Of friends and dusting

Bless all young nieces who enthusiastically rescue their frazzled aunts.

My bookshelf had ceased to become a refuge and had become a source of tension to me. For nearly two years, it had become a dumping ground for books that were gifted, purchased at conferences and meetings, and worst of all the-books-that-we-SHOULD-read. Rather than address the issue, I tried to neglect it. There it sat, a dusty judgemental lump.

I could not do it myself and so approached D's daughter who had come home for the holidays. 'All the books you want to carry home are yours' I said, in hopes of offering a bribe. The bribe was not needed, 'It will be fun' she said.

And she made it fun. I loved being with her as she diligently (for five hours!) dusted, sorted, and arranged. Not part of the plan, but she took a rag and dishsoap to clean the covers of the more 'loved' books. She used cellotape to mend the torn books.

Here's an example. My much-loved, much used copy of Thangam Phillip's book.
Before:

and after:

And at the end of it, I had a bookshelf that was clean, nice-smelling, logically arranged, and full of the books that Mian and I turn to frequently.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude as she set off on her long walk home- down 'our' hill, up the other, and across the ridge in the face of an approaching storm. This is a child who gladly gave up a summer day to sit and work. That was not all. A sms from her father revealed that she had given up a trek that her friends had gone on to dust my bookshelves.

We are blessed.

It's all gone

It was nearly an hour of terror. I knew the deafening pounding on the roof was 'just' a hailstorm. My lizard brain was not having any of it. The dogs were a panting, quivering mess and my own heart was pounding hard. On top of this primal fear and the worry that every crack I heard was the sound of our solar pipes breaking was the sorrow for our plants.

The morning justified my grieving. The rose petals had been stripped and lay in a thick blanket on the ground. The kiwi- our first 'real' harvest- had tattered leaves and several of the promise-laden blooms had been torn off. The vegetable seedlings were tattered, several lay prone and broken. I got a message from a friend who lives at the top of the hill, " I am crying, my veggies are so damaged from the hail." "Hang in there, they will come back if the tips are okay" I replied as I continued with my melancholy accounting. Maybe half of the other fruits- the plums, peaches, pears and apricots- had fallen, the others were still okay. Or so I thought.

We are having some work done, and when G came with the workmen, I was all ready with my quip. "Was that a hailstorm last night, or did China shell us?" G and Hem laughed, Ragbar Da was beyond a smile.

Ragbar Da is one of a  fast disappearing breed of people in the mountains. He is a Renaissance man, an expert mason, tinsmith, weaver and horticulturist. He knows the ways of the plants and the animals, he knows to read the land and the rocks. He had never seen anything like this. A few years ago, Ragbar da had set out a new plum orchard. Being the man he is, he had done it excellently. Home-grafted trees, carefully set out and diligently tilled, manured and pruned. This year, they were going to repay him. Despite the hailstorm we had already endured, the plum trees bore about 400 cases of fruit.

 

Today, the fruits are gone. This is when I learnt that the fruit I had thought was okay because they were still on the trees were doomed. Apparently the hail bruises the fruit and it begins to rot at the point of impact. With time, the rot increases to the point where the fruit is unsaleable. 'Everything in Chatola and Sitla is gone', said Hem. "All we are going to harvest this year are mosquitoes and flies from the rotting fruit.'

There are a few people who have insured their fruit. For the vast majority, the premiums are high enough that gambling on the weather is worthwhile. With climate change, this is an increasingly loaded bet. And with farmers in the area almost entirely dependent on the fruit crop, they have indeed lost everything.

A mulch of money

After I wrote the last post, I emailed it to my family, sat back, and waited for congratulations. They did arrive eventually, but the first reply was not what I expected 'you spent 40K and don't even have walls', she said.

Ouch. 'I wanted it very much' , I replied. And then I thought about it.

The photo that started this chain of thought

 My reply must have seemed arrogant It probably was.
I definitely do not regret the toilet. It gives me great pleasure, it feeds my garden, it has removed a lot of tension over water, and I get a major kick just dreaming of all I will do with the compost. I would do it all over again, and happily.
But that conversation got me to thinking about my spending on the garden. Is it too much? How does one estimate whether spending on a hobby is justifiable?

This amazing display, all gifted by a friend from her extras

 As far as possible, I am a DIY person. The 'make do or do without' philosophy is entrenched in me, or so I thought. But now I wonder.
I don't spend on frills. My garden has no tchotkes, none of the fancy gear that is considered indispensable. My bird table  is a plank wedged into a tree. I propagate my plants. I handwater using a can and a pipe.
But the list of what I consider 'not-frills' is increasing. I spend a lot on labour. I got the patio-wall resurfaced, the veg garden fenced in, the upper fields ploughed. When Mian goes to the States at Christmas, he always goes accompanied by a list of seeds. Not all of them survive.

My seed stash. Part bought, part collected. Mian doubled this stash with his annual spring gift

 I now am in contact with a supplier of bulbs in Kalimpong and 'treated myself' to an embarrassingly luxurious order last fall.

Part of my luxurious bulb order- on the resurfaced patio wall

 I want a golden azalea, I have decided. I want a proper rose arch, not my current jugad one. I want a proper path down to the house. I want garden furniture to sit in. I want. I want.

The 'jugaad' rose arch I want to replace

But the rose couldn't care less. Definitely a 'want' and not a 'need'

And there are two things running through my head now. One is from a book  I am currently reading, which says that gardeners who don't have creative capabilities try to cover up deficiencies with 'a mulch of money'. And the other is what a friend had told me once, when we were discussing the concepts of 'high maintenance' women. 'You are the worst of both worlds' she said. 'You look low maintenance, but are high maintenance'

The Mansion

When I got off at the Pul Bangash metro station (which thanks to Kavita and Unmana I know got its name from the when the Bangash tribe settled near a bridge) that I glanced out of the station and saw this tower.

I thought it was a church and walked out to see it. Its not.

It is the Roshanara mansion, and that is all I could find out about it. I would love to know when it was built and by whom. But while I don't have any factual information about it, I know this: its residents are warm and friendly folk.

I walked in the approximate direction of the tower, and found myself in a narrow road with high walls on either side. I stood there, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of that lovely iron dome when a young policeman came along and raised an eyebrow at me.

I saw a lovely tower, I told him, and I came looking for it. Is it a church? Would he know where it is?
That was no church, he told me, and instructed me to follow him. He turned into a narrow opening in the wall and up a steep flight of stairs.

And there I was, inside Roshanara Mansion. looking at a beautiful weather vane over a set of roofs. The building is now divided up into several small apartments, of maybe one or two small rooms each. I was ooh-ing over the weather vane when a woman came out of one of these apartments. We got to chatting, and it ended with her inviting me over for tea.

I am not sure if I would do that if I found a stranger gawking at my house- I hope I would.

Impossible fantasy

I've spoken before of the 10-year old Chicu and her fascination with the landscape Corbett walked in, of how it seemed so remarkably far away to her that she did not even yearn to see it. When she grew up a bit more, she believed that a sign of maturity is to erect a fence around one's fantasies. And so the pine forests were replaced by a farm in the western Ghats .This she did yearn for, and visualised it in great detail- the kitchen garden, the view, the chanderi sarees on the windows. Eventually, that too got filed away as an impossible thing, something to be joked about.

And now, she's doing it. All growned up, and she's learned that its not necessary to limit dreams, just to reach out for them.

Come September, I pack up our life here and move to the hills. Mian and I will find a little house in the hills, and make it home for the next few years. We'll be in the district of Nainital, where Corbett lived. The area where we are moving to has pine trees and rhododendrons, and Himalayan magpies are as common as crows. More important, it has the two of us together. For that, I'd gladly exchange any number of rhododendrons.

We hope to rent a house built in the traditional manner, with slate and mud. A little garden we'll have, where we'll grow corn and roses, cabbages and jasmine. I'll sit in the garden and write. Mian will have me to come home to every night. It'll be a good life.

There are worries. The nearest coffee-vendor is 4 hours and an overnight stay away. I've always been a salaried person, and have quite liked the calm knowledge that come the first week, i'll have cash in my account. The one thing I am bad at is project-peddling. Mian will be away for six months in a year.

But the other six months will be together. I am excited and nervous at the same time. If I had a tail, it would be going around in circles.

The 20’s Parisian salon

That’s what my sis and I joke that mum has created in her ‘quiet retired home’. In addition to our old friends, she has amassed a long list of people who live in the neighbourhood and care for her. I was overwhelmed on the day she had the formal opening of her house by the sheer number of people who came- especially by the number of gallant men she seems to have milling around.

Take last afternoon for an example. I had run out of dry clothes and was lounging at home in a shirt and not much else while my clothes attempted to dry in near-100% humidity. You’d think a secluded home belonging to someone who ‘does not like company’ would be private, wouldn’t you? Hah!

First came the local priest with a coconut plant he had grown from seed for her. Then came an autorickshaw driver with sweets his wife had cooked. An artist friend came to chat and presumably, to check if the painting he had given her was hung yet. A group of impossibly handsome keralite well-diggers came rushing over to tell her the well they were working on had struck water. A neighbour came to check if the leak she had complained about was still there. Seeing that it was, he repaired it.

Me? I huddled under a sheet and wondered when was the last time I needed to fend ‘em off with a stick.

The Simple Life

That’s what my mum has decided to adopt here in Sawantwadi. And it is pretty much, the life of my dreams. It’s low-impact, calm and friendly. My mum wakes at 5 and sits watching the birds come to her garden and looking for any flowers that might have blossomed overnight.

A big part of this simplicity is her desire to be as self-reliant as possible. So we have a compost pit which will be just fine once the rain stops sloshing down, she’s growing some of her food, and she’s harvesting her water from the skies.

The Konkan in the monsoons is never short of water. So far, we have been managing just fine with a couple of buckets in rotation: one being used in the house, one under the downspout which gets filled every 5 minutes. This necessitates a lot of running in and out of the downpour with buckets, and is not something I want mum to do when she is alone.

And so the home-made rainwater harvesting system. Rajan (a chap who comes around every couple of days to do odd jobs in the garden) and I fixed a pipe to the downspout using willpower- it is too wet to use a solvent glue. This was steadied with a post. I then stole mum’s cleanest dish towel and used it to make a rough filter. We slipped a collapsible pipe over it, tied it on tight, let the other end into her water tank and then the real work began. This was the gentle nudging out of all kinks in the pipe so that it would carry water instead of storing it. An hour or so in the rain and now it seems to be working.

It definitely is not as pretty as a rainwater harvesting system can and should be. In some ways, I feel like I cheated it of its potential- wonderfully aesthetic and functional things can be done by playing with various downtakes. But it was done in a morning, my mum can dismantle it whenever she chooses, it filters and transports her water, and it was done for a total cost of Rs600 /- . Not too bad.

Travelling Light

One of the long running joke-arguments between my mum and me concerned the concept of traveling light. I prefer to travel with a small backpack- the same one I usually carry to work. In it are a couple of changes of clothes, a book, a pen and journal, and just enough toiletries to prevent me from being a bio-hazard. If I do carry any gifts, they are always small and foldable, and I take no souvenirs.

My mum, on the other hand, travels with the kitchen sink. I get distressed at the amount of stuff she considers it necessary to tote around, and explain to her- loudly and shrilly- that life is much easier with less stuff. 'you can buy everything everywhere. You don’t need to carry things from one end to the country, there are professionals who do it for you!' has been my constant refrain. What my sis and I find endearing and exasperating is mum's tendency to carry plants everywhere. When we go to pick her up, its always easy to see what seat Amma is in- it's the one with branches jutting out of the window. We have told her that it is an unnecessary cause of stress and discomfort. 'Look at me, I travel so well' was my unspoken message.

Until now.

I am visiting my mum this month, and I traveled here with far too much. All my gifts were bulky and perishable. And to top it all off, I was carrying a tree. I was also carrying lilies, but they were discreetly tucked away in my suitcase. The tree, on the other hand, needed to be planted in my berth, from where it benevolently spread its branches over the rest of the passengers.

I discovered three things during this trip. First, I am turning into my mum. Second, traveling light IS better. Most important, I discovered that a tree possibly trumps a dog as a conversation magnet. Just so you know.

Home-maker

My mother is 65 years old and she's building a house. Mian and I visited in Jan and the house is gloriously beautiful. Red laterite, warm brown wood, terracotta tiles, red coba floors- it is a little jewel.

When I was 25, my first job was building a house. Only, I did not do it alone. I was assisting a site engineer, who was assisting his boss. We had back-up in the office to work out finances and ensure that the right cheque reached the right person in time. The office staff would help us do the inevitable follow-up with suppliers and the whole army of craftsmen. As we were regular customers, these agencies had great motivation to cooperate with us above their other jobs. I never knew of the mechanism for various permissions required, someone else did that for us. Despite that, I was stressed and over-worked.

My mother is doing it all alone. No admin-backup, no big, influential boss to scold errant sub-contractors, no promise of future work to lure them in, no strange person who would come in the dark of the night  and then get the required permits for us. (btw..he was legit, he only came in after office hours because this was his moonlighting job).

Two years ago, she decided that she wants to live in our childhood town. She went there, and started work. This meant getting the land in her name, getting a promise of a water line, getting building permission, the whole works. And it meant living as a tenant in a little place after 4 decades of being a house-owner. It meant dealing with often-untrustworthy, sometimes aggressive workmen. It meant staying there, managing a thousand different things. She is still doing it, though now she is in the finishing stages (always the difficult part).


For her, it has also meant a new lease of life. The woman who could not walk around the house now routinely walks everywhere. She is having a whale of a time being the boss again- 10 years after she sold her hospital and embraced the retired life. She wakes in the morning, laces up her shoes, wears her hat, takes her packed lunch and takes the bus to 'the site'.

But I know that I would not be able to do what she is doing. I would not be able to navigate the decision-making, the management, the planning, the execution all by myself.  With no experience and very little support, she has created a lovely home for herself and for us.

She is sometimes in tears when workmen don't show up despite promises. She gets frustrated when one of them damages the work of the other. She experiences self-doubt when confronted by a bewildering array of tiles. She calls me up to describe a butterfly she saw. She feeds birds at our new house. The pineapples and roses and medicinal herbs she has planted are all thriving under her care. She sits on the verandah and watches the sunset. I am so amazingly proud of her.

It's everyone's world, after all.

Leading the crowd of worse things that cluster accusingly around my bed at 5am is a photo I took a few years ago. When I was working in the little village of Sulibhanjan, a woman invited me into her house for chai. While she was making it, my eye was caught by a sudden movement. The door to the outhouse was weathered near the floor, and a child was peering at me through one of the holes. To do it, he must have crouched so that his chin touched the floor. I laughed at the surprise of it. "See, your son is playing hide-and-seek" I said gaily, as I took a photo of him.

"He lives there", his mother told me. "He is mad."

Stunned, I looked again, and noticed the padlock on the door. As soon as I came to my room, I deleted the photo. It has been 6 years now, and that image still haunts me. It does not matter that I did not know. This was a boy who lived locked in a loo, and I had laughed at him.

I do not blame the mother; she did not have any options. But that child was in front of me all evening today as I listened to a lecture on inclusion and the right to education act organised by the Latika Roy Foundation.  As he tried to sort out the question of 'Whose School Is It Anyway?' (the title of the talk), Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah was passionate and informed as he always is. More than that, he was compassionate. "When you are my age, these things will no longer shock you" he replied to a student who was outraged that a woman would 'choose' to have her daughter beg in the streets rather than go to school; his voice hinted that these things would always sadden him. That was reassuring. The Right to Education Act is a step in the right direction. That is also reassuring.

My afternoon was not just reassuring, it was positively uplifting. I spent it playing and eating chole-bhature with the young students and almost-as-young teacher of Street Smart, a school conducted for street children near Astley Hall. Not inclusive in the ideal of a classroom where they would rub shoulders with 'elite' children, maybe. But it works. The genuine friendship between the students and their teacher was unmistakable; they studied, and more important, they had someone who cared for them.

My friends and I sneaked out of the lecture hall a few minutes early. On our way to the car, we justified our decision 'not really our field..we don't really have an opinion..what can we say..mumblemumble'. Five minutes later, we were arguing at the tops of our voices, gesticulating wildly, and slapping each others hands out of the way. At one point, my hands were tightly pinned down so that I would stop trying to interrupt. All this for a topic that we had decided we don't have any strong opinions about. The LRF lectures do that to one..


 The photo? while I deleted the one I talked about, I do have one of most of the family- sans the men who were selling their products, and one little boy. 

yesterday

She woke up at 5:45 am in her berth. The first thing she did was check if her husband was awake too. 'Sweetie?' she said, to be met with a strangers stare. He was not there; he was on a plane. She had forgotten when asleep.

The guards at the Metro terminal of the Delhi airport were bored, and did not pay much attention as the couple raced down the stairs towards them one minute to go before the last train pulled out. They were used to goodbyes, and this one was brisker than most, almost brusque. A quick almost-hug, and the woman grabbed her bag from the scanner and rushed into the lower levels of the terminal. The man waited till she was no longer visible, turned, and walked away with his bags in tow.

The taxi ride to the airport was quiet. A half hour of watching the lamp posts whizz by far too quickly. Dark skies, unearthly yellow surroundings. Vividh Bharati on the radio with its nostalgic, romantic music and chaste hindustani-speaking announcers.The couple sitting close together, his arm around hers, her head on his shoulder.

The weekend was much of the same. Two people stuck together Velcro-fast. Playing enough scrabble, eating enough mangoes, listening to enough music, making enough plans to tide them over for the next few months and then realizing that it would never be enough.

But it need not be enough. We will have more. We will play scrabble online,and chat, and read, and watch movies. And before we know it, Mian and I will be together again.

Staying home

There are only two stories in the world, I have heard. One is of the stranger who rides into town (and eventually leaves), and one is of the person who has a stranger visit his or her town.

I have always been the one who gets up and goes. It seems to me now that a large part of my time at home was spent packing for trips while my mum sat on the bed and watched me. I know how it feels to be torn..to be sad to be leaving, but to also be excited about the upcoming trip. I have had times when my mind was already at my destination even as my hands were packing my bag. I would talk excitedly about wherever it is that I was going to. I remember feeling defensive when my mum expressed regret that I am leaving. Be happy for me, I would say. Why aren't you happy for me? And all the time, she would sit there and try to summon up excitement about my plans. In an effort to cheer her up, I would emphasize how happy I was wherever I was going to. It would make her feel better,I would think, to know I was happy. And I would suppress my regret and tell her over and over how wonderful my destination was.

I feel sad now.

I feel sad that I rubbed in my excitement to be leaving. Did Mum feel that I was happy to leave her? Back then I didn't really have the empathy to understand the desolation of the one who is left behind. I couldn't see that while the one left behind IS happy for the traveller, she is also faced with the reality of an empty home. I didn't realise how difficult it is to bite back tears and join in the packing. I was also too dense and self-absorbed to understand insecurity, to understand the doubts that rise despite one's logical mind.

Back then, I say. Because now I know. As the fates would have it, my situation is now reversed. The one I love is more of a traveller than I am. And I am the one who thinks despite herself, "he just got here, and he is planning to leave." I know its not like that. I know exactly what it feels like to leave home. I try to always remember that.

I thought I do a good job of it. But today I realised that Mian senses my unhappiness. And worse, thinks it is directed at him. It's not. As I said, I do know both sides of the story. I can, and do, feel excitement about his travels. I am damn proud of his work and the life he has crafted for himself. But this is the man who selects the most intact chips in a crushed bag of Lays and keeps them aside for me. He left an hour ago, and I am already lonesome. How can I not be filled with dread at the thought of his being away for a week?

Off I go!

In 19 hours, my holiday begins.

Till then, I am scrambling around like a mad thing trying to do all that I need to do to ensure that the world keeps spinning for the next month. Completing sundry spreadsheets, presentations, and following up on correspondence at work. Making sure everything perishable / fermentable is out of the house. Arranging things so that we dont need to do major excavation when we return. Making sure all dues are paid, the plants are taken care of, everything that needs to be protected is sealed. Pre-holiday primping has taken a back seat, though hopefully tonight will be a spa night.

But it is so worth it. A day in delhi, buying gifties. 20 hours of scrabble and conversation time in the train with my Mian. Some days in Goa, revisiting old favourites and finding new ones. Celebrating our anniversary where we spent our honeymoon. Feeling incredibly lucky and thankful for the last year. Some days in my home town with mum. Eating fish cooked by her, visiting my school, my childhood beach, my favourite haunts, the cakes of Experto Bakery. Going to Pune. Hugging family (after a year!). Discovering my niece is now as tall as me (not taller, no matter what the measure says), seeing her wearing lipstick, seeing the teen chicu in her and thinking 'oh no..not again.' Food, drink, laughter, love, warmth. Meeting old friends, rewinding life by nearly a decade, visiting old haunts, being giggly, shopping, makeup counters, gossip, exclamations. A training program. Learning, being awestruck, coming home to mum's meals at night. More conversation, more warmth. Raiding mum's crockery. 'Stealing' her mother's cookware. Going through my beloved books, selecting far too many to bring back. Entreating Mian to carry lamps and furniture back to our Dun home.

I can no longer wait.

Learning Plateaus

4 years ago, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to do some serious navel-gazing. I went through several assessments, by myself and by those around me. There were personality tests, leadership assessments, skill analyses- the lot. The outcome of all that was what my mother had been saying for two decades-but never mind that. With the help of my coach, I drafted a Development Plan. At the end of 2010, I am still working on it. I still catch myself getting into trouble for doing things I know I should not be doing.

I tried and tried to make bread, concentrating on just two recipes (rustic bread and cinnamon-raisin-oatmeal bread), with variable results every time. This weekend, I will buy some more yeast and add a third one- roasted potato bread. (All by Jeffrey Hamelman, recipes in his book or online at The Fresh Loaf). I expect more unpredictability there.

I am still trying to learn enough English to teach it to a six-year old. We started tenses yesterday, and I realized that I only remember six of the twelve (or is it 9? or 15?).

I intuitively understand the concept of resilience, but cannot define it- and I certainly cannot sound erudite while talking about it. I see vulnerability, but find it tough to assess it without including disclaimers with every phrase.

For the first time in my life, I feel my father's absence. I now see that I have no idea how to do this husband-wife thing. My observations of married people are either dowry reports in the newspaper or the 'how to iron Father's shirts' chapters in my 19th century housekeeping manuals- which makes me as stable as Himalayan geology. Working on it, but I don't think I'll be asking Mian for a stakeholder assessment anytime soon.

My basil died in October due to the cold, my earthworms in November. The mint and garlic are alive. I don’t know how to garden below 15 degrees Celsius. Still feeling my way around northern gardening calendars.

I spoke of two challenges facing me last year. The work challenge I have bowed down in defeat to, the personal challenge is a continuing one.

Cakes, yes. Pies, no. Ensuring equitability, sort of. Basic conversation, no. Thinking before I speak, sometimes. Thinking before I snap, no. Got my work cut out for me.

This has definitely been a Year of Learning. Where learning is a verb, of course. Still working on all that, and thoroughly enjoying the process.

Happy new year.

The photo? my big adventure of the year. Our wedding day dinner..

Toil and trouble..

Am back a sadder woman. The last week's travel was a little harrowing for me.

Yes, the scenery was great and while walking in the mountains of Nainital, I could feel the approbration of the 10-year old chicu who had a crush on Corbett. At one point, we reached the top of a mountain-where I would stay for the next two days- late at night. I stood in the courtyard at midnight and was surrounded by sparkles- both above and below me. The sky was clear, moonless and  liberally sprinkled with stars. Below me spread a valley with a hundred little villages, each house a tiny and intense point of light. Only the band of darkness where the high Himalaya were, enabled me to distinguish between earth and sky. Despite the cold, I stood there for a long, long time.

In the midst of all that beauty was great injustice. The family I stayed with had three young children, all girls. They were intelligent, beautiful and hungry for love. For the crime of having given birth to them, their mother was continually berated. Within half an hour of my arrival, the matriarch of the family began complaining- in front of her grand daughters- how expensive it was to feed them. The mother was anaemic, and malnourished with shoulders like a coat hanger. Despite this, she will be forced to go on giving birth to children till she finally produces a boy, who will be spoilt far more than is good for any human and who because of his upbringing will carry on the misogyny.

My colleague refused to drink water at any of the houses that belonged to scheduled caste villagers. These families did not offer water to me either- they had probably learnt the hard way that it is a crime to offer their 'tainted' water to visitors. I made it a point to ask for and drink water at each such house and was rewarded first with astonishment and then a smile of welcome. But of course, this only serves to make me feel good and will have no impact on their lives whatsoever.

On my way back, I exploded at my good and patient Mian leaving him sad and bewildered. I travelled back wishing my life came with an undo button. When  I got here, I learnt that a colleague is seriously ill.

Plan for the next week? get bucket of sand, bury head

Wanting more.

He is here, my Mian is.

Travelling to Delhi despite jetlag just because I needed to go and we weren't prepared to be separated again. Gravely agreeing with me that the mould on the walls does add a certain decorative something. Good humouredly jumping headlong into the Great Game of stalking and appropriating our newspaper before the landlords 'borrow' it. Sharing with me the wonderful joy of a morning coffee while watching the world wake up. Eating a hastily made dahi-rice as if it was the most splendid thing ever.

And instead of wholeheartedly enjoying this, I am grumpy because he leaves in a fortnight. Somewhere inside me is the ability to be thankful for the now, to not let tomorrow spoil today. I need to find it, that's all.

happily ever after

Being married for seven months makes me an old hand at this marriage thing now. However, my theory that marriage is an unnecessary blot on society remains.

Make no mistake, meeting Mian was the most fortunate thing that ever happened to me. Not a day goes by that I do not fervently thank all the gods, universities, friends, and airlines that made it possible for us to meet. Rather than my options closing after marriage, Mian has opened up possibilities I did not know existed, and taught me to aim further than I had ever dared to. Rather than increasing stress and negotiations, Mian is a place of refuge for me.

But that is him, not the institution of marriage. I am lucky enough to not have a TV at home, and so was shielded from the new phenomenon that is sweeping India- Reality show marriages. These are shows where a group of women compete for the attentions of a man. They are put through tests, evaluated, and exhibited like so many succulent steaks. The man on the other hand, shows off his fancy house. In the last series, the would-be groom had a history of domestic violence. Despite that, otherwise sane women fought on television to marry him with the blessings of their proud parents. Four months down the line, the ‘lucky winner’ is displaying her bruises to the media.

This is an extreme case. But ‘normal life’ is not so different. Too many of my friends- intelligent engineers all- have had their faces bleached, their teeth straightened, their cooking skills tweaked. And the lies and the grovelling! I went through the matrimonials for a short while, to make my family happy. The day I put my foot down and refused to play along was the day I overheard my mother apologizing for me. I forget what it was she was apologising for- either my salary or my language skills. But that was the last straw.

And today, I am glad. The thought of where I would have been today had I played along terrifies me. Continually apologising for my existence, suppressing all that makes me Chicu. Telling myself ‘love does not matter. Atleast he does not beat me’ as I’ve heard my friends tell themselves. Structuring my life in such a way that I minimize contact with the man who is my husband. Lying. Cheating.

The heavens bless this man I am with. He is loving, considerate, fun, supportive. And he would have been even if I were not married to him.

I am still mystified by the importance marriage is given. It is not the goal. The goal is to spend one’s life with someone you love so much you cannot imagine not being together. If we find someone like that, it is wonderful. If we don’t, living alone is better than putting up with someone odious just for the sake of public appearances.

Thanksgiving

It's over, my period of penury is now over. I had been living the last fortnight with a self-imposed tightened belt. When I say self-imposed by the way, I am not implying a stunt of some sort, but merely referring to the combination of too little financial planning and too much misplaced pride that left me with Rs. 240/- for fifteen days. This requires considerable ingenuity, but if I have been able to do it at all, it was because of those that love me rather than because of any thought on my part. There were many things I could not do, but I was not hungry. I might have eyed the cooking oil anxiously dreading the time it ran out, but the putting of meals on the table was not just possible, but pleasurable.

And this is where my loved ones come in. Not that they gave me emergency packages, but I benefited from the continuous loving concern and giving that I am blessed with. I have not really had to buy too much food in this period. My mum had, over the last year, sent me enough dried fish and masalas to feed an army. My Mian had stockpiled the house with enough flours and yeast to start a bakery. Maybe more important, they had taught me enough of their cooking skills for me to use this food. I had not just the raw materials, but also the culturally diverse techniques to allow me to wonder if I wanted pesarattu or buckwheat noodles for dinner.

I hate to admit that I had bickered as they loaded up the kitchen, "we can buy more anytime! It's clutter!". No, sometimes we can't buy more. It's food.

I have also been thinking. This was a cash flow hiccup, nothing more. These rupees were only meant to top up food stocks. I have all the necessities- a properly set up household, a job that punctually pays me a salary. I even had an adequate and liquid emergency fund in the shape of a $50 note. Not only would any of my friends and family have helped me, but the two who knew the state of affairs were actively insisting that I allow them to do so. If I did not accept, it was because I was never in distress, just uncomfortable. Even this mild level of discomfort occupied my thoughts to a large degree.

And that is why the Arjun Sengupta report made me ashamed of my complaining. 836 million Indians live with 20 Rs a day for ALL their needs- food, shelter, clothing, medicine, life. 20 Rs a day. Always. Not for a fortnight till the next cheque comes in. Always. For far too many people all over the world, the state of affairs I was in is wasteful affluence.

I am ashamed that I have not given thought beyond the occasional 'tut-tut' to this; I have never done anything to alleviate their real distress. I will now keep my eyes open to help someone out in a real way- not the occasional five-rupee charity, but something more reliable.

How can I end my tale of the last fortnight without sharing the way the multi-verse stepped in too? One day, pretty early on, I gloomily held the last coffee bean on my palm and resigned myself to a fortnight without the soul-satisfying and pleasurable mornings that are my one 'habit'. That same evening M stopped by with a request. She was going away soon and her family were all tea drinkers. Would I mind taking a pound of coffee?

Teaching English

The little girl who visits me on alternate evenings. She is now becoming more comfortable coming home, and opening up wonderfully. She has begun going to a children's activity center and the question "what did you do today?" opens up a flood that I need to stop with a stern call to studies. She paints excellently, has an astounding grasp of mathematics and a keen interest in the world around her. She is also exceedingly generous and often brings me little gifts like this flower she made.

The problem is, I feel like a fraud when I coach her. I have bitten off far more than I can chew, and it is sheer bloody-mindedness and the reluctance to withdraw what little help I am without offering a better alternative that is making me continue.

I am supposed to be helping her with Maths and English. The Maths she only needs the slightest help with, and the English she needs far more than I can give her. It is not her intelligence that is at fault. It is the education system. Its emphasis on focusing on the exams means that children like her get by with concealing the real state of their knowledge till they are suddenly thrown into the world.

She reads her English text well including words like 'attended', and 'jealous', and 'regularly'. She translates each paragraph correctly into Hindi. All this made me think that she is competent in English. No, she isn't. She has simply memorized the textbook.

Trying to converse with her in English made me realize that she actually has an extremely poor vocabulary. She did not know the meaning of 'you' or 'me'. This has me stumped, because I cannot conquer the large gap between what she knows and what she has learnt by heart. Getting her to translate a simple new sentence,"what is the time?" is impossible, because she tries to translate each word. We end up tied into knots because not only do Hindi and English have their subjects and predicates at different ends, but they also split verbs in a maddening manner.

For a while, I said goodbye to the school curriculum and focused on language games. The BBC games were a little out-of-context, but she had good fun with the graphics and would actually listen and try to understand the instructions. And making words with scrabble tiles was fun too, though that game usually ended with us building a house instead.This starting from scratch would probably yield results given time

But now exams are around the corner. I know that her parents expect that she'll do better because of the time she spends here, and the only way to do that is by dropping this and 'doing her lessons' which is learning the questions and answers by rote..knowing that if the question is worded even a little differently, she does not have the language skills to know what is being asked of her.

I have no idea what to do..should I sit down with her father and explain matters to him? Tell him that it is important she develop basic language skills now, before the gap between her curriculum and her skills is unbridgable? And even if I do, will I still be able to teach her, knowing that she has an utter phobia towards the language? I want her to know that English has an applicability outside the classroom, that there is pleasure in the written word. I show her my books- the few with pictures in them- and plan on buying some appropriate for her soon, but will that be enough? Is it any surprise that I feel like a fraud?

being home

Last night, I was asked if I had been to all my favourite haunts in Seattle yet. No, I had to confess, not yet.
And today morning on my way to the market, I was wondering why. After all, one of the things I was looking forward to (besides plonking my head on Mian's shoulder) was revisiting all the places I loved in Seattle.
But I find myself unable to do that. Not physically, it is not like I dont have the time to, but mentally. I find myself strangely reluctant to pull on walking shoes and step out.

Part of it is the new neighbourhood, of course. I live some distance away from where I did earlier, and so my haunts are a bus ride away. As for sauntering around this neighbourhood, I am still in the position of the child learning to tie her shoelaces- 'the chicu goes  across the road at the big yellow tree, and under the bridge at the little pink house'. Part of it is the feeling guilty to saunter when I have things I am supposed to be doing. And I know that is not logical, I need to work through this fog. I will do that, soon.

In the meantime, as I answered truthfully,I am focusing on meeting all my favourite people. A couple of days ago, and again yesterday I met The King (no, not that one!). This man has given me goodbye-forever hugs twice already only to have me pop into his life like a mushroom again. Bless him,  he always reacts asif that is one of the nicest things that could happen to anyone. And in an hour, I meet M (no, not that one) for a day of wrapping wedding favours, gossip, and rendering me sane. Not bad, eh?

And as for the haunting, out at the market, I got me a map. Now I am an unstoppable force!