Early mornings and love

A lonely bus stand in a little town. It is about 4am, when the dawn is just planning to arrive. It was a request stop for the bus that just passed; except for the woman who got off, the stand seems empty. It is cold and dark everywhere except for one solitary point of brightness. This glow comes from a chai stall run by another woman, maybe in her late fifties. There is a rickshaw next to that stall, the passenger rushes to it only to discover that like the stand, it too is empty.

'Do you want the rickshaw?' calls the chai-walli. 'Wait, I will wake him.' She bustles over to a figure sleeping in the shadows, bends over, lays a hand on his shoulder and wakes the driver. He is instantly semi-awake and takes the passenger to her destination.

A simple incident that would have ended there, had I not heard their story.

They were in love once. Then something happened-maybe parental pressure, maybe a fight that looks minor in retrospect but was a dealbreaker then- but she married someone else. He did not. After many years, she found herself a widow, and began the chai stall to make ends meet. They both chose the night shift- he watching over her safety and livelihood, and she over his.

It is not a poor substitute. Think of the utter pleasure there is in sharing a space with the one you love. Those long nights with the two of them together must be full of a companionable peace. And it is pleasurable to work knowing that the one you love is next to you, that he has chosen to be there so that he can watch out for you. And how wonderful it is to know that you can help him too, that you can keep an eye out for passengers.

And of course, there is the actual waking up. It is not for nothing that I prize my mornings with Mian. It is splendid, true, to slowly wake up next to your love..but there is also something to be said for waking him or her up. She too must enjoy it- to bustle up to the sleeping one, to lean over him, inhale the warm and sleepy child-like smell, lay a caring hand on his shoulder and know that rather than an alarm clock, he is waking up to her voice. And for the one being woken up too- what better thing to wake up to than the voice and face of your sweetheart. And then to set off on work knowing that you will return to a cup of chai, to the exchange of a few quiet words.

No, not a poor substitute at all

A landmark in the village

There isn't one. Of the conventional type atleast. And that led to this story.
I finally went up and opened me a local savings account- step 1 towards establishing one's residence and all.
But the thing is that the banks now insist on delivering their documents to your home. And that had me worried. My address is just short of the Mark Twain style- instead of 'god knows where', mine says 'Chatola'.
'The post man won't know who I am' I fretted to Mian 'And no one will be able to help him, because while people know my face, they don't know my name.'
'Don't worry', he soothed me 'Everyone knows everyone here. The mail will reach just fine. Trust me.'
And of course I trust him. Utterly, and absolutely.
But you see, that is such an important letter..

And so when Shona and I had gone up to Mukteshwar to get the passbook, I stopped to introduce myself to the postman.
'Hello, I am Chicu. I just opened an account, and I was not sure if you know where I live or who I am, so I thought I'd come up and say hello'
He looked up at me and down at Shona  and beamed sunnily.
' I know you!' he said. 'You live with Shona-Bhaloo! Mian lives with her too!'

' Ah. Yes' I said. 'That's us. The ones who live with Shona-Bhaloo'

There are landmarks in the village- they just happen to be furry and charming.

More pupdates!

Clearly, I think that there is nothing you'd like more than photos of Sho and her babies.
Or baby, I should say. All but one have gone to their 'real' homes now. The black one has gone to a teacher's family, with two small boys. The grey one has gone off to the lady who refers to Mian as her Panditji. His name sadly, is Tiger.

The red is still here..and every day that she remains, I fall in love with her more. Keeping her is not an option for far too many reasons. And so I continue to look for a home for her. In the meantime, here are photos

posing for the camera

 

cuddling on the sofa

Sphinx and trainee sphinx-let

Watching for langurs

the moon last evening

Rainy days and cold pups

Two days of incessant rainfall. Great beauty, yes. And I took some sadly inadequate photos..

But with this great beauty came great cold. We were all miserable despite multiple layers, but the pups even more so. When we realised that they were shivering uncontrollably and whimpering with the cold, we allowed them to sleep with us.

That they loved this privilege is clear from the snap. It's difficult to see, but I have a husband somewhere under the pups.

Culpability

It was in Pune. I was riding my scooter back home from work, via the railway station. When I was standing at a traffic light, I saw them. A mother, a teenaged daughter, a young son. And I saw the man as he walked by the girl and pinched her buttocks. The girl started, her mother glared, the man moved away. The traffic light changed, I drove on. End of incident. Or not. This was atleast 7 years ago, and I still remember that scene with guilt.

And more recently, in the Delhi metro. It was late in the evening- I had come in by the train, and was going to my hotel. There were about half a dozen women in the women's coach- and 4 men. The type you probably know- tight tees stretched over paunches, expensive jeans, lots of bling, sunglasses after sundown, lots of cologne. 'This is a ladies' coach, Bhaisaab' I said ' general coach is over there.' They smirked. I persisted, 'there's plenty of space there too..This is a ladies coach 24 hours.' One of them looked at me and rolled his eyes. I shut up, cheeks blazing with embarrassment. The woman sitting opposite me gave me two thumbs-up..hiding her hands behind her purse.

Now a nation is struggling to answer the question,' how could this happen?' Some are baying for blood. Some want to change the culture in India, in the world. I am part of the group that thinks that every single one of us is responsible. Don't think so?  Read Peter Griffin's sobering post 'the problem is us'

The incidents I wrote about are a small fraction of the many times I averted my glance. Even when I was the victim. In the bus incident, why did I keep quiet? Why did I shield that man? It would have been easy enough to call the conductor, 'Bhaisaab, please give this gentleman another seat..he seems to be getting a little too close.' Why did I not do that?

It was the commentary in my head..He will stop now. Why do you want to make a noise? People will think you are making a tamasha. The bus reaches early. He might 'do something' after you get down. You don't want publicity. Keep quiet.

Those voices have made me an accomplice. Enough. It is difficult for me to argue, to confront, to talk to people. But yell like a banshee I can. That should be enough, no?

 

Christmas in the mountains

Convent school educated, brought up in an area with large Catholic population- Christmas means a lot to me. It means meeting friends and family for curiously coloured fried snacks and plum cake. It means carols sung off-key. It means over the top decorations. It means a lot of joy.
 I was missing the Christmas of my childhood when our neighbour asked me if I'd like to go to the Christmas eve service with him. 'Yes!' I said, and at 5:30p was ready in all the white, red and glitter I could wear.
It turned out to be a full car..several others were going to the same service. When we arrived, our little group effectively doubled the number of people in the pews. Used to Roman Catholic pomp and grandeur, this church seemed bare at first..When we started,  I realised I was not going to hear any of my favourite hymns- the service was in hindi. And then the nativity began..a magnificently ambitious but woefully unrehearsed musical.
And slowly, I got what I had come looking for. The church might have been small and bare, but it soon filled up with happy families. It was obvious that everyone in there knew each other and had played a part in making this night happen. The nativity was simple, but its managed to tell its story in a simple and honest manner that would have been lost with more props. I couldn't sing along, but the church was filled with voices singing- just a little reassuringly off-key. And on our way back, our gang was invited home by a colleague. 'The whole paltan?' I asked incredulously. 'Yes', she said, 'Its Christmas!'
And we went. She sat us down in her wonderfully decorated hall..full of trees and tinsel and a nativity and cottonwool snow. And then she fed us plate after plate of crunchy fried snacks and plum cake.It was Christmas.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Puppy snacks

All summer, and well into autumn, I would keep ice cubes in the freezer for the little Bhotiya pup. It got so that everytime she heard the fridge door open, she would come running and go through her entire cycle of 'lessons' (sit-down-good girrrl!). But then I unpacked the sweaters and stopped freezing ice.  And today I realised that she still misses her snacks.

It snowed today! It makes the last two sunless days worthwhile. Not that they haven't been cozy. The first day, the Bhaloo and I spend on the couch with a hot water bottle (she still prefers to hang out with her human family- the Ugly Squeaklings* are left to their own devices). The second day I baked this, which by its aroma alone made the house warm and of Christmas.
And today, we woke up to this

And if this isn't a X'mas card, I don't know what is

And finally, a photo of the tiniest Bhaloo in her element

*: The Ugly Squeaklings? coined by my niece- and a more fitting handle for the grand-pups I can't think of

Pupdates!

The thing is, I am rotten at photographing black-grey-brown fuzzy objects that continuously tumble over each other. And there are only so many snaps I can take of them nursing and sleeping.

But today, one of them posed for me. A little wobbly, its true, but her* eyes are open!

The sun has been in hiding..Once its out, I'll take the pups into the yard and then maybe we'll have snaps.

* Turns out her grandparents made a mistake. The roll is a girl, a boy, another girl. Oops.

Its a girl! a boy! another boy!

It took six hours of gnashing of teeth, chewing bedclothes, grunting, and hyperventilating before Shona delivered her first pup- and we are just describing her human parents here. Shona Bhaloo endured it like a champion- though she did rip up a carpet and her basket to relieve her feelings.

It was a proud moment when the first pup emerged at 5am today- though I took one look at the flat head and the protruding tongue through its sac and wailed 'it's dead'. Her (the first one was a girl) mother knew better and ripped, licked, nudged till the little one began clamouring lustily for a drink. The second popped out thirty minutes later. And that, we thought was that. We kept checking on the little family and finally napped for a half hour. When we woke, behold! there were three.

So that's the tally now. One black female, two grey males, one tired mother.

And here is  the only decent photo of the night. Nervous cameraperson + bad lighting + excited subject = disastrous snaps.

What I do

A conversation I have every single time I meet someone new in the village

'So, do you work for____ (insert name of NGO)?'
'No, I work from home. Most of my work can be done over the internet.'
'So what is it that you do?'
'I write about water and related issues- like the forest.'
'Ah. you do research.'
'Not exactly, no. I present other peoples work on this website I work for.'
Blank stare
'Its like being a journalist.'
'Ah. So you report on the elections and all.'
'Not exactly..its mainly about water.'
'Why?'
'It helps people understand, to plan better
'why?'


Now don't get me wrong- I am a staunch proponent of stories for stories' sake, for data for data's sake. I also think that online portals and research organizations have a stunningly important role to play in stopping the world from going entirely to ruin (or atleast slowing the process).

But talking to a farmer tends to give one an entirely different perspective on things.

It looks like a planetarium

We were all laying on our backs in the sand. This was the largest sand dune within a day's drive of Jaisalmer, about 40 km from The Border, by which all India means the border with Pakistan. The sun had just set, and we were looking at the stars appear one by one till the Milky Way stood out strong and clear just above us. That is  when my colleague likened the vast dome above us  to a planetarium.

For the last 20 km, our driver had been telling us to watch out for Ranau. It is a most cute little desert village, he told us. He reminded us again when we crested the last hill before the village. All of us gasped on cue. My thought? It looks like a Star Wars set.

 

Confronted with startling beauty, the two of us reacted in the same way. The only way we could make sense of what we saw was by linking it to our childhood. The only way we could refrain from being overwhelmed enough to hide under our blankies  was by associating these sights with our childhood experiences. Does anyone else see any irony in that?

Even the camel's laughing at us.

We have everything here

That statement sounds like a boast- what made me stop and think is the detail of where I heard it. Not in the super-stocked aisles of Delhi, and not in the lush Konkan where you can't see the trees for the fruit.
I heard that statement (and other versions of it) while talking to people who live in this landscape:

And where this is considered to be a field so lush people are brought in from miles to see it:

Walking around in the north-west of  Jaisalmer district, I listened as people counted their blessings over and over again. I listened as they thanked the fates for receiving 20 mm of rain this year. I heard them extoll the virtues of the milk  their goats provide, of how the sweetness varies with the herbs the goats eat. I was stopped at nearly every bush, every plant while my hosts told me of all that it provides them. I tasted the sweetest berries, drank the most live-giving water. The well overflows, I was informed. We have more than enough.

Contentment is a quality I like to think I have, one that I consciously cultivate in myself. But contentment I now know is more than virtuously refusing to complain. It is honestly exulting in the life that we lead. I do it, but not enough. I need to practice.

I have more than enough.

It is a Good Thing

 That's what Mian told us as he peered into the distraught faces of his wife and pup. And it is, I agree. A wrap around porch, non-mud floors, a rat-free kitchen, open shelving, solar hot water..the list goes mouthwateringly on. Living there was becoming stressful, it is true.

But. There is always a but. And that but is summed up in this photo of Sho.

 

Our porch was always her favourite spot. There, she could sit in the morning sun and look out over the valley. More often than not, Mian and I would be there too. Belly rubs were there for the asking, and always there was the comfort of being in a loved place. 

Now that porch is no longer there. It has been ripped apart, the wood and stone stacked up to build our new house. All that remains is a bit of stone floor that the masons have retained. 

And the first thing Shona-Bhaloo did when we visited was to run over and plonk herself down in as close an approximation of that old spot as she could manage. Maybe that way, home would come back.

It should not be a surprise that both Mian and I teared up when we looked at her there. She feels exactly what we feel too. We miss our Chatola home. We want those mornings back. We want to huddle by the fire again. We want to wake up and watch the birds.

soon, soon.

Baking day

Sourdough breads at our home.

My Mian, he bakes.

A wide-spread besmirching of reputations

To understand how several reputations in the area were damaged in one fell swoop, you need to visualise several scenes.
Scene 1: A woman returning home after a week away from her husband and hearth. She should be happy and excited. Instead she is edgy, tense. At every bus stop she gets down, requests an extra 5 minutes from the driver and darts off looking for a chemist. The object of her search? Emergency contraceptives. I know what you are thinking; all the other passengers were thinking the same thing.

Scene 2: A man who has been alone and wife-less for the last week is busy on the phone calling everyone he knows of who might be travelling between towns. 'Would you mind stopping at a medical store?' he asks each one. 'I need emergency contraceptives. If you won't mind asking for them. Yes, I will text you the name.'

Scenes 4-9: A young and unmarried taxi-driver is ferrying his passengers from town A to town B. He requests a stop at every chemist and darts inside, only to emerge red-faced and empty-handed. What is he asking for, the passengers ask. 'i-pill' he mutters. The passengers sink into a stony and disapproving silence.

Scene 0 (the explanatory scene)
This actually is a series of phonecalls. But first a little background. Mian and I turned out to be procrastinating parents. 'We'll call the vet next week' was repeated often, and before we knew it, a lot of male dogs started besieging our home. Our little pup was clearly all grown up. We dealt with it for two weeks- a stressful experience for all concerned. Just as we were at the finishing line, Sho slipped her collar and got entangled (most literally) with a chap we had named Red1. (the others were Red2, Interloper, Tiger, Rocky, Scruff, and Black).

I cannot, I decided, deal with a litter now and so made perhaps the 2nd most embarrassing call* I've  ever made to her vet. He recommended the emergency contraceptive. And while we can buy instant popcorn in our neck of the woods, we don't have a chemist.

And this is why all of the Chatola area had to go  through that.

Shona and Interloper, before her parents figured out what was going on and became very nasty towards her dates.

* The most embarrassing call ever? 6 hours after the call to the vet, when I had to call up a most dignified neighbour and ask him if he could procure contraceptives for me..err..actually, for the dog.

Learning plumbing

'I tried to change my eating style once', I told Mian in the middle of a mini-breakdown in the kitchen. 'I tried to do everything at once- low carb, raw, frugal- and I couldn't. I cannot handle too many variables at once. I could possibly stick to any one rule, but not all'. The bewildered and slightly worried look on his face reminded me that I was talking to a guy. Metaphors are not delicately coloured illustrations of life, they are mine-fields. 

'I can cook without a stove' I translated. 'and I can cook without water. But I can't do both.'

And that is the gist of our lives the past week.

Our beautiful, beautiful house took a battering in the monsoon, and began to fall apart. And the rats had gotten to an unmanageable point. So when A visited, looked at the place, and suggested rebuilding the house, we agreed happily. And yes, I am glad to be free of rats (almost..we still have a visitor), am glad to have a house that's easy to clean..but I do miss the old one.

Our gas cylinder sputtered out on the day of the move..and when we got here, we trusted in the pipeline and cleaned out the water tank.

The next day, we realised that a) for various reasons, we cannot get a new cylinder for the next 12 months and b) the pipeline- like Bertie Wooster's head- is more for ornament than use.

The food issue is okay- lots of roasts and breads and stews. Our solar oven and the electric one mean that the only thing I cant do is saute, and we can live without that. The water however, is another issue. I have no idea how we managed for the last few days, but now as I sit and write, I hear the sweet tinkle of water pouring into the tank.

And I learnt one very important, but saddening thing today. I wasted the first three years of my professional life BS-ing a lot of people. See, I worked for a plumbing consultancy, and my job was developing specifications for every teeny-weeny bit of the system. I had drawings and specs for the distances between pipes, and the way they are to be laid, for angles and curves, for thicknesses and weights. If I were to turn a pipe to the left, then down a wall, and along the floor, the drawings would have included one long bend, one elbow, one thrust block and umpteen spacers.

Not one of those specifications included bending a pipe by wrapping it around a tree. The humbling realization? It works. It might worry Shona, but  it works.

Pyaar ke rahi

I was in an overnight bus yesterday, and was lucky enough to have that most perfect of things- a window seat with no one next to me, which meant I could put my feet up and snuggle against the window.

To make it more perfect, the breeze was just right and the moon full. (actually it was gibbous, but let's not squabble over fractions). As is usual with me- and with most other people in the subcontinent, i fancy- I started humming 'Khoya khoya chand'. One thing led to another, and I was soon humming snippets of all the old Dev Anand songs.

The moonlight and the songs put me in a dreamy mood and I was oscillating between thoughts of my childhood and of my mian. I wanted to share these songs with him, I decided. The only question was whether to show the films or just play the songs. I remember my sister's dismay when I begged her to show me a movie that a song I liked was from. This was a pretty special song, still is. Both Mian and the song had entered my life at the same time, and at that time the song was forever on my lips-whenever it could elbow Mian aside, that is. My sis had finally shown me the movie, and explained the reason for her reluctance. 'First you could see him in your head when you sang this' she said,' now all you will see are Rekha's green plastic earrings.' It was an 80's movie-plastic earrings were perfectly correct. I was happily curled up and remembering this while humming the song.

I realised soon, that I was not just humming- I was humming along. The bus driver was playing the same songs that were running through my head.  And this continued through most of the night. Usually, I would resent the playing of music in the night. However, not one of those songs was one I did not react to with great pleasure. By the time he moved on from the cheerfully hummable (hum hain rahi pyaar ke) to the more sentimental (yeh safar bahut hain kathin magar), he was occupying a great deal of my thoughts.


I firmly believed by then that the two of us were kindred souls. And the scene was perfect for a black and white movie - the valiant bus chugging up the mountains, the moonlight, the stunning high-contrast landscape, the music, the  woman passenger and the bus driver in silent communion.

Until a passenger who had apparently also been humming along burst into song.

It was not just me- every single passenger in that bus was also conjuring up dancing-in-the-rain fantasies around the bus driver.

on writing, schedules, and guilt

Today as I checked my mail shortly after I woke, I smiled. And I am smiling still. The reason? A letter from a friend who I thought had gone out of my life. It has been more than two years, he wrote. And went on to say how  embarrassed he was, but how  it is reassuring to know that I was still on the other end of that letter. And he had no reason to be apprehensive- I received his letter as joyfully and naturally as if that two year gap was never there.
And that letter also made me lose my apprehension  and begin to write again on this blog. You too, I think, will receive me as joyfully as if the irregularities were never there.
There has been plenty to write about..and I will. But there also has been a voice (largely due to Problogger and their like) that I need to stick to a daily schedule or nothing at all. And that has had me seriously consider stopping this blog. But I won't..I get too much pleasure from this blog and from the friends I have met through it  to stop.
But  the other blog- the homestead one- I am taking offline. Maybe some day I will be disciplined enough to keep both as they deserve. In the meantime, I will strive at this, keep writing, keep trying.

Naivedyam

It is the practice of offering one's food to the beings of the land, water and air before sitting down to eat. A good practice, one that reminds us that we are not the only inhabitants of our world, that we are the new tenants in a bustling community.

And it is also a good way to reconcile oneself to the  loss of one's harvest. What with one thing and the other, Mian and I have not tasted too much of  the  fruits of our toil. The wheat I wrote about. 
I was proud of the corn- as I should be, na?

15 plump, luscious ears. One more week, and they'll be perfect for the picking, we decided as we wiped the drool from our faces. The porcupines thought so too. We returned one day to see all the corn gone, stalks and all. A little scouting showed that the plants had not gone far. Just below the garden was a heap of corncobs and gnawed stalks.

 

The tomatoes we did get a taste of, can't complain even though sundry ground crawlers got more.

My first reaction to the loss of the wheat and the corn  was utter rage and distress. I swore to eat pies made of grain-fed, free range, organic parrots and porcupines. My second thought was that this first harvest was naivedyam. A sharing of food with the rightful occupants of the land. They are not the thieves, after all. 

 There are still some tomatoes, two ears of corn, the beans are just setting fruit. And now the all-important september planting is due. Here's a photo to prove that atleast one of us did enjoy food from our garden.

The tiniest Bhaloo

is what I used to call her as I rocked her in the winter.

Shona with her faithful-and permanently puzzled- Jhumroo

Now that is no longer accurate- I am pretty sure there are a lot of smaller bears around. The basket of  which she once occupied only a quarter has now been flattened into a pancake by her trying to fit into it. She has chewed off the edges now, and sleeps on it- overflowing from all sides.

What I love best about her is that she has so much of Mian and I in her. Mian and Shona tend to be at their snuggliest in the mornings, they have the same expression when they do something they shouldn't be doing. When I was visiting mum this time, I missed one particularly endearing trait they both have.

When I stand and cook, these two tend to potter about in the same room. And every time one of them passes by me, I get a peck. There is nothing in the world as lovely as standing in ones home, cooking for the ones you love, and having them show that this love is reciprocated by little kisses at two different heights depending on the kisser- so that I get some on my face, and some on my knees.

What she gets from me I think is her utter love for our home. Now that we are living with Mian and his students, our visits home tend to take on a festive air. She and I don't quite know what to do, and so we do it all. In Sho's case, it means sitting on her patch of the porch, digging up her bones, chasing the birds, and splashing in the stream. I am embedding a very inadequate video of her reaction when we visited it last. It is sheer joy to see her splash about in the stream..I do hope this video gives some idea of the utter delight that is Shona-Bhaloo.