Kenyankronikals

Two Houses I Once Knew.... And Loved

2026-08-09T11:34:00.911-07:00

My earliest memories trickle through my mind...My very early, pre-kindergarten years were spent in Pune, first at my grandparents' bungalow and then at the Military College of Engineering in Pune, where my father was busy with his studies. Then, when we moved to Mhow, in Madhya Pradesh, we would visit Pune once a year. It is in Pune that my memories of houses and of course the people living in them, began to crystallize. Once cannot think of a house and a garden, without thinking of the people who are so intrinsically woven into them.

The smell of Odomos, that sticky yellow cream, which is supposed to repel mosquitoes, is firmly embedded into the nostrils of every child who has grown up in India. The steady buzz of mosquitoes near my ears, as I lay beside my grandparents and tried to fall asleep on a sweltering summer night...the sound of my grandfather's hands patiently swatting every mosquito that dared to come within an inch of me...Eventually I would fall asleep, lulled by the dull roar of the Tata and Ashok Leyland trucks that sped down the highway, Pune Satara Road, a stone's throw from our house. Trucks being banned on that road and ring roads being constructed around Pune were very far into the future.

The one thing that fascinated me the most about my paternal grandparents' house was that in every room, the floor tiles were of a different colour. The kitchen and the dining room had speckled maroon tiles, the living room had a deep pinkish cream floor and my grandparents' bedroom had jade green tiles, with bits of black and cream. The upstairs bedroom had similar, colourful tiles. The children of the 60s, 70s and the 80s, who were brought up in India, will remember these floor tiles in the homes of their childhood.

Coming from the standard, Army-regulated houses, these gleaming, smooth and well-polished tiles to me, seemed to be the epitome of luxury. Ceramic tiles were far into the future...Decades later when my father, replaced the original tiles with the more modern ceramic ones, I felt as if an important part of my childhood memories had been buried deep forever!

The house had been designed in such a way that the downstairs bedroom opened into the living room and also opened into the dining room and kitchen, which also opened into a passage which had a door to enter the living room! Oh, the glorious times we had with our cousins and friends, chasing each other through all these rooms, on a circular route, as if we were playing 'Round Robin'. The very walls echoed with our raucous laughter and high-pitched screams, when we felt we were about to be caught!

Our grandmother must have been in despair as we raced like little hooligans, though her bedroom, her well decorated living room and sparkling dining room and through her immaculate kitchen. But to her credit, she never once admonished us.

Later when my father renovated the ground floor, sealed a door, pulled down a wall, added another wall and constructed a third bedroom, it was akin to our childhood playground being demolished! Used as we were to the colonial army apartments and bungalows, with their strait-laced rooms off a central passage, the design of the original family home seemed to me so unique and one where children could have so much fun.

The original garden, with the then young mango trees and the not yet tall coconut trees, the tender banana shoots and the fragrant curry leaves, was a testimony to my paternal grandfather's hard work. All the flowers that my grandfather needed to worship the gods, had been planted in that garden: fragrant jasmine, the deep red hibiscus, plump gardenia flowers, pink roses along with other flowers of peach and lavender hues. To see the gods being covered in fresh, home-grown flowers by my Army colonel transformed into a retired civilian grandfather was a treat to watch. I often sat next to him every morning watching every step of the process in a hawk-eyed manner.

Oh, the memories!

A few years later, my father was posted to Pune and we moved into the initial temporary accommodation. This consisted of one humongous room, a part of a large passage converted into a children's bedroom, a dressing room converted into a kitchen and a bathroom complete with a claw foot tub and black and white chess board flooring. Now we could boast that we had lived in a palace (well, in a tiny part of it), off the Pune Nagar Road.

But finally, we had been allotted a huge, colonial era bungalow. My mother sent us to our paternal grandmother's house that week end. (My grandfather had sadly and prematurely passed away the previous year.) We were to go to school from there the following morning. As a grand surprise, our Army school bus would drop us off at our new house, instead of at 'our' palace. Unbeknownst to my mother, our neighbour's daughter inadvertently let the cat out of the bag by asking me if I was excited about the new house. I knew immediately that my parents had moved and I got through the Monday school day with great difficulty.

When the Army bus dropped my sister and me outside our new house, life in a whole new abode, began unfolding then and there. Pune had been a British Army Hub before independence, and this house was colonial to a T. A sprawling front lawn, replete with a fountain in a little pond, a massive, red-tiled roofed house and an acre behind the house and another half-acre on each side. It had a large living room and a separate dining room, while the little pantry adjacent to it had been converted into a kitchen. The actual kitchen was at a short distance from the house, connected by a roofed passage which was open to the garden on both sides. This was in case a fire broke out in the kitchen, it could be put out before it reached the main house. The colonials certainly knew how to protect their own lives...
Many decades later when my children and I went to Karen Blixen's house which is now a museum in Nairobi, I spotted exactly the same long-distance kitchen of our erstwhile colonial home in Pune. When my parents visited the museum, my mother affirmed that this was how the kitchens had been placed in the homes of her childhood on various coffee plantations across Southern India. Coffee plantations were, of course, another colonial bastion!

By the time we moved into this house, the main kitchen had been converted into the house help's quarters, the reason being that the original helps' quarters for all the four bungalows which stood in a row down that little road, were much further down the same 'Loop Road'. Pune's famous Ritz Carlton Hotel stands there today. Yes, two of the four bungalows were demolished and all that land along with the Helps' Quarters area became civilian territory.

Since Pune is our hometown, all our cousins and family friends visited us very often. We would don our swimsuits, race around the low parapet wall surrounding the fountain, with the fountain running full blast and sprinkling us liberally with cold water. My mother would keep the huge tub in our bathroom filled to the brim with water (yes, each massive bathroom came equipped with a tub) and when we were tired of the fountain game, we would race, dripping wet, through the house and plunge straight into the cold water in the bathtub and pretend it was a swimming pool. We were tiny tots and five of us girl cousins could easily fit into that tub. Water conservation came into our lives later and is woven into every aspect of our lives today.

We were fortunate enough to be assigned a soldier who was a skilled gardener too, for my father's work. Once my father's various uniforms were readied for the next day, all his pairs of shoes had been polished, all the brass shone brightly, the person had plenty of free time on his hands. (In our house, unlike many other Army houses, the helper soldier was never made to do any kitchen or household work.) And thus it was that he turned his attention to our huge front lawn. He etched a massive flower shaped flower bed on one side of the lawn and an equally large star shaped flower bed on the other side. In these, he planted 'Pinks' in different hues and 'Phlox' in myriad colours. When these seeds grew into plants and then bloomed, we had an absolutely breath-taking flower and star on either side of our famous fountain! Even today, when I see Pinks and Phlox anywhere, my heart skips a beat.

This was the house where I spent hours reading in the garden, made up mysteries, pitched a tent in our neighbour's garden and lived there the live long day, whenever we had holidays. Our mothers would keep a steady supply of snacks and meals flowing. My friend's mother would stitch clothes and bonnets for our dolls from the fabric that she had left over after stitching frocks for both her daughters. She had also stitched my first knee length denim dungarees! My mother would make the most exquisite lace edged pillows and tiny flannel blankets for our dolls' beds. We would be under our impromptu tents all day, alternating between reading, munching goodies and playing with our dolls and teddy bears who were straight from our beloved Enid Blyton's Nursery Tales. We had nary a care in the world!

It was here that I first witnessed a father's love for his daughter. One memorable evening, our house help was working in our house, and her four-year-old daughter was asleep in their house, the one accessed by the open corridor. When she went to check on her daughter, she saw a huge cobra coiled right at their door. Then there was panic, to put it mildly. My mother phoned our Army Unit for help, but it would take time for someone to reach our house. My father was away. Just then, our house help's husband came home from work, and we tearfully apprised him of the situation. Without a second though, without even a glance at the cobra lying in the corner next to their door, he strode into the room, picked up the sleeping child and rushed out in the blink of an eye. A true hero in my nine-year-old eyes. A short while later, the snake slithered away into our garden but after that, even if the smallest twig pricked me on our lawn, I was convinced a cobra had bitten me.

All too soon, it was time to leave this beautiful bungalow, with its semicircular driveway, two stately gates, the long verandah with the wooden trellis, the flower beds of exotic lilies (we transplanted a few bulbs to my grandmother's garden and every March the lilies bloom to this day, even after more than forty years) and of course, my beloved fountain. My father had received his marching orders, and it was time to move to Guwahati in Assam, where more houses, floods and exciting adventures awaited us. It was, I felt, a pity that I could not carry this house on my back, like the turtle does its shell.

Outside our Army house in Pune, with my mother and younger sister. How green was our garden!

My Dad: The Designer !

2025-05-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Today, 3rd May, 2025, marks six long years since my father's passing. Much water has passed under the bridge and much has happened in these six years... My then young adult daughter is now a seasoned adult and a working doctor too, licensed in both the United Kingdom and in Kenya. My then young teen son is now a young adult, a Finance major and an intern as well, is on his University cricket team, and on the verge of completing his undergraduate degree. His mannerisms and expressions grow more like my father's every passing day. My Dad would have been so happy and proud to see these two hardworking and honest humans, with a work ethic that so closely mirrors his. My husband has switched jobs in Kenya, we have moved houses, our canine kid continues to bring us untold joy and my online Academy is thriving and has grown in leaps and bounds. Time and tide wait for no man or woman is something I have seen first hand in these six years since my father's departure to more salubrious climes...

As always, my mind, at this time of the year, dwells in the past and so many memories surface like everything happened yesterday. It is the wedding season in India and there is much brouhaha over the best designers, be it for clothes, jewellery or footwear. Few people know that my Dad too was a designer in his own right. It all started when we were living Mhow in Madhya Pradesh and my father had got posted to Jodhpur in Rajasthan. My parents had begun the arduous process of winding up our house and packing our lives into the ubiquitous black, metal trunks. My Dad began packing everyone's woolens in a trunk and the process took a few days with piles being added as and when he got time. Finally the trunk was sealed shut, stencilled with his rank, name, place of departure and the place of the new posting. ( Many of my fellow Defence Forces brats will identify with this unfailing ritual which took place every two or, if you were lucky, three years). Then, it was sent, along with all the other trunks, to be unpacked at our destination, which in this case was Jodhpur.

If the process of packing is difficult, the process of unpacking is even harder, especially as the initial accommodation is always temporary. When my parents finally popped open the trunk containing all our woolens, they got a nasty shock! At some point, over the days of packing and then locking the trunk, a mouse or a family of mice had got in and had chewed up some of the coats, shawls and even blankets! I well remember my mother was especially upset over a beautiful, soft, deep pistachio green over coat. It must have been particularly tasty because chunks had been bitten off from various areas, rendering it quite unusable. Those were not the days when we could just replace things by ordering them online or get rid of them by simply trashing them. Officers of the Indian Army then, unlike today, had smart but not deep pockets on their uniforms...

My father did the next best thing he could. He sent many of the items to the Army Unit tailor to get them darned (the vernacular word 'rafu' was a common word in Defense circles then!). But this particular coat was beyond repair and so the designer in my Dad kicked in just then! He marched ( pun unintended!) a nearly six year old me to the tailor. I was measured from top to nearly toe, the usable part of the coat fabric was measured too. The tailor pronounced it sufficient for a long sleeved, warm dress for me and a couple of quick sketches by my Dad ensured the design of my new dress was ready!

The dress was stitched and when I saw it, I fell in love with it. My Dad had asked the tailor to add white trim to the collar and had designed heart shaped pockets, again with white trim scalloped around the upper edges of the pocket. It fell to nearly mid calf, much longer than the short frocks I usually wore, making me feel very grown up. I proudly wore it to my school, St.Patrick's Vidya Bhavan, Jodhpur, on my 6th birthday and have never felt smarter than I did in that particular dress, as I went around the class, distributing sweets to my class mates. It was the perfect dress for a cold January morning and my hands felt extra warm and toasty, as I kept them jammed in the heart shaped pockets! It remains one of my favourite outfits to date and now that I think back, the colour matched the green of my Dad's eyes too, though I did not realize it then ...

The officers of the Indian Army are, more often than not, in uniform. From the white shorts and T shirt for exercise early in the morning, to the regular Olive Green uniform, to the camouflage uniform during special training, to the shorts again for evening Physical Training and so on...Even the formal Galas have dress codes, which are strictly adhered to. The result of all this was that in the early 80s, my Dad was the proud owner of three or four shirt pieces that he did not think he would ever get stitched. (My maternal grandparents used to gift him shirt fabric at least once a year!) Yes, in those pre Loius Phillippe, Allen Solly and their ilk days, all Indian men got their shirts stitched from their friendly neighbourhood tailor or in our case, from the Army Unit tailor.
Waste not, want not ! So what could be done with the shirt fabrics? The designer gears in my Dad's miles- ahead - of - everyone -else brain, whirred until he had the perfect idea! He would design dresses for my sister and me, using that fabric. It did not matter to him that the fabric was not floral or pastel and not very flattering for young girls of four and six... Off we marched to the tailor again, this time with my little sister in tow. We were measured, more designs were sketched and my Dad explained to the tailor how he had to contrast the bottle green fabric with the white one and the dark brown fabric had to be used in contrast with the white too. He wanted buttons all down the front to give it a tunic like look....I may have been only six, but I was skeptical of using the dull - looking shirt fabric, until I saw the results ! When our dresses were delivered, they were like no other frocks we had ever seen. Well cut, smart, beautifully contrasted as envisioned by my Dad and they fit us like gloves. We both had exactly the same frocks, as was often the trend then... I remember using both mine for a few years until I completely outgrew them and I well remember the compliments that flowed when we wore them. Not a frill, a flower or a flounce was in sight but we looked like the most smartly turned out little girls for miles around !

Here is my sister wearing one of the dresses. At this point, she had outgrown hers and I had outgrown mine, which she then fit into ! Those were the days.
Pic Courtesy : A very dear friend of my Dad's, taken on the occasion of his son's birthday...You can see the smart cut and fit of this dress and the bottle green and white contrast in the picture, which is more than forty years old...

These days, much ado is made of designer footwear too. Cristian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo may be laughing all the way to the bank many times a year, thanks to enthralled customers but for my sister and myself, for a few years during our school days, wearing designer shoes was all in a ( school ) day's work. When my father was posted to Gauhati in the North Eastern part of India, he had to travel to Rajasthan a Western border state, once a year for Army exercises. Rajasthan is well known for its hand tooled leather goods. My Dad would get four pieces of blank paper and then meticulously trace both my feet on two sheets and then would do the same for my sister. Then he would tuck the sheets away in his suitcase, promising to get us new shoes when he was back. So in the midst of all the tears and goodbyes, there would be an undercurrent of excitement in our hearts, regarding our new shoes.

My Dad, a designer at heart, be it for electronic equipment, exotic food or music or photography related items, would not just give the shoe maker, whom he had painstakingly sourced in Bikaner, Rajasthan, our shoe sizes. He would always add a touch of whimsy to our hand crafted leather shoes ( today I refrain from using leather goods , but we were not this environmentally conscious back then). One year it was a tiny bow stitched onto the top surface of the shoe and one year it was a tiny oblong piece with three dots on it. It is a good thing that the Nuns in our Convent school in Gauhati did not look too closely at our shoes or else they would have realized they were not the standard 'Bata' black school shoes but especially designed and perfectly executed masterpieces, courtesy of my Dad! These shoes were well made, roomy and comfortable and over the years we outgrew them but the shoes did not wear out!

Today, on his 6th death anniversary, I made smoked, baked cauliflower in white sauce to honour his expertise in continental cuisine.. It looked and tasted flawless and would definitely have appealed to my Dad's designer heart !

We Don't Deserve Our Trees, Beasts, Birds And Bees

2025-02-01T23:31:00.000-08:00

My spiced tea on the gas stove did simmer,

The freshly made Indian breakfast on my plate did glimmer,

I was all set to sit on our porch,

And was prepared to extinguish hunger's torch.

Before I am submerged in my students' work on my phone,

For my day, I have to set a refreshing tone.

My favourite view of a forest, in myriad hues of green,

Every morning, by my eager eyes, is seen.

Then suddenly I heard a shrill, high pitched electric saw,

What I saw next made me drop my jaw.

Tall and stately trees, had, like criminals, been chained and roped,

All around agitatedly chirping birds, the destruction of their nests, moped.

Someone had decided to clear their plot,

For the trees, beasts and birds, they didn't spare a thought.

The sabre toothed saw began doing its deadly job,

Where, when needed, was the protesting mob?

I watched, helpless, frozen in time,

Just as the trees began to crash down, in a line.

My heart screamed, "Stop! A tree takes time to grow,

It's a process that's rather slow."

Then my tears began to flow,

Of 'development' what did I know?

Unable to do anything to save the trees, from my porch, I fled,

But my heart, like sap from the fallen trees, truly bled.

The electric saw continued to relentlessly purr,

For me, the rest of the day was a tear stained blur.

This is how, inch by inch, bit by bit, Earth we have destroyed,

With Nature's balance, we have badly toyed.

Floods, fires, unrest and destruction rages,

Humankind, as Earth's worst enemy, is duly noted in History's pages.

Maya Angelou spoke of " When Great Trees Fall".

I would add, "They ring the death knell for us all."

The gaps and the red soil is visible from where the trees were destroyed.

Wonder when these beauties will be 'cleared'?

When The Bells Tinkle...

2024-10-23T00:45:00.000-07:00

At first, it's a gentle, little tinkle,

The prancing wind chime, with the breeze does mingle.

One barely pays much heed,

One doesn't even realize there is, of intervention, a need.

Then the breeze does become strong,

A child is caught in the bullying throng.

The wind chime does then madly jangle,

Often the rods and strings, in each other tangle.

But we, in our little cocoon of bliss,

So often, do the warning signs miss.

Then the danger bells begin to madly ring,

The voices in a child's head do begin to sing.

But we, as adults, barely hear a ping.

Then is heard the loud sound of a gong,

But life, we think, will surely move along.

The wind chime tinkles, then it jangles,

The bell furiously rings, the gong gravely does us warn,

But we, deaf, mute, blind, are of reason shorn.

The child is stuck in, of emotions, a roller coaster,

But such mixed feelings, we do not bother to foster.

Until, in the dead of the night,

When a full moon was shining bright,

The death knell has been rung.

In deep shame, we, the so called 'educators' have our heads hung.

Dedicated to all those students in India, whom we, in a bid to push them towards a brighter future, have ended up robbing them of any future they might have had...

Spare A Thought, Say A Prayer

2024-08-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

As August does into September meld,

Goodbye parties and last-minute shopping sprees are held.

Be sure that much in advance you have booked your ticket,

Else your university will start, and you will be on sticky wicket.

With much excitement, subjects for the new academic year are chosen,

But spare a thought for those students, who, in time are frozen.

My Facebook feed is filled with pictures of the 'First Day',

To all these dear students, my best regards I do pay.

But pause a while, spare a thought for those parents too,

Whose children departed and their souls to heaven flew.

No bags are packed, no flights booked, excitement does not reign.

Just heavy hearts, of grandparents, parents and siblings, full of pain.

In those houses, that particular child will never graduate,

No cap or gown or degree, for him or her await.

Call it God's will or call it Fate,

Every such student's absence on my heart does grate.

So, in the midst of your own excitement and joy,

Spare a thought for that particular girl or boy.

Even better, say a deeply heartfelt prayer,

Around parental grief, it will become a protective layer.

The Old Order Falls

2024-08-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

The Old Order Falls.

Collapses, crumbles, gives rise to the New.
The last bastions, (and we, sadly, have a bird's eye view),
Seem to totter on their wrinkled and quivery legs,
Before they give up, of their lives, the last dregs.

They had watched over us, self appointed guardians humble,
When we as toddlers, took a tumble.
And they were just shooting the breeze,
When we, as children, scrambled up and down various trees.
At a later time, they watched us like a 'hooded hawk',
At our shortening hemlines, they would often gawk!

They witnessed our first crushes ,
And, of our youth, the first flushes,
In those days, we had fewer words and more blushes.
Unlike Gen Z, who, on the 'Gram' gushes.

As teens, we acted in plays at society functions and sang,
Decorated pandals, danced, gave speeches with a tang!
They encouraged us, feted and felicitated us, even fed us,
Gave us a sense of self worth, sweetly, of us, made a fuss.

And much like their ordinary bungalows and bowers,

Born of their blood, sweat, toil and tears,

Are now being bull-dozed into oblivion,

So also, this old upright order faces Armageddon.

Swanky buildings, thinly disguised as 'a bungalow',

Take up the maximum square footage allowed,

Who needs trees around a home, who needs Nature's rules followed,

When ritzy, fuel guzzling monsters, make a better show?

I try to hold on, with a tear in my eye. Oh, saudade!

To those nostalgic moments of my childhood and teenage,

But every time the news of the death of a childhood father/ mother figure,

Is shared by my mother,

I feel 'The Old Order Falls.'

Collapses, crumbles, as it is meant to, as it must.

But for me, yet another precious memory turns to dust,

As yet another 'old school' person's soul in heaven does rest.
One mustn't forget, each one of us, on earth, is a mere guest.

They once proudly walked these lanes.

Picture Credits: My Dad, late Col. Ajay Ukidve, clicked on a rainy Monsoon Day in Pune.

My Dad : The Father

2024-05-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

His eyes matched his uniform! So glad I donated them after he was gone!

3rd May 2024, it has been five whole years today since life, as we knew it, changed forever. We lost our Dad on 3rd May, 2019. Recently, a childhood friend from our Army Air Force days lost her mother and then she mentioned on our WhatsApp group that she now realized what many of us had gone through over the years, as we lost either one or both parents...

But my sister and I were still fortunate enough to have had my Dad around as long as we did, given the fact that he had been in the Indian Army and had often been in life threatening situations. I have young students who have lost their fathers as a result of the Covid pandemic or due to sudden cardiac arrests... As they cope with their loss in a stoic manner and stand tall and strong for their mothers, I admire them with all my heart. As I told a student of mine recently, listen when your father or mother tell you something, for only those who have lost a parent, no matter what our age may be, would give anything to hear that parental voice giving 'gyaan' ( imparting knowledge) one more time...

Every year I mark my Dad's anniversary with a blog post ( and a donation in his memory ) and over the last five years I have shared my earliest memories of him, his cooking skills and then his engineering and photography skills. Last year, I was unable to write anything as I was travelling across the Unites States and Canada on his death anniversary. As paranoid as he was about flying, I know he would have spent sleepless nights at the very thought of the long hours I spent aboard multiple planes, during this particular trip and crossing the Atlantic to boot! His favourite grouse was, " You people spend bl**dy too many hours flying!" Yes, I have quoted him to a T, including the forbidden swear word. After all, the colonialists handed down many defense 'traditions' to the officers of the Indian Army...

As I look back over the years, my Dad's generosity stands out more than anything else. He never really cared much about money or about materialistic things. He bought things aplenty, but could just as easily sell them off or just give or lend them to anyone he thought needed them. He could safely be called extravagant ( that's actually a euphemism for being financially imprudent, I can SEE him glaring down at me!) not only towards us, his daughters but also towards just about anyone in need, especially towards those who could not afford academic fees. Many a young girl is standing firmly on her feet today, only due to my my parents' unflinching financial support. In addition, my mother imparted English language skills to many young girls and both my parents provided emotional support too.

A very early memory stands out. The month was July, the year 1986. After a two year stint in Pune, my Dad had been posted to Gauhati, Assam. It was a long journey by train. Army Officers and their families, in those days, did not fly at the drop of a hat, the way they do now. So here we were, travelling across the breadth of India, on a journey that spanned four days and three nights. The train halted at Patna, Bihar, which is a state in India. We were naturally wary, for many years ago, my maternal grandfather, enroute to his first job in the late 1940s, post a Masters In Business Administration from the United States, had been royally robbed on the train, in this very state. Pun intended, as my maternal grandmother was from the royal family of Aundh and was carrying most of her silver ware, as she never ate or drank from any other metal. The shock of the robbery ensured my grandfather's hands trembled from the minute he signed the police complaint, till the day he passed away, many decades later. My dad disembarked from the train to refill water in our 'surai' ( an earthenware pot designed for travel.) Remember we had no bottled water in India in those days and 'Sit On It' water campers were introduced into the army canteen just a few years later. . When he reentered our First Class compartment, oh yes, the Indian Army ensured its officers travelled only by First Class, there was a lady and a little boy accompanying him. The lady wore a 'mangalsutra', traditionally worn by married women in my home state and spoke in our mother tongue Marathi. The little boy remained mute, which raised my mother's suspicions. My Dad explained to us that the lady had approached him and had begun speaking in Marathi. She had told him that she and her son had been stranded at Patna Junction as they had been robbed. She needed some money to return home and she faithfully promised to return it. My mother was very skeptical as was my Dad. The whole story smacked of a con game and Mom said as much... But my Dad argued with us (in English) and asked what if the story was true. What if it was one of us in such a situation? (These were, of course, pre ATM and pre cell phone and UPI payments days..). So my Dad generously decided to give the lady the benefit of doubt and bestowed on her the princely sum of Rs.500, from the money he was carrying to start us off in Gauhati, until he had a new bank account and the Controller Of Defence Accounts, Officers, deemed it fit to transfer his salary into this new account. This could take anywhere from a month or more, so imagine my mother's feelings! Rs.500 in those days could buy us groceries for more than a month....So the lady pocketed the money and diligently noted down our Pune address where my paternal grandmother resided. "I will send a money order", she said. And that was the last we saw of the Rs. 500! But to date, I myself find it hard to refuse people in need, especially if the need revolves around education and is within my financial capacity....We are more like our parents than we realize, admit or acknowledge.

The year was 1990 and ways were being devised to keep us army brats busy during the hot North Indian summer. Someone in the higher command had the brilliant idea of teaching us to drive an Army Jeep on an empty army ground and as we were all under age, the less I say the better it is! Today, this would be unthinkable and no one should even dream of driving until they get their license. But those were different times and we were strictly supervised by a battalion of army drivers and only drove on the ground. Anyway, all of us bonded well over these driving lessons and we decided to cycle down and watch the latest Bollywood Blockbuster in a tiny single screen theatre in Jallundhar Cantonment. I was thrilled, as I had never been to a civilian movie theatre without adult supervision.

It was my mother who handed out pocket money to my sister and me each month and it was more than enough for our school-girl expenses. But going for a movie meant I needed more money and I approached my dad. I hesitantly asked for Rs.10 but my Dad simply dived into his pocket ( he never carried a wallet and would just stuff notes, and much later his debit and credit cards, into his trouser or shirt pockets!) and pulled out Rs.30 which he promptly handed over to me, no questions asked! I was dazed at the thought of getting so much money to spend in a day and once again I admired his generous soul. Needless to say, I had a field day at the movie theatre. Over the years, as I got married and then began teaching in colleges and at the university and subsequently launched my own academy, a lot more money, in different currencies like the Russian Rouble, the American Dollar, both the Tanzanian and Kenyan shillings and of course the Indian rupee, was to come my way, but those three notes of Rs.10 remain to date the most valuable sum I have ever held in my hands.

The year was 1992. My Dad had been transferred to Na**t* up further north, from Jallundhar in Punjab and he had come to Pune in between on leave. My mother, my sister and I were in Pune as both of us were studying there. All too soon it was time for him to wind up and leave for N****t*. I was watching him pack. On an impulse, I suddenly asked him to give me his precious, fancy sunglasses. I used to commute to college on a two wheeler moped and the sun often hit me in the eye. Or maybe because my Dad was being posted to a new city, I just wanted to hold on to a part of him, as we did not know when we would see him next, or, and this dark thought always lurked in our minds until he retired, if we would see him ever again at all. Without a second thought, my ever generous Dad whipped out the sunglasses from his packed suitcase and handed them over to me. My heart rejoiced! "Had they been mine", the teenage me thought to myself , "I would never have given them to anyone!" It was on that very train journey that my Dad and three other army officers were robbed in the middle of the night from a First Class Train compartment and my Dad lost all his personal belongings and literally got down at N****t* station in his nightwear and bathroom slippers. He was also robbed of his Identity Card. All that was left of his belongings were the sunglasses he had given me at the last minute. Today, I own multiple pairs of sunglasses to match different outfits, which are coordinated with even my hand bags and my foot wear but none are as close to my heart as the ones that my Dad had given me on that day so long ago. Even more precious, is the thought that most parents never think of their own needs first, it is always the children who come first and this is something I wish many of my students would realize sooner than later.

If you grew up in the India of my teenage, you would know that eve teasing was a reality and something that most of us faced in our college years. I too faced a horrifying incident where the boy in question, drunk on too many Bollywood movies, accosted me on the road and thrust a letter in my hand, just as I had slowed down my two wheeler to turns towards our Army Quarters. I glanced down and saw the letter had been written in what I thought then was red ink, but later realized was blood! I raced home, jumped off my bike and began screaming for my Dad. He was home on his annual vacation from N****t*and he came running down the stairs. I narrated the incident to him. My parents were already aware that I was being harassed by this person. Harassment, in the pre internet days in India, meant getting anonymous phone calls and being followed as one went to college or coaching classes. But now this person had taken things to a different level and my Dad immediately filed a police complaint.

Now remember this was an era where such incidents, unlike in the India of today, were brushed under the carpet, as everyone wanted to 'protect' the girl. My Dad was firm that a complaint was the best form of protection and he let the law take its course! This was the best possible example he could set for us, that we should never bow down in the face of wrong and being girls did not mean that we could not act against the opposite gender. I wish more Indian women had been taught this lesson by their parents..... The boy was arrested and firmly chastised by the police, taken to court and then later let off on the promise that he would stay miles away from the female gender, until he completed his education and went back to his home town! I have not seen him since but the way my parents handled the situation shines like a beacon of light for me, even today.

Today, I am in Kenya, my sister is in Singapore, my mother is currently in India but our thoughts are with the one person who set so many examples for both of us and who played a huge role in making me the person I am today....my generous, rather hot tempered, lavishly extravagant Dad!

As a newly commissioned officer

My parents

Where Have All The Faces Gone?

2023-10-14T03:21:00.002-07:00

The months of August and September,

Bring with them sullen clouds and fat, cheerful raindrops.

Either month also brings with it,

One of the many Gods in our pantheon,

My home state's especially beloved God,

Lord Ganesha, the Elephant God.

After thirteen long years, I happen to be in my hometown,

In our housing colony, and cannot help but recall and reminiscence.

The nostalgia, the memories, sometimes threaten to overwhelm...

My mother and I, we enter the venue on the dot,

Only to be greeted by an empty hall.

The God there by himself, in isolation,

The guard tells us the ceremony 'is pushed by an hour'.

Our immediate neighbours trail in, shake their heads at the blatant exhibition

Of Indian Standard Time and leave, saying they would be back.

Meanwhile, I take in the 'hastily cobbled together' decor.

The guard helpfully tells me he helped put it up mere minutes ago...

Time was when we, the young teens of the society, stayed up until midnight,

Decorating the Lord's pandal, hanging up streamers, sticking buntings.

The camaraderie, the chatter, the fun , the laughter,

Where have all the faces gone?

When the time came to worship our beloved God,

A dull, tired, tarnished copper plate was produced,

I could hear our God laughing at the farce.

Then someone ran home and brought a bright, sparkling silver one, fit for the Gods.

And the worship commenced , pushed by more than an hour...

The lamp was lit, incense burned, prayers were chanted by a handful of motley folk,

So many voices who would, in years past, their timbre add, now missing...

Where have all the faces and the voices gone?

Time was when after the 'Aarti' , we would line up like little dominoes,

( Had never heard of the pizza brand then.)

Arms outstretched, our well scrubbed steel plates clutched tightly in our hands,

Waiting eagerly to receive the venerated food offering.

Different families would cater each day for five days ,

And we would willingly partake of the blessed food.

It cannot be denied, we had our favourites.

And the 'store bought' sweets were placed a notch above the ones

Made by harried but willing hands at home.

Today, I craved the human touch, a home made dish,

Not the caterer's impeccable offering, but there was none.

Where have all the faces, the voices and the skilled hands gone?

No performances marked the post worship eve,

Time was when 'entertainment ' would stretch long into the night.

Even though as a child and then a teen, I would often doze off,

Today I longed to watch a dance, a play or listen to a talk or some songs.

But everyone present hurried home,

They have all the entertainment they need, in their hand held device.

Where have the all the faces, the voices, the skilled hands and the talented personalities gone?

The God and I face each other .

I ask : Where have all the faces gone?

Why does the celebration lack heart and mind and body and soul?

He seems to look back at me with a twinkle in his eye,

And says, " The Faces, the Voices, the Skilled Hands, the Talented Personalities.

Are in YOUR mind, in YOUR soul, in YOUR heart and in YOUR recollections,

Through YOU they live on,

Those faces, those voices, those skilled hands, those talented personalities have never gone...

A Bond That Transcended A Generation

2022-10-05T04:41:00.003-07:00

When a bond is to be formed, it does not really look for an excuse or an occasion, it is a simple and natural process which does not require planning or calculation or fore thought... Maintaining a bond, on the other hand, can be a gargantuan task. It depends on multiple factors and also on the people closest to the one with whom one has forged a bond. Relationships cannot sustain themselves, they take time and work and energy, but when the feelings are genuine and heartfelt, all this does not seem like labour at all!

My mother's maternal family, the Pant Pratinidhi family, who ruled the former princely state of Aundh in Maharashtra, my home state, is a large one. But the extended family is so closely knit for the most part, that often, while among second cousins, one tends to forget that it is not our parents who are siblings but it was our grandparents who were siblings....most of that generation is no more but the rest of us would continue to meet when we could, ( pre Covid), and those were nostalgic times, even as we forged new memories and children from the next generation too bonded with each other.

And when we lost my mother's cousin (the son of one of her maternal uncles ) very suddenly, a month ago today, I felt as if one very strong branch of the family had been badly shaken. My earliest memories of him stem from the weddings of various uncles which took place during the three year stint we had in our home town Pune, in the early and the mid eighties. He also loomed large over my memories of the many ice cream parties we had at the Pant Pratinidhi ancestral home, in the heart of Pune city. Always laughing, joking and teasing all the school going children, he and his brother ( who would pass away very tragically due to kidney failure in the late eighties) had given my sister and me the monikers, 'Rose Red' and 'Snow White'. This had nothing to do with my ability ( or lack thereof ) to blush or with my sister's complexion. We were given these grand names by our two jovial uncles, based on two of the dresses that we had worn to our maternal uncle's wedding! Frilly, frothy, organza creations, one pink, one white, they were 'every little girl's dream come true' type of outfits and we thoroughly enjoyed the attention and the nick names that were bestowed upon us.

After a three year stint in Gauhati, Assam, where my father had got posted after Pune, I returned to complete my high school years in Pune. And came across a more sober but no less friendly version of my uncle, as it had just been a few months since his own brother had passed away. But exciting news was in the air, as he was engaged to be married and everyone looked forward to new beginnings for a family who had gone through so much already. I remember attending the wedding like it was yesterday, instead of more than thirty three years ago, and little did I know then, that his newly wedded wife, my aunt, was to become a friend for life....

Well educated, well read, soft spoken, with impeccable manners, she was the perfect match for my suave uncle. She and I bonded from the start. May be it was because she too had left her parents and moved to our city and my parents were based in far away Jallandhar in Punjab, where my father was posted then. Or may be it was because we both were voracious readers and loved the English language. I remember bonding over my then meagre French ( I had just begun studying the language) and her very advanced knowledge of French. Or may be it was because she was a journalist and I had started writing my first stories in third grade....Or it could be that we both had equally phenomenal memories when it came to dates and never forgot to wish each other and other people, on special occasions. My uncle, she and I had great times whenever we met, in my maternal grand mother's house in the early years and later, during my junior college years, when I used to visit their house frequently to play with their new born son. And they both, along with the baby, visited our house very often too, and she and my mother got on like a house on fire. By this time, my mother and my sister had moved back to our home town too. My father was on a field posting in Jammu and Kashmir and the baby often brought new life to our rather lonely house, every time they dropped in.

Just a handful of years later, I was to get married at short notice, as my then husband to be had suddenly landed a job in Russia. My uncle drove with his entire family from Pune to Mumbai, where the wedding was to be held. He was entrusted with the task of escorting my husband to the wedding venue and I have lovely pictures and a video of that occasion. Much to my delight, my husband too got on fabulously with my aunt and uncle! Once they got to know that my husband loved Indian sweets, either my mother's uncle or his son never failed to organize fresh 'Malai barfi', a particularly delicious and decadent Indian sweet, well in time for us to carry to Russia, every year for the next three years! We never forgot this sweet gesture... Like I said, relationships need investment, else they wither away like yesterday's flowers.

And once we moved back to Pune, they got it for him every single time they visited us! Be it when my daughter was born, or when my son made his appearance in this world. Thoughtful, delightful gifts, both from my uncle and aunt punctuated these memories and the same pattern was repeated when my sister came down from Singapore, first with her older daughter who was a toddler then and later with the younger one. And when my book was published, I mentioned my fellow blogger aunt in the 'Acknowledgements' and sent her a copy, ( I could not visit, as the pandemic was raging in India), she sent a beautiful gift for me with the driver, 'to mark the momentous occasion of the publication of my book,' she said. My uncle supported her so ably in all these gestures...

Even after we had moved to Tanzania, we never failed to meet during our annual sojourn in Pune. I cannot recall this incident without laughing out loud, no matter how heavy my heart feels today. I had a cell phone way back in 2000 but Google Maps did not come into the picture until much later. So my uncle would give me directions to their home every year just before I visited, as our city Pune expanded rapidly year upon year and many landmarks near their house, which I had committed to memory from previous years, were either no longer visible or had been replaced entirely. One such year, in the mid 2000s, he had told me to cut across a huge, empty plot of land ( it's no longer empty!) so I would have direct access to their compound. I set off eagerly, with two young children in tow. All was well until I reached the field. It was dark by then and I did not realize that the entire plot had been turned into a slushy, marshy field due to the rains, earlier that day! I confidently drove on to the field and before long I was mired in deep mud! I could neither reverse nor move ahead, and the more I tried the worse it became. Panic stricken, I called up my uncle and he told me to stay put, while he rushed to my aid. His car driving skills are legendary ( as were his late brother's, I recall a drive with him as a six year old, that could have so easily gone wrong but for his skills, through our famous Western Ghats, eons before the new road was built) and in no time he had expertly extricated my car and had driven us safely to his house. I was very apologetic but we all had a good laugh about it once we reached home, where my aunt was waiting to welcome us!

When my husband was working in Goa, my uncle visited for work and we took him out to dinner along with another dear Uncle from the same side of the family, whose home is in Goa and whom my husband is very fond of too. The two cousins are very close and I am their niece, but some bonds do transcend a generation. Our camaraderie along Goa's beautiful shores and lush foliage and the bond my children shared with my Uncles and my Goan cousin, left a deep imprint on my heart that day...

On another annual visit, this time from Kenya, my uncle eagerly told me that he had found a new route for me to try, across another bridge, that would bring me straight to almost their door step! He tried explaining it over the phone but I felt very confused and said I would stick to the old one. After so many visits over the years, I now knew it like the back of my hand. But he urged me to give it a try and said he and my aunt would meet me at a certain point and I could follow them from there. I acquiesced and in no time I had reached their house, with no muddy adventures or incorrect turns! I will never forget the joy I felt, when I popped my head out of my car and I saw my aunt and uncle patiently waiting for me by the side of the road, in a sea of strangers.

Some people just make you feel special and pampered, no matter whether you deserve it or not. For me, this aunt and uncle and his parents ( my mother's uncle and aunt) are one such family. Since we all share a common love of ice cream, he would ensure that he stocked up on his latest 'find' in the field of ice cream or Kulfi ( our Indian version ), just before we visited. And if my husband was to accompany our children and me, then my uncle ensured he had a variety of Indian sweets laid out for him to enjoy....Whenever we wished each other on birthdays or anniversaries, my aunt would update me on the latest delicacy they were trying out and I would say, we have to get this when I visit you all. I knew my aunt would remind my uncle when the time came and he would make it happen!

A few years ago, I mentioned to my Aunt that I wanted to visit Aundh with my children, as they had been very young when we had visited earlier. I said I would be happy to follow them in my car, in case they planned to visit during the time I was in Pune. My uncle went one step beyond and actually planned the entire trip on a day convenient to us all, including pre ordering a wonderful lunch and getting the strong room of the museum, which houses my great grandfather's phenomenal collection, especially opened for us. My mother's uncle who had grown up in the palace there, accompanied us and my Dad joined us too. This was one of the most wonderful trips I have ever had and my grand uncle's stories of his childhood and my Dad's photographs of the palace, the temples and the museum are the icing on the cake. All thanks to my uncle for taking time out for us.

In September 2019, when flash floods occurred in the area we live in in Pune, my uncle was the first person to call me up in Nairobi to tell me that the situation was bad and water had probably entered our compound and I should find out from neighbours what was happening. He was absolutely right and water did enter the home and we lost my car, the same one in which I had taken numerous trips to my uncle's house and got lost innumerable times too! But what's a car when we have all lost so many beloved people in the last few years....

During the Covid years, we did not meet, of course, even though I was in Pune a couple of times. They were very firm about protecting my mother's uncle, who is now in his 90s, from unnecessary risk and exposure and I was equally strict about my mother's safety. So we were all on the same page and contented ourselves with phone calls and WhatsApp messages.

Finally when I was in India again in July 2022, the situation was deemed safe enough to meet. We met after three long years, the last being when they had rushed to our house to meet us after my Dad's death in May 2019. This was a record for us, as we had been diligently meeting each other every year since 1989. My mother's oldest sister invited us all for a delicious meal and it was as if those Covid years melted away, as we tried to catch up on three years worth of missed conversations. We bonded over 'Bhel' ( a spicy Indian street food made from puffed rice) and what else, but ice cream, never imagining, never in our wildest dreams thinking, that this would be the last time my mother and I would meet him. We have had ice cream together for decades but that last time, on 8th July 2022, will always stand out most poignantly in my mind...

My cousin, the younger son, called me up to tell me that his dad, after nearly two weeks of hospitalization and desperate prayer, was no more. He was so calm and broke the news so gently to me that despite the intensely emotional moment, I could not help but admire him. My uncle and aunt have done a great job raising their sons. My older cousin looked after his grandfather throughout the time his Dad was in the hospital and patiently updated us all, whenever we asked.

My children sent condolence ( such a trite word, that never truly expresses the depth of one's feelings) messages to my aunt and to my cousins, my daughter from Dubai and my son from Calgary. Unknown to each other, they both asked me later if I had got the correct information and that it wasn't all a mistake...I only wish it was....

Come November, I will be back in India and I will visit my aunt and my mother's uncle. Whom will I call when I get lost again? Who will keep my ice cream ready for me and match me, scoop for scoop?

Bonds never die, even if they have transcended a generation, sometimes even two. And so I pray the bond between our families lives on too.

My Dad: Engineer Par Excellence And Mr. Fixit to the T!

2022-05-03T13:28:00.006-07:00

Three on three....no these are not the marks of a short quiz but the number of years it's been since we lost our Dad, three years today on May the 3rd, 2022. As always, when I think about him, it is hard to imagine that he is no longer with us and lives on only in our minds, memories and in our hearts now. And so once again, as I have done on his first and second death anniversary, I have to go back to the 1970s and sift through my earliest memories...one year I wrote about my general memories of him, last year I focussed on his cooking skills and my food memories and this year I have to write about his technical skills, which were a large part of his profession and consisted of one of his favourite hobbies too! Few people are lucky enough to do what they truly enjoy, in my Dad's case, it was fixing things!

Photography has been a huge part of my Dad's life since he was a school boy. His father gifted him a camera when he was a ten year old student at The Bishops School, Pune Camp, and he began going to the photo studio of a very good family friend of theirs, who was a top photographer of his times. Thus began his early lessons in photography and he developed such a passion for it that it was to last a life time. When he was doing the Young Officers Course in Mhow in Madhya Pradesh, he was already developing his own photographs, by converting a bathroom in our huge colonial bungalow into a dark room, as and when needed, and he used to be ably assisted by my mother. Never one to be content with one specialized skill, he decided he wanted to enlarge photos too and hit upon the idea of building an enlarger of his own, as buying one was out of question, as it was way beyond his pay grade! I must have been around four years old and as our play room adjoined the kitchen in that house, I have a very distinct memory of him rooting around in the kitchen cupboard. Then I remember him coming away with two shiny, deep, bowl like vessels and disappearing with them. I remember being upset about my mother's items being appropriated in this manner, though my mother was right there and she had no objection!

Today, when I was discussing my memories of this incident with my mother, she told me those were two aluminium vessels with dome shaped lids, which had been gifted to her by one of my great grandmothers on the occasion of my naming ceremony! Aluminium is a very shiny metal, so my memory was spot on about that and maybe I had got upset when I saw him carting them off because those two items had been part of an occasion important to a new born me ....Memories seem to run deep into our subconsciousness, don't they?

The next day, my Dad proudly called us to view his enlarger and those two vessels had now been painted black and perched proudly on top of the whole device, which worked wonderfully well. I don't remember this, but I'm guessing I magnanimously forgave him for stealing my mother's kitchen items! Here is the enlarger, now forty plus years old and clicked a few years ago by, who else, but my dad himself.

Many a photo was enlarged by this device, hand made by my dad.

This Bazooka like lens was a favourite with him for wild life photography!

As technology advanced, my Dad ensured he kept up with the times, and brilliantly edited his own photos on his home computer. He was also always happy to help my mother's uncle, another brilliant photographer and a very skilled surgeon as well, to edit and upload his photos, something Uncle had always found challenging, given his age. Dad's knowledge did not extend to just photography but to all the software related to photography too. It was no surprise that the very first computer, along with its witty mouse, ( I remember being highly amused by this term as a teenager) entered our house in 1990, at a time when most of India had not even heard the word. My Dad had bought it from a fellow officer who had purchased it while on a stint abroad, but had no clue what to do with it upon his return to India!

So when something went wrong with my gynaecologist cousin's son's first birthday photographs, and they refused to reveal themselves, despite repeated attempts by professionals, she thought of my Dad! After all, all my cousins had spent their childhood watching their mothers give my Dad various electronic gadgets for repairs, the minute he came to our hometown on his annual leave. And he never disappointed them, the gadgets were in top shape again long before his leave was up...And once again, after a few hours of concerted effort, he did manage to retrieve those precious pictures, which he then saved for one set of very happy parents!

Since my Dad was in Signals, communication was the very core of his work and he was on standby twenty four by seven. When half of India was in queue for a land line and the other half couldn't even imagine owning a phone, we had not one but often two lines, right though the 80s until the mid 90s. And there was always one extension at my parents' bedside because Dad had to be contacted at any time when the lines were down, further afield. Whenever his commanding officer ( CO) called to give instructions, my sister and I would immediately be all ears to listen to my Dad's side of the conversation. It went something like this, " Ajay here, Sir. Yes Sir! Right Sir, it will be done, Sir ! No problem, Sir! Right away Sir, copy that Sir!" We would go into fits of laughter, cramming our hands into our mouths to keep from laughing out loud, lest we be heard by C.O. Uncle at the other end. And all the while our dad would be glaring at us, even as he focussed on what was needed from him and gave all the politically correct 'colonial' responses. And guess what, if my Dad was entrusted with the task, it always WAS done, Sir...right away, Sir!

Olfactory memory is also an important part of everyone's childhood. But while other four or five year olds might remember their mother's favourite perfume or the fragrance of their grandmother's incense sticks, I have only one smell lodged firmly in my brain, from those times. The smell of the soldering gun being used! The sticky brown ointment like cream from the tube being dabbed on to the board, the gun being switched on and then the wires being soldered in place and the circuit being complete! Though I was very young, my dad often roped me in to hold the circuit board steady and that's why I guess I experienced this aspect so closely. I have no memory of what exactly it was that he spent so many after-office hours making, but my mother told me it was his own, powerful music system. He had even built the speakers from scratch, getting the wooden part made by a carpenter. We had the system for years and it worked beautifully until the entrepreneur in my Dad woke up and he sold it off! Many years later, my father in law once roped in my then five year old daughter for the same task of holding the circuit board, while he soldered something he was working on. For me, the circuit was then truly complete....

His skills were not limited to just building a music system. He could play any musical instrument he laid his hands on, be it the flute, the harmonium or the harmonica! He had never had any formal training but belted out popular songs as if he had been a professional player. Ironically, in the two days that he was at home in between hospital stints in April 2019, the last thing he ordered on Amazon ( I told you he was tech savvy and would give the younger generation a run for their money where shopping online was concerned!) was an advanced harmonica ( a mouth organ). He played one last song and recorded it too...His swan song? Today my son has that harmonica and having inherited my Dad's instrument playing skills, ( he plays the drums, the guitar, the saxophone and the flute), he is trying his hand at it.

In the India of then and even in the India of today, for reasons I personally fail to understand, owning a car or up grading to a better version, is considered a huge deal. Maybe this attitude stems from our socialist policies of the 60s, 70s and 80s, when everyone was in a queue to buy a simple Lambretta or Vespa scooter and only the 'lucky' few owned cars. Well, my Dad got his hands on a used but fantastic car in the early 1980s itself and the model was called the Hindustan 14. It resembled the car in 'Herby Goes Bananas' and I absolutely loved it! He was often found to be tinkering with the car's engine and the bonnet was popped open more often than it was not! In the late 80s, he even changed the colour of the entire car from a silver blue to a dark blue, which he told me was an " Oxford Blue". Well, given the fact that he was an artist too and very skilled at painting pictures, it wasn't surprising that he knew his colours well. He certainly wasn't a person afraid to experiment. This car carted us and our friends around and moved all across India with us, until he decided it had grown too old and it was time to bid it goodbye. The car he drove for over fifteen years was an Indica and as he became unwell, nothing I said could persuade him to sell this truck-like diesel engine car and buy something lighter and easier to drive. He took care of it like a baby and so deep was his knowledge of cars, that no mechanic ever dared pull a fast one over him, every time the car needed some repairs. We had no choice but to sell it after he was gone.... here he is with his car and sure enough, the bonnet is open! I believe he loved the engines more than he did the cars themselves!

And having a particularly skilled engineer Dad meant that we never had to miss our favourite Sunday morning television serial in the late 80s, in case of power cuts, which were frequent in Gauhati, Assam, where we lived then. He would simply pull out our 'Herby's' battery, connect our small black and white television set to it and lo behold, our television miraculously had power, with all the Army kids thronging to our house, once the news was out!

Many men bake these days but how many 'make' the oven they bake in? My mother, a good baker, had a traditional round 'Bajaj' electric oven, common in the Indian homes of the 70s and the 80s. But she had a deep hankering for the 'rectangular, upright ' oven of her childhood, but with a twist! Her mother's colonial oven had been one that worked on a wood fire, hers of course would need electricity. While on one of our shopping jaunts to Gauhati city, a few kilometres away from the army and air force station he was posted to then, my Dad came across a decades old rectangular oven, albeit one that was designed to work on a kerosene stove. I clearly remember it sitting in the shop window, a dusty old thing. But his uncanny eye spotted its potential immediately and he bought it without batting an eyelid. And then he set about converting it to an electric one, right from designing the circuit to locally procuring the materials he needed . He succeeded and how! Some of the best cakes I have ever eaten were baked by my parents in that oven, which was truly a labour of love by my Dad.

It looked something like this and is a hundred plus years old today!

If baking was my Mother's forte, sewing like a professional was ( and still is!) her fondest desire. So with that in mind, my parents bought the much in vogue in the 80s, the sewing machine called the Singer Fashion Maker! My contemporaries will remember the Singer advert which showed the fanciest of clothes being stitched in the least possible time. Well folks, we actually had that beautiful, shiny white machine in our home, and all our fancy clothes were designed by our mother but were still stitched by the neighbourhood tailor! This was because that machine had issues since day one! Either the thread would get jumbled, or it would get cut, or the cloth would get stuck or the motor would stop, you get the picture! Now this was a challenge like no other for my techie Dad and he set work at once. Countless hours were spent after office, trying out each 'foot' that came with the machine and made different types of stitches. He analyzed and evaluated each action and its repercussion, before giving my mother a list of Dos and Don'ts and making her practice under his eagle eye. Thus, he trained the machine to behave itself and we had no further trouble. And a decade and half later, when my mother had progressed to newer and fancier machines, she gave me that one and I happily churned out soft toys for my toddler daughter on it. I used to look at it bemusedly as it purred along, for I well remembered its antics before my Dad had tamed it!

And the knowledge that that machine had imparted to him stood him in good stead, when he was posted to Jammu and Kashmir again, later in his career. Someone had ordered many brand new fancy sewing machines for the unit but no one knew what was to be done with them. So my Dad demonstrated how the machines were to be used and showcased all the fancy stitches that could be produced. The women of the unit were suitably impressed and the machines were sold off in no time, thus freeing up unit money! Truly, there was nothing he couldn't turn his hand to.

And then there is the story of how my Dad lost out on his Engineering Drawing Gold Medal. This one I do NOT remember as I must have been barely three, but my mother tells the tale often enough for me to see it in my mind's eye. All the officers of his course were doing their engineering in the College Of Military Engineering, ( C.M.E), Pune. It was rather far from my grandparents' home but the day of the submission, my Dad was staying at home and drove across town to college and unfortunately got caught in a rainy squall. He was completely drenched by the time he reached and his drawings were a damp, sodden mass too. His fellow officer and good friend ( he retired as one of our top Generals) told my mother later that the minute he saw my Dad looking half drowned, holding his wet drawings, he knew the gold medal was exclusively his! Otherwise, no one came close to my Dad in engineering drawing, but fate had conspired otherwise that day...

I do not need to see a gold medal to understand how technically skilled my Dad was... I witnessed it all my life, until the day he passed away, three years ago today.

Of Bakes, Kitchen and Classroom Stakes

2022-02-18T04:25:00.002-08:00

As the academic year in India draws to an end,

Your keen ears, to my rant, please do lend.

When the pressure in my classroom becomes too much to take,

I run into the kitchen and begin to bake.

As I, unsalted butter and brown jaggery do cream,

I begin to let off some steam.

The end of an academic year in India is chaotic, to say the least,

To feel a semblance of control, I sometimes try to whip up a feast.

Morning, noon and night, students with doubts do me bombard,

Even as I ensure my cake tin is floured.

Just as I feel I'm being driven around the bend,

A new student query pops up, saying many others do me recommend.

As I begin to fold in the peanut butter and whole wheat flour,

Other students begin messaging about final exams that were smooth, by far.

A pinch of baking powder and of baking soda, a dash,

A cup of hot milk, some curds blended in, and the cake's oven-ready in a flash.

My just home from school teen will smell it from the door,

Even as my kitchen clock strikes four.

I'm refreshed and ready again to conduct my next academic batch,

And my wits with my razor sharp students, to match.

Then a thought strikes me, we'll be empty-nesters soon,

So how will my kitchen, to me then prove a boon?

Neither my husband nor my mother nor I can afford an extra kilo or two,

And my canine kid's diet is always planned through and through.

There won't be much in the kitchen for me to chop, mash and pound,

But I can hope and pray my daughter, by then, might just be around!

Then I'll enter the kitchen in between classes with renewed zest,

And will feel once again, truly blessed.

I'm an Indian to the core,

Cooking for the children is never seen as a chore,

And with a plethora of food varieties, it's never even a bore.

I'm so glad that in Kenya, my classroom and kitchen share a door!

Wholewheat peanut butter and jaggery cake, eggless.

Recipe on popular demand!

2 cups whole wheat flour OR 1 cup whole wheat flour plus 1 cup Ragi ( nachni) flour, 1/ 2 cup unsalted butter or ghee ( clarified butter) , 1 cup powdered jaggery, 3/4 cup peanut butter, 1/ teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, a few drops of vanilla essence 1/2 cup curd, 1 cup warm milk. For a coffee chocolate variation, add 4 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa and a few teaspoons of instant coffee.

Method is in the poem! Bake at 180 degree fan, for an hour or until dry in the centre. Cool, cut and enjoy!

For Months So Stressed, Then One Day Doubly Blessed

2021-09-26T13:14:00.002-07:00

The Dream they had seen.... the boy in his White Coat!

More than six years ago, in May 2015, my sister in law came to visit us here in Nairobi for the second time and she had three of her friends in tow. I knew that with eight of us in the house, my class schedule, cooking and taking my guests sight seeing and for shopping in between, meant that I, along with my regular house help, needed an extra pair of hands. And so through my then house help's contact, a young girl, in her early twenties, entered our lives and for the next few weeks helped out as and when needed, until the guests left. Subsequently, school closed for summer and the kids and I left for India. In the interim, my regular house help who was an older lady, had a stroke (she recovered later but was unable to work again) and so by the time I came back from India, the young girl who had been a part timer, now joined us full time. Was she sent to me to pave the way for what was to happen in 2021 or was I sent to Kenya, way back in 2011, to ensure a certain event took place smoothly in 2021? Only God can answer that question, but honestly, what were the odds that this girl, with a brilliant younger brother, would come into MY orbit, a place devoted almost solely (pun intended!) to education?

For the next two years she worked sincerely and honestly for us. She grieved with us when the meritoriously won medical admissions of non resident Indian students were arbitrarily and unfairly cancelled and rejoiced with us when our daughter secured a place the following year, in a medical college in another country. Most folks who want to do medicine don't get in the first time around, let alone twice!

All this while, her younger brother, who lived with her and was a year older than my son, continued to shine academically and did very well in the 8th grade Board exams, which are mandatory in the Kenyan system. I had never met the boy but I supported him in whichever way I could, with books, shoes, clothes and then he won the Member of Parliament's scholarship for the four years of High School. We all celebrated with her that day, in 2016. And then with her brother settled for the next four years, she got married.

In 2017, we moved houses and she moved across town with us but soon left for a maternity break. My daughter, though away from Kenya, cried buckets that day and I too was very sad to see her go. We kept in touch and I sent gifts for her baby boy when he was born. Soon it was 2019 and my Dad was hospitalized and I had to urgently leave for India for who knew how long...My husband was very busy, my son was in high school and there was only one person I could trust to care for my canine kid, manage the house and cook Indian food, while I was away...I called her back.

After my Dad passed away and I brought my Mom back to Kenya with me, our house help too was full of grief and tried her best to make my Mom feel comfortable here, without me having to say a word...One day I asked her what her brother planned to study once he finished high school. " Medicine", she said. I was taken aback as I know, first hand, how difficult it is to get admission and how long and expensive the whole process is....but I said a few encouraging words and kept following up on her brother's progress.

In March 2020, the pandemic hit, Kenyan schools closed and her brother was back in the village with their mother, in despair, as it was his 12th grade board exam year, but he was not ready to give up on his ambition. He continued studying at home with a few other boys. My own mother was stuck in our home town during the lock down but she wanted to encourage a group of the village boys who were studying together. So she announced a small cash prize, in my Dad's memory, for the boy who would get the highest marks in the test the boy's cousin, who is a teacher, had set for them that particular week. This boy won hands down and we sent him the money but large hearted as he is, he shared a part of it with the other boys! That was the day I decided I would do my best to help him. Little did I know then what that would entail and just how many people the world over would be involved!

Schools in Kenya finally opened in January 2021 and the board exams were held a couple of months later, with results being announced in May 2021. My house girl was so terrified of the results that she asked me to check them online, just like I had done for his 8th standard board exam results! And here is what I saw! ALL As!

And here is the SMS I received after the results, from a boy I had never met but five years earlier, had sent a dictionary for, as my house girl had told me he needed one. I had forgotten all about it, but he hadn't!

Once the results were out, I was after their blood to keep checking admission applications, requirements and last dates. Due to Covid, everything was online and this boy, back home in a remote western Kenyan village had to go by bus, to a Cyber Cafe in the closest town, every time he needed to check or update anything to do with the university admission. With gadgets popping out of our collective ears, strapped to our arms and glued to our eyes, one truly wonders at the disparity....But one saving grace was that as he had topped his school and county, he was gifted a Laptop by the County Governor, just a few days before he moved to Nairobi.

The admission results were finally out and he had secured a place in Nairobi University's prestigious MBBS ( Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) program. My house help's screams of joy rung around our compound, startling my mother and our neighbours too! Then I began pushing him to apply for the County scholarship and to see if the Member Of Parliament whose office had sponsored him in High School could do so again. The County office kept telling him his name was on the list of applicants but there were no funds and disbursal of scholarships would be delayed. Meanwhile the last day to pay the fees, 13th September was fast approaching, with no money from anywhere in sight. The boy's father had abandoned the family long ago to set up house with another woman, and my house help is now a single mother too, supporting another sister who is in High School, along with her own son, on the salary we pay her. The boy's mother ekes out a living by growing her food on a small piece of land in the village, and has no income in cash...Where would the fees come from? I finally told him it was my personal guarantee that his fees WOULD be paid on the due date and he would start university this month.

Seeing how upset I was about the lack of the promised scholarships and the prospect of the child losing his seat, my husband said he would pay the fees and my mother too said the same. In the past, my parents have paid the fees for many students doing their engineering, nursing, teaching and other degrees in India, including our house helps' children and other needy students. But I wanted a long term solution as this is Kenya, everything is at least thrice as expensive as India, it is a long course, the requirements are many and we are here only on two year permits....I had to build a community for this boy and we, by ourselves, had to be the last resort.

In desperation I messaged a friend who is part of an education board and asked her if there was any way I could go and meet someone in the M.P's office. It turned out she knew the M.P personally and she spoke to him and got me an appointment for the next day, which was Friday, 10th September. I was beyond grateful! As my house help and I made our way to the M.P's office, I told her to send the boy to the county office one last time to ask about the scholarship, before he came to Nairobi, the following day. The answer, which came even as we were waiting for the M.P, was the same: funds delayed.

My house help and I waited for nearly four hours but the Honourable M.P was delayed in his other office. Finally I had to leave as I had a meeting with my son's cricket coaches, which had been scheduled days earlier and then I had to rush home to teach a class. But I managed to explain the case to the office manager and his assistant, pointing out they had funded the boy throughout high school and asked if there was any chance they could continue the same for university fees. I could not let this boy lose this hard earned seat! They politely pointed out that they had been allotted funds only for needy school students but were suitably impressed with the boy's grades....I left and finally two more hours later, my house help managed to meet the M.P. He listened to the whole story, took down her number and promised her he would be in touch.

Saturday morning rolled by and there was no word from neither the County nor the M.P and no money. I had already spent sleepless nights where I had chalked out what I would do if we ever faced this very scenario. I had spoken to the Fund Raising site in India which my son had successfully used to raise fees for the engineering student in our home town , during the pandemic, the previous year. They pointed out they could release funds raised only to Indian beneficiaries, whose names were on the admission documents or to their close kin or directly to Indian universities. Then I had researched foreign fund raising sites but not all released funds to Kenya. I finally found one which did but they would release funds only after thirty days. My husband held off paying our credit card bill in case we fell short, since the donations from my friends in Europe and the United States would not be released in time. I had also opened a PayPal account and visited Safaricom twice to activate my M-PESA account, which I had held off doing for the last ten years in Kenya, as PayPal releases funds here only through that. I had to link the online fundraiser to PayPal, as that would free up some of the money faster. I decided to use my mother's account for donors in India who trusted us and I had spoken to my Chartered Accountant back home about taxes on donated funds. He had pointed out there was no exemption and my mother very graciously allowed me to use her account and she would pay the income tax on the raised money from her personal funds, as they would be clubbed with her income. For the donors in Kenya, I had decided to share my house help's number so they could send her any amount they wished to directly, and the money would be ready when needed. So Plan B was more than ready in my head and unfortunately, the time had come to use it.

By early Saturday evening, once I knew for sure no scholarship money would be immediately forthcoming, with less than thirty six hours left to pay the fees, I launched the fund raiser. It took a few hours for it to be approved, but by close to midnight Kenya time it was finally active and visible! I immediately shared it on FaceBook . Then the wait began and I woke up on Sunday morning with some hope in my heart and my mother and I shared it across the few WhatsApp groups we are a part of and my mother also sent it directly to a few people!

Our students and a few generous friends in India NEVER disappoint and many donations came through into my Mom's account. A few friends from Nairobi too sent money to my house help. No amount was too big or too small and we were grateful for every single rupee or dollar or Kenyan shilling...One of my Yoga teachers saw the link on FaceBook and asked me on WhatsApp what 'our' target was ... I was so touched that she had automatically included herself in this fund raising effort...She said she would visualize the goal and we would surely reach it. She sent a generous donation and also told me, if we fell short, she would pay ALL the remaining money that would be needed. I was stunned but I assured her that my mother had already told me she would do that herself but then she simply said, "Aunty and I will share that amount then, if needed."

On the online fund raising site too, money was coming in, with a few of my childhood friends and a school friend who is a doctor herself in the States, contributing, along with a few people from Kenya. By Sunday night, in less than twenty four hours of making the fund raiser live online, we had more than enough funds for fees ( nearly USD 1580, which is, Rs.1,16,000 approximately, before deduction of the fund raiser website charges) the hostel room and for a few other college supplies. One generous gentleman from Kenya, whom I do not know personally, donated and left a note that we should contact him in case there was a shortfall in the fees, he would put in the remaining amount! AND we had a list of people who had messaged to say they would contribute on Monday morning. For the first time in many days, I went off to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Empathy is a double edged sword...it benefits others but can be agony for the empathizers themselves as we are able to put ourselves in other people's shoes only too perfectly. And trust me, those shoes pinch.

I had asked my house help to get her brother, who had arrived in Nairobi by then, with her the next morning as we would go and pay the fees in the bank branch closest to our house, as soon as I finished my Monday morning Kundalini Yoga class. I never miss any class if I can help it, and that day was no exception. Coincidentally, it was with the same teacher who had offered to pay the shortfall in fees, if any! Even as the class was on, ( at yogilateswithnidhi.practicenow.us) at around 9:00 am Kenya time, my house help popped her head in and excitedly told me that the M.P had called. Then she shut the door again. I didn't think much of it and wondered if he had called to ask if she had managed to collect the fees as that was the last day to pay...As soon as the class was over, I excused myself and told the teacher we were leaving to pay the fees and promised to update her. She wished us luck!

Then I came out of the room and saw that my house girl was nearly delirious with joy! She showed me an SMS which had come at 8:59 a:m. The Honourable Member of Parliament had paid the ENTIRE fees for the first year of University from his PERSONAL funds! I was shaken to the core. What a truly honourable man! It was as if a load had rolled off our collective backs. The first thing I did via Facebook and the WhatsApp groups, was to ask folks to stop sending money, as the fees had been paid. Now we had enough from the fund raiser, to pay for the hostel room, scrubs, white coat, medical tests, eye check up and spectacles, stationery, printouts, legal notarization fees and some amount would be left over as a buffer for the following year, in case the County scholarship did not come through at all. A few folks insisted on sending money even then and we told all the others that we would surely ask them during the second year, if required. There is truly no dearth of generous folks around us....A friend passed by to personally drop off her donation, even after I had stopped the fund raiser, saying students have many needs besides fees, and we could use her money for anything. So I gave her money, along with the amount donated by my mother and our two generous children ( BOTH of whom had separately told me, that since I have access to their bank accounts in India, I could just take whatever was needed, and even break their fixed deposits if the necessity arose, but paying fees on time was very important... I was moved, to say the least!), to the boy, to buy a basic smart phone and a few other things that are essential for life in a hostel. This friend met the boy and gave him some excellent advice, critical for students starting a new life! I was so grateful that this busy lady spent many precious minutes talking to the boy. Another kind friend from India gave permission to use her money to buy clothes for the boy, now that the fees had been paid! One does not realize as one goes about one's cushy life, how much a child needs and how expensive everything is... I certainly realized it while handling donor money, weighing the pros and cons of every item, seeing where we could save, what was essential and what was frivolous, hunting for a reasonably priced notary ( met a lovely lady advocate!), the cheapest government hospital for all the medical tests needed for admission, a value for money phone and giving whatever items I could spare from my house, just to save more donated money for next year.

I had given our night guard the responsibility of tracking down the boy's Kenyan Identity card, as it was critical for admission and had been delayed due to the pandemic. He went and met a very efficient lady on a high post in the relevant office, who managed to expedite the process and in three days he had collected the card for the boy, foregoing some of his precious day time sleep! Help is not always monetary...and so many people we don't even know personally have helped us in this entire process. I wanted the boy to have the right spectacles before he started classes and even those were delayed due to non availability of blue block lenses, but my optometrist managed to finally deliver them yesterday, so he can carry them with him to the hostel tomorrow, since he won't visit his sister again anytime soon.

As I pointed out to my Kundalini Yoga teacher, if I had bunked class and left earlier with my house girl and the student to pay the fees, they would have been paid twice as the M.P had given NO indication whatsoever that he would pay, the money would be stuck in the university account, until who knows when, and we would have been left with barely anything for the hostel and all the other myriad expenses...As she pointed out to me, "Kundalini Yoga doesn't just wish for miracles, it relies on them!"

And a miracle, aided by God, many generous donors and a very generous Indian educated Kenyan M.P, it certainly was.... After months of being stressed, this deserving boy has been truly blessed! And since then he has appeared for the County scholarship interview too and if he is awarded that scholarship, his fees for the next few years will be taken care of and all the remaining donated money will be used for hostel costs for next year. Will he be thrice blessed? We will know soon...but we will never forget how donors from across the world, regardless of their religion or country of residence or origin, saved the day for an unknown, economically challenged Kenyan boy who will, one day, be a doctor...He starts his first formal day of classes tomorrow, orientation got over last week! Wish him luck!

And the boy's mother who is very thankful and grateful to you all, sent me this gift from her village, red beans and peanuts... She said she has nothing but she was crying all the time, while we were organizing the fees....A person who shares with others what little he or she has, NEVER has nothing... How I wish you all could taste these Kenyan Kidney beans... I used some today and we had our lunch with a full heart...

Ink Dots On The Quick Sands Of Cyber Space

2021-08-24T05:36:00.002-07:00

For the last few months, from Google Mail just one message has frequently come,

Which makes me want to, in the opposite direction, run.

"You're out of storage space",

And thus to delete some mails began my race.

"Buy Storage" was the message that would repeatedly flash,

Was this a gimmick to make me part with my hard earned cash?

I'm a Microsoft fan, Hot Mail is my lifeline,

So why should I give Google even a dime?

(Though recent marital allegations against the Windows founder have shocked me to the core,

I still remain staunchly faithful to the Microsoft store).

Classes on Skype, an Android phone and an HP lap top,

An expensive, half eaten Apple has never made my heart stop.

Every day, after classes, I would spend minutes ten.

Deleting mails from the G Mail den.

When I reached 2019, mails from my Dad snaked their way through,

The number of mails from him just grew and grew.

He remained a G Mail fan until the end,

Though "Out Of Storage" messages were currently driving me around the bend.

2019, 2018 were mostly about blood count reports,

The Lab kept us in the loop so we could, our parents, from a distance support.

Suffering from Deep Vein Thrombosis, some had been forwarded by Dad himself with pride,

To show that with INR tests ( prothrombin time) he was making many a stride.

As I delved further and further into my box of mail,

2017, 2016, messages from the time he was fit, began flooding the computer on a large scale.

All the Human Resource programs he had pan India conducted,

He had, with pictures and write ups, meticulously documented.

Then showed up his blog, " From Here And There",

Where he often wrote about life's incidents, unfair and fair.

Reading those again brought a quick tear to my eye,

Well, I'll be honest, I simply began to cry.

When a person is dead and gone,

The written word does one beckon,

Into times now well and truly past,

Who knew that particular mail would be his last?

2016 2015, then came photos he had clicked of the times we had had fun,

And then mails about all the work for me he had done.

From something simple like a passport scan,

To the more complicated attachments from the dreaded tax man.

More mails followed of scans of insurance payments and property taxes,

Of forms and details of my former educational franchises.

In those days, I just had to him a mail shoot,

And all my issues in India magically got the boot!

Tech Wizard, crazy Army Colonel, and also a Colonel's son,

He knew how to automatically get things done.

2014, 2013, 2012, then followed mails of his travel itineraries,

His fear of flying meant road and rail were the beneficiaries!

'Perfect travel planner' describes him well,

Those mails, if published today, will surely those destinations sell.

I couldn't bring myself to hit 'Delete',

Without those, my memories of my Dad in cyber space wouldn't be complete.

I'd only heard about footprints in the sands of time,

To be born, to live, to die is life's rhythm and rhyme.

But then in these past few days, I have discovered ink drops scattered across G Mail,

Can be as poignant as hand written letters in the era of mail by the snail!

Today, as I, to manage our 'Empire' in India, struggle,

And as I, my Mom's bank work, donations, insurance, taxes, simultaneously juggle,

The tiny but persistent thought begins to niggle:

Indian children, no matter their age, really do their parents 'for granted' take,

Our parents' motto is," Anything and everything for their children's sake"!

I had not realized how much I had relied on my Dad,

Until Google forced me to check what all in my mail box I had....!

This tiny vignette from my mail box gives a small glimpse, the mails ranging from my Dad's travel plans to Kanha Tiger Reserve, to some life certificate needed by the Life Insurance Company of India for my daughter, to the quotation to get some Air Conditioners installed at home in India, a scan of a picture of my father in law with a former American President that my son urgently needed for his 6th grade social studies class, to some post office investment forms I needed....you get the picture!

Happy Birthday, Girl!

2021-06-28T15:36:00.002-07:00

Sanjana, our daughter, came into my life at a time when I was buried neck deep in academia. I was in the middle of my first Masters degree then. Commuting back and forth from the university, in my home town, on a two wheeler, staying up at all odd hours to study and asking my doctor if walking up and down in the garden, studying from a book in my hand counted as a 'walk', because I literally had no time during the pregnancy, with exams looming over my head, to even go for a 'proper' walk. She was a 'surprise' baby but had timed her entry into the world so beautifully that I never missed a day of university nor of the 'Advanced Diploma in Italian' I was pursuing then. I went on to top the course, with one hundred percent marks in the finals. In fact, when fellow students called me up to come and collect the diploma, I had to tell them I was due soon and was avoiding commuting long distances in the final month and would someone please collect it for me. To say they were all shocked is putting it mildly, no one had even guessed I was expecting, when I had last seen them a couple of months earlier. So studying was definitely encoded into her very DNA and needless to say I had a very smooth and easy pregnancy.

A few days before she was born, my husband had to go to Dubai for a job interview. So, interestingly and most ironically, our baby's first 'shopping', which included a designer Pierre Cardin baby carrier, uncommon in the India of more than two decades ago, was done in the United Arab Emirates. Little did we know then that a mere eighteen years later that baby, by another twist of fate, would end up there to pursue her Bachelors Degree in Medicine and Surgery. My love of chocolates and ice creams is legendary and so of course my husband grabbed all the chocolate he could buy, before he came back to India, just in time for her to be born. I spent the entire weekend, 27th and 28th June, gorging on chocolates and I often tell Sanjana that the weight of the chocolates pushed her out on 29th June, sooner than my original due date of 3rd July. Medical science may not buy this theory, but I definitely do!

Monday, 29th June,1998: Of course I had a problem with the date! I knew at least four other people who were born on that day, all fantastic people ( you ALL know who you are!), but like with our son five and a half years later, I wanted a 'fresh' date for our baby. I was willing to settle for 1st or 3rd July (2nd July is my late mother in law's birthday) but was I given a choice in the matter? No! Just after dawn, on a wet, rainy, soggy, blotchy, dreary Monday morning, my amniotic sac broke and a short while later, just as the sun burst out from behind the clouds in a blaze of glory, my husband, my mother and I drove to the hospital.

The doctor said it would be a couple of hours before I would be moved to the labour room and mercifully a private room was available, so it was alloted to us. I was highly irritable because I was forced to lie down and wait quietly and lying down is not something I do easily! I'm usually to be found actively working, studying, cooking, embroidering or reading at the very least. By the time my son was born, ( do read 'Happy Birthday, Child!'), the doctors knew me and my pattern better, did not impose 'lying down' on me and I was happily strolling around, until they told me to step into the labour room.

That long ago monsoon Monday morning was also when we discovered I had inherited my mother's, maternal grandmother's and great grandmother's pattern of naturally painless deliveries. So I never had any so called 'labour pain' but my daughter, after her stints with wailing, screaming women, in the ObGyn wards of her medical college hospital and summer internships in Pune, refuses to believe me. All I felt was the painless pressure to 'push' but of course the doctors, all three of them, while clustered around me, in the labour room, gave permission for that only in the final moments.

And so much to the astonishment of the doctors, in a surprisingly very short labour for a first baby, to the tune of gentle rain beating down outside, Sanjana was born well in time for me to have lunch at my usual hour of 1:00 pm and leaving the medical staff free to have theirs on time too! Those who know me well, know how particular I am about my meal timings and it looked like our new baby had heeded that too! I had hoped that my newly developed voracious appetite would abate, now that the baby was out, but no such luck. I couldn't wait to get into my room and tuck into a good, hot lunch. I had missed breakfast that morning! The second time around I made sure I had had my breakfast before we set off for the hospital. But I was still starving after our son was born, again well in time for me and the medical staff to have lunch, so that plan didn't work!

So impressed were the doctors by my calm demeanour and my casual conversation with them at the height of labour, on topics like why episiotomy is not a choice in India, APGAR scores and later why a vaccuum was used for the delivery, that one of them actually went out and complimented my mother on such a daughter! I think, they all, like my daughter many years later, had rarely encountered such a naturally painless experience and couldn't believe it had nothing to do with me or my pain bearing capacity, per se. More than five years later, just after my son was born, in just fifteen minutes of painless labour, the same lady doctor would go on to tell me that with 'my ' pattern she would have had twelve kids! I was ready to hop off and walk to my room after our daughter was born and I had been tidied up, and asked them if I could but the horrified nurses restrained me and transferred me to a stretcher and then I was wheeled to the room. I did not make the mistake of even asking this question the second time around, but quietly gritted my teeth and bore the indignity of being wheeled around on a stretcher, when I felt perfectly fine.

Sex determination tests are, of course, banned in India for reasons well known to all of us, but I instinctively knew beyond any shadow of doubt that we were having a girl. So after anxiously asking if the baby was fine, I only perfunctorily asked my husband what it was. He gave the expected answer and it felt so good to be proved right. And of course all my baby clothes shopping featured pink very predominantly! That very same daughter doesn't approve of associating colours with gender today, but what can I say, I'm old fashioned that way....

Interestingly, she was the only girl born there that day, the rest were all boys, six or seven of them, and one of the nurses had the audacity to tell me that I should have had a boy, just as I was being taken, sorry 'wheeled' to my room. I am rarely rude and usually remain calm but discrimination against women is a 'no holds barred' topic for me. I had just had a baby, less than an hour ago, but that was no deterrent for me to turn around and give her a tongue lashing I'm sure she remembers to this day. I angrily pointed out that what she had just said was the root cause of India's skewed sex ratio, one of the main causes of female foeticide and all the other issues that a son centric, patriarchal society brings in its wake, pun absolutely intended. I pointed out women are the backbone of any society, the very fabric that weaves the two genders together and she should champion the cause of the girl child, not make people hanker for sons. She was duly apologetic, but I wonder if my words resonated in the air that day and permeated into my new born baby's body, mind and soul because today, anyone who knows her, will tell you she is one of the strongest feminists they have ever encountered. Her Senior Seminar topic, when she graduated from High School, was 'Making Misogynistic Monsters' and centered around how a male dominated society contributes to creating men who think they are a cut above women. It was very well received and her paper was among the top ten papers and her presentation made it to the top ten too, a rare honour!

It wasn't until we came home with her three days later, that I realized I was solely responsible for a newly minted, helpless human being ( my husband left within a couple of weeks to start his new job) and the saga of caring and nurturing continues to this day...

Soon after, I started my second year of my first Masters program, and so this was a child who spent her neo natal months surrounded by my books. Later when she began sitting up and then toddling, I had started my second Masters and yet again she was surrounded by my books and now hers too! But she was a calm, steady child who loved to eat, be read to, and played quietly by my side, for hours at a time. My research papers and heavy historical tomes would be scattered all around us in her room, but she never even touched or tore anything. I often tell my son it was a good thing she was born first, because had he been born first, I would have had to abandon my own studies and take up cricket as a full time occupation. This boy, born, while India played Australia at Melbourne in February 2004, began batting as soon as he could sit and I spent hours bowling to him for years, until he began school at the age of three. And, mind you, I had to stand and bowl, sitting and bowling did not cut any ice with him...He began speaking really early, saying a few words at the age of seven months, and one of his first words was 'stand', if I had the temerity to sit down even for a second. Our daughter, on the other hand, inspired by and enamoured of my parents' wonderful dacschund, Speechka, declared at the age of five that she wanted to be a vet and coolly informed Speechka's vet, our beloved Dr. Dhokrikar that she would take over from her one day! She also added, as a side note, that she would call Dr. D to step in whenever she went for a 'modelling' assignment! To say I was embarrassed by her five year old precociousness would be putting it mildly, but our vet was highly amused. Well, she ended up studying human medicine but still loves dogs more....And everyone tells me she could pass off an a model, but mercifully for me, she doesn't model!

Today is the first birthday I have spent apart from her since the day she was born, so I felt I owed it to her to write her 'birth' day story! When I celebrated my 23rd birthday, she was already in my arms, as a tiny baby! Does she think she could be responsible at her age for another human being? As she very candidly and characteristically put it, in language I disapprove of ( swear words, I did warn you, I'm old fashioned!), when I asked her, " Hell, no!"

But then she was such an amazing baby, that she made it very easy for me!

Of Pulverizing Poignant Emotions In Pickle

2021-05-25T05:35:00.003-07:00

Ruby red chillies and ones that are a brilliant emerald green,

Coated with fragrant spices, immersed in smoked oil, are through glass jars seen.

Plump, lush lemons, that are paper skinned,

Have been, in cold mustard oil, firmly pinned.

Their colour is still a bright, sunshiny yellow,

Unlike the state of my mind, which is somber and mellow.

From my online classes I've taken a short break,

And today, I was determined to my favourite pickles make.

But the state of the world weighed heavily on my mind,

I thought of the many people, worldwide, who are in a bind.

Whole spices did I roast and pound,

Sauted, stirred and coarsely ground.

Even as the entire melange in warm oil swirled,

My mind, with deep rooted sadness, whirled.

I absolutely cannot fathom how oxygen cylinders can be sold in black,

Of how many ventilator beds there is a lack.

To, at exorbitant rates, sell what nature gives us for free,

In itself, to me, seems like a crime against humanity.

Such folks have, not just on their faces, but on their collective conscience a mask,

WHO will take these evil hearted criminals to task?

And then I suddenly realized, whatever on my troubled mind had sat,

Had just been fully absorbed into my pickle vat!

I momentarily felt freer and lighter than I had been,

Whether my pickles emerge unscathed from the tumult of emotions, remains to be seen.

If only it were that easy to make whole a world that is broken,

I'm doing my bit, but it's no more than a token.

Find something that you enjoy doing from home,

There truly is no need to outside roam.

This morning, I was free, I could have chosen to gallivant,

Instead, I chose to replenish my pickle stock that had become scant.

If we have to be out and about, let's double mask up and not oscillate,

Between the decision of to or not , vaccinate!

As soon as you can, get your jab,

At life, it may be our last stab.

Currently I can only WhatsApp my close family from afar,

But soon, I'm hoping I can safely fly black and personally hand over a pickle jar!

Men CAN Cook: The Proof Lay In My Dad's Pudding!

2021-05-03T06:59:00.004-07:00

A few weeks ago, on a Recipe group I follow on FaceBook, a mother had shared a picture of something her twelve year old son had baked. Everyone was praising the boy but one woman commented that how nice it was that a boy was cooking and baking too....This absolutely got my goat, though I didn't say anything on that forum. We live in the 21st century, for heaven's sake and are we STILL saying that it's good if boys cook too? There can be no worse way to unnecessarily distinguish on the basis of gender than by singling out boys for 'indulging' in activities traditionally 'meant' for girls.

In our house, my sister and I ( yes TWO girls born in the 70s, another slap on the face of patriarchy and so proud of my parents for delivering this stinging one, pun intended!) grew up watching my Dad cook. Some of my earliest memories of my Dad stem from watching him make Chinese food every evening, post attending his course, to supply it to a restaurant in Mhow, in Madhya Pradesh, where the Indian Army had sent us then . This, of course, was eons before everything Chinese became an anathema to the world. Our playroom adjoined the kitchen, so that my mother could keep an eye on us, while doing the more mundane chore of cooking three meals a day! But this also ensured that I, as a three year old, had the best viewing point whenever my Dad was gliding around in the kitchen. Ajino moto ( Monosodium Glutatmate or MSG ) became a part of my vocabulary long before I could spell it and much before its hazards were known to the world and it was subsequently banned from our kitchen by my Dad!

My Dad absolutely loved food and as a young, newly commissioned officer of the Indian Army, was often found in the kitchen of the Officers' Mess. He began garnering a lot of knowledge from experienced army cooks and they, in turn, must have been delighted that a young, newly minted officer was showing so much interest in their profession. Once the Commanding Officer of each Regiment where he was posted every three years, discovered that the new officer had a passion for cooking and was an extremely talented chef, the 'Mess Officer' duties were heaped on his head! So by day he was the Communications Engineer, ensuring seamless communication between officers, soldiers, units and regiments and during parties or VIP lunches and dinners, he was to be found in the kitchen, adding his own unique, signature touch to each dish. No dish left the kitchen until he had been satisfied that its colour, aroma, taste and consistency were exactly as they should have been. The menu du soir ( of the evening) would be artistically calligraphed on stiff card paper and would be placed at the head of the buffet table, during every party. Once, a friend and I sauntered into the Army Mess dining room for a peek at the menu, at a party where kids had been permitted. The first thing the eleven year old me noticed under the main course was ' Peking Duck'. I asked one of the servers to summon my Dad from the kitchen and, eager to show off my knowledge of Geography, loftily informed him that the capital of China was no longer called Peking but Beijing and hence he had made an error! He was highly irritated at being disturbed while he had been neck deep in kitchen supervision and told me no matter what the city was now called, the dish remained 'Peking Duck'! You only have to look up Wikipedia today to see how deep my Dad's knowledge of cuisine was and how ahead of his times he had been...Thirty four years after this incident, which stands out in my mind like yesterday, it is still 'Peking Duck', with Peking being used as an adjective!

As his interest in cooking kept on increasing, he wanted to add more to his already formidable repertoire of recipes. And thus began our cook book collection! When most of India had not even heard of pastas and pizzas in the mid 80s, my sister and I were often found flipping through one of his favourite books on Italian cuisine, 'Mama D's Pasta And Pizza', after we had run out of everything else to read! But more than any book, he cooked by instinct alone most of time, which I believe, is the hall mark of great chefs. Very few 'store bought' ground spices cut ice with him and he often roasted and ground his own spices at home, frequently giving me packets to use in my own kitchen. I remember once, many years ago, I had hosted a dinner for thirty people in our house in Pune. An aunt refused to believe I had made the chick peas myself and kept saying they tasted as good as my Dad's chick peas did! I was highly amused and said that was because I had used his home made chick pea spice powder. She remained unconvinced and felt I had secretly roped in my Dad to make this simple yet highly popular dish!

But even my dad was not always infallible in the kitchen. A few decades ago, when I was a school girl, he was making a few kilos of chick peas for a party we were hosting in our home town, for my mother's extended family of fifty plus people. He added sodium bicarbonate for the chick peas to cook faster and something went terribly wrong and the whole dish hissed and fizzled and turned completely sour. My dad calmly walked out into our garden and tossed the whole sorry mess under the small mango tree. It remained there for many days and I used to often go out and gaze at it sorrowfully for many weeks (until it finally merged with the soil), because throwing out food is practically unheard of in Indian households...I have never ever used sodium bicarb to speed up the cooking process, so deeply did this incident scar me. On another occasion, when my Dad was posted to Pune and we lived in a huge colonial bungalow, we had invited my then newly married maternal uncle and his wife for dinner. They were fond of fish and so my Dad had especially bought fresh fish for them. But by the time he finished cooking it, he realized all was not well with the fish and being almost as paranoid as I am about food poisoning, he chucked it into the garden again! This time, our beautiful March and Spider Lillies flower Bed was the recipient of this rotten offering. I thank God every single day for turning me completely vegetarian twenty five years ago, so I never have to worry about rotten meat products or fertilized eggs! Yes, you guessed right, it was none other than my Dad who found a half grown chicken in what we in India call 'vegetarian eggs', while making a Spanish omelette....Enough to put me off eggs for life!

The tea and coffee connoisseur that he was, he went the extra mile to buy coffee beans of his choice, roasted them in the Gas Tandoor (oven) at home and then ground and mixed them in the right proportions. On the days when he went through this whole process, trust me when I say our house smelled much better than the pretentious Star Bucks or its more humble Indian avtaar Cafe Coffe Day, both of which burst upon the Indian scene decades after my Dad's gourmet coffee had entered our home. He specially ordered the tea varieties he used, either online, or by requesting kind friends from Assam to send him some. Then he blended them and put them in a jar labelled with his own name, 'Ajay's Tea', and woe betide anyone who touched that jar! He himself was more than happy to make tea for family and friends as only he knew how to make the perfect cuppa from that combination! Today, exactly two years after he has gone, the jar, still neatly labelled, stands empty in my mother's kitchen. No one dares to touch it even today...

In the early 90s, when my Dad was home on leave, our housing society in our home town, hosted a cooking competition. All the neighbours, who knew what a great chef he was, encouraged him to participate. He made a fabulous vegetable biryani ( a spiced rice dish infused with vegetables and yoghurt, topped with browned onions and saffron) and no prizes for guessing who won the first prize! All the home makers who had participated were agog and eagerly wanted to learn some tricks and skills from him. Yes, because in the 90s, it was truly rare for men to cook at home and even rarer to win prizes for it. Whenever my Dad was in the kitchen, neighbours walking past our house would be tantalized by the aromas drifting out on the road and would often stop and call out from the gate, asking if they could pop in for a taste of whatever was cooking! My Dad, ever hospitable like my equally skilled in the kitchen paternal grandmother, would welcome everyone...

When he visited us in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 2006, he cooked a fantastic repast for my daughter's 8th birthday. Everyone who attended that party still fondly remembers the food he had cooked that day. His expertise did not extend to just cooking but also to laying the table in such a way that the food was showcased in the best possible manner . And to top it all, he was great at food photography as well so we have superb photos to remember those bygone days.

Every single item here was lovingly prepared and clicked by my Dad for his grand daughter's 8th birthday party.

He was very particular about the table being set perfectly and the crockery had to match and be complemented by the cutlery and the glasses too. He deliberately chose a common design for a dinner set he bought in the 80s, saying that if anything broke during our frequent transfers, it would be easier to replace! We use it in my parents' house on special occasions to this day!

This dinner set is thirty five years old! You can also see my parents' collection of glasses and tea sets in the background. Every aspect of cooking and serving the meals truly interested him and food photography, long before Instagram came on the scene, was one of his specialities too.

From one of the many dinners my parents' hosted before my Dad became ill. Every item was personally cooked by him and both my Mom and their skilled cook were always relegated to sous chef duties!

When my parents visited us in Nairobi in 2012 - 2013, I encouraged my Dad to host a cooking class in my children's school kitchen, organized by the school's Parent Teacher Fellowship, of which I was ( and am!) an active member. All the proceeds would be donated to our PTF fund, to be used for various good causes, throughout the school year. My Dad agreed very readily and we had a huge group of ladies eagerly signing up to learn to cook a few items which are a staple part of Indian cuisine. The venture was a massive success and we generated a lot of funds for the school that day, all thanks to my Dad's skills. We also hosted a dinner party for friends in Nairobi ( yes, seems like a dream in these times, inviting friends over and actually sitting next to each other without masks!) and one of the items my Dad made was rice and corn croquettes. I still vividly remember his fingers, which had been adept at pressing a gun trigger all through his army life, now gently moulding cooked rice and corn together into lozenge shapes, imbued with finely ground coriander and chillies, before deep frying them...needless to say this appetizer was a huge hit later that evening. I then encouraged him to submit the recipe to an international Cook Book the school PTF was publishing and so it was that a recipe of my Dad's appeared in print in Kenya!

That's the recipe book!

And here is the recipe if anyone would like to try it....

On of my fondest memories is from March 1989, during the Indian festival of Holi, in Gauhati, Assam. My parents never participated and locked themselves in the house along with us, but that particular year my Dad allowed us to go and play with colours with our army and air force gang of kids, probably after we had begged long and hard. When we got home, after a long day of smearing colours on each other and soaking everyone with coloured water, we saw the most perfect, pale yellow, lemon souffle waiting for us on the dining table. My dad urged my sister and me to take quick showers and then come and try the treat. We needed no further bidding and soon we were back, freshly tubbed and scrubbed. The first mouthful of that sweet, light, frothy, lemony goodness was enough to induce food ecstacy and had me craving for more...Such was my Dad's expertise in recreating even this very colonial dessert. For him, cooking was all in a day's work and the proof did, indeed, lie in his pudding.

And yes, the title for this post was inspired by a cooking show my Dad loved to watch in the 90s. It was called 'Yan Can Cook'! So apologies, Yan! I replaced you with Men!

My Dad, as a newly commissioned officer, that's when he first began taking a keen interest in cooking!

In Dr.Bach's British Backyard

2021-03-11T07:27:00.004-08:00

This is a time of turmoil. For the entire world, no doubt about that...But it has been especially traumatic for 10th and 12th grade students in India. These are board exam years, the equivalent of the very British O and A levels respectively and the first lock down of 2020 occurred just when the students had started these all important grades, last March. A year down the virus filled road and there is no immediate end in sight. The exams, which should have been nearly over at this time in a normal year, are now scheduled for April and May 2021 and students are plodding on, on line, as schools have shut again after they had barely begun. Imagine the angst, the fury, the helplessness, the sheer fatigue of regurgitating the same material for more than a year, with schools now holding a third prelim (pre boards) as against one or two, which is the norm.

I am away, across the Indian ocean, but the anguish coming through in waves is palpable every time I teach these fifteen and sixteen year olds. And so I have been advising their parents about the Bach Flower Remedies, in case these weary beings would like to try them out. But WHO is Dr. Edward Bach?

To answer this question, I need to go back exactly thirty years into the past. I was a tenth grader myself and my mother was teaching in a school in Pune. My Dad was on a field posting in far away Jammu and Kashmir, based near India's border, so stress levels were naturally high in our house. One day she came home and told me about these wonderful remedies made from thirty eight flowers, based on the states of the mind, that a colleague of hers had studied about and was successfully using for students who needed them. I am skeptical at the best of times and this seemed rather over the top to me. I did not even take this information with a customary pinch of salt...I point blank refused to believe her.

The very next day, my mother came back from school, armed with proof! She had got home the notebooks of a few of her elementary school students for corrections and she showed me before flower remedies and after flower remedies pages from the notebooks . There was a remarkable difference in the quality of work and in the handwriting too, not just for one student but for each one whose parents had agreed to using the remedies, if the child had academic or emotional issues. I could not deny what was in black and white and thus began my life long relationship with and usage of the Bach Flower Remedies, which had been discovered in the United Kingdom by Dr. Bach in the 1930s. He was an allopathic doctor himself , a physician, pathologist and bacteriologist to be precise, but realized that emotions need help too! Besides our family members, thousands of people and hundreds of students have benefitted from these remedies which are available in all homeopathic shops in India and indeed the world over, and my mother is often invited to give lectures on this topic and conducts workshops too. Her write up about these remedies and their zero side effects and addiction free usage is played on the local radio channel in our home town multiple times a year. My Dad too extensively used these for people in companies and banks where he conducted Human Resource workshops, post retirement.

August 2019: My husband, my daughter and I were about to leave for a big fat wedding in the United Kingdom. At the last minute, my mother said to me , " If possible, do visit the Bach Flower Centre in the UK." Now this idea took firm hold in my mind, percolated through it all through our long journey from Nairobi to London and helped by Google Maps, I made the decision to visit the Centre. We had a whole day free before the wedding festivities started and my daughter wanted to visit London and take in some tourist attractions. I had seen all I had wanted to see during our holiday in the UK in 1997 and had no desire to see again how money acquired from the colonies had been splurged here nor view once more artefacts and jewels looted from India, displayed in their full glory in the many museums. And pay in pounds to see the loot? Thanks but no thanks. ( The issue of Britain paying India reparation has been officially taken up, so I'm not just shooting my mouth off here). My husband was torn between accompanying the daughter or the wife...I convinced him no harm would come to me and I had my phone which worked for WhatsApp calls and messages, when there was WiFi. I had downloaded the details of the entire journey and so I was set to go.

We had been put up at a hotel in Kingston Upon Thames, South West London, for the wedding. We took a bus from right outside the hotel to Kingston Upon Thames railway station and here we parted ways. I took a train to London, Waterloo while the other two took one to London, Charing Cross station. I was on my own now, setting off on an exciting adventure in the land of the Famous Five. Since my journey had been mapped out by me on my phone, I had all my tickets ready and just needed to change trains. I disembarked at Waterloo half an hour later and then hopped on to a train to Reading, a journey which would take an hour and a half. Memories of very dear friends of my parents came to mind as this is where Uncle had come in the early 90s, in pursuit of a Ph.D. all the way from Gauhati, Assam. At Reading, I trotted off rapidly to the other platform to catch the train for Didicot Parkway, which is the closest main line station to the Bach Centre . Time was of essence, trains are not too frequent and so I could not afford to miss my connections. I made it and half an hour later, I found myself at the bus stop outside Didicot station. The bus service to Brightwell -cum -Sotwell, the village where the Bach flower Centre is located, runs only once every hour, so I was paranoid about missing the bus, as taxis are very expensive and buses are safer too. I kept asking if the bus was ready to go yet and finally the gentleman at the depot, whom I had been plaguing, told me he was the driver of the bus and there was no way he would leave without me! I heaved a sigh of relief and settled down to wait. Dr. Bach, of course, would have given me a dose of Impatiens!

I finally hopped into the bus but alas, the London Oyster transport card did not work in this region and the driver did not have change for five pounds. He waved away my money ( which I offered again before getting off, which he refused to take again) and thus I hitched a free ride to the Bach Centre. The grace of Dr. Bach....

Fifteen minutes later the driver signalled to me that my stop had arrived and so I got off, right in the middle of a lonely country road. I looked around but did not see any signs for the Bach Flower Centre. I could see some houses across the road, so I crossed over to the other side and began wandering around, in vain. Not a soul was to be seen. I had no WiFi. I began to despair that I would probably have to turn back without visiting the Centre, after having come so far. Finally a car turned into the lane where I was wandering and I did something one must NEVER do. I flagged down a strange car. The driver was a young boy and he stopped when he saw me waving desperately. I explained that I was looking for the Bach Centre, he promptly pulled out his phone and searched and then told me to head down the road where I had got off from the bus. I thanked him and he zoomed off, while I scuttled rapidly away to the main road. Ten minutes of walking and nothing in sight... I was nearly in tears by now. With the hot August sun beating down on me, I was berating myself for having ventured all the way here alone. I truly needed Bach's Rescue Remedy at that precise moment. Finally I saw some signs of life , a Dad wheeling a kid in a pram. Somehow men with a kid around seem safer to approach but of course that's never a guarantee. I asked him if he knew about the Centre and he told me to go further up the road and then take a right turn. I marched off again and a couple of wrong turns led me down a narrow path, deep into a wooded area.

I was not far from Wallingford, where my beloved author and the Queen Of Murder, Agatha Christie had lived for a while and all those murders that happened in the woods in her books came to mind. Remember, I was also in the land of Jack The Ripper. The Bach remedy Mimulus was definitely the need of the hour.... I got a grip on myself, turned around again and reached the main road, almost expecting Christie's famous detective Miss. Marple to pop her head up across a garden wall, and finally stumbled upon the right path. There it was in all its glory, Mount Vernon, the well preserved 19th century cottage and the home of Dr. Edward Bach, surrounded by a rambling yet lush garden, with flowers peeking out from all corners, in myriad hues.

Mount Vernon, the Bach Flower Centre.

Twenty eight years after we had begun using the Bach Flower remedies, I was at THE place where a lot of the research had been done by Dr.Bach himself and where the remedies used to be manufactured until the demand increased so much that they had to move out commercial production to a bigger place in the 1990s. But classes are conducted here for those who want to learn more about the remedies and visitors like me continue to be enthralled by glimpses of the things that Dr,Bach used, his books, his research papers, his typewriter, even a beautiful blue pottery plate. A gleaming copper cauldron caught my eye and I wondered which remedies had been frequently brewed in it by him. The whole atmosphere is imbued with calm and there is a sense of trust, as the two people on the premises simply went back to their work, leaving me alone to wander through the rooms. This, I felt, was the very essence of the work Dr.Bach had done and what he had wanted to convey to human kind as a whole...

Dr,Bach's Workspace

Then it was time to head out into the garden where all the thirty eight flowers, from which the remedies are made, grow in wild profusion. Magical pathways lead visitors up and down the garden, towards a little pond which has an inviting bench, allowing one to sit down and reflect, not just on the beauty of the garden but on the miraculous marvel that these remedies truly are.

Mimulus and Cherry Plum, two plants from which two popular remedies are concocted , grew by the stone edged pond. Very charming! I bumped into another family there who had come all the way from South America to visit the United Kingdom, were Bach Flower Believers too, and hence had come to Mount Vernon.

Much as I wanted to linger in the garden and examine each plant, bush and tree, time was running on and I had to head back. I bought a few souvenirs from the tiny shop there for myself, my mother, my sister and two friends ( mothers of our former students! ) who had gone out of their way to help us during my Dad's illness. They embody the spirit of Dr. Bach for me.

As I walked back to the bus stop, with many a backward glance at the house, I thought of the countless people Dr.Bach had helped throughout the world, more than eight decades after his death, and his quote came to mind,

"Healing with the clean, pure, beautiful agents of nature is surely the one method of all which appeals to most of us”

- Dr,Edward Bach, 1936

38 Beautifully illustrated flowers, from which the remedies are made, line a wall in Dr.Bach's cottage.

If anyone would like to know more about the remedies, please click on these links. If you know me personally, get in touch, Mom and I are always happy to help, for free!

https://www.bachcentre.com/en/remedies/

https://www.bachcentre.com/en/remedies/the-38-remedies/quick-reference-guide/

Of Smoky Tea and Smoked Lungs

2020-09-20T06:44:00.009-07:00

One of the last series which I binge watched on Amazon Prime, with my daughter, before she left for college last month, was 'Bandish Bandits.' It is the story of a family which has developed their own school of Indian classical music. It has been shot in in Rajasthan, India's desert state, with its vast tracts of dry, beige-yellow sand and an arid landscape, with thorny, dark green acacias scattered sporadically over the vista. The entire story plays out against the backdrop of the imposing and stunning palaces and forts of Jodhpur, (also known as the Blue City) in Rajasthan, built by the Rajput rulers of yore.

Now the very mention of Jodhpur is enough to send me spiralling back into early childhood and here I was actually seeing the city again, through the cinematographer's eyes. Since my husband heads a tea company here in Nairobi, my current life is seamlessly merged with tea: sales, targets, profits, losses due to Covid et al. So, as the first visuals of Bandish Bandit began streaming across the television screen, I excitedly turned to my daughter and said, "You know, I had my first cup of tea ever in Rajasthan!"

My mother comes from a family of coffee drinkers. Her father, wife and older daughter in tow, after a Masters In Business Administration from the University of Kentucky in the United States, way back in 1946 -48, returned to India. He was soon hired by a coffee growing firm and they all lived on panoramic coffee estates in the heart of southern India. So of course they drank nothing but freshly roasted, ground and brewed, top quality coffee. If I were lucky, my mother occasionally put a pinch of instant coffee in my morning milk...

But tea was an almost completely unknown entity in my life until I turned six. My paternal grandmother was a die hard tea drinker (see my post My Grand Mother's Ginger Tea) but she was to introduce me to her milky, sugary, shot-with-fresh-ginger, concoction much later. The honour of serving me my first cuppa goes to a humble but generous tea seller in Rajasthan's breathtaking 'Golden City', Jaisalmer.

This trip to Jaisalmer was also the first road trip of which I actually have memories...The very first one had been at the age of six months, on the highest motorable road in the world, at Leh Ladakh in Kashmir, where my Dad had been posted then. And so we travelled from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer where my Dad had some work and were soon safely ensconced in the Army Mess. In between sight seeing and a wee bit of shopping, my sister and I spent most of our free time swinging on the mess gate. And right outside the gate was the tea cart! If my memory serves me right, my Dad probably bought us all some tea from the vendor on our first day there, because I distinctly remember having a whole glassful in one of those glass tea tumblers ubiquitous to tea sellers in India...And then the fun started in the days that followed! The tea would be bubbling merrily away on a charcoal stove, spiking the air around us with the deep aroma of freshly pounded cardamon. And whenever the tea seller had more customers than there was tea left in the kettle, he would pour out the last remaining bit into two glasses, one for my sister and the other for me. Then he would start the whole process of boiling a fresh pot all over again, while we eagerly hung on the gate for the next bit of dregs coming our way! Note that tea in India is boiled, not steeped! And thus began my lifelong long desire for smoky, cardamon infused tea, which my husband brought to life again for me, nearly four decades later...

A few months ago, my husband was watching a food show where he saw a tea cart, complete with the little charcoal stove of my childhood tea fame! We already had a little Kenyan charcoal 'Jiko' which we use to roast aubergines or tomatoes. (Only rarely, we are aware of the hefty carbon footprint of burning too much charcoal or wood for too long). And so he decided to make some tea on it. We also had little terracota tea glasses, reminiscent of both our childhoods, large chunks of which were spent travelling on Indian Railways, courtesy the Government Of India. Tea in trains, before the scrouge of plastic hit us, would be served in these little earthern pots which, being eco friendly, could safely be tossed out of the train, mud to mud again...They also lent their own delicious earthy, flavour to the unique train tea!

A warm melange of Kenyan tea and Indian spices!

And the tea boils, don't miss the cricket practice net in the background, both colonial hangovers!

He recreated to perfection the spiced, soul satisfying cardamon tea I had long craved, imbued with slightly smoky flavour, by virtue of being boiled on a charcoal fire. Since then, it has become a Sunday morning ritual, carbon footprint not exceeding a few tiny lumps of charcoal. And the best part is we are using Kenyan tea, one of the brands his company makes. So I'm giving back to Kenyan economy, in my own small way, always one of my primary goals towards our host country.

If tea was on the cards, could the favourite tea time snack from my home state be far behind? Boiled, spiced potato cutlets, traditionally deep fried in a gram flour batter and sinfully served popped into tiny, freshly baked white flour buns, with fresh, fried green chillies and dry coconut chutney, liberally sprinkled with red chilly powder, on the side...Vada Pav! I managed to recreate this all time favourite in a healthier manner, shallow frying the cutlets in a special, scalloped pan meant for another recipe and replacing the white buns with sesame topped brown ones. The taste of my motherland unfurled itself on my taste buds...

Tea, terracota tea cup and a traditional treat!

A short while after we had begun our tea ritual, restrictions on restaurants in malls here were lifted. When my husband and I were out grocery shopping in a mall close to home, my eye fell upon a group of nineteen or twenty year old Indian origin students, seated close to each other in the food court, with little thought for social distancing, beer bottles lined up on the table in front of them, masks pulled down around their necks, nonchalantly blowing smoke rings into the air, home from their expensive universities abroad, for the Covid 'holiday'....

I was truly glad that my own 'smoke and beverage' craving was limited to 'smoky tea'!

Why Sending A Child Off To College In The Covid Era Is Akin To A Daughter's Indian Wedding In The Days Of Yore

2020-08-19T12:38:00.003-07:00

When the colleges in the United Arab Emirates closed with a couple of days notice, back in early March 2020, we flew out our daughter to Nairobi within thirty six hours. We knew that the world was in for a long haul, airports would soon close the world over, like they already had in parts of Far East and South East Asia and she would surely spend the next month at home, if not longer. It turned out to be a span of five and a half months! Four months of on line college and exams and a month and a half of vacation...

But we knew with equal certainty that the Arab Emirates would be one of the first to open too, given the resources they have at their disposal to carry out rigorous testing and sanitization procedures and their insistence on strict adherence to rules. And so we set about ensuring that we did everything within our power so that she would test negative by God's grace, when the time came and would be able to go back immediately when recalled.

How, one may ask, does this compare with organizing a wedding for a daughter in India, through an arranged match, say sixty, seventy or more odd years ago ? Read on!

Since we did not know when she would have to go back but knowing testing negative for Covid would be mandatory, we minimized or in many cases terminated all external contact. Our staff was moved into the housing on our bungalow compound way back in March itself, for which I am very grateful. Using public transport has proved to be one of the fastest ways in which Covid spreads and house help, security and garden staff in Nairobi comes from a long way off, unlike in India where they live close enough to walk to work.Even when my husband went back to work, or I sporadically went out to buy groceries, going straight into the shower became the norm upon return home. Our son, once his tennis coaching and cricket camp resumed, had to follow the same rules.

Our daughter, of course, was not allowed to leave the house at all for the first four months, to keep her safe for her own sake and for the all important third year of medicine final exam. Then after a quick trip one morning, after her exams were over, to buy some skin care essentials, she stayed home again until the time came to visit the clinic for antigen and anitibody testing needed for clinical rotations. Finally she went for the all important Covid test seventy two hours before departure! In India too, after a certain ritualistic ceremony, which is held a few days before the wedding, traditionally brides were not allowed to leave the home. Today we can see how cleverly our ancestors managed to keep the very young bride-to- be safe from many diseases, just before D day, as there were no vaccines centuries ago. Today we call this home isolation.

Once the college sent the new academic year schedule, buying the ticket was possible only after getting written approval via mail, (valid for just three weeks), from the Emirate that issued her resident visa. So finally we had a date in hand! This was much like getting grand parental approval before setting the wedding date...In the India of a few decades ago, no step was taken without approval from the 'elders' in the family and that was exactly our position, we could do nothing without permission from the concerned authority!

We had a date but who knew if the flight would take off? Cancellations, delays and re bookings are the norm rather than the exception, since international flights have haltingly (pun intended) begun, post lock downs... Much like an arranged marriage of yesteryears, someone, often from the groom's party, calling it off for some reason, either obscure or genuine, was always highly likely! So whether things would actually materialize on the given date, was anybody's guess. We were in the same boat. After five and a half months of non use, last morning I was checking Flight Aware every thirty minutes, to track the flight and ensure it was still departing as scheduled. Every time I called the airline, Emirates in this case, I was told, as of now it is as scheduled but we cannot say what may happen....For remember, a cancelled or delayed flight would mean a very expensive and rather painful repeat of a Covid PCR test, results being valid for tests done a maximum of ninety six hours before flying. It would be like losing money already paid to caterers and the wedding hall booking deposit!

Brides buy trousseaus. And comfortably off brides of long ago were not even allowed to step out of their homes to buy sarees and jewellery. The sarees, gold jewellery and silver ware was brought to the house by the saree shop owner and jeweller respectively and selections were done there in the comfort and safety of the home. In our case, we did not have a trousseau but a whole arsenal against Covid and the accessories were protective ones! I got her a brand new thermometer, disposable gloves and packets of masks which consisted of African print cloth ones, the KN 95 for days when mingling in a crowd at the hospital would be inevitable, the surgical ones for regular use and of course the N 95 mask, deemed safest for air travel! Huge refill bottles of the trusted Lifebuoy sanitizer and small bottles to tuck into her purse and cabin baggage and a bottle of Dettol Handwash were given to our Covid warrior in training. The N 95 mask, purchased in Kenya but manufactured in Singapore, actually cost more than my daily wear wedding ring did more than two and a half decades ago...though gold was much cheaper then and I have simple tastes! Then came the face shields to use during travel. Here too we bought her two each, of two different types. She was surely spoilt for choice, like the brides of yore must have been! The scrubs needed for hospital were promptly delivered home by a tailor who specializes in making them, after I sent measurements and her colour requirements to him, over Whatsapp. No prizes for guessing the colour, if you know her! Black.

Since brides were very young, usually teenage girls, it was assumed they would be at the in laws' (read mother in law!) mercy when it came to food. They wouldn't be able to express their food preferences and wouldn't be immediately able to cook either. So it became the norm to send the girl's favourite dry, savoury snacks which would last and lots of sweet meats too. Thus, lots of boxes and bags of goodies always accompanied the bride. We were no different. Certain that she would need to quarantine for a few days, whether imposed by the authorities or self regulated, as going out and about for a few days, even for groceries, after travelling is absolutely not advisable, the food planning was done carefully by me. Rotis, Methi (Fenugreek) parathas (both Indian flatbreads), spicy puris (puffed. fried balls of dough) were made, cooled and then packed in sets of ten, to be frozen immediately on arrival. Dry, spiced potato was similarly packed in containers after carefully draining out the excess oil. My husband bought lots of dry packaged Indian snacks, chips, nachos and chocolate. Bottles of her favourite beverage, Krest Bitter Lemon, ( also bought by my husband, I root for plain water) had to be left behind due to extra baggage weight, thanks to her heavy weight course books! Excess weight, no matter which kind, is a problem unique only to our times...

Traditionally, taking kitchen ware was a must for any Indian bride, no matter that there wasn't an inch of space left in her husband's ancestral kitchen. We too sent items she could use in the eventuality of quarantine or more lock downs. A rice cooker, a hand blender and a new knife will be added to the items she already has in her hostel flat. Things we do not usually send had to be sent this time due to the long period that she had been away and also keeping in mind the extra sanitization needed due to the on going pandemic. So a large bottle of Savlon, the antiseptic, a bottle of multi vitamin pills, a packet of machine autowash Ariel detergent, kitchen scrubbers, Dettol wet wipes wended their way into her suitcases.

Since every Indian worth his or her (Tata) salt, no matter where in the world he or she lives, currently leaves everything out for decontamination for many hours, every surface in our house was covered with things that had to be packed. Bags bursting with necessities lined the corridor floors. Checklists of documents needed, like approval from the UAE authorities to travel, quarantine and health declaration forms to be printed and the all important Covid report, an extra copy of her ticket for my husband, in case after dropping her off, he was stuck in traffic, when the Covid night curfew timings for Nairobi kicked in, were kept handy. We were ticking off and cross checking or adding to the list, as new rules kept appearing on websites. Very wedding like. If you have ever been to the bride or groom's house before an Indian wedding, you will know exactly what I mean!

Good wishes had started pouring in from relatives and friends who knew of her imminent travel. And we, the parents, were anxious until the aircraft actually took off, as rules and requirements are changing on a daily basis...And then, like the bridal party relaxes only once they know the bride has reached her new home and safely entered it, we did too, once she exited Dubai airport, without any hurdles. Just twenty four hours earlier, a group of Indians had been refused entry due to permission mix ups, so our feelings were justified...

And just like the parents of yore, we do not know exactly when we will see her again. Young brides had to depend on the good will of their in laws to be allowed to go back home for a visit, after the wedding. We are dependent on the mutation of the virus and the arrival of the vaccine.Will she be home in December like every year, or will the virus continue rampaging unchecked, making travel inadvisable?

When a child leaves home, he or she leaves a gap that cannot be filled. Once a bride of long ago was firmly ensconced in her new home, her parents would anxiously wait for a'positive' report, as per the common misconception ( pun intended!) that an heir apparent would once and for all seal and strengthen their daughter's position in her household.

We, on the other hand, are eagerly awaiting YET another negative Covid report ,before she will be allowed to enter the portals of her college and the teaching hospital....

Our canine kid is already eagerly anticipating her favourite person's return....Much like the canines of yore, I'm sure. No matter what else may have changed in this world, the fidelity of this species hasn't and never will!

I Need A Day

2020-07-28T14:23:00.002-07:00

I NEED A DAY,

Just ONE day.

When I do not have to the clarion call of the kitchen obey,

When I do not have to hear my children say,

"What's for lunch and dinner today?"

I need a day, just ONE day ,

When there are no on line bills to pay.

A day when there are no WhatsApp forwards to delete or read,

A day when, with my students, to submit homework, I do not have to plead.

I need a day, just ONE day,

When no one relies on me to let the sun shine, while they make hay.

A day when I do not have to smile, come what may,

While the whole wide world is in complete disarray.

I need a day, just ONE day,

When I don't have to hear how my husband's work has been hit,

A day I can choose to spend as I see fit,

And my gas burner doesn't have to be lit!

And then, I think and I wonder, why do I complain?

From grumbling and groaning (in my mind), I MUST refrain.

At least I have a kitchen in which I can cook,

I have the ingredients to try out dishes from my recipe book!

I'm blessed my house help does on our premises stay,

I don't have to sweep and mop, dust and chop- no way!

Everyone in India has their hands in the kitchen sink,

And miss their faithful help more than one would think!

I have one hundred and fifty students to keep me on my toes,

Asking questions, be it grammar, poetry or prose.

My husband still has a paying job,

And I can churn out food at the turn of a knob!

We are STILL capable of dealing with bills,

They aren't, just yet, making us run for the hills.

And I'm glad I'm found worthy of finding solutions,

I'm happy people rely on me for quick resolutions.

God has given me the energy and the skills,

To, across the ocean, get into my mother's account and pay HER bills!

He has given me the resources to control my Skype classes,

And I'm always thrilled to see those fresh, eager young faces.

Despite the pandemic, my children are blessed to study on line,

And we have managed, by God's grace, to keep healthy and fine.

This, too, shall pass, and we WILL find a way to beat the disease,

And the much awaited vaccine will help everyone's angst and anxiety release.

Our rainbow may currently seem leached and gray,

BUT we are alive to see another day.

And that's more than many can say....

A Legend We Called Malegaonkar Ajji

2020-07-26T15:09:00.008-07:00

Our Dear Malegaonkar Ajji

When one is really young, one does not think of or dwell too much upon the grandparents of childhood friends. Like the parents, the grandparents are just there. almost like permanent fixtures. You greet them politely, even as you rush in and out of each other's houses, addressing them as ' Ajji' (Grandmother in my mother tongue Marathi ) or Ajoba (Grandfather), exactly like your friend does. At that young and innocent age, children do not even take cognizance of the fact that these folks too have led full and successful lives and do have other identities, besides being someone's grandfather or grandmother! And so it was with the grandmother of one of my oldest childhood friends. (She and her Dad also happen to be our family dentists now!)

For many years, during our annual sojourns to Pune, I knew her as the erudite 'Ajji' who was always reading, either a weighty book or a serious looking magazine was a constant in her hand. When I was seven years old, we had moved to Pune for a year to be with my grandmother, after my grandfather's death. I have a very clear memory of my mother telling me then that Malegaonkar Ajji's late husband had been the Principal, when she and my Dad had been students at one of Pune's oldest and most prestigious colleges, Sir. Parshuram Bhau College. (Many years later, as a freshly minted History lecturer, I would land my first job at this very college, but that is a tale for another day!) I was shocked speechless when I heard this and I remember telling my mother a little later, that if my Principal and his/ her family lived just down the lane in my society and passed my house everyday, I would have died of fear every single time! I was a student of St. Helena's then and we had a very strict Principal who ruled the school with an iron fist (literally!) and we all lived in perpetual fear of her, hiding behind her car and school buildings when she passed by... So my reaction to my mother's announcement was not surprising in the least! My mother had nothing but fond admiration for her former Principal's wife. Ajji was one of the few women of her generation who spoke English reasonably well, despite not having attended a Missionary school! Her husband, after all, had been an English professor. Ajji was very progressive in her beliefs and always advised young mothers of the 1970s to combine old wisdom with new research. With this aim in mind, Ajji gifted all new mothers Dr. Benjamin Spock's best selling book 'Baby and Child Care'. Dr.Spock was a very famous American paediatrician. I think Ajji and my mother bonded well in those early years over the fact that not only did my Mother already have a copy of Dr.Spock's book but was also following it to a T, often overriding the slightly archaic child rearing ideas of her own mother and mother in law! Malegaonkar Ajji, with her crisp, starched, well ironed simple cotton sarees and sharp, sparkling eyes, strode down our lane, every morning and evening. like clockwork. She voluntarily worked pro bono for the Students' Welfare Association in Pune and for many years, until she was well into her seventies, rode public buses to go there, until her children put down their collective feet and insisted that she use a car and chauffeur. The organization offers subsidized boarding and lodging and help with college fees to students who come from economically challenged families and have no place to live in, in Pune. My mother, my sister and I have been long term supporters of this organization as we knew that as long as a person like Ajji was in charge, our money was in good hands and would be put to optimum use. Ajii used to always lament that my generation did not have a 'social conscience' and every time I went to drop off a cheque to her house, she would be delighted that we wanted to make whatever little difference we could....She would be especially happy that I always donated the money in memory of my paternal grandparents and later on, my father in law too. One day, many years ago, she invited me to tour one of the hostels and meet some of the students. I saw first hand how loved and respected she was by everyone there, from the peons to the cooks in the kitchen and by the students of course. They treated her with a deference laced with genuine affection that one rarely gets to see among the millennials these days. And yes, the receipts for each donation were personally dropped off by Ajji into our mail box. My mother finally asked her once, why she took the trouble to do it herself each time, instead of just letting the office post us a receipt. Ajji answered that every rupee saved upon a postage stamp could be put to better use to meet a student's many needs. My mother was humbled when she heard this and then began following the same practice whenever she donated money online, saying she would collect the receipt later when she came that way and there was no need to waste money posting it to her! Each receipt dropped off by Ajji was accompanied by a special hand written note for whoever had donated the money from our family and my mother has preserved many of those notes....Today's fund raisers could take many lesson's out of Malegaonkar Ajji's book! My personal donations were dominated by many demands. (I was much younger then, today, I would leave it to the organization to decide what to do with my money...) " Ajji", I would say," use this only for the girl students, let the boys fend for themselves!" Or, "Ajji, I want this money to go to the blind girls you had told me about, please ensure this!" Or "Ajji, do buy blankets with this money for any girls who need them." Ajji always patiently heard me out and faithfully reported back to me that she had done exactly as I had asked. Today, when I think back over those years, I feel Ajji taught me a lesson without berating me even once... Malegaonkar Ajji raised four super successful children. They are skilled professionals and yet remain grounded in reality, simple and humble and Ajji had a big hand in making sure they turned out this way. She loved to recall a story from when they lived in the Principal's bungalow. She was in the kitchen and the children who must have been in school and college then, were playing carom in the hall. A voice called out from outside, asking for Principal Malegaonkar. The children, engrossed in their game, barely glanced out before shouting out that he was not at home. Ajji turned off the gas and ran out and asked them who had been asking for her husband. They all said it was someone wearing a 'lungi' ( a traditional Indian cotton garment worn by men, draped around the lower half of the body.) Ajji rushed out and finally caught up with the man, a little way down the road. It turned out to be the Chancellor of Madras University! His simple, unassuming, traditional dress and manner had resulted in him being turned away from the door itself! Ajji apologized to him on her children's behalf and later scolded them soundly for judging by outward appearances! Today those very boys are some of the finest gentlemen I have ever met. Ajji was active in another organization called 'Friends Of France' and helped many exchange students to learn a little bit of our local language during their stay in Pune. Teaching came naturally to her, and knowing how interested I am in languages, she often gave me examples from Marathi for which she had found it particularly difficult to get an English equivalent. My admiration for her went up several notches. She also interviewed many famous people for a magazine called 'Beyond Friendship'. She wrote poems and articles and embroidered beautifully, another common bond between the two of us. For an Indian woman of her generation, she had truly not just broken but absolutely smashed the proverbial glass ceiling. She was a prime example for the next generations of how much one can give back to society. simply by using our physical and mental resources and money does not always have to play a role... She was a raconteur par excellence and I could listen to her stories for hours. Every time I came away after meeting her, I felt I had learnt something new, had got a fresh perspective and I hope, I had become a better person. Ajji doted on my children too and never forgot the time she had met my daughter early one evening during her walk. On being asked by Ajji where she was going, my daughter who must have been ten or eleven then, promptly answered she was on her way to buy puffed rice from the grocer,as we were making "Bhel' , a spicy, tangy snack. Then she added, "Ajji you also join us for Bhel, please." Ajji was touched by this invitation and told me when she met me next, that I had done a great job in raising my daughter. Thanks to Dr.Spock or despite him, I wanted to ask, but didn't!

When my son was born, Ajji of course came to see him when he was a few days old. My mother expressed her worry that many Indian women have a propensity to grab newborns and insist that they be allowed to hold them on their laps. Even in those days when Covid 19 was not even dreamt up, my mother was against the idea of exposing a new born in this way. Ajji told her not to worry and freely use her name and say Malegaonkar Ajji had forbidden anyone from touching the baby! Both my grandmothers had passed away by this time and my mother did truly use Ajji's name anytime anyone asked to hold my son and it worked wonders! My son was 'seen' from across the bedroom and thus kept safe until it was time for me to travel to Tanzania with him! After we moved to Kenya, I always made it a point to meet Ajji every time I went home during my children's vacation. A few years ago, when I went to see her, I was shocked to realize that she had completely lost her memory...She had no clue who I was or where she was and she kept getting up to leave saying she had to go...It was absolutely heart breaking for me to see this brilliant lady reduced to this because for so many years, her activity levels and her brain power had belied her years and we had not even realized that she has crossed the age of ninety, a few years prior to losing her memory. I somehow managed to chat with her for a short while and then fled down the stairs before I burst into tears which just refused to stop. I had only met the shell of the person I had known, respected and admired for most of my life and it was a very bitter pill to swallow. Later on Ajji was moved to her son's Nursing Home where she would get round the clock care that she needed. I visited her there for the next few years and I remember the last conversation I had with her where she told me that her youngest son had gone to college and would be back soon...he is an eminent laparoscopic surgeon, a good friend of my Dad's, one of my favourite people and he was right there but he patiently indulged his mother in her belief....The values imparted by Ajji to all her children, were clearly visible to me that day.

On 10th June, my mother broke the news to me that Malegaonkar Ajji has passed away on the night of 9th June. Her grand daughter told me she had just turned 99 on 13th May 2020 and was in her 100th year. I wish that Ajji had lived to be a hundred but it was not to be. During any other year, I would have been in Pune on that particular date but this year the circumstances were beyond anyone's control...I could say my good bye only from afar. They do not make them like Malegaonkar Ajji anymore. She truly was a LEGEND.

Malegaonkar Ajji with beautiful hand embroidery done by her sixty odd years ago.

Time and tide wait for no man or woman, Ajji as a young girl.

Thank you Dr. Satish Malegaonkar, for giving me permission to write about your wonderful mother. Thank you Vishakha Malegaonkar for sharing these beautiful pictures of your grandmother with me and letting me use them.

Thank you Dr.Kshipra Malegaonkar Panchawagh for being one of our oldest friends and so we have had the privilege of knowing your "Ajji'' for as long as we can remember...

Myriad Memories Mandatorily Until May 3rd 2019

2020-05-03T01:27:00.000-07:00

My Dad

My parents, eons ago, before I was born!

Memories are funny things. One can have a good memory, helping one tremendously while attempting an exam or one can have a terrible memory, practically guaranteeing a struggle in the aforesaid exam. And also one can have good memories or bad ones, depending on how fortunate one has been in life....These memories, especially the childhood ones, linger pleasantly or lurk malevolently in the recesses of one's mind, popping out, at times when prodded gently, at other times slowly, reluctantly uncoiling themselves, if one cares to delve a little deeper...
Today it has been a year since we lost our Dad and it is but natural for memories to flood our minds, at times, flooding our eyes, pooling in the crevices of our visages, a smile here, a tear there, a frown too because, of course. if it was always sugar and spice and all that's nice, it wouldn't be life...
My first memories of my Dad involve post dinner dessert sprees in various parts of India and I have penned these down earlier. So I'm going to dig deeper beyond my gustatory memory and see what crops up! The year was 1981, I was in Upper Kinder Garten in St.Patrick's Convent, Jodhpur, Rajasthan and I had excitedly come home and announced to my mother all the details of the picnic our class was going to go to the next day. But there was some issue with my water bottle and the heat of the Thar Desert meant no water bottle, no picnic! The very thought of it was upsetting me no end. These were the pre historic days when you could not simply buy bottled water in India! Given the chronic shortage of army housing, we lived in a rented bungalow in the back of beyond, as we waited to be allotted our house in the Army Housing Complex, and my Dad came home really late from office. On that particular day, he reached home after dark and my mother told him about the urgent need for a water bottle...He immediately rushed out to see what he could find, if anything at all. I remember feeling so guilty that he had had to leave home again just because of me...He must have hunted far and near (we had no shops in every vicinity like we do now...) but he finally came home with an oval shaped bright sunshiny yellow water bottle! He told me it was absolutely the last piece available in the shop and the little plastic cog which fits into the straw was already detached from the bottle, but it was the best he could do and it was better than not having a bottle for the picnic at all! I was so glad and grateful and even though I was only five years old, I think that was the day I realized that most parents do anything and everything they can to see their children smile again...
My first memory of Diwali is in Rajasthan too...we had finally moved into our designated house and my Dad tied long, parallel rows of string which began in our house, passed on through our front door, went across the staircase landing and continued straight into our neighbour's house! Folks brought up in the 70s and 80s in India will remember those "Burning Train" crackers, which then whizzed along those strings, powered by gun powder, until they ultimately fizzled out! What a fascinating sight it was, while it lasted...And my Dad had made it happen! What could be more wondrous for a six year old!
This past week has been hard for Bollywood, as two of India's top actors succumbed to cancer within twenty four hours of each other...So a couple of days ago, we decided to watch the movie "The Namesake" based on Jhumpa Lahiri's brilliant book of the same name, which had one of the deceased actors in the leading role. And the train accident shown in the movie, took me back to 1984, when my Dad too survived a train accident...My mother had moved to Pune with my sister and me, to help my paternal grandmother, after my grandfather's death and my Dad was on his way back to New Delhi, where he was posted, after attending my maternal Uncle's wedding. Our winter vacation was still going on but my mother was already back in school where she taught. Suddenly the postman was at our gate and he handed my grandmother a telegram which simply read, "I am safe." Ajay. Come on people, those were pre cell phone, practically pre telephone days, both good news and bad came via a physical telegram, not the app! My grandmother and I were completely flummoxed, as we could not make out head or tail of this message. My grandmother scanned the Marathi language newspaper but found nothing in it. Then she sent me to our dearest neighbours (after nearly forty five years of being neighbours, they are as precious as family!) across the lane and told me to ask them to look in the English newspaper...And sure enough, Naik Kaka (uncle) found the little news item, giving details of the train accident in The Times Of India.Thankfully there had been no casualties and it explained my Dad's mysterious telegram! That day my abiding trust in the Times began and it also explains my slight, make that strong, disdain for that particular Marathi paper...it had not covered the very important news of my Dad's train accident, an unforgivable sin in my eight year old mind! My Dad, of course, read the rather apolitical Indian Express until the end, a tad bland for my tastes...!
The following year, my Dad was posted to Pune and after a short stay in a temporary accommodation, ( it was actually a part of a palace!), we were safely ensconced in our colonial bungalow on Loop Road, off Nagar Road. Today this road is a very busy thoroughfare in my hometown, surrounded by infotech offices and posh residential buildings. In the mid eighties, it used to be deserted after 6:00 pm and we had no street lights either! We had attended a party in the Army Mess (yes located in the same palace where we had stayed earlier) and were on our way back home in our car. My sister and I had almost dozed off in the back seat,( pre seat belts, pre car seats days), though it wasn't later than 9:00 pm. Suddenly we saw a cyclist illuminated by the head lights of our car coming towards us, on our side of the road, not on the opposite side where he should have been, just before we heard a loud crash and the screech of the brakes, applied by my Dad. I can still hear my Dad's voice in my mind, telling my Mom that the fellow had come under the car. That day I knew what being sick to the stomach felt like...My Dad jumped down from the car, and peered beneath but called out to say he could only see the bicycle...then we heard a voice from the side of the road and realized the man had jumped off his bike in the nick of time...He apologized for driving on the wrong side of the dark road, but said he never thought anyone would be out and about that late! He admitted it was completely his fault but my Dad insisted on taking him to the hospital and then dropped him and his mangled cycle home...And he also paid him to get his bike repaired and explained to us when he finally came home, (my sister and I were wide awake with anxiety!) that the man was a labourer, so he really couldn't afford to get it done himself. That day I learnt how to be generous to another's fault and that human life is very fragile...
Then he got posted to Gauhati, Assam, and just before my 11th birthday, I declared that I did not want to celebrate my birthday and candidly admitted that I would rather just get gifts from my parents than have a full fledged birthday party...My parents agreed and my Dad drove twenty three kilometres to Gauhati city to shop for my gifts! I got almost as many gifts as I would have, had I invited my friends and they included among other sundry things, Swiss Rolls from Gauhati's famous bakery "Shaikh Brothers", books, a diary / planner for the brand new year 1987, along with a fancy pen and a wonderful birthday card which had a glass box painted with flowers, against a background of a deep midnight blue...I adore blue, wear blue often and am surrounded by blue in my house but my favourite shade of blue, to this day, matches the one on that card... It also said "To A Darling Daughter" and I wonder if that was the beginning of my love for alliterations, though I did not know the term then! Look at the title of this post, folks!

Shillong, Meghalaya, 1988
(If this picture would have been the Indian Government's prototype for the complete family pic, instead of the ridiculous one girl one boy pic, our population would have been so much lower! Hats off to our parents for showing the way, way back in the 70s... Two girls are also a complete family!)

From Gauhati, my parents moved to Jallandhar while I came back to Pune for High School...It was my Dad who encouraged me to travel alone by train as a thirteen year old, despite my grandmother's misgivings, across half of India, to spend every vacation with them, a journey that spanned two nights and nearly two days...Today I am immensely grateful for those experiences, for they filled me with unshakeable confidence, taught me to look out for myself during travel and to make friends with fellow travellers! And the bliss of eating pineapple ice cream, that my Dad would rush out to buy from the Jallandhar cantonment market post meals,while sprawled on chairs on our lawns, is unmatched to this day...No, Haagen-Dazs does not even come close...nor do Ben and Jerry, Vermont's finest though they may be...
It is hard to separate food from memories of my Dad...A chef par excellence, he gave me many tips and taught me many tricks, painstakingly wrote down basic recipes for me when I got married so I could easily follow them, as I was still busy studying. He bought all the cooking equipment I carried to Russia, where my husband was working then and personally bought and packed fresh spices, both whole and powdered, every time I came home, to take back with me. When he visited us in Kenya, he conducted Indian cooking classes for school mothers from other countries and they were wildly popular. I'm so glad one of his recipes is printed in the cook book compiled by the parent teacher fellowship...
He and I shared a common passion for car driving. And though a fast but skilled driver himself, he had stopped driving for the last few years. Whenever he and I went on the highway out of the city and I touched the speed limit for that particular stretch, he would always tell me to slow down, indicating it with his right hand, while gorgeous green eyes glared at me! I would always point out I was within the limit, and I never slowed down...but now I will because I have no one to indicate that I need to reduce speed, so I need to apply the brakes myself...when you lose a parent, you stop being a child to a large extent, no matter how old you are or whether you are already a parent yourself, when this sad day dawns in your life...
The other day I saw a Dennis The Menace WhatsApp forward and here is what it said:

That would be my Dad's attitude, in a nutshell, during the current, complete, Covid 19 lockdown in India! Post his retirement from the Indian Army, he loved ordering food home or, when he was healthier, quickly popping out to eat...He would have surely complained how long he needed to keep eating groceries! One of my final memories is the nurse telling me that my Dad was awaiting food from home, despite a wonderful lunch being served to all the officers who were in the Army hospital, the day after I moved him there. It was ironic that the man who, like my son, was ready to eat out at the drop of a hat, was craving home food at the end...Exactly a year later, a certain section of India is struggling to put food on the table and the rest are cooking at home like there's no tomorrow, then spending the evening scrubbing vessels, as there is no house help coming in and desperately hoping lockdown is eased, so they can at least get their favourite food delivered at home! Oh Life! I often wonder what my Dad's take on all this would have been, posted with no holds barred on his blog " From Here And There" but now I will never know...There is no document more final than a Death Certificate, so stay home, self isolate and stay safe! Not due to force or fear, but to simply help flatten the curve.

Our Darling Mrs. Dinshaw

2020-04-12T10:29:00.001-07:00

Exactly a year ago today, on 12th April 2019, a school classmate of mine messaged me directly on WhatsApp to say she had heard that our beloved high school English teacher Mrs. Jeroo Dinshaw had passed away earlier in the day. My first reaction, of course, was one of denial, though I knew she had been grievously ill for the past few days. In fact, a couple of classmates had especially gone to meet her during the previous week, after I got to know how ill she was and had asked if anyone could visit, since I wasn't in Pune myself, and she had chatted and interacted with them...."Not possible", I said," You must have the wrong information!" What the heart does not want to hear, the mind does not believe...I confirmed it from two of our High School teachers and then I knew the very sad news was true and it was time to break it on our school WhatsApp group....
On 15th March 2019, I had messaged Mrs. Dinshaw myself, like I had been doing every year for the last few years. It was the Ides of March, and her wedding anniversary. While teaching each batch Julius Caesar every year in school, she had never failed to point out how she had got married on 15th March, the very day Caesar had been warned against and subsequently assassinated on, and always joked how her brother had warned her husband-to-be too! On 15th March 2019, when I messaged her and told her we were all remembering her and sending our best wishes (her husband had passed away a couple of years ago), she thanked me and blessed us all...
As a scrawny thirteen year old who came back to join high school in June 1989 in Pune, after three years in Gauhati, Assam, meeting Mrs. Dinshaw and comprehending just how amazing her standard of English was, felt like being rejoined with a long lost kindred soul. I clearly remember that the first story she began teaching us on that first day of 8th grade was Saki's "The Open Window" and I still get goose bumps when I think of how Mrs. Dinshaw narrated and explained that 'twist in the tail' tale! I was spellbound and, like many generations of Helenites, immediately became a fan of Mrs. Dinshaw's for life. She introduced us to William Shakespeare that same week and as we began studying Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's England came to life! In an era when not many Indians had travelled abroad, Mrs. Dinshaw told us about her trip to Stratford upon Avon, Shakespeare's birth place, spun tales of seeing first hand his home and school, Globe Theatre and his wife Ann Hathway's cottage. When I visited the United Kingdom in 1997, I missed visiting this tiny town by a whisker and when I went back to England last year, after twenty two years, ironically in the very year Mrs. Dinshaw had passed away, I was determined to make it there, come what may. Thanks to my husband's dear cousin and her husband, we did visit Stratford Upon Avon, sat upon the banks of the Avon river, knocked at Shakespeare's door, had a cup of coffee in a pub he used to visit, and thus I paid a personal tribute to my beloved teacher in my own special way. She, with her magical way with words, had brought alive Shakespeare for a classroom full of young girls , (many of whom had never left India's coral strands), on a gloomy, rainy June morning, which probably perfectly mirrored regular weather in Shakespeare's country!
All of us were, no doubt, in absolute awe of Mrs.Dinshaw. The beloved and extremely pampered wife of a very rich businessman, she had no real 'need' to work. At a time when few women drove cars, let alone had one of their very own, Mrs. Dinshaw zoomed majestically into the school gates every morning in her Marie biscuit coloured Maruti 800, the very car most of India was dying to own, instead of the stately Ambassador or the Fiat, usually seen on Indian roads then. Chiffon sarees, deep cut sleeveless blouses that smacked of haute couture (and not of the tailor who had a little shop at the end of every Indian lane), high high-heels, beautifully permed and set hair and a flawless milk white complexion with skin as smooth as a baby's bottom (one of her favourite phrases!) , she was the very epitome of dignified elegance and grace. She had a larger than life, very magnetic personality and fondly addressed all of us as 'her little darlings' and 'baby dolls'. We felt as if we were straight out of Kipling's books and those colonial 'baba log' (children) were no patch on us! That was how special she made each girl feel. She came from India's Parsi community, well known for their generous flamboyance, business acumen, flair for music and teaching and a philanthropy that knows no borders of religion, caste or creed....the world certainly needs more of this rapidly shrinking group...
Once Mrs. Dinshaw discovered how much I loved to read, she wasted no time in recommending scores of books to me and continuously challenging me in class by asking me to explain or interpret what I thought a particular phrase or line meant. She contributed immensely to my already stupendous vocabulary. I say so myself but in those pre Google days, I used to carry an Oxford pocket dictionary in my uniform pocket and continuously look up words I came across in the course of a day, but did not know. Asking Mrs. Dinshaw what the word 'Tureen' meant, while studying Guy De Maupassant's 'The Diamond Necklace', is etched on my mind! Once she had explained a particular word, I never ever forgot it. And yes, she also taught us how 'Guy', the name, was pronounced, and how Champs- Elysees had to be uttered too, from the same story, because of course Mrs. Dinshaw had mastered French long before I did! And had visited Paris too, which I have yet to do!
While studying Lord Macauley's Horatius At The Bridge, I got so impatient at the delay before he jumps into the river when the choice was so clear, that I put up my hand and coolly informed Mrs. Dinshaw that I found Horatius incredibly slow on the uptake! She immediately got what I meant and her peals of laughter echo in my head to this day...On yet another occasion, in 9th grade, I had been reading a book called the Devil's Advocate, from our school library and having just learned the meaning of the phrase, immediately applied it to a character in a story we were studying. Mrs. Dinshaw instantly asked me to explain why I thought so and then agreed with my logical interpretation. That, I believe, is one of the main reasons why she stood out as an excellent teacher! The ability to let a student think, explain and explore in class, in our Indian education system, focussed as it is on 'finishing portions' and setting exams, remains sadly limited in the English teaching community today.
All my English papers came back marked with the highest marks in class and remarks like 'excellent' and 'I salute you', in Mrs, Dinshaw's hand, for all the three years that I had the good fortune to have been taught by her. This would have been enough to go to anyone's head, especially a fifteen year old's, knowing how hard it was to match Mrs. Dinshaw's impeccably high English standards, but ironically it only served to make me read and study more to keep meeting those standards...and of course, she is the one who had explained the word 'irony' to us in class, which is why I have used it so beautifully here, even after thirty long years! My mother, with her penchant for storing tangible memories, actually still has my old English file but now that Mrs. Dinshaw is gone, I'm so glad she does! I can skim through those papers and go back to that long gone era in the blink of an eye...
As 10th graders, we somehow badly managed to mess up the recitation of Edgar Allan Poe's very onomatopoeiaic 'The Bells', during our annual day, despite having been personally trained by Mrs. Dinshaw herself. Then her wrath knew no bounds and she was on the war path! Even I, who was known throughout the school as 'Dinshaw's Pet', and generally immune to her temper, got singed by it and got a tongue lashing to boot! It reduced me to tears then but I would love another scathing lecture from her now, if only to hear her voice one more time....
When Mrs. Dinshaw took leave from school in order to help her daughter, who was to have her first baby, she appointed me to teach our 9th standard class and I dreaded stepping into those large shoes! But having witnessed first hand the teachings of such a wonderful master meant the disciple did a reasonably good job, albeit with a quaking heart, but we were all so glad to have her back! We had missed her every minute of the time she had been away. In 10th grade, she personally hand picked me for inter school elocution competitions and coached me for those and for debates too, instilling vast amounts of confidence in me and today, it is my students who reap the benefits of her labour...I always ask my students to pay heed to what I am saying NOT because I am good but because I was taught by the very best. If I can pass on Mrs. Dinshaw's invaluable legacy to the thousands of students who have passed through my hands and the hundreds who are currently passing through, I will feel I have fulfilled at least some of my life's destiny...
A few years ago, thanks to two other favourite high school teachers, Ms. Nirmala Khemlani and Mrs. Veena Thadani, I was able to visit Mrs. Dinshaw and met her charming husband and one of her grandsons too. It was such a wonderful evening in her lovely home and they were such gracious hosts. I am so glad I made the effort for truly I can never repay the debt I owe her....she saw the potential and honed my language skills into something that is now being used to help so many students who sorely need it. It was during this visit that she gave me the manuscript of a book she was writing. She told me to read it and I was deeply honoured. It is a charming tale of her girlhood and her college and courtship days, written in her inimitable style, liberally laced with her particular brand of humour. I was entranced from the word go and begged her to continue writing, even offering to transcribe it for her over Skype, as she said she was not able to type much anymore...I just hope and pray her family manages to publish the book soon, if they haven't yet. It certainly needs to see the light of the day and thousands and thousands of her students would love to see Mrs. Dinshaw come back to life, though her own words.
In 2017, we had our mega high school 25th reunion at one of Pune's elite hotels and Mrs. Dinshaw along with our other beloved teachers, was one of the guests of honour. Despite not being in the best of health, (she was a cancer survivor), she managed to come and for that we will be ever grateful...That was the last time I met her, as another dear school friend and I dropped her back to her house and said good bye. In the summer of 2018, I was not able to go and see her as I was busy driving my son around for a summer project that he was doing, besides teaching nearly full time in my Academy. She gently admonished me over WhatsApp, when I wished her on her birthday on 27th August 2018, for not making time for her, as she had been waiting to see me and I promised I would see her in the June of 2019, when I would be in India next. I went back to India in March 2019 for just two weeks as my parents weren't well but I knew I would see Mrs. Dinshaw in June, when I would be in Pune for a longer period of time....How confident one is that one has all the time in the world and so do the people around us....She passed away on 12th April 2019 and most ironically I was back in India nearly a week later, as my dad had been admitted to hospital....I was too late to see my beloved teacher, and I was not destined to attend her funeral either as I missed it by three days...I will always live with this regret....
Today, I remain cut off from 'my native land', as flights worldwide remain suspended for how long we do not know...Again Mrs. Dinshaw's beautiful interpretation and explanation of this deeply meaningful poem by Sir Walter Scott comes to mind, for though my footsteps cannot, my thoughts do turn to my native land though I'm 'wandering on a foreign strand', to my wonderful teacher's heart warming memories and her family, as they mark a year of her passing...
And yes, she wouldn't have missed the alliteration in the title, in this small and humble but heartfelt tribute to her! After all, she taught me that too!

Such a beautiful evening, we met that day after twenty four years!

Work From Home

2020-04-05T01:06:00.001-07:00

Work from home?
Work from home?

This is a concept I implemented eight years ago,
So I am completely in the know!
The power to set your own work time,
Is something that is absolutely sublime!

No students and parents to actually meet and greet,
My Skype classroom's virtual, wow, that's so neat!
And so I was in my own zen zone,
Very happy to teach a hundred plus students from home!

And then, a virus rapidly invaded our lives,
On OUR respiratory system it was sharpening its knives!
Study and work from home became the new decree,
As from schools, colleges, malls and offices folks began to flee.

Suddenly I had THREE extra people working from our home,
And every surface was covered by a medical tome!
But, about the virus, none of them gave even a clue,
The disease, you see, is absolutely brand new!

There is a huge load on our formerly fast net connection,
And our daughter's begging for a net coverage extension!
Her classes, seminars, webinars are all online,
And medical students are expected to sharply toe the line!

The daughter's college uses Moodle,
The son's classroom relies on Google,
The husband's meetings are all on Zoom,
Learning and working virtually has hit a new boom!

All these super busy folks have invaded my lair,
On some days, I just wish they would get out of my hair!
There's been an encroachment on my work space,
I'm suddenly seeing too many people face to face!

The children are scarfing down food faster than I can cook,
And, in between, they disappear into a virtual book!
Coffee shops cannot match the beverage level I currently serve,
They claim, to study and work online, it gives them verve!

But, at a deeper, inner level, I'm SO glad they are all safely home,
While the virus outside can freely rage and roam!
For, with our current lifestyle, it will have no place for incubation,
And, very soon, will face complete annihilation!

Meanwhile, also do pray, for those who cannot at home stay,
They are out there, fighting to keep our dragons at bay!
Essential services workers, policemen, doctors and medical personnel on duty,
Their dedication to service is a thing of beauty!

We must, to God, very sincerely pray,
To keep us safe and sound to see another day!
Meanwhile we will study, work, exercise, cook and eat at home,
While outside, the virus at its greedy mouth, does froth and foam!

#StayHomeStaySafe

(And DON'T let this get on your face!)

Another Wonderful Wedding In Pre Brexit Britain

2019-12-14T05:41:00.002-08:00

Amongst Indians or people of Indian origin, wedding invites are first issued verbally to immediate and extended family, immediate neighbours, close friends and certain colleagues. Since planning and executing an Indian style wedding is a colossal task and people travel from far and wide, forewarned is forearmed!
Thus it was that my husband's boss and the owner of Kenya's top tea company that my husband works for, sounded him off in April itself, about his older daughter's wedding, which was to take place in August 2019, in London. I told my own daughter and her excitement ran sky high and she was determined to attend this wedding, especially as her college did not begin until the 1st of September. She knew this would be a really lavish and glamorous 'celebrity style wedding' and besides she had never visited the United Kingdom and this seemed like a golden opportunity, pun unintended of course, though one may be forgiven for thinking one has stumbled into a gold shop accidentally, while entering the venue of an Indian wedding! And into a designer sari shop too, for good measure!
There was the 'small' matter of visas and whether we would get them in time or would they be rejected, was the moot question. My husband and I had travelled to the UK twenty two years ago and so had those visas in our old passports, making it easier the second time round. But we were both eligible to apply from India and Kenya, and my daughter was eligible to apply from India, Kenya and the United Arab Emirates! The Indian travel agent was worried and advised us to apply from our countries of residence, (Kenya and UAE respectively), as applying from India could be a reason to reject them! Ultimately my daughter and husband, who were in India for a short time, ended up applying from Nairobi, while I applied from my home town, Pune. We spent a mini fortune, even though these stiff upper lipped folks entered our country so many centuries ago without a so much as a 'by your leave', we have to shell out mega bucks to get the documents to enter theirs....Oh, the expensive irony!
And so, though our visas were still in limbo, it was time to shop for this wedding while we were in India. Shopping in Nairobi would have meant we would have had no funds left to buy our tickets to London! We were invited for three major pre wedding and wedding events and so outfits and accessories (read matching purses, shoes, costume jewellery ) for every single outfit became essential. Suffice to say, at the end of all the shopping and stuffing heavy dresses into suitcases that seemed to have shrunk, my daughter declared that IF she ever got married, she would never have a destination wedding, as packing wedding outfits, even as guests, seemed an impossible task and imagine if you were the bride herself ! I'll definitely hold her to this IF and when the time comes...
After spending a few days in Nairobi, settling my son into his new academic year and teaching my Mom the ropes of handling the house, managing my house hold staff, and the 'how to' of teenage sitting the son and baby sitting the dog, taking a marathon twelve consecutive hours of compensatory classes on Skype to make up for my little holiday and participating in a Webinar as the chief speaker, finally we were on our way to London...
The hotel where we were put up was in a very beautiful part of London, at Kingston Upon Thames, and was located at the sight where hangings took place many centuries ago. That was where the original inn had come up, to accommodate people who had travelled long distances to witness the hangings... Rather gruesome but more grist to the mill for an officially qualified history buff like me! We were greeted by very thoughtful 'Welcome to our Wedding Weekend' hampers which had been placed in every room booked for the wedding. They had everything ranging from wet wipes to chocolates, snacks, safety pins, mini bottles of perfume, the ubiquitous band aids and many more things!
The most unique aspect of this wedding was that the girl is a Muslim of Indian origin, brought up in Kenya and the United Kingdom and the boy a British Jew and yet like all Indian weddings, no matter from which religion, so many of the pre wedding rituals were identical to those found all across India...And Bollywood of course effectively blurs all man made lines (yes, even the Radcliffe line!), with its milieu of songs and dances, which have become such an intrinsic part of Indian weddings.
The Mehendi or Henna painting ritual was the first formal wedding event and the bride's family mansion's garden with its colourful decoration of silk threads and a huge tent and stage which had been put up on the lawn, was the perfect backdrop for this rainbow hued event. Delicious food that felt like it had been flown in straight from India, right down to the Kulfi (Indian ice cream) and fresh betel nut leaves, hit all the right spots, with us vegetarians being sumptuously catered too as well. A little bit of traditional wedding songs and dances and the camaraderie of close family, friends and overseas guests made for a glorious day. It was the perfect way to kick start the celebration. We all queued up to get the intricate henna patterns done on our hands from the ladies especially invited for this occasion and got into the wedding mood, with the first fragrant whiff of henna!

That's NOT the bride and I have permission to post this pic!

The next event was the 'Sangeet' or the mega song and dance ceremony. Practice had been in full swing over the past many days and two choreographers had flown in all the way from India! There was the bridesmaids' dance, the parents of the bride dance, the parents of the groom dance, the bride's Uncles danced and finally the couple du jour danced, of course. After this the dance floor was thrown open for all the guests and as the DJ belted out the most popular dance numbers, it got transformed into a riot of colours, with even non dancers like my husband and me being pushed onto the dance floor. The popular Bollywood number from a super hit movie with the lines 'poora London thumakda' (all of London is dancing), was met with a huge roar of approval as it seemed so ironically appropriate for the occasion! The cuisine was street food from different parts of the world, with India predominating, of course, and the venue the very beautiful and historic Conservatory at Painshill in Surrey, with its lush expanse of green lawns and summer flowers in the most gorgeous of colours and the magically decorated hall and dining area...An enchanting evening, to say the least.

The colours of Indian street food compliment the summer flowers, at the Conservatory at Painshill, Surrey. Note the delicate henna pattern on my daughter's hand!

Recreating the street food scene at Painshill!

The actual wedding ceremony was a civil one followed by the grand finale, the wedding reception at the Hurlingham Club, set on forty two acres of grounds, bordering the Thames, at Fulham, touted as one of Britain's most exclusive private clubs. The waiting list for membership, we were told, is THIRTY years long! A couple of days ago, the club was in the news as Kate (the Queen's grand daughter in law) is taking private tennis lessons there and her three children are romping all over the grounds and no we did not bump into her when we were there!

There's a time capsule buried right at the entrance of the club, adding an interesting touch of whimsy to an otherwise colonially correct establishment! I wonder what it says? Maybe it's,"No, though it's 2104 your turn for membership still hasn't come! Keep waiting...till eternity!"

After mingling around in the atrium, we were led to our pre designated tables in the spectacularly decorated grand salon. Everything matched the pink theme of the wedding invites, including the menu cards, the party favour boxes and the floral arrangements. One of the gifts in the box was a special blend of tea concocted for the new couple. A fitting touch, when your family owns one of the largest tea companies in Africa and is in the tea business in the United Kingdom too. The dinner was to be a pre plated one, with each delicious course being served to us in pre set plates, even as we listened to speeches by members of the groom's and bride's parties....A new experience for us but a very enjoyable one.

And then the dance floor was thrown open post dinner with everyone enthusiastically hitting the floor, with my daughter leading the pack...

And that finally wrapped up the wedding, our main purpose for being in the United kingdom and I'm going to need a couple of posts more to write about other important aspects of our trip!

So bear with me,

This is the first of three..!

(When one visits Stratford Upon Avon for all things Shakespeare , which we did during this trip, I guess one starts ending a post with a rhyming couplet!)