Cooking Mythology!

Mixing turmeric in the vegetables before smelling the salt to add it to simmering potatoes and aubergine, I resisted the thoughts on Hindu mythology. There are two massive epics, The Ramayana and the Bhagwat Geeta. Stirring the lentils and counting the whistles as I poured a cup of rice into heavy-based pot, measuring two cups of water, I thought, how strange most children born in the narrative of bhagwat geeta are out of wedlock. Most women choosing powerful deities to father the children over their husbands! Did we have a civilization where marriage was not as 'sacred' as today and good genes determined whom the women in wedlock would mate with, to have gifted and healthy generations. Chopping onions, de seeding tomatoes and slicing green chili, I brood over the stern, dry values of Ramayana. Ram, the avatara of Visnu, an ideal king was sent to fourteen years of exile by his step mother so that her son would rule. She enters a 'kope bhavan' a palace where the queen would retire to when she was angry and discontented. She reminds the king of a promise he had made while on the battle field as she saved his life. The politics reigns and the virtuous Rama along with his devoted wife Sita move to the forests. A demon abducts Sita and carries her to Sri Lanka, after a fierce battle, Sita is overjoyed to unite with her husband. Rama stuns her by asking her to marry anyone as he could not take back a woman who had stayed under another man's roof! Sita is enraged. I mix milk with whole wheat flout and take off my three rings to knead the dough. Sita jumps into a fire as she thinks it is beneath her to accompany a man who has so publicly raised a doubt on her chastity. Fire cannot touch her and the fire god, the 'agni devta' appears praying to Rama to take back his wife as she was pure as pure can be. It's time to pack husband's lunch and I wash the steel containers. Sita, cools down and accompanies Rama to Ayodhya. Four containers, two I fill with rice, a little pickle on the side and one with 'dal' the lentil soup. Once back all is quiet till a spy reports to Rama of a washer man who refuses to take back his wife as she had been away under another man's roof. " I am no Rama" he says, "to take back a tarnished woman". Fourth container, I fill up with the potato and aubergine vegetables with a bit of tomato and onion that I saute in mustard oil. Sita, pregnant with twins is abandoned without an explanation in a forest where she is found by a sage and given shelter.

It is time to serve breakfast so I pour cold milk and two spoons of coffee and sugar to the blender and switch it on. Mythologies churn in my mind and cold milk swirls in the blender. The bhagwat geeta they say is 6000 years old and Ramayana older than that and what a contrast in value systems. After the radically logical approach of Krishna in Bhagwat Geeta as he encourages ' Arjun,' his disciple to wage a war against those who had cheated the five princes of their land and humiliated their common wife-draupadi. He uses all the tactics, negotiation, guerrilla warfare, threat and when nothing works sly methods to cheat the enemy just giving back the enemy taste of their own medicine.

Coming back to today when there is so much ruckus on just sketching portraits of a prophet, I do not know weather to laugh or feel frustrated. The very idea of not having idols is to identify the creator with the non manifested, a much higher state of awareness, whet could be more contradictory that create mayhem on an approach that was just to establish a stream of thought that self realization could be attained through either means, through devotion or though meditating on the abstract manifested creator. I pack the lunch and stuff the dough with onion-tomato-green chilli and roll it into thin parantha, a little butter in the flat pan and I press it to crisp both sides. Golden 'parantha' on white plate with cold coffee, husband says it tastes good!

Pic: The valley of flowers, clicked by son and husband.

Wanderings and Night...

Red ants get angry as I spray water on wilting leaves, they bite my flesh. Since morning they have been carrying their eggs and larva, holding the creamy oval things in their pincher(yes, that's what they are called!)There is dust everywhere, you can taste it on the warmed furnace blast-like air. There is no breeze just a warmed stillness saturated with humidity. As labourers slog near fly overs and roads, their children play in scattered shade. Every time I pass a cluster of such children playing with sticks and sand piles, I pray to whoever watches over their safety.

Sometimes just looking, really looking at things makes one think. Was adjusting the ruby ring on my finger and suddenly it occurs to me that the gold and the ruby both have come from the depths of this Earth. Now, circling my finger, what a long journey and after my life, its journey goes on.

Was thinking about the string theory that speaks of parallel universes lying side-by-side like slices of a bread loaf. Well, actually just stepping out of the house, one feels it is already so, we do live on an irregular mass of molten lava covered thankfully with earth crust and rocks, but we live in different universes. It's just with us humans, if you place apes together, they will be just apes, but us, we will be this nationality, that skin colour, first world , third world and then all those strange equations of the ruled and the rulers. Yeah, there are dominant matriarchal or patriarchal structures in apes too, but those are not so rigid, mainly about territory and sex. The insecurity of a terror attack and deciding who are non believers or lesser mortals, that is a trait prized in humans. Dunno, maybe this is what evolution was meant to do to us. Looking closely, we are still in that maze of basic survival, tilted this way or that for convenience of some smart humans who decided how the society should be, thankfully these smart people were limited to some priests, religious preachers and dictators like Hitler. The damage they have sent rippling across the ages and generations validates the need to put them in same category. If people with wisdom were in charge of this earth, we could have survived here for millions of years. Is there a dearth of people who can take humanity as a whole. There is resistance against the very fact that human race is one species as power equations are involved, but naive as it may sound, at some point with dwindling resources and unmanaged populations, humanity will have to either face the problems or face savage wars like the first and second world war or just perish through natural devastation.

Had that same scary feeling of hanging in space as I woke up. As if there is no Earth, no place to belong to, probably that triggered these thoughts.


Night

Wide open like a white lily
Floating in cosmos
This night, my night
Woven with warm breaths
Still, with spots of jasmine fragrance
Throbbing stars laughing on petty human concerns!

Flesh sprouting flesh in shrill labour rooms
here, the night is silent
Storms blend the night into dust
Far away, there are frozen polar nights
and nights turn sweet, sour, bitter, sad
We make the darkness so
Giving flavours...

Drunk on dreams and desires
saucy, smelling of hormones
Old, grumbling lonely night
as the hormones go...
Coming full circle to a still night
Boats of dream tethered in the darkness
Eager to flow...

Thinking and Storm...

There are clouds above the dusty tree tops and birds are relieved, they chirp. I can hear a cukoo, a crow is building a nest in the massive silk-cotton tree behind my house, jet black and melodious cukoo is smart, she lays eggs in crow's nest, no hassle of bringing up chicks! The huge bee hive is gone and I think the bees were smarter as in the morning the four hives on another silk-cotton tree were larger. Human greed robbed their hives but they got shelter with the other bees.

Observing human nature these days, it is not difficult to destroy people, there are ways to control and keep one on the edge. Wonder why I never saw through these obvious ways earlier. Even now, I find it difficult to react to petty tricks. What does one think, can't I play the same games? It is easy to do that once you put your mind to it, but there are constructive things, meditation, sharing, interacting with children. I should not pay heed, what I am, no one can take away, at least not through projecting what I am not! Just that at this age it is difficult to see someone trying to control every moment, that can happen if I give in. Sometimes I do get tired. How much energy do these false hierarchies consume. All the time criticism as if this can somehow push you to a higher plane. A person's true worth is judged by the way he or she treats others when he or she is in a position of power. It is actually sad to be cunning, to knowingly lead others to wrong decisions, just to reflect in the glory of the false superiority. I have seen people say the opposite of what should be done and wait to see how their cunning plot unfolds. If you stop watching your back, they can be dangerous. So instead of doing something constructive, you have to keep a tab on what is cooking in this someone's mind that can harm you.

Problem is, when you know that all this is happening and yet you have to abide by social hierarchies,how do you contain the frustration about the importance given to people, who do not deserve it? How indeed do you respect such people? Maybe some people can, they are good at acting out things they do not feel in their hearts, but that must be such a strain. There is just one desire that I have before I leave this plane, to make some difference, not money, not recognition but my leaving should be accompanied by this beautiful Mother Earth becoming a better place for coming generations. Don't know how it will come about, maybe through sharing what God has so generously given me, maybe through some work or the field work that I aspire to do in Himalayan glaciers when kids are grown up. Just want to do this much before I leave and maybe that is why I feel, there are miles to go before I sleep...
Should always remember what Buddha said, we are not punished for our anger, we are punished by our anger. Even when so many things are so unfair...


Storm

Yellow dust swirls
A storm brews slowly
Gray clouds and a torrid heart
Raindrops comedown like warm kisses
Anger evaporates like ice in fire

Noon

A poem I wrote some time back. There are days when the magic of light and shadow transports us to a matrix where time stops and suspended in this warp we look at this existence differently.




Noon

Smell of boiling milk

Spilling through the kitchen window

And your hands on the table

The window brings in the sky

And the warm sunlit breeze

Speaking of a blank dazed noon

When a black bird sang outside

And broke the silence blanketing us

Smells of paint, varnish and white wash...

Shadow dance of leaves on white bed spread

Your hands entwined on the table

Take me to that warm dazed noon

with pregnant curtains and stark blue sky

And us...

It Rained...

There was rain
And I got drenched
It was spring
And I wove flowers in my hair
Breeze was a river carrying me far
How could I stop rain from drenching me
Or stop Blossoms from raining
Or breeze from taking me
Where daisies bloom...
Fingers untangle the wilting blossoms
And the breeze shies away from me
It was so...
Believe me
It rained and I got drenched

The Earth Day Story

A few days back this story started forming in my mind and I never realised that it was Earth day today, posting it here as in other parts of the world now it will be celebrated. If you wish to read it to kids, you can substitute Himalayas with the mountains in your country. Read it to one hundred thirty kids today and then to another similar group in second and third grades. They kinda liked it, had added many more things as the story started building up through their questions. Had a box full of leaves, stems, berries, pods and distributed these as the story unfolded.

Bulbul's Summer Vacations

There was a pretty little girl. Her name was Bulbul. One day when her summer vacations had started and the sun was shining high in the sky, her mother asked her to help her in packing. They were visiting her father’s village in the beautiful Himalayas. She brought her dresses and neatly folded them, helping her mother in packing the suitcases.

Early in the morning Daddy loaded the suitcases. It was dusk and the birds were still asleep in the nest. There was a cool breeze blowing. Bulbul said bye to her plants and she hugged the stray cat that came to her for milk every morning. Soon they were driving towards the Himalayas from Delhi. Slowly, the sun rose in the sky and birds chirped in the trees. Bulbul sat near the car window, watching the monkey mamas jumping, their babies holding their mama’s bellies tightly.

She clapped when she saw a beautiful peacock cross the road. Her father slowed the car so that the peacock could cross the road. Mamma gave Bulbul a burger and a packet of chips (question: Where do you put the empty packets after you eat the chips?)She folded the packet of chips and kept it in a bag to throw away later.

Early in the noon they reached the village. Daddy parked the car near a dense pine forest. There was a stream of clear water in the path and Bulbul saw small colorful fish swimming in the water. She sat down to watch the fish move very fast in the water, She cupped her hands and tried to catch a little fish, but it was a very smart fish, it moved under a rock and hid there.

Bulbul loved the forest behind their cottage. There were apple trees and plum trees (Question: Have you eaten plums? How do they taste and smell?) In the cowshed, she discovered a white calf. She gave her green grass to eat. The calf was very happy and jumped and ran behind her.

Everyday she visited the stream; she liked the dark cool shade of the pine trees. Slippery pine needles made it fun to slide and reach the bottom of the hill. (Can you think why pine trees have needle like leaves?) Next day, she visited a temple with her father and in the way their car got stuck as a lot of rocks and mud had piled on the road. There were no trees on this hill. Bulbul saw a river flowing near the hill and all the soil was washing away in the river. She asked her father, “Daddy, why are rocks tumbling down to the road?” Her father explained, " Bulbul, trees hold the soil with their roots, even floods are unable to wash away soil when trees grip soil tightly. here all trees have been cut by some selfish people and that is why there was is way to hold rocks and soil and so the mud and stones are falling on the road and washing away into the river."

Bulbul felt sad. She loved trees and flowers, she helped her father in removing rocks from the road and the next day they planted a plum tree and many pine trees and watered them. Her cousins promised to take care of the plants.

A year later when Bulbul visited the village, the hill was green once again. There were happy birds singing on the plum tree and there was no mud flowing into the river. They had a bath in the clean river water and sat under the shade of the pine trees. Bulbul chased the fish in the river and ate fresh apples. She collected pine cones which were lying on the ground and ate the delicious seeds inside them. When it was cold in the night, she collected twigs and lit a bonfire. Now she knew that trees and the Earth give us all the wonderful things in life. She decided to plant more trees and take care of Mother Earth as she had come to know that Mother Earth gives us every thing we need to live.

Memories...

When I was born, my mother was diagnosed with jaundice and was not able to breast feed me. As a result I was brought up on canned milk powder, she tells me I would shake the glass bottle to see if it was full, if it made sound I would just throw it out and it would shatter into pieces. After observing my liking for a perpetually full bottle, parents got a steel bottle that was retrieved and filled up again. The bottle was still lurking in some corner of parents' home. I love powdered milk even now, a taste that developed as a new born. My grandmother used to give me cooked vegetable dish of brinjal and I hated it, but one day she made look like a lolly pop and I fell in love with eggplant! Parents were in Baroda and there was a join family of businessmen next to us. My mother tells me that they did not have a child in their home so I was practically brought up by the women in that household. In small cities, these bonds are deeper, mother says if deep into night I would cry, the neighbors would come knocking and take me away to quieten me and try their home remedies. There was a women who was employed to massage me and considerable part of my father's salary went to this woman along with the bus fare. My mother remembers that she would bath me with scalding water after massaging me with oil and if mother complained of my wailing and temperature of water , the women would threaten to quit.

Memory is such a magical thing, I still remember so vividly, sun streaming and making patterns of window bars on the floor and my mother talking to her friend standing on the doorstep. Her cotton saree well-worn and soft, I sneak into the bathroom and fill a huge jug with water. I was kept away from a drum that housed a bee hive and it attracted me like a magnet. As mother was busy, in my two-year-old wisdom, I seized the opportunity and poured the water on the hive. Soon the bees were stinging my cheeks and the mother and her friend sprung into action taking me inside and plucking out the stings. How clear are those stings in my memory!

My parents were fond of movies and first day first show was a norm. They would stick a fanta straw into my mouth and as long as the clod drink lasted, I would leave them in peace. They thought I didn't register a thing but I still remember the love making scenes in that adult flick, blue lagoon. The scene when the teenagers stranded in this Iceland try and deliver their first baby, I remember that too, though I never saw that movie again.

So many things one remembers, mind is such a wonderful sensitive part of us. The first formal school, Convent of Jesus and Mary, the stone building and stern spinsters who taught us. The day I was called into the office with the teacher complaining that I was not able to pay attention in class, I still sense the fear and humiliation. It turned out that I was underage and as I was able to answer most questions they had given me admission in first grade without considering my age.
Home was a vast house with land stretching in every direction. There were snakes in the stacked tiles that made the boundary of our lawn. There was a swamp at some distance and white storks moved in slow motion looking for fish in the muddy water. Massive trees with sweet seeds that danced to the ground lined the roads and a few days back I identified the tree near Qutab Minar and told Jayani, my daughter about these seeds. The taste transported me to those warm days when a girl friend and I would look for broken glass bangles to make a bangle box. We would peek into houses through windows and giggle. One day she was telling me how we can make the flesh near knee look like genitals, when my mother overheard us and I was pulled into the hose and told not to speak to her again. I still remember her name, Jyotsna, funny how things we are forbidden become etched forever eh!


Memory

Gentle ripples of thought
Green peaceful words cascade
Blue kisses of memory
Fleeting embrace of time
Dusk and dawn entwined tenderly
Flowing into wilderness like a dream
Foot prints on a rainy day
Moments that became today...