Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Flowering in the rain...

The rain, though never really absent from this part of the world, is here in all its fury! Everywhere I look is water and despite the mud, and the insects, and the infections, and..., I really love the monsoons and the dark clouds it brings along. Our little garden too stands bravely against the pouring drops and here and there you see lovely colourful patches and even though the sun is not out, your heart still manages to sing!

The humble French Marigold, leftovers from winter plantings, are a bright patch of colour. Come hail or wind, this hardy species refuses to bow down!


The Hibiscus too is a colourful relief in bleak rainy weather. This one here is a white Australian (supposedly) variety and is as colourful as the red ones... The rains does not seem to touch the petals!


These pink flowers are like delicate puffs but they remain undaunted by the torrents of water that fall on them.



Some roses I have tried to protect by at least providing partial shelter overhead. This miniature pink is one such example...


And can monsoons exist without the intoxicating fragrance of the Rajnigandha? These bulbs had been presented to me by my mom when I was carrying Arjun so they are all the more special to me...


Along with flowers, our old swing too has turned colourful...

Kabir

Reading Kabir today...feel so connected when I read his verses...Here are some:

Jaise Til Mein Tel Hai, Jyon Chakmak Mein Aag
Tera Sayeen Tujh Mein Hai, Tu Jaag Sake To Jaag
Just as there is oil in the sesame seed, and fire in the flint stone
your beloved is inside you, awaken if you can!
------------------
Kabira Garv Na Keejiye, Uncha Dekh Aavaas
Kaal Paron Bhuin Letna, Ooper Jamsi Ghaas
Don't be proud Kabira, by the sight of your high mansion
Tomorrow you will have to lie on the earth, and above there will be wild grass
--------------
Jab Mein Tha Tab Hari Nahin‚ Jab Hari Hai Mein Nahin
Sab Andhiyara Mit Gaya‚ Jab Deepak Dekhya Mahin
When I exist, my Lord does not
when my Lord exists, I do not
All darkness was removed, when I saw the light!
----------------

Monday, August 4, 2008

'Eating out' at midnight...

Sanjib came home around eleven on saturday and for a change, he wanted to go out! Arjun and I, though almost on the verge of falling off to a dreamless sleep, did not give him a chance for second thoughts...

At this hour, in the place where we stay, it was not likely that we would find anything or anyone on the roads. "Let's take along a couple of hot cases", said Sanjib, "Just in case we find a dhaba open." We went off in the general direction of a old, derelict 'dhaba' that goes by the name of 'Baba Hotel'. turns out it was about to close but more than happy to pack some dal tarka and make some 'Alu subzi' for us to take home.

We reached home around 1 at night and needless to say, both the dal tarka and the 'alu' was finger-lickin' good!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

O Calcutta!

We just got back from a short trip to Kolkata and I have a number of tales to tell... Kolkata is a place which has been so oft written about that everything you write is almost bound to be passe. However, at the same time, it is also a place that lends itself to new discoveries everytime you visit it. This time my visit to the city of joy was a bonus... Sanjib was part of one of the company golf teams for the Merchant cup golf in the city and spouses got to go along...what fun! The weather, unlike every other time, was very pleasant.
As soon as we landed and checked into our hotel (that's HHI, or Hotel Hindustan International), Sanjib went off to 'check the course' and Arjun and I went off to check Oxford book store. It is not easy shopping with a 2.5-year-old, especially when you are looking for books. We ended up getting 4 books for him and none for me! I had a couple of other things that i had to do in Cal...one was visit Kalighat, which I did very early one morning. The roads were clear, people were jogging and near the temple, flower sellers were beginning to spread out their ware...It was beautiful. Kalighat is a Shakti pith, where a part of the body of Sati, cut off by Vishnu's disc, fell. The image of the goddess is so powerful that the first time I saw it I almost got a shock!
The second thing on my agenda was to buy some handicrafts. I usually visit Swabhumi for this (Swabhumi is something similar to Dilli Haat in New Delhi, a crafts 'centre' where you find a number of local and traditional craftsmen under one roof along with food), however this time I saw an adevrtisment for a place called 'Sasha' and decided to visit it. It was a nice place in Free School St. but I expected a lot more crafts from Bengal. Instead what i found was crafts from across the country. Unlike Swabhumi where I could pick up a lot of lovely jewellery and terracotta goods for very low prices, here the choice was not much and i also found the prices slightly high.
Now comes the fun part...food! I love eating out whenever we visit some place and usually build up some favourites places to visit everytime. However this time, there was a change int his as well. Apart from breakfast, which was on the house, one meal in a day (either lunch or dinner) was given by the hotel. We thus had beautiful five-star twice a day and had either lunch or dinner outside. Sanjib was in the mood for Bengali food and we discovered two lovely Bengali restaurants. The first is Kewpie's (2, Elgin Lane), opposite Forum. This is a beautiful quaint resturant with a wonderful owner. The second is Prince, in Free School st. The place is exactly like its name, the Bengali equivalent of a Punjabi dhaba, with plates slammed down in front of you and dal spilling from the bowls, but the food...it was absolutely tasty and hot and exactly what you would get in a Bengali home.
There are a couple of things I learnt ont his trip: If you are travelling with a child, and staying at a five star, buy (from outside, of course)and keep the following things handy: A packet of bread, a packet of milk, a jar of cheese spread and some jam. Arjun's been travelling with me ever since he was four months old and I always carry his food with me. This time, since it was a short trip, (I gave it a miss) and somehow Arjun really did not enjoy his food, delicious though it was. A cheese sandwich is something that I always fall back on in times like this and the HHI cheese sandwiches (three slices of bread with two cheese slices between them) cost me Rs 350 each!!! Internet too is very expensive for someone like me who's used to getting it at so much less: it was Rs 95 for half an hour! I also missed all the evening functions at RCGC (the Royal Calcutta Golf Club- pic on the left) because I felt very guilty about spending so much money on baby sitters (Rs 1000 per hour!) ...
Sanjib's birthday was celebrated en route on the plane with the crew making an anouncement and everybody cheering him as he stood up, red in the face.
Calcutta was a fun trip for us!





Monday, July 21, 2008

View from my window

It's been raining constantly for the past few days and our house looks like it's on an island. There are no tea bushes in front of the house, just paddy fields and these are, at the moment filled with water. As I write this, I can hear the drops of water plink plonking from the roof onto the cemented drain. The plants, thirsting for water a few days ago, are now full to the brim. It should be gloomy as the sun's away but it's strangely not. There's a calm peace and coziness all around, reminding me of cold winter days...

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Arjun gets a haircut

The best thing about a sunday in a tea garden is that it is truly a sunday! The day, unlike other days, starts late and I get to see my husband in the morning! Before he goes off for golf, that is...but that's another story! Today it was haircut day. The garden 'thakur' came over with his pair of scissors and waited for 'Mistri Saheb' and Son. This was the second time Arjun was getting a haircut from Thakur...the first was a month after he was born when just a few strands were cut off as a gesture. Earlier, last November, Arjun had a mundan done at Tirupati in andhra Pradesh. Sanjib also had to get one done to stop Arjun from crying!

Monday, June 30, 2008

Meeting Jaffrey Archer


For someone like me whose life inspiration has been Prodigal Daughter and who’s read ‘Kane and Abel’ at least 10 times, Jeffrey Archer is probably third in line to God. I was visiting my mom in Delhi this May and generally chatting and catching up with a friend on the net when she said, “Btw, Tulip, Archer’s coming tomorrow for a book signing session. Would you like to meet him?” Would I what??? Of course I would love to meet him…I could give her my best dress to meet him!
Like two teenage fans we gaped at him as he walked in and realized everyone else was doing the same. He was funny and inspirational at the same time. I am repeating here his words about his second book and first best seller, ‘Kane and Abel’: ‘After I wrote Kane and Abel, my publishers wanted to publicize it in the USA. After trying hard for a number of days, they came to me and said, “Jeffrey, you are very lucky. You have got a spot in the Today Show. It’s at 7 am, and you have 3 minutes, and you are following Billy Carter’s brother and Mickey Mouse.” Then he goes on: “and then it’s time for the show. Billy Carter’s brother goes up and speaks about the beer that he’s promoting and he takes 3 minutes and 35 seconds. Next goes Mickey Mouse and I have learnt one thing from Mickey and that is –if it’s your last question, just keep on talking! I am finally left with just 1 minute and 20 seconds with me. My publishers told me repeatedly to just keep saying ‘Kane and Abel’ as many times as I am able to. I step on to the stage and the host says, ‘Jeff! So you have come here from Britain…’ and then I say, Yes! What a plane is the Concorde! You get up in Britain, you get down here. What power, what speed, and so on and so forth and then I hear him say, ‘Jeff, I was really happy to have you here on our show’. Not once was Kane and Abel mentioned!”
Archer’s blog (jeffreyarchers@blogspot.com) is his favourite means of writing at the moment. However, when he’s writing his books, he still uses a black felt tipped pen! And as he writes just for about two hours a day (6am to 8am), he completes a book in about two years.
When I asked him which one of his books is his favourite, he said he was most sentimental about ‘Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less’ but he considers his latest ‘Prisoner of Birth’ to be his most well written. We walked up to get his signature (we were of course the first two in the queue), and after the deed was done, we realized we did not take a picture. What a crime…We went and stood in the queue again and asked a security man to take a picture. We thanked him and Lord Archer and as we walked down, looked at the camera and realized the guy did not know how to take a picture and there was just a black spot on it. We broke into the queue (with smiles to everyone) and walked up on the podium for the third time and my friend took a picture of me. Finally, we had a picture! Thank you Jeffrey Archer and thank you, the Head of Security for not holding us back…We are, after all, the biggest fans of Archer!

My life for the past couple of months

Arjun under the Litchi tree...
A lot of things happened since I last posted a blog. A dear colleague of ours passed away and that affected me quite a bit. I had stopped working after I got married and have started work again recently. Arjun (my son) is driving me nuts with his 'don't want to eat' moods, and I have started keeping a record ofwhat he eats along with my daily schedule. My agenda is now to feed him high calorie food and make him gain weight. (He's 33 months old and weighs just 12 kgs, about 24lbs!) And please don't think that this blog isa real sad spot...It isn't. It's just that I turn to it only when things go wrong...I'm trying to change that from today! (Big resolution!)

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Nobody gives a damn?

It was almost six in the evening and I was rushing to the club to do some last minute arrangements for the Children’s Nite taking place that night. I met one of my husband’s colleagues en route who said, “You work so hard for everyone and no one gives a damn.” I do not know if he meant it kindly or otherwise. I just smiled back at him then because I didn’t have time to think. As I continued on my way, however, I did ponder on the statement. It took me back to my teenage days.
No one gives a damn. Funny how things repeat themselves. A long, long time back when I was in school, maybe in tenth grade, I had a very good friend. One fine day, she came up to me and said very suddenly and seriously, as she still does, “Tulip, no one gives a damn. Always keep that in mind. Just go ahead and do what you have to do in life.” I do not know whether she remembers what she told me but that statement had been my strength in some difficult times.
Today, I am a married woman and things have changed. I do not hold on to the ‘rebellious’ thought of ‘No one cares’ because I realize that there ARE one or two people in your life who do care genuinely. And, because of these one or two people, it does not matter whether anyone gives a damn or not. At the same time, I understand people are mainly egoists as opposed to egotists. Believe me, I am not being cynical and pessimistic when I say: You may have a soul mate, but there is just one you…
Anyway, I am rambling and digressing. To come back to the present tale, I think we all work for different reasons. Someone may be working for money, someone for recognition, someone to help boost his ego, and so on. I have passed through a number of stages in my life. In the beginning, when I started work as a reporter, I was like a school kid. I was a hard worker, doing my best to gain the appreciation of an extremely hard taskmaster of an editor. Work that I thought was brilliant was thrown into the waste bin and I learnt, one published story at a time, little by little, step by step.
One day I realized I had learnt almost all that that place could offer and joined a publishing company that had been calling me up for a while. Here I discovered another kind of motivation—to be the best in my field. I competed with myself and excelled. As I moved on, I had young and elder people working under my guidance. At this point of time, I started getting a number of calls with good offers, and this time I chose keeping finances in mind. I realized one does not have to make a ‘hoolahoo’ and show people that one is working hard in order to get good results. In the big bad world, people just care about results, not how hard you have worked. People really have no time to give themselves a damn, leave alone you.
I kept learning and a lot of lessons that work did not teach me (and that is a lot) are being taught to me by marriage and my child. At this point in time, i.e. today, whenever I take up any work, I do so because I genuinely feel I would like that work. Even to the point of sounding hypocritical, I really do not care if there is no money or ‘recognition’ and I do not really mind if everyone does not say ‘Thank you’. At the same time, when someone does say a genuine ‘well done’ it touches my heart. Sometimes, even words are not required.
For example, the Keyhung crèche was not in a good shape some couple of years back. We got the place in shape. My mother was visiting at the time and the two of us popped in every morning and played and worked with the kids and the teacher. We did not make a big noise and except the manager and my husband, who was the factory assistant, nobody got to know. The crèche was cleaned and repaired, new playthings were organized, and walls had pictures on them, and so on. After my child came about, I lost touch and when I went there just a few days back, I saw chart papers with vegetable prints that I had taught so long back were put up on the wall. The children recognized me and came running, the teacher was all smiles, and my child was now able to join them in play. I was really touched by the change from what I had seen the first time we were there.
As I reached club that evening, a young boy who was going to be announcing the programme came with his opening speech. At the end, he had written, “Thank you, Tulip Aunty from all of us. We really appreciate the effort”. I crossed out that line but it did help me smile.
As I stood on stage behind the screen with my fingers crossed, more nervous than the kids behind me, I saw Sanjib peeking in through the stage door, with his thumb up. And as the programme ended, the parents were as excited as the kids.
Hmmm…Maybe some people do give a damn…and maybe these are the people who matter.

Tiku Mama

Tiku mama with Arjun...
As soon as I reach Ambari, I walk into the TV room. He is inevitably there, watching TV, with his legs folded and his fingers curled around a cigarette. I can see him in his lungi, and the vest, his hair a shade between flaming orange and dirty grey, smiling at me. I do not want to remember that he had lost his hair, and the last time I met him his head was covered with a gamucha to cover up the effects of chemotherapy. A gamucha, not a cap—that was Tiku mama. It was 1982 when Arun, my father, passed away and we came to stay at Ambari. Dhriti and I grew up with Riku and Miku as one family. If my mother baked a cake, they would be there downstairs to share. If mami made rotis, we had it with honey upstairs. In the middle of everything there was always Tiku mama. Everytime someone felt ill, we would troop to him and he would hand out small homeopathy sugar pills. We mostly faked illness for that. There was a version of scrabble called ‘Word making and taking’ that we used to play. Come exam time and Tiku mama would make us his special timetables with a time for everything from watching TV to eating to Maths. I already loved books and he loved to discuss different books with me. He taught us the importance of having a well maintained library and both Miku and I had notebooks where we catalogued all our books. We had hearty discussions on any topic from Perry Mason to Sangam to Global warming to Pakistan-India with him. Tiku mama loved Raj Kapoor. Cricket was his life. He was however an enthusiast on all other sports, especially tennis. I remember watching the 1985 Wimbledon matches with him. Ma was away and both of us sat late watching each and every match we could. As we grew older, we moved away but Ambari was always Ambari. He was always there when I came for a visit and if he wasn’t the house was empty. In times when he was worried about something, he would pace up and down, smoking his cigarette, in his quintessential old white lungi. He did so many things and knew everything and if you had any problem on anything he had the answer. Anything from cattle rearing to ship building to security software to baking cakes to knitting to car mechanics. Everything. You go ahead and think of something, ask Tiku mama a question and he will give you the most sensible answer there is. I got married from Ambari and he made the Doi-Mas at my athmongola. It was, everyone said, the yummiest. Ma and I spoke to him over the phone just as he was to go in for his first operation. I asked him if he was scared. He said “No, it’s ai paar or sai paar so I am not scared”. Ma and I was crying after we spoke to him but he was smiling. It was not ‘sai paar’ yet for him and he also met Arjun, my son. Miku’s wedding went off very well, and hundreds of people visited the house in the days prior to the event and attended the wedding, everyone had a chance to talk to him. He joked about his illness and was always smiling when I met him. In fact, because of that the news came as a shock. I thought he would always be there, despite his illness, despite everything. He must be smiling now, wherever he is. He must be missing his lungi, cigarette and cricket matches though. I miss you Tiku mama and so does Dhriti and Miku and Riku.