i wouldn’t want to miss it for the world!

and so i was up very early, only to find there were many others before me. the entire town was celebrating…i walked fast, half-ran. i was so excited i could barely contain myself.

when i reached the (town)centre i waited for my turn patiently, tapping my feet, pushing behind my ears strands of hair that threatened to fly away, looking around at all the curious shops that seemed to have come up overnight, vendors selling solar filters and books about the transit of venus, the event that occurred once in a hundred and twenty-two years. now, here was another thing i would tell my grandchildren about (or leave behind to read it themselves on this journal 😉

maybe when venus, earth and the sun would queue up again, it would be time for them to tell their grandchildren: “ahh, this was what my achchamma was talking about years ago!”…
as i stood daydreaming, i heard someone call out my name for “the viewing” and i stepped forward, my heart racing, climbing what was like a small hillock of green.

what i saw next almost made me remind myself i had forgotten to breathe! there it was! the sun, radiant and magnanimous, bright reddish-yellow and so silent and angry… near its left cheek was a tiny teel-like spot, making its way slowly to the other side. i had made it!! i jumped excitedly, clapping my hands like a child. i had made it to the once-in-a-lifetime event!

when i finally closed my mouth shut, and narrowed my wide-open eyes, i noticed tiny little shadows running alongside the yellow planet. like a relay race, they had in their hands some sort of baton that they exchanged before the next person began running again. this went on for a while…at least six people running and pushing the speck a little ahead, and a little more, until they covered the full length of the sun. for a moment i wondered what they were up to, but then i remembered it was a six-hour carnival after all.

far beyond, tall sleek buildings glistened in a twilight-like hazy glow, steely white birds stooped very low and almost wanting to be comforted…they had never seen a beauty spot on the sun before. nor had they seen so many saturns so close. pale blue, their frosty rings spinning icy winds across miles together. carefully erect though slightly wobbly-at-times were the digital words splashed all over them: “£5 ONLY! JUST FOR TODAY!” and “WATCH THE TRANSIT OF VENUS AND WIN…”

i slapped my hand to my head. “how fast these ad-people work!!? brilliant idea though, hai na praveen?”

i looked to my right and praveen had disappeared. arre! i thought. he was just here. i sighed and decided to take one last look at venus-on-the-sun again, before i set out to look for him in the mela below… the six little men were still huffing and panting, and that’s when i realised. i had been looking at the sun with my naked eyes.

i blinked, surprised that i wasn’t blind, yet. i *must* find praveen and tell him, i thought, turning around to run…

the birds were still chirping and chattering away noisily, sunlight all over the place. a pedestal fan whirred softly nearby, the sheets were still warm and praveen, still fast asleep next to me. i blinked again, chuckling to myself this time. “wake up praveen, wake up,” i shook him gently. “it’s almost 6:15 and we have just four minutes before the transit-of-venus begins…”

it must be this book i was reading before going to bed. something tells me i’m going to do it again tonight!

ps: after a lot of trials, errors, and torn empty boxes all over the lawn, praveen and i did succeed in spotting venus on the sun! we used a mirror — placed under a piece of cardboard with a hole to catch the sun in and reflect on the opposite wall. one of us then just had to focus on the reflection (on the wall), using my father’s 70x210mm zoom lens, until we got a clear picture…much more satisfying than the star in my dream 😉

my mother is never going to believe this.

in all the 29 years of my life, i have always *loathed* the alphonso, the so-called ‘king’ of fruits. for as long back as i can remember, every summer vacation was spent with all of us cousins together. and i would dread meal-times when a katori of the orange liquid would be thrust into my plate, along with piping-hot and irresistable puris, and a simple but soul-filling cauliflower-potato-peas sabji.

“eat!” my maasis would scold affectionately, shaking their heads in disbelief. “how can anybody not like mangoes!??”

so while all the others would help themselves with three or more aamras helpings, i would steal glances at their plates, and cheat without a thought, simply swapping katoris when i found the right moment. sometimes my cousins caught me in the act: “tch tch, arre yaar, saal mein ek baar hi to aata hai aam, ab nahi khaegi to kab?” (come on now, the mango season just comes once a year. when else will you eat it if not now?) and i would make a face like it was the most bitter thing ever grown on earth.

not that i accompanied my parents to the market as a child. even if i did, and if it happened to be that season, i would hold my breath till we passed the nehru-capped men sitting behind hundreds of the green-and-yellow-mangoes-in-hay petis (boxes), praying that my mother doesn’t stop to buy one of them. eventually, she would. and then i would stay away from the kitchen, watching from the corner of my eye, how both my parents would enjoy washing each and every mango, place them one-by-one slowly – in a bucket of cold water behind the wooden door so they turn jucier (i think). yechch!!

two or three days later it would be sunday. amma would have been waiting for this day. she would pick out the ripest mangoes and squeeze the pulp out of every one of them, blend them in a mixie along with some cold milk or ice-cream, and plop the thick smoothie into shiny steel cups with hot rotis or puris alongside. of course it was a ritual to make some extra aamras so we could share it with our neighbours too. while i nibbled at the puris and sabji, my family would relish the sweet excitedly, amma looking up between spoonfuls, so content and happy. “nice no?” she would ask.

after marriage when i went home for the first time, cousins and aunts would huddle around to hear stories of the phorein land, and gasp every time i mentioned, quite matter-of-factly: “aam? those are always available in london, anytime of the year.” the trick never failed to amuse me. that i still stayed about ten feet away from the mango shops and sections was a secret i kept to myself. until two weeks ago…

it was the colour.

bright orange and chrome-yellowish with sharp tinges of red here and there. no matter which direction i turned to look, there they were, throwing at me my childhood memories and demanding attention. i gave in. hands in my pocket, i walked across, looking at them intently, wondering all of a sudden why i always hated them so much, why had i to be forced to have a bite. “just one small piece beta, just one spoonful.”

the next thing i knew, i was holding a huge mango in my hand, feeling it for the pulp inside and smelling its sweetness. praveen laughed when i put it in the shopping basket. “are you sure you are going to try it?” he asked, now well aware of my impulsive habits. i nodded, not sure whether this is going to be some round of self-torment, or whether i really wanted to have a mango, without being told to.

for two weeks it haunted me. just doing nothing and sitting there on the kitchen worktable. when my in-laws arrived from india last week, i was relieved. at least now i wouldn’t have to cut it myself and eat it. they can have all they want. they enjoy it. i just bought it because of its colour. but it lay there, untouched.

then, this morning, i suddenly decided to make puris for lunch, just like that. there was cauliflower in the refrigerator, a capsicum, peas and potatoes too. i thought i would try the same recipe my maasis used. and then i looked at the mango again. i would make aamras too.

it took me just 15 quick minutes. i tried to recollect how my mother used to do it, and suddenly it was as if she was right there with me. i couldn’t help smiling as the rhythm came to me. turning the mango over and over, feeling how right it was, slicing it, gently scooping out the luscious orange pulp, enjoying all the mess i was creating, mango juice all over my hands and face when i tried to steal a couple of oddly scooped out bits. next, mango pieces in the mixie, a dash of cold milk and whoooosh! a really rich-looking aamras was ready!

“nice no?” i asked praveen, a little surprised at the question myself. i had indulged, shamelessly. i was seduced. the mango had taken its sweet revenge.

“there is always a front seat and a back seat, and a window in between”
— the chauffeur mr fairchild, to his daughter sabrina, who thinks she is in love with the rich employer’s son(s). wise words indeed.

achchan, i finally got to see sabrina 🙂

my father loves the old (english) classics. our home, where my sister and i spent almost 14 of our growing years, was very close to the school we went to. right opposite the school was this video-shop from where we learnt a lot too. about movies. about classics. about music, and about life. the shop was called videotrack.

the shopowner knew my father’s tastes, and always reserved an english classic for him. in fact i often secretly wondered if he was getting the cassettes just for us…
in an area with a quite-conservative school, a white-marble-shiva-temple and a cinema-theatre frequented by roadside romeos, most families would prefer the latest bollywood blockbusters from videotrack. but not my father. sometimes when we insisted on getting a good hindi movie, he’d give in and still borrow two cassettes, one for him, and one for us.

we didn’t watch too many movies …i guess achchan didn’t want to spoil us either. so it would be fred astaire on a thursday night, the next-week-friday it would be frank sinatra, or doris day, or bing crosby, barbra streisand, or julie andrews, or peter o’toole, or charles bronson, elvis presley and of course cary grant…sometimes we got home kishore kumar and gurudutt too. and sometimes when there were more of us at home, the hilarious bud spencer-and-terence hill movies, by the end of which i would find just my father and me red-faced and laughing and laughing till we coughed and tears ran out of our eyes. the others, our cousins and aunts, would either be in the kitchen, playing outside or or fast asleep on the sofas.

i guess my father paid rs 5 per cassette, and rs 15 if it was a new release. i have enjoyed every one of those movies. i don’t know why i never said it earlier to my father, i guess we both knew. in any case, he enjoyed them too much to stop and re-consider, and that was the best part. because watching these movies had become our way of opening ourselves to the world. often we would imitate an actor’s accent at home, be it english, american or cockney. and sometimes we would amuse amma and deepu with our tap-dancing or opera-singing. it was so much fun.

i miss all those movies now.

i think we gradually stopped visiting videotrack due to the most common thing indian parents do when their children have reached class 10 or 12. switch off the cable television, hide the remotes and ban all other entertainment activities, lest it ‘distract’ the child’s attention from his or her studies. perhaps i might do the same when i reach that stage in parenthood, perhaps i won’t. right now though, i think of this practise as a sad mistake.

after exams there are vacations, and after the vacations, admissions in new colleges again. new friends, canteen-gupshup and new trends take priority over parents and siblings, just like pimples taking control of a girl’s *entire* meaning of life.

it happens to everyone. in our case, it affected the movies first, and videotrack was soon forgotten.

all that was left, apart from hummable musicals and memories, was a huge wave of sympathy for the shop-owner. it was that time in bombay when doctors with fake (or original) certificates were removing real kidneys off people for money. warnings issued all over the place asked us to beware of co-passengers in trains or buses who offered something nice to eat or drink. because these eatables would be drugged more often than not, and the next thing you know, your body is left with one kidney. (more)

it was around noon in august one fine day; the videotrack shopowner who rented out stories of tears and laughter to everyone, brought the shutters down on his shop all of a sudden. his teenage son had left for college two days ago, never to return again.

years went by and we shifted to another home. i was shuffling jobs between bombay and bangalore and then nerul. in those five years, the three girls in my neighbourhood got married and turned young parents themselves. cable television turned into something only ‘housewives’ watched and kids and youngsters preferred the internet and broadband instead. small shops too, were crushed under shiny glass-exterior-software-companies or mega shopping malls. shops that sold video cassettes now housed the latest mp3 music cds, popular dvds, and pirated copies of the latest hindi or english films.

even if we had wanted to, my father and i would never find the irreplaceable old classics again. because like the unfortunate teenage son, videotrack had disappeared too, without a trace.

when i came to the uk with praveen, i thought it would be easier to find my favourite movies here. but i couldn’t even locate my favourite audio cassettes. every time praveen and i visited london, i would remember to look out for some of the musicals my father or friends had talked about. sure enough, we enjoyed all of them so far — cats, beauty and the beast, the lion king, and les miserables.

some months ago, rashmi told me about an audrey-hepburn collection of (five) movies that had recently entered the market. naturally, i nagged and pestered praveen until he bought me the entire set, as a belated birthday gift. the collection had sabrina fair, the one movie that my father told me much about, that we both missed seeing while in india. he said the movie has a lesson we should all understand, and that i would know what that lesson was when i see the film. i did, yesterday.

“there is always a front seat and a back seat, and a window in between”

the subtle message that the chauffeur passed on to his daughter was about life, and how easy it is to forget the paths we have taken, the people who helped us get to where we are, the places we once occupied. i can think of no one but my father, who would pick this line from the otherwise gentle-humour-flitty-romance movie. like audrey hepburn would have replied: “thanks p’hppa” 😉

my turn now to pay it forward i guess (and to stop NOW since i’ve been rambling for too long, again!). i have now made a resolution to visit all the websites available, and shops that i find through the local-markets here, anyone who hires or sells good old movies. so that when it’s time, my children will enjoy (maybe blog about!), along with their father’s gift of carnatic music, their mother’s collection of english classics.

less words.
more updates.
less back-sores.
more smiles.
more updates.
less words.
let’s see…

“why aren’t you writing anymore?”
what do i write about?
“why? is everything over?”

you can never hide anything from your own mother.

i tried to change the conversation (we were on yahoo chat). i tried laughing it off, told her about how the gobi parathas and channa-palak dal i’d made for lunch had turned out surprisingly yummy. but no matter what i said, amma came back to that dreaded question again: “are you very upset because of your backache?”

my three-month vacation in india will remain one trip i will never forget. li’l big sister‘s wedding, of course, reserves its place as the best part of all the 87 days. there were new babies in almost every home we visited. and then there were a few deaths too. amid all this rush across all the southern states of india, one ayurvedic treatment for my 11-year-old backpain went terribly wrong; another — which seemed to be going correct — never got to be complete. thankfully, at least praveen‘s sciatica was treated and cured, mostly.

it’s a month now since we returned. i lost my freelance job at the children’s publication to some full-time employee. the easter holiday came as a blessing though — praveen took me to north wales, a much-deserved and awaited four-day holiday on the lush green hills was just what i needed.
but i still didn’t feel like writing.

i guess i’m just tired sometimes, of these knives in my back. it makes me angry, helpless, and terribly terribly lonely. for no specific reason it makes me yell at praveen, who is so understanding, he just smiles and lets me be. thanks to him i still am holding on to my wits (i think), and most times i’m trying to be cheerful, thinking up new hobbies or recipes to keep me entertained. i was always so proud of the fact that in the past decade, i have tried my best to hide the pain. friends often would scold; they called me foolish, sometimes too stubborn, when i went to the extremes of a long-distance state-transport bus ride to hyderabad, or a strenuous trek to harishchandragadh. my argument? what if i am never able to visit places again? even while i was at school. i once spent an entire week trying all sorts of non-vegetarian food…just because i didn’t want to die one day with the thought that i hadn’t tasted chicken yet! (i’m an eggitarian, otherwise.)

i don’t like regrets. and this perhaps, will be the testing time for my attitude.

steadily for over a month now, my pain has been draining the patience out of me. it does not allow me to sit for long periods, nor can i walk a certain distance without significant discomfort. what is worse than the pain though, are the questions i have to deal with. questions in my head, or from loving friends or family. last week, a friend informed praveen about how i can get the nhs to pay me a weekly allowance — because my discomfort was affecting my everyday life, because the doctors could not find a cure, or the reason behind it.

not yet, i said politely. but i couldn’t sleep all night. was all the fight in vain then? even if i do apply for this allowance, would it mean the doctors never have to try anymore? would i then lose my right to hope?

well…coming back to the conversation with my mother, i just don’t know how she always manages to catch those tears i try so hard not to show or shed, even with me here in london, and she in mumbai. this time though, she spared me any further probing. in the little chat-window on my monitor, she slowly keyed in a simple old story.

…of a man who was shipwrecked and left alone on a huge island. of how he cried for help and none came. of how then, he looked around himself…collected bits and pieces of what he saw and built a house for himself. of how he began living in it and one day, it too caught fire. of how he was so devastated and then, how help came in the form of an helicopter — wanting to find out where all the smoke was coming from.

the story made me want to look inside and think. there must be a reason why i should not give up! (thanks momsidoo :-x)

suddenly, i am beginning to find so many notes i need to make, so much to do (stitch my quilt, complete my half-painted oil collage, get back to writing class, get a job, swim, read, learn to drive…). and then there are so many everyday things i enjoy and still need to share online! the pictures i take, the people i come across, the places i visit, the food i cook, the books i read…

why! there is SO much to talk about… it looks like i just might need a brand new journal!

dec 2002. 12 months since i left india.
i was ready. gifts for everyone. surprise plans for family and friends. chocolates. little nothings that meant so much to some. excited phone calls. last-minute purchases. memories and dreams. all these on the trip home.

jan 2004. 24 months since i left india.
i hate the cold weather here. it gave me dermatitis. i miss running out barefeet when it rains. i miss the sound of the indian autorickshaws, imagine what they will look like on the m25. i hate to be wrapped up in thick jackets when i go out, even if it is to buy just some milk and bread. i wish sunshine was not so rare. wish there were less leaves on the grey roads and more above on on the naked trees…

but soon i’ll leave all this behind, for three months.

i’m on my way to india where my family is waiting with open arms. where amma now must be full of questions: what should i make? will she still like that? can we all go someplace for a picnic once she gets here? my sister is getting married, and i should be excited about all the preparations i will be involved in.

yet i am not.

i didnt get gifts for everyone this year. i don’t have any surprise plans for anyone. i haven’t called home about what i need to pack, and my flight leaves in 10 hours from now. i don’t feel like making any last-minute purchases although there is a list here in front of me. i don’t like what i’m feeling. perhaps things would look better if praveen accompanied me too. strange how a single person and a home can fill up all those voids of friends left behind, family that brought you up. this home is part of me today. praveen, my reality.

i hope my family forgives me when they find out. i don’t want to come back.

they were shabby, unshaven, and up to their nose in alcohol. and they swore at every passerby they came across, even as they tottered along on the narrow footpath we too were walking on.

as the four of us made our way through, they suddenly hushed up, and then one of them shouted out behind our backs.

“GO BACK, YOU… IMMIGRANTS!!!”

not wanting to create a scene, praveen, zubin and girish just shrugged them off, and did not stop to look behind: “its the weekend, happens all the time…” they laughed.

not me. i wanted to rip off the guy’s shirt for yelling like that, slap him in the face and pour freezing water over his dirty hair, and shake him till all the booze drained off him. then i would scold him that we are NOT immigrants, and that we pay taxes too and have every right to live in this country as long as we wanted to. besides, we cannot wait to go back to our own homeland ourselves, and would do so as soon as we had fulfilled our priorities here.

i would also remind him to be happy he was part of a country that had such a huge humanitarian purpose… of helping those in search of better lives, with time and money to sort themselves out. why, just a year ago, i was so excited about the fact myself!

i guess i’ll never ever (want to) forget this incident.

i don’t even remember how long i was running it over in my head, along with my very stern speech to the drunken man… fortunately i’m a peaceful person — the type who would show a lost housefly the way out without even touching it. was the european union thinking of this when they decided to open its doors to the destitutes of the world?

why else does this country — which would perhaps not be recognisable without its being such a diverse ‘culture-pot’ — open its arms to so many different communities, when its people do not really want to welcome them? apparently, this is a question many britons are asking the government too.

the children’s publication i now freelance for, makes easy-to-read stories and educational titles for over 27 or 30 ethnic minority and asylum-seeking communities in england; and this list is growing steadily. what must it be like for all such ‘refugee’ children, to make efforts to learn english, just so that they can ‘belong’ to a country that is not even their native land?

i looked through pages and pages online, wanting to understand why the united kingdom had allowed its foreign population to grow to 2.2 million today. by agreeing to be a safe haven for refugees, perhaps uk is unable to weed out the real (read, illegal) immigrants who are stomping all over the place?

abdul hashi, a 17-year-old somali who has many refugee friends here himself, has a simple explanation (find more comments by young refugees here): “in principle, you can’t put the asylum burden on britain. but if you’re saying you are the policemen of the world and you make out that you are a paradise, then you can’t turn people away… it comes with the territory.”

i find it ironical indeed… this tiny nation once ruled over so many parts of the world; and today the same diverse identities that are housed under the english sky here, are threatening to shake the very ground of its own people, making them feel insecure.

“are you looking for theeratha velayudhan pillai?”

i almost fell off my chair laughing when i saw this question on the monitor. of the 3,083,324,652 web pages that google combs through, i was wondering why it could not find me the tamil song i typed in, until praveen pointed out that i’d spelt it all wrong (thanks to my teetering tamil vocabulary).

for those (non-tamilians) who are still wondering what was so funny, vilayattu pillai is old tamil for a mischievious little boy, while velayudhan pillai can be anyone living just down your street (or next door, if you’re in kerala)!

i’m not deeply religious, but this poem, by south india’s noted poet and patroit subramaniam bharati, makes me go back to it again and again. it paints a very affectionate picture of how the ceaseless mischief and tricks of kannan, or little krishna are creating havoc among all the girls in his village: he plays pranks, bites into the fruit that he’s initially offered them (in southern india, sharing food from the same dish is taboo, even now), snatches the flowers that adorn their hair and says its for his flute, and so on…

perhaps it brings back memories — of reading dozens of amar chitra katha in the school library, at home and anywhere i could lay my hands on one. the endless legends and the mythology figures in the magazine, not to forget the illustrations, formed for me the perfect escape from the world of geography (ugh!), math homework and other (real) classroom bullies.

i had wanted to share the song with my mother and chitti, who were waiting miles away in front of another computer screen, excited, blessing the technologies (yahoo chat and webcam) that compensated for the physical distance between us. i was also trying to explain to my mother not to be so surprised about my newly-acquired seriousness for carnatic or south-indian music…

“what is the soul of music?”

it all began when my in-laws visited us two months ago, and then went back home to proudly narrate (perhaps a little too generously, in an attempt perhaps to make my parents feel good) how well their mattponnu took care of them; how fast she’s learning from praveen and can identify some of the ragas herself! “AHA! and you chose not to continue the music lessons *we* sent you to, just because it irritated you and made you sleepy?!!”

at home, i grew up listening to my father’s favourites from his ‘lp records’…western instrumental classics (though i perhaps wouldn’t be able to point out the tchaikovskys or the schuberts from one another), indian carnatic classics – m s subbalakshmi, yesudas and the like; and, my favourite-est among his…the golden english oldies. perhaps since i enjoy and can just lose myself in the panchavadyam, i also developed a taste for folk music from other middle and northern states in india…and could appreciate russian music too when my father took us to a ballet (on ice) in bombay years ago.

at work, mp3s occupied most of the space on our pcs and i watched as colleagues sometimes even related to each other according to their musical preferences …here i was introduced to the carpenters, the haunting loreena mckennitt and hindi and tamil hits from the movies. if someone asked me what my kind of music would be, i could never pick ‘one’ favourite, since my list only seemed to be growing!

i have tried (twice) unsuccessfully to learn to play the violin, thanks to impractical geographical distances between home and violin-classes. sigh… someday, i hope to complete the training (carnatic again) and play at a concert, even if i’m seated at a corner behind the others on the stage!

marriage however, is bringing in a strange change (or direction?) in my so far-diverse music tastes… with praveen belonging to a whole generation (i’ll leave the family history to him) of indian carnatic music lovers and singers themselves, for the past 18 months it is as if i have been thrown into a pool of pure traditional music, through live performances recorded on tapes and cds, and of course, online.

having been away from his home for almost over eight years, it is only now that praveen too, has been trying to re-establish his connection with ‘his’ music. it was not easy, since we could not find him a suitable teacher here (in the uk) who taught just the ragas and how to play the harmonium — what he really wants to learn.

so well… we turned to the internet!

besides the fact that its free, its really been worthwhile. unlike praveen though, i’m a slow learner when it comes to grasping a melody or ‘raga’ and understanding the lyrics in a song, but its been steady progress. these days, i even get a great thrill out of ‘matching’ some of the songs i hear!

anyone can do it, and its just a matter of ‘tuning’ your ears. here’s an example:
take a hindi favourite say, “tere mere beech mein…” from the movie ek duje ke liye; then listen to “jane kahan gaye voh din…” from raj kapoor’s mera naam joker, and r d burman’s classic “mere naina saawan bhadon…” from mehbooba, sung by kishore kumar. you’ll find a similarity among the songs, and that’s just because they all originate from one simple raga: shivaranjini.

sometimes praveen and i even play guess-the-raga-from-the-song-games and i can perhaps tell about seven or eight ragas from each other by now. i’m still learning though, and i find that understanding the lyrics of a song helps me learn faster. it’s been a very interesting journey, and with each song, especially the old carnatic ones, i get a glimpse of how rich indian culture is, and how much more is yet waiting to be discovered.

reminds me of one of my english literature professors at college, a young keralite.

he believed in the absurd theatre and other existentialist theories. he was also a very silent philosopher (i still suspect he is also a poet), and i would not be surprised if, in his student days or later, he had ever been involved in one of the communist/trade union-strikes that so much form the essence of kerala.

one day, he threw a vague question at the class even as he entered, and the suddenness of that question was perhaps not as surprising as the equally quick (and correct!) response that came flying from the far left corner of the classroom. mine.

…the soul of music, is silence.

tiny, very tempting, and so many…berries in my garden. i watched them, closely, for two days as they turned from green to dark green to crimson to a very deep red, and that was when i could not handle my curiosity any longer.

climbing on to the wobbly old wooden bench just under our fence, i reached out for the nearest low-hanging red bunch, plucked them out and watched them roll and glisten on my palm in the 30-degree uk sun. they seemed juicy, almost too ripe to press and feel the fleshy fruit inside, whatever it was.

…this being the first summer in our home at hemel hempstead, i’m finally able to explore my gardening potential, and enjoy the rewards. with help of course.

it was my mother-in-law’s idea to turn our confused little plot of green, to a vegetable garden. i guess all mothers make natural supervisors. and so everyone (the boys — praveen and zubin) were instantly handed out tools and tasks, moving the garden-shed to make place for more plants, ripping out the weeds and terribly unruly grass, turning over the soil in dead-mud areas, pruning the existing plants and finally, plonking in some huge sackfuls of compost for the seeds.

while my father-in-law and i exchanged (his)tories, email and online-journal lessons, and recipes in the kitchen; out went some of the flowering bulbs, ivy and i-don’t-know-their-name-plants, and in went aubergine (baingan) seeds, marrow, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, french beans, tomato, chilli, coriander and the pepper seeds, and not to forget, the onions, potatoes and ginger. before we knew it, their vacation came to an end and appa and amma flew back home, leaving me (initially) overwhelming instructions about which plant is ready to pick and when, and to water the garden twice a day, watch out for the slugs and other leaf-thieves, and ‘read’ the sky.

“if the sky has dark clouds on the west, it will rain. when its cloudy where the sun rises (east), it is less likely to.”

try and observe this yourself sometime, this works, especially when you don’t want your freshly washed and tumble-drier-damp clothes to soak in the rain again!

today, three weeks (or is it four?), since praveen and amma raided the garden and turned it upside down, we’re having a steady supply of beans (almost 250gms every 48 hours!), the aubergine, tomato, marrow, pepper and chilli have sprouted flowers too and these will soon make way for more veggies. as for the potato plants, they’ve grown almost waist-high and i have to keep praveen from plucking them out to see how many potatoes we have in there…

it’s not only the vegetables that our garden is growing. it seems to be alive, to be sort-of making me feel very generous and positive all of a sudden, and making me want to share everything there is inside, with everyone i can. what else would prompt a usually-shy-indian-girl-next-door to walk up to her very-reserved-english-neighbour for the first time in 11 months, and give him a handful of freshly-picked beans…through the garden fence!

the english are known to be very ‘formal’ here. sometimes i’ve watched (through my huge kitchen window) when a friend visits an english home he or she is rarely called inside, unlike in india, where a guest, even if its an unplanned visit, is not allowed to leave unless they’ve been served snacks or even (if it is my chitti) a full meal!

and then, there are the birds. i am yet to figure out if its the same bird, but its true. every evening when i get the water-hose out, there is this very friendly robin that hops very close to me. then he (or she?) puffs out its orange chest and tilts its head from side to side, its tiny eyes blinking very fast and happily. it amuses me so much i’ve decided to give him a name. maybe i’ll call him pakshee, because this is the closest i’ve come to being friends with a little bird. ‘pakshee’ by the way, is malayalam for bird. (pronounced ‘puckshee’)

there’s also another black bird who lands right under the thickest of plants, and hunts around furiously as if he’s lost something very important. perhaps he’s just looking for food, because he flies out again and returns with two or three more of his kind. really strange bird, this. but it makes me wish i could understand their language 🙂

…so then i could ask them about the red berries, which filled me with such bitter taste i called praveen right away to tell him i loved him very much, and then waited, sure that my whole life would flash in front of me anytime now.

it didn’t.
and i lived to tell you… that the berries are not edible.

i give up.

there’s no point in waiting for “inspiration” to strike, and make my fingers dance all over the keyboard once again.

my in-laws have left, and so have rashmi and zubin. i had a great time with everyone here…there was so much to share but no time to write.

i have run out of excuses today. with all the time in the world to write (okay, i still have my freelance job and my routine household chores to look after), i wonder what i want to share? and what do i leave out?

sighh, for now, i’m just going to type. just between us…

…these days i often remember the girl who, hours before she was to be married, stole up to her computer amid all her sleeping relatives to write down her conversation with herself. a promise that come what may, she was not going to change.

twenty months later, in a world so distant that only phonecards matter, friends are in the inbox, family is all there is and career is just another job…

i wonder how much of that promise was kept, and how much of it made any sense at all. because today, i know i do not want to trade this moment for any other, yet the girl is just a memory i carry in my heart.

is that what marriage is all about?