Flowers of Lucky Manzil!

Growing up with Ma was eventful in so many ways. 

Drama was a high point most days. Put-on argumentativeness to get one's way, heightened emotions to ensure that sought-after item was brought to the house by her, silly tantrums to get an upper hand; it seemed I was always in overdrive.

Then there was her Garden, where she spent most of her waking hours. Soonest as she would ready me for school, she would walk into her garden for some early morning work. 

Her mid-mornings were devoted to the Garden before she would step into the kitchen to prepare lunch.

Once I would return from school, we would have lunch and some chinwag together before I went to my books and homework and she to her garden work. Her Gardener would have arrived by then and she would be busy guiding, planning, developing, reorganizing.

To whatever cities and cantonments we went on Dad's postings, she lent her magic and wonder of her green fingers to the House. 

Ma's gardens were always amongst the best if not the very best. Most times than not, she won competitions locally and regionally.

Friends were always asking her for tips, begging her for cuttings and marvelling at the ease with which she grew both flowers and vegetables. The GOC's Wife would send across her Orderly, requesting Ma to give him a bunch of flowers to decorate at an official gathering. She knew Mrs. Dhir's bungalow would always have flowers and that the Batman would never return empty-handed.

When I was very young, I could have easily developed sibling rivalry with plants, for all the time Ma spent with them. But that was never to be the case. For, I began to fall in love with nature and its bounty as well.

It became a fun game to try and learn names of as many flowers as one could. And there were always so many - Dahlia, Chrysanthemums, Asters, Hollyhocks, Zinnia, Gerbera, Phlox, Verbena, Pansy, Petunia, Antirrhinum, Sweet Peas, Lillies, Marigold, Gladioli, the Cornflower.............the list was varied and long and changed with the seasons.

Forever the show-off, it gave me a chance for one-upmanship over friends to be able to identify and name such a wide range of flora.

I also became the custodian of her gigantic Seed Box. At the end of the season, Ma would dust the dry petals off and take out the seeds. And I would put them in neat envelopes and label them for use in the next planting season. The Box is still there in the Store somewhere.

When we finally moved back to Lucky Manzil, as our permanent place to stay, Ma went to work to design and lay out her front and back and side gardens.

Stone benches were placed, Trellises were erected, flower beds were created, round river stones were brought in to circle the flower beds in a section of the garden, new bricks were bought to frame the beds, a bird house was installed in the Front Garden and a Garden Swing in the back.

On the right side of her giant Front Lawn Ma created a huge space to house her Rose Garden. There were roses of all sizes and shades - black, blood red, baby pink, deep red, scarlet red, Auburn red, yellow, orange, white, small China roses, roses in twin hues.

Ma has moved on to tend His garden beyond the pearly gates, but her Rose Garden still thrives at Lucky Manzil, as do some of her other plants.

She has left behind her blessings via the plants she nurtured. Her legacy lives on in them!  

Picture courtesy - Karuna Dayal

Death – the Turning Point in my Life!

Death is a great equalizer on many levels. It is said that not everyone lives, yet all of us die. Then again, each one of us leads a different life – from posh to one of utter paucity, from illustrious to the one beset with several ills, from reverentially hailed to denouncedly hated and hounded. But in the end, we all die in more or less the same way – one moment we are breathing and the next moment, life has left us leaving behind a still carcass robbed of all identity – of caste, creed, title, power or wealth.

In my case, Death has served as a Turning Point at several junctures of my life. Like the Age rings on trees, it has left behind age lines that define when I reached not physiological but mental puberty, the point when I was coming of age in my womanness, the telling sign when I had to be the weight bearing support to myself and the extended family. It has sordidly marked the point in motherhood when I was to be losing my all – from a stable, ambitious mind to matters of significance, from my will to wisdom, from an untiring zeal to unputdownable zest; and entering my personal ice age to, from here on, toss and turn on a bed of frozen tears.

Death hits everybody harshly, rendering a fatal blow. It is mostly unkind and cruel, leaving behind a trail of excruciating pain and irreplaceable loss. On rare occasions, death comes as succour bringing relief and respite. Like when it takes away a terminally ill loved one with no hope for any cure or corrective course of action, giving them a dignified exit. But mostly, death is vicious and severe.

Death first came knocking on my threshold when I was all of Nine. Well, actually a month short of it and none the wiser. At that age, you seem to think that your parents are invincible. That they are the best, strongest, bravest and all other superlatives that go into defining caring, loving giants to an overly indulged, pampered child’s eye. Adolescence and hormones have not yet coloured the vision.

A loss is a loss and losing a parent is amongst the worst pains a child will ever face. However, to lose a parent earlier is somewhat easier as you still have not found your bearings. You are too young to grasp the enormity of the loss. Similarly, if you lose a parent later in life, say when you are on the brink of launching yourself into career or your own family then you have enough distractions to help assuage the pain. But the years between eight (when you are aware enough to know what is happening around you) to eighteen (when you are all grown up but are yet to find a firm mooring) are the hardest.

One evening I was a little, spoilt single child; and the next day I had grown a million years. From an overly protected daughter to a young person of sense and maturity beyond her nine years; the transformation was swift and sudden. And from that point, there was no looking back. One just had to assume a role of responsibility and be all grown up within that small frame; for, there were daily battles to be won and new struggles to be slayed.

Studies reveal that children who have lost either of their parents at an early, impressionable age grow up in their mental faculties and worldliness much faster than kids who continue to enjoy the bliss of both parents till later in their lives. The children of loss, for obvious reasons, turn out to be smarter, sturdier and to an extent more stoic. This is not a badge that we carry with a sense of pomp; it is more a survival mechanism to stitch back the torn tapestry of our new life.

Death changes all of us who have experienced it once or several times in our lives. I like to believe that it makes us a lot more tenacious, compassionate and calm. Having faced the worst of our nightmares in real life and pieced ourselves together to come back and stake a claim in our personal ‘Game of Thrones,’ Death is an unwitting ally in shaping us into what we eventually become – stronger, more self-righteous yet sympathetic and spiritual. 

Death has been the fulcrum on whose axis my life has turned a 180 degrees several times. Like a warrior in a personal battle of ginormous proportions, I have had to fight with all my might. I have had to bring everything I have to combat the grave adversity to then somehow put myself back together into a new whole. One with deep scars to show as signs of devastation that could have annihilated one’s being but from which one liberated one’s soul to nurture a fearless spirit.

Not to say that a normal, wholesome person is not quite talented or an A-list achiever or a performer extraordinaire. But loss and grief add their exquisitely special hues to a person’s thoughts and expressions and creativity. It has been recorded in history that prose, poetry, painting, performing arts have been more poignantly magnificent and wondrously awe-inspiring when presented through the pensive shades of tragedy.

Death will be an unwanted, unwelcome guest in each of our lives. The defining point is how do we learn to deal with it. Do we concede defeat at the hands of such ravaging; losing our will to fight? Or do we, having lost our all, learn to shake ourselves up and rise from the ashes like a Phoenix to find our real purpose and reclaim what we are meant to be?     

Death visited me again when at the age of 33, I was firmly ensconced in the captain’s seat to take off to greater heights, both personally and professionally. This time, Ma was taken away from the little world she and I had created for ourselves; cocooning ourselves into a life of love, longing and strife. With her gone, I had to learn to fill the insurmountable void, I had to pick up the torn out parts to rebuild my life. I had to relearn to live with loss but not without love, with pain but not without propensity to find pleasure in simple, little things that life presented, with forlornness but not without an ability to create new bonds.

Death has again lent me the severest of blows. My two children, now in that piece of heaven beyond the rainbow bridge, are building a place to which I will find myself beating my final retreat. But before I do that, there is life to be befriended, bonded with and made a soul mate out of.  

Death appears indefatigable. But if you have lived this gift of life, on your own terms; and having looked death squarely in the eye, turned your back to it so as to beat a path to your own promised land, have you not defeated it!

Death is inevitable. But so is life – destined and undeniable. Death seems devilishly demonic and unassailably scary. But think about it! Life is more potent. It gives chances and opportunities to reshape, remodel, renew, and rejuvenate. It brings hope and happiness and passion and a sense of promise. And most of all, what would death be without life. 

Death is because there has been life!

  

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Note 1 - Picture courtesy - Google Images

Note 2 - This article has appeared on Daily O on 23rd September 2017 - 

http://www.dailyo.in/voices/death-life-pain-sadness-children-parents-family/story/1/19677.html

What Ma’s Kitchen Taught Me About Life!

My mother was a great cook and indulged in cooking as a fetish. Ma was a magician too, adding that special sparkle to anything she touched. She could even snip a handful of wildly growing, wayward Amaranth leaves, tease them with fiery red chillies, team them with un-skinned potatoes, turn them over in an iron skillet and tame them into a tantalizing, lip-smacking stir-fry; just like that.  

Ma learned how to cook Desi and Mughlai Indian dishes from her maternal side - they seemed to have a rich tradition of food and eating at home which borrowed heavily from the family roots both sides of the border - Punjab in India and Lahore in Pakistan. Ma also picked up valuable skills, techniques and recipes of Continental Cuisine from my Father's long-standing Khansama - Gafoor, who was more a Man Friday and Confidante than just a cook to my Father for most of his bachelor days and well into his marriage with my Mother.      

With such great schooling in culinary craft, Ma always managed to impart lasting lessons on making food - from the science of growing it in your own garden to the art of cooking it in divinely diverse and exciting ways possible - one of the permanent passions of our family.

Here follow some of the finest food lessons Ma has left behind - 

Ma's first lesson - you first eat with your eyes!

Ma always maintained that you first eat with your eyes. She put out her profound sense of aesthetics even in the way she created and managed her gardens, helping her win one of the biggest gardening championships in the Jhansi district for the Year 1974 and several more. 

She prided in her pots & pans and her finest China that she managed to lug around without any breakage from Dad's posting from one part of the country to another, then another. She would polish and clean her China and silverware and bring them out in resplendent display at the several parties she had to throw as a Cantonment Top Boss's Wife. 

She taught us how different things - from salads to entrees to desserts - had to be plattered and laid out on the table – from an informal lunch for friends to more formal dinners to a larger buffet set-up for a big party at home.

You need to choose your plates and platters well, she told us. You also must learn to present your food nicely in those platters, she exhorted.

Ma' second lesson – Mind your Balance

All the ingredients must be in the right measure; they also must balance each other well. Her measure for spices and herbs was the time-tested Indian way - by the pinch and to the taste (swaad ke anusaar). For continental cuisine she would use her measuring cups but overall it was by estimation. And what a perfectly balanced estimation that would be - never leaning too heavily on a spice so as to overwhelm the dish and spoil its taste.

Ma's third lesson - Use the best produce

Ma was a great proponent of organic food long before it became a modern-day fad. Much before Nature's Basket became a gourmet store, we were picking out tomatoes, aubergine, gourds - bottle, bitter, snaky, striped; spuds, chilies, garlic, radish, carrots, bell peppers fresh from her bounty-laden Kitchen garden basket.

A meat eater, Ma also knew how to choose and select the best piece for the dish she was going to make; from cutlets to casseroles and curries, pasandas to pilafs, roasts to roulades. 

While Dad was once sold offal when he was asked to buy meat for a formal Do at home, Ma knew how to direct and guide the butcher ever so gently and have him pry out just the right cut her recipe demanded.      

That is one hell of a valuable lesson. Ensuring that the ingredients are the freshest and the best already puts you on a winning streak so much that even if your recipe is commonplace it always ends up tasting good.

Ma's fourth lesson – Get your Timing right

Every cook worth his or her salt knows this. What is the smoking point of your cooking medium, just when should you add the onions and other spices, how long should the cumin seeds be allowed to sputter, at what point of cooking a dish should salt be sprinkled and when do you exactly add the tomatoes, because if you add them too soon then the sourness in them will not allow certain vegetables to cook fully - there are scores of gems that abet you in presenting that perfect platter.

Ma's fifth lesson - Shape and Size and why they matter

When we were too young to understand we really thought Ma was some kind of a culinary wizard - making the same egg scramble taste differently all seven days of the week if she wished, just by the swish and slice of her knife. The same was with her salads and other dishes. 

As time moved on, while we still upheld that Ma was a conjurer behind the stove (or grill or oven or the big, fat, mud-coated Indian tandoor that she stood by), we also became privy to one of her easily-shared secrets. She displayed in her oeuvre that it was important to dice out perfect cuts of vegetables for different dishes. She also exhibited how each cut lent a different taste.

Try it! Finely chopped tomatoes, onions or any other vegetable taste hugely different from their thick, stocky versions. They also become a different preparation if sliced lengthwise or in other shapes. 

Ma's sixth lesson – Develop the best Technique

There were little things that Ma would do with her cooking to take it from one level to another. Sneak a bowlful of tomatoes under the hood of cooking vegetables to bring them to the same cooked-up level as the rest of the pack. She taught me how to brown the onions and add just that bit of water to it at the right time of frying so as to get a royal brown hue in the Shahi Pulao. She would roll her potato wedges into a mix of flour and salt before deep frying them into golden delights with such dexterity that it would retain the inherent moisture of the potato yet turn up as the finest crispies this side of the Atlantic. 

There is one official lunch I remember where she made the Shammis sans meat, using only the lentils to cater to the large herbivore guest list, such that even the die-hard meat lovers couldn't tell the difference. Ma would at times employ a western technique to an Indian dish or add an Indian seasoning to the Continental preparation to create her own innovations in the kitchen.

She beat and braised, cut and combined, drizzled and dressed, mixed and melted, weaved and whipped with such precision, enthusiasm and finesse that our Annapoorna turned into Julia, Nigella, Patricia - all rolled into one. 

Ma's seventh lesson – Visualization is Key 

Either because she was an award-winning Civil Engineer's wife or because she had honed her observation skills, Ma had fine-tuned her trait of Visualization to an attribute par excellence. In cooking, Ma would visualize how she would create and present her dish and it would turn up just the way she had thought of it in her head. 

Always play it in your head before you pan it out.

Ma's biggest lesson – Nothing tastes good without Passion and Love 

These two words have been the crux of Ma's entire life. Whether it was her much awarded gardens that she left behind as lovely gifts for the next inhabitants each time she moved with Dad for his next posting or the special classes she held at the behest of the General's wife for the benefit of the army wives, she did it all with the two most important facets of her personality - rock-steady love and intense passion.

She carried the same attitude into her cooking. Because she was passionate about her produce, cooking style and end product she always presented the perfect platter, even when she cooked the simple homely fare. Her marinades were so perfectly balanced that the meat or vegetables would lay happily in this mix imbibing all the juices and flavours to the optimum.

And what can I say about her fondness for food and feeding. Feeding people was an expression of love for Ma. She is known to have won many friends and got the better of arguments and disputes just by inviting the opponent to her dinner table. 

Ma even robbed me off my friend list as most of them willingly stepped into her heartwarmingly, inviting camp! The biggest lesson though, was that food is not an end in itself. It is the beginning of all things beautiful. 


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Note 1 - Picture Courtesy - Writer's own and Google Images

Note 2 - This piece has appeared on Unboxed Writers on 22nd September 2017 - http://unboxedwriters.com/what-mas-kitchen-taught-me-about-life/#.Wcg0xPMjHIU

Fare thee well, Monsoon!

The monsoon season in Delhi is almost on its last leg.

'Tis time to bid goodbye 

to the washed clean Greens, 

the diamond drops on the edges of leaves, 

the freshly scrubbed flowers, 

a peahen crouching under the Neem Tree 
to keep its pretty feathers dry, 

the rhythm of the gentle pitter-patter, 

the curtain of rain that falls 
lusciously in such symmetry,
and the great after-look 

of having been rain stroked 
and rain-kissed!

Until next year then!