Twenty- five Seven

and yet another birthday

May 19, 2025

once upon a time, when Ms Papaya was all of 4, she was asked what she did all day. She very innocently replied “weddin’s and parties”. Undoubtedly we were all shocked! But if any one asked me what I’ve been doing these days it would be parties and parties. Indeed, these last few days seem to have gone by in a series of birthday parties.

It all started with Hubby Dear’s milestone birthday, which he didn’t want to celebrate. But Prima Donna and Anna Shetty took the lead in organising a family party. For those of you who know my family, you would be familiar with the numbers involved. So the girls organised a home caterer who came completely equipped with wait staff. They also organised a bartender much against Hubby Dear’s wishes. But seeing the happy smiles all around, he agreed that it was worth getting Nilesh Dighe of Culinary Foods to take care of the food.

By the end of April, we celebrated another birthday – that of my Ma-in-law who was even more reluctant to blow the candles on her cake.

So it was a relief of sorts to celebrate Ms. Papaya’s birthday this Saturday past.

CELEBRATING A GEN A BIRTHDAY

I haven’t celebrated a kid’s birthday in years so I went down to Abdul Rehman Street in what I call the biggest open air mall in the world.

It was hot and sticky even at noon and the shop keepers were just about pulling up the shutters. It was fascinating to see how boxes were emptied out and wares were displayed on rickety shelves and makeshift stands. This wholesale market has always been a buzz with people buying retail in bulk.

Each shop specialises in a product while some shops specialise in ‘Gift Items”. These shopkeepers are a party planner’s dream and for people like me a great resource bank. These guys have a pulse of what people want and show you what is trending and what is not. They show you what you wish to buy without judging you on your budget

Ms. Papaya had a vision of what she wanted for her birthday and all we had to do was fulfil it. I found some blingy bracelets that the shopkeeper assured me would warm the cockles of a 10 year old’s heart.

A phone call to a wholesale Chocolate Trader in Crawford Market had him share his price and product list with us on WhatsApp. After a quick discussion at home, the chocolates came home within an hour of making the call!

A Gen A party was quite easy to organise thanks to technology but for us oldies it was hard to come up with the entertainment. So used are they to organised parties by Party Planners etc that only a brave-heart would undertake such a mission.

Prima Donna reached a compromise with a bit of the old and a bit of the new. She asked The PaintSocial.com to organise the modern organised party part while we organised he disorganised, play it our way old fashioned part.

The old fashioned part is pretty easy to organise too thanks to cloud kitchens, WhatsApp and some enthusiastic home grown party organisers. Pizzas were organised through TwentySevenPizzas, momos were sourced from Meatigo and the cake was ordered from Celejor. A WhatsApp message to the nearest Celejor was enough to get the cake we wanted to eat. Select the cake, print the photo and light the candles and blow them out.

After some games organised by Anna Shetty and two enthusiastic Dads, the kids began to trickle home with their hand made wooden boxes and a stash of Candy.

So I can relax now till July when the next lot of birthdays come my way.

Ciao
WE ARE FAMILY

May 15, 2025

Photo by Delcho Dichev on Pexels.com

There are families

Today is International Family Day. So happy family day to all the families.

When I was growing up, I didn’t know that I came from a nuclear family. I only knew that I had my parents and my brother. Sometimes we stayed at my granny’s who had her other children staying with her. So that became our ‘extended family’. We also had family on both sides so we had a maternal family as well as a paternal family.

Oftentimes, when we went on holiday to one set of grandparents, we met cousins of our cousins who also became our family.

Because of our itinerant lifestyle, our friends and their families became our families too. We still maintain these bonds long after our fathers’ transferable jobs came to an end.

And this was family as far as I knew it.

and families

I got married I realised that there is another kind of family that is a Joint family. The Indian Joint Family is an intergenerational family where three generations live together under one roof. Sometimes it is a single line of descent while at other times it can consist of several brothers living under the same roof as their parent’s with their nuclear families.

As late as COVID, when the Little Ones were doing school on Zoom calls, I realised there were more families: Single-parent families, adopted families, and families with two daddies or two mummies

Truly there are all kinds of fmilies.

the family that eats together

When I was in school, I was fascinated by my classmate’s family, which consisted of six cousins who would pile into one car and come to school from the far-off suburbs. In the afternoon, an aunt from the extended family who lived in town would send these six and her own two children a basket full of hot lunch that would leave the dry lunch eaters filled with envy.

Photo by Michael Burrows on Pexels.com

It is said that the family that eats together stays together. But it isn’t always the case that the family eats the same food at the same time.

In our case, the family eats together, but not necessarily the same food. The time slot can also vary with the little dawdlers starting ahead, so that we could all finish together.

And especially since food is now eaten as portions and nutrients, each one of us has different proteins (plant based, red, white, etc). We have different fats too – Olive oil, cold pressed, unrefined, poly unsaturated etc etc.) If there is no unanimity on oil and protein, there is hardly any uniformity in carbohydrates, grains, pulses, vegetables and fruit!

Having said that we are foodies and even before the meal is over we’re thinking of the next one.

The family that prays together

Hindu tradition demands that the family demands that the family get together before the families deities kept in a special place or special room, at sunset and light the lamp together. In some families the children say the prayers, other families have the patriarch or matriarch lead the prayers.

In our families, we have different idols in the prayer room and we only pray together on special occasions like Ganpati or Diwali. And we only remember the Family Deity at special ceremonies when asked to by the officiating priest.

The rest of us pray to our own favourite Gods at different times of the day

the family that sticks together

I think my family, no matter how different we may be from each other and other families, are still family because we always laugh together, whine together and are there for each other when needed.

Several years ago, despite being mired in a vicious family feud, I went to help a cousin in need. I suppose that’s what family is all about.

A point to note

When I got married all those years ago, my mother-in-law told me that she would give me a medal if I remembered all the people that made up my new family: my father-in-law was one of six siblings. There mother was the eldest of seven sisters and each of her sisters had three-four children and each of them had 2-3 children themselves. My mother-in-law was one of four with each sibling having two children each ( on an average). Her mother had seven siblings and her father had one sibling with five children.

And this is only my husband’s side. of the family. My own parents were one of 4 siblings who also came from a passel of kids.

You do the maths. It was a huge number, growing ever more with newer additions of spouses and newborns.

Now, alas, the family is shrinking with each branch surrendering their newer generations to greener pastures overseas, some choosing to remain unmarried, some choosing not to have children, and some having crossed over to the other side.

But for those who are lucky to be blessed with family, wishing all of you a Happy Families Day. Cherish the day and your family relationships.

Ciao
clouds of war ?

May 8, 2025
Dark clouds gather in my bright blue sky.

This morning I woke up to a distinctly cooler breeze, one that had me reaching out to turn off the fan. Strange as it may sound, the weather suddenly turned, and I didn’t want the air buzzing needlessly over my head.

The clouds outside were unusual for this time of year, though we do have what we like to call pre-monsoon showers. But considering that everything is uncommon these days, it isn’t really a surprise.

After days of news anchors shouting out different scenarios to vindicate Pahalgam, finally, we woke up to the news that India had struck back.

In the early hours of the 7th of May, 9 sites in Pakistan were bombed, and like most Indians, I was elated. At last, we had broken free of the shackles of ‘Peace, Love & Tolerance’ that prevented us from taking an eye for an eye and turning the other cheek. We proved through Operation Sindoor that we could actually deliver a hard punch.

Immediately, we Indians sprang into action: cabinet meetings that were going on continued to go on, News channels continued interviewing defence analysts and former diplomats, WhatsApp messages urging us to be responsible citizens and not pass on any information that may be used to help the ‘enemy’ flew from phone to phone and we hunkered down for a mock drill for civil defence.

It has been a long while since we were faced with such a situation. In fact, a whole generation has gone by watching wars fought in far-off lands on television news.

I told Ms. Papaya that when we were little, we were taught how to crawl under our desks with an eraser clenched between our teeth, cotton wool stuffed in our ears and brace ourselves for an attack when the air-raid sirens rang out.

Later on in 1971, I remember helping my parents paper up the windows in preparation for a nighttime attack. Those were the days when my family lived in the military area, and only a few non-combatant men were around, the rest having reported for duty. This made us children even more aware of our ‘responsibility’, and we made elaborate plans on how we would face the enemy should we come face to face with them.

How exciting it all seemed.

Yesterday, we didn’t hear the sirens ring. We heard the rumble of thunder instead. And Wow Dinga and Little Po ran to the window to look for the bombs they thought were raining down on them.

What will today’s clouds bring?

or petrichor?
```
I do not like this word
It is pretentious
It is clever
It is fake
I like the smell of rain instead.
The first drops as they fall
I like the smell that breezes past my skin
Gently pressing in 
It makes my bones chill
It fills up my room with freshness
A faint coolness 
The smell of rain
The first rain 
That stills the thirst of the parched earth,
Waiting, longing, welcoming
The drops of water.
Petrichor.
```
International donkey day

Photo by Julissa Helmuth on Pexels.com

In a lighter vein, I would like to share an incident of why donkeys hold a special place in my heart.

Our Mumbai traffic which was once the pride of the Nation, has now sadly deteriorated to the level of the rest of the country. Traffic Rules are meant for fools who are in no hurry to get anywhere and are, more importantly, a valuable source of revenue for the government, which can always slap a hefty fine when violated.

But I am neither a fool nor a violator of rules, so it annoys me when I see a blatant flouting of traffic rules. Since I don’t believe in blowing horns or flashing lights to show my irritation, I generally pull down the window and yell out my favourite expletive ” Saale Gaddhe” meaning ‘You foolish Donkey’.

These words roll off my tongue so easily that I clean forgot that Mr. Big Ears, also known as Wow Dinga was lapping it up like a puppy dog and completely forgetting about him in his car seat, yelled out loudly to a taxi driver coming up the wrong way.

The next time he was in the car with his dad, an irritating taxi came the wrong way and Wow Dinga promptly rolled down the window and yelled out ” Saale Gaddhe”

My apologies, dear donkey, for using your name to keep my road rage in control.

Ciao,