Twenty- five Seven

Knit One, Purl One and Pass Slipped Stitch Over

March 27, 2013
The Joys of Knitting

With 2012 being one of the most stressful and horrible years of my life, I had to try several ways to beat the stress.

Every problem brings upon a million suggestions and almost every day I got new advice to try
- walking
- talking
- ranting
- raving
- blogging
- homeopathy
- sleeping pills
- psychiatric counselling
- tarot healing
- past life regression
- making deals with God
None of them seemed to work and I’d reached such a stage of desperation that if any one had told me to count backwards from 1000 while walking backwards with my eyes closed on a crowded Mumbai street in peak traffic, I would have done it – just to experience a good night’s rest of dreamless sleep.

Finally, it was this last month that I discovered the true key to happiness – knitting.

Alas! With Mumbai’s brief and warm winters, knitting is a skill quite alien to me despite the compulsory set of booties and mittens we had to make in school. Apart from learning what k1, p2, psso meant, knitting remained a mystery – a troublesome skill we had to learn during lessons called Home Science or Needlework. While all of us hated those lessons in the afternoon, especially when the teacher ripped out an untidy hem that took almost half the afternoon to do, I realise now how essential they are ! With Home Science going out the window, girls today who are highly educated career women with great jobs that pay so well don’t know a thing about needles and thread they’d rather staple up an undone hem or buy a new trouser rather than darn a tear. Their fingers are more adept at punching numbers and keyboards and they are handier with swiping their credit cards than they are at threading a needle or sewing a seam.

Oh those poor things! I feel sorry for them for not only have they lost a skill that would have them run up their own “BESPOKE” wardrobes but as I found, these women have lost access to a great stress buster. Embroidery and knitting are great ways to calm the mind. Unlike the iPad or mobile phone which is downright antisocial, needlework has an elegant grace to it, something that soothes the spirit of even those just watching you work, slowly and steadily one stitch at a time. Women find knitting easy to do while in company and there are several celebrities in Hollywood who have discovered its therapeutic qualitites.

The Code of the Sweater Knitters

My recent foray into knitting was purely by chance – With her nesting instinct strongly kicking in, Anna Shetty was seized with a great desire to knit. So with great enthusiasm we trooped down to the shop at Arora Towers off Pune where I found a measly selection of wool. We rummaged through my mother’s stack of pattern books dating from the 40s and found a pamphlet of adorable babies wearing adorable knits. Unfortunately the instructions weren’t adorable and definitely weren’t meant for a first time knitter. It was only a matter of days before her enthusiasm waned and my curiosity was aroused : I was determined to learn how to debunk the code of the knitting pattern.

And after several attempts at deciphering the language, figuring out the instructions, knitting and unravelling inches of finished knitting and picking up dropped stitches I finally managed to finish the garment – a pale cream Matinee Coat. It was with a sense of immense satisfaction that I tied the delicate bows of satin ribbon to finish it off. Now the only question is will it fit the baby ?

But I’m not too worried because I’ve discovered a new Mantra

Knit your stress away!
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Soap Opera

March 25, 2013
This evening I opened up my Inbox and found this delightful email from my friend KumKum. Unfortunately she did not identify the author but I would like to share this incident with some bath time memories of my own :
- Water that smelt metallic thanks to being stored in huge drums
- Bathrooom doors that barely shut
- 2 minute baths before the tap ran into a trickle
- Toilet paper as rough as sandpaper
- Toilet bowls filled with milky white phenyl
- Pulling the toilet chain of an overhead water tank
The Times, They Are A’Changin!

My daughter Puja and I were at the Command CSD Canteen, and I was lamenting the non availability of `Imperial Leather’, my preferred bathing soap.

“You still use SOAP?” she cried incredulously, making the word `soap’ sound like a four letter word (I know it is, but you know what I mean). “Pa, who uses SOAP (there again, the same sound) these days?”

I glanced around the aisle, ran my eye over the three whole shelf rows choc-a-bloc full of the offending item, and was just about to answer “Well, just about everybody”, when she yanked my arm and dragged me to another counter.

“Here!” she said, grabbing a fancy looking tube from another counter, “use this!”

The label on the collapsible tube said `Shower Gel’, and I wondered how on earth it could replace a healthy bar of soap which one could (and did) vigorously rub all over one’s torso. At the risk of sounding an ignoramus, I asked her how one used the stuff. She rolled her eyes heavenwards, and gave me the look one normally reserves for mentally challenged six year olds, and sighed “With a loofa, pa!”

The shower gel, she explained, was not for the face – for that she picked up another smaller tube called a `face wash’. It was my turn to roll my eyes skywards.

As kids, all we had at home were two basic soaps – a hefty red `Lifebuoy’ bar for bathing, and an even bigger yellow one for washing clothes. The richer kids used Lux, the `soap of the film stars’, which accounted for the fact that they always smelt (or so we thought) a bit like pansies. The Lifebuoy, on the other hand, smelt exactly like what it was billed as – a germicidal. I finally gave up on it only when I saw it being used as a hand wash in the Zoology lab in College, and all the girls (the ones that mattered anyway) crinkling up their noses in disgust at its offensive presence in their lives.

We Army guys, our preferred brands of toiletries (disparagingly referred to as `saaboon-tel’) is normally limited to whatever is available in the CSD Canteen! After Lifebouy, I tried all sorts, including the Karen Lunal inspired Liril. Check out the ad – the sight of the bikini clad Karen cavorting under a waterfall sold me quite a few cakes of Liril in the 80’s. Had to give it up hastily when a pretty young thing asked me why I always reeked so strongly of nimbu pani!

Call me archaic, but I still shave with an old fashioned double-edged razor blade, till recently used a cup soap – migrated to shaving cream after my brother complained that my bathroom smelt like a barber shop, and regularly use talcum powder. Yes, TALCUM POWDER – kar lo jo karna hai!

My son, on the other hand, alternates between shaving gels and foams, uses a Gillette Fusion razor, and has a set of colognes, after shaves, perfumes and deodorants that would be the envy of Priyanka Chopra! To be fair, he is way way too conservative when compared to my son in law, who takes the cake, icing et al. Being metro sexual is one thing, but Sukh is just a product or two short of having his own show in Vegas!

Shampoo entered my life just a couple of years ago – earlier it was plain Shikakai soap. The kids have separate shampoos, conditioners and hair products even your hair didn’t know existed! Sukh has now come upon an `All-in-one’ – shampoo, conditioner, face wash and shower gel – which he can use from head to toe. Of course, you can watch the entire season of `Homeland’ by the time he emerges from the shower!

My nephew Rohit was much the same. After a shower, he’d sprinkle an entire can of talcum powder over his expansive frame, and would then stomp all over the house leaving his trademark Size-11 footprints in stark white in every room. We called his showers `maha mast abhishekams’, and I once seriously suggested he use milk instead of water!

We are a nation of washers, not wipers – which is our biggest bane during our trips abroad. Here too, times have changed. The brass `lota’ gave way to the `mugga’ once we entered the age of plastic, and then of course the hygiene faucet (inexplicably called the `muslim shower’ in some quarters) caused a paradigm shift in our morning rituals. What a cataclysmic change that was!

And post the act, like Macbeth, when we need to wash the `guilt’ off our hands, we now have an obscene range of liquid hand washes to choose from – of all fragrances, colours and viscosities. Not for me, however, the ghastly `hand sanitisers’ that the modern lass carries in her handbag (along with pepper spray and a .22 pistol, if she happens to be in Delhi). I tried one once, and found I needed to wash my hands immediately after, since the sanitiser left my hands feeling gooey (`chip-chip’ if you know what I mean)!

The ubiquitous yellow `shining cloth’ we used to brasso our stars and shine our ammunition boots with is now passé. We have separate micro fiber cleaning cloths for every surface – laptop screens, glassware, and even for spectacle lenses! But believe me, if you really want a sparkling shine on any surface, nothing, just nothing beats an old baniyan!

As a kid, I had to hide my Brylcreem from a dad who insisted on `khopre-ka-tel’. Now, I guess I’ll have to hide a bar of soap from my daughter in favour of a tube of shower gel!

For years, it was our parents who dictated our choices. Now it is our children. The times, sure, they are a changin’!
Thank you unknown author for sharing this delightful anecdote………..
Yeda ban ke peda

March 25, 2013
This very strange sounding title in Bambaiya – the bastardized Hindi that is the official language of my city that is neither Hindi nor Marathi which totally captures the spirit of this city – cheeky and irreverent – loses its flavour when translated into plain English. However, in simple English it means a Smart Fool.

The smart fool is essentially the person who acts the bumbling idiot, who manages to get his way by his universally appealing “guileless” charm.

The heated arguments, TV debates and media hype about “pardoning” Sanjay Dutt that have been raging this past week have firmed my belief that it is truly the idiot or lovable fool who gets away with murder. While forgiveness and justice tempered with mercy are laudable, surely there should also be some correlation between action and punishment?

Honestly, the way people are clamouring for Sanjay to be pardoned makes me question the values and beliefs I was brought up with. My old beliefs and values no longer hold good in today’s world where more and more horrendous crimes are being pardoned or forgiven with the excuse that the perpetrator was “unaware” of what he was doing.

The new mantras for new age children should no longer be as you sow so you reap
but
- Ask and you shall be forgiven.
- Fools always win
- Cheaters always prosper
- Crime always pays
- Mothers know nothing at all
Societies have never been static having been influenced by interacting cultures and different ideals. But it is strange how time honoured codes of behaviour like honesty, integrity, truth and justice have changed to accommodate declining mores and values. Is this the natural outcome of a more advanced technological society constantly bombarded by techno bytes?

While I do not want to go back to the riverside to wash my clothes or forage in the jungle for firewood to cook my meal, I definitely miss the good old days when a man was known by the company he kept and honest day’s work ensured a good night’s sleep!