Twenty- five Seven

RIP

March 15, 2013

Early this morning, infact I woke up with Hubby Dear announcing the news to anyone who cared to hear that an old family retainer passed away. L was a man all of 75 + who had spent the better part of his life in service to the family. He had left his home at the age of 14 and since then worked his way up as a house boy to driver to baby sitter and finally just a general dogsbody. He never married and made his home with the family. Having brought up two generations he was privy to many family secrets.

Over the years he developed a passion for alcohol, something which we found out quite by accident when he came slurring at our door one evening. No one believed that he was alcoholic till they found some whiskey missing from the cupboard. But he was a good soul who didn’t mind being woken up at midnight to drive someone to the airport or to accompany anyone to a party. Over the years his teeth fell out thanks to his tobacco chewing and over the last year he lost a great deal of weight. In the last month he discovered that he had a cancerous bladder and finally breathed his last last night.

May his soul rest in peace.
Wow Dinga , Bibbas and Babies

March 14, 2013
Coming from a land which is the second most populous place on earth and with Indian families extending from here to eternity, it would seem strange indeed that the first ever baby I held in my arms was my very own. Yes, in a fact that is worthy of mention in Ripley’s Believe it or Not, the first ever infant I held in my arms was my very own. And with the cycle of life completing 30 years, I will soon be holding a new baby in my arms yet again – this time my first grand child. With the countdown to the day of Deliverance coming closer, Anna Shetty has been asking me all kinds of questions relating to Baby and Baby care.

I must say that like the babies, these memories have long faded from my memory but what I do remember is that if you have a problem, you just have to ask. Anyone from the doctor to the watchman is capable of giving advice for we Indians love giving free advice freely. Especially when there is a baby concerned, everyone has a story to tell.

I remember the first time my baby howled , it elicited a response from shock to indulgence:
- Poor thing, what is the matter?
- Why is the baby crying?
- Could it be colic?
- Is she hungry?
- Is she tired?
- Is she in pain?
and Twenty Questions multiplied to 100 complete with free answers or should I call them suggestions.

Give Gripe Water, walk her up and down, put a sandalwood paste, rub some Bibba on her foot, make a decoction of Wow Dinga, put some ghee in her nostrils, rub some brandy on her tummy, put some kajal in her eyes, tie a string of garlic round her neck, make her wear a copper anklet and the suggestions went on and on as baby grew as did her various ailments.

Most of these suggestions were useful for white hair does bring wisdom and I was amazed at how my knowledge grew with the baby’s! Wow Dinga was not a Dinga that was fantastic but a herbal remedy for colic .Similarly Bibba was not a baby’s bib but a seed which could help in curing wounds as did turmeric.

So it would seem that with my kitchen filled with simple remedies of turmeric, dill, yoghurt and ghee all that remained to cure a kid’s distress was a good tempering of oil and mustard seed!

p.s My apologies to those who don’t find this funny. I do believe in the power of herbal medicines and while home remedies have not been documented, they do provide relief to the baby. But definitely DO NOT USE HOT OIL OR MUSTARD SEED.
Smiles from ear to ear and the ties that bind

March 9, 2013
Aghara (Hindi: अघाड़ा) (Photo credit: dinesh_valke)

With temeperatures hitting the low 40s this past week Mumbaikars have been sporting sweat drenched frowns while they scurry around in a city that is growing more concrete than grass. The hot weather, however, hasn’t stopped two people I meet every day from sporting smiles that are growing wider by the day. Bayda the Bai an Madhukar the Chauffeur ( Driver is too plebian a word to describe this gem of a man who drives our car as though it were a Rolls and holds open the door for me as though I were the Queen!) are the two people whose joy is growing deeper as the temperature keeps rising. The reason for their unconcealed joy is the fact that they are both going home next weekend.

It is strange how both of them who are living a life far better than they’d ever imagined away from what is called in Indian Bureaucratese their “Native Place” still pine for what they call home. Both of them though not living in the same vicinity will still have to make a long trek home : Bayda will spend a good 8 hours to cover a distance of a mere 180 km only because there is no convenient bus to take her there; and Madhukar will spend a good twenty four hours going all the way to his home which is in the heart of the Konkan, a desolate strip of land along the Western coast. Once home they will be forced to walk some distance to get drinking water which will have to be stored in earthen pots, will have to collect twigs and wood to light their stoves to cook their food, will have no light switch to turn on at night, will have no fan to stir a breeze and above all will have no escape when their mothers drone on and on about their knees that hurt or hearts that pain . They will have to go back to eating the rustic food that their palates have long forgotten, tend to their fields in the hot sun and walk on dusty tracks to meet old friends .Yet despite this all, the two of them couldn’t be happier to go home and are literally waiting for the day they can go on home.

I often wonder what is it that makes people pine for what they have left behind? Can they still call home a place they had left all those years ago? What ties bind them to people they don’t meet for months on end ? How can they re-connect to a lifestyle they abandoned all those years ago?
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