Twenty- five Seven

Personally speaking

Recent Posts

  • International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

    Did you know that just a few 100 miles out of Mumbai is a kingdom of the indigenous peoples of Maharashtra? Jawhar still boasts of a Palace and the district still abounds with Adivasis or Tribals.

    A village called ABJE

    Tired and jaded by the modern world, many urban Indians are thinking about farming. Hoping to have a more sustainable lifestyle, they are returning to their roots. Or rather, they are returning to the land. But farming is not easy and the rosy dreams of becoming a self-sufficient happy person can soon remain castles in the air. About 120 km away from the busy metropolis of Mumbai is the sleepy village of Abje. This village, in Palghar district, is a village of Aboriginals or Adivasis. Their land is protected and cannot be sold or bought by non-Adivasis.  There are just a few tracts of land belonging to non-Adivasis.

    Non-Adivasi lands command a high price and one has to be really careful to check land titles etc before buying.

    My father-in-law bought some land from the village of ABJE and it has been in our family for more than 50 years now.  Despite being so close to Mumbai, progress has come slowly to this village. There is electricity, a local school, and a basic healthcare centre. They also have a woman in the local governing council ( Panchayat). This is not really strange because it is the women of this village who actually wear the pants. The men are too busy fishing in the half-dried river and getting drunk on the local hooch. Much has changed in the village since FIL bought the land but the scenery is much the same as it was when our family first entered it.

    A visit to our ‘farm’ in Abje is always a welcome change from our routine Mumbai life. Apart from the regular visits to keep an eye on things, we often have to run to the land to sort out some minor issues.

    Like the unscheduled visit in 2010 to sort out a boundary issue.

    My father-in-law bought the land from the only non-Adivasi family at that time, Old Man Patil, the designated law officer for the village. For several years it remained wild, with a few 100 teak tree saplings and two paddy fields that we cultivated each year during the rainy season.

    Busy with his regular city job, Hubby Dear had little time to devote to this farm project that was actually his father’s dream. It remained so for at least 25 years. But now, with Patil’s sons grown up, we had to ensure that our land was clearly demarcated and the boundaries clearly defined because one fine day our manager called up to inform us that Old Man Patil’s son had overnight encroached into our property and marked off what he claimed was his with some dried thorny branches to mark out ‘his’ land well within our boundary.

    Land disputes are common and take years to be solved. It took us quite a few visits to the village for us to negotiate a mutually acceptable solution.

    The villagers are simple people but they are not stupid. Television has brought them up to speed with their city cousins and are shrewd negotiators.

    From time to time we still visit our farm which now has a dilapidated structure with several trees around it. We have now made a rough motorable road to access it but during the rains it becomes I have a prayer on my lips that the tyres don’t get stuck in the mud.

    They have abandoned their traditional bamboo and wattle huts for stone and cement and have discarded their loincloths and scanty clothes for fashionable city wear but the inigenous peoples still retain a certain innocence that distinguishes them from the other inhabitants of the village

    Unfortunately during my several changes of blog identity, I have lost the photographs .

    But on this day of International Indigenous People, I am glad that we still have a tenuous link to these original inhabitants of the land.

    Ciao

  • Putting on the pounds: the eternal lament of the fat person

    Putting on the pounds: the eternal lament of the fat person

    A few days ago, a friend of mine began telling me the story of an overweight person I’ve never met and am hardly ever likely to. I don’t know why this person came up in conversation because we weren’t even talking about weight or health. But somehow this person and her weight took up a large part of our conversation.

    “How did she get to this size ?”

    “Doesn’t she look at herself in the mirror?”

    These rhetorical questions triggered off a response quite unknown in my psyche: it made me want to cry because the person under discussion, could very well have been me. And it could have been one of the millions who aren’t blessed with a metabolism that allows them to live the way they want to.

    Eating when when you want to and what you want to; exercising/walking because you want to and not because you have to; filling your library with books you want to read and not books about healthy eating and healthy living, is a blessing.
    Because being healthy is not synonymous with being thin.

    Weighty Matters

    I have been having a weight problem ever since I was born. Initially, the problem was lack of weight. . Where other babies looked like angels, I was scrawny and emaciated. As a toddler and a young girl, I was the stick figure with wild curls. Then when my hormones kicked in ( and rather early at that ) I began to put on the pounds. And they never stopped piling on till my teenage years. During my mid-teens, I was mocked by the neighbourhood kids who called me Empress Ashoka after the first Jumbo Jet that was acquired by Air India. And later on as a middle aged woman, my Yoga teacher would point out to my bingo wings and say “Ay joh ni? Porbundar nu asli ghee!” ( Look at this fine specimen of Porbunder Ghee)

    During the six-month break we had after the school leaving exams I invented my own routine to become an acceptable size before beginning college. I would walk 5 miles every day and dance to disco music for an hour after that. I played an hour of badminton three days a week and continued with my daily dog walking routine. The effort paid off because I came to a medically and socially acceptable weight. But sadly I was still known as the fat girl with the curly hair.

    Still Pleasantly Plump

    In my early twenties I managed to control my weight even after marriage and two pregnancies . I was not exactly my ‘ideal’ weight but still only 2 kg off my pre-pregnancy weight. However, it was exactly when I hit my 30th birthday that I began losing the battle of the bulge.

    In an effort to lose those two kilos, I stuck a Video Cassette in my VCR and jumped around with Jane Fonda while the babies looked on in amusement. They loved the music and The Girl with the Pony Tail as they called one of the dancers in the class.

    But that didn’t do me much good so I joined an Aerobics class that was not too far to walk to. So for three days a week, I would burn calories walking briskly to the class and back, burn up some calories during the hour’s class but before I knew it, I had put on 2 kgs instead of losing them!

    So now I was 4 kilos heavier than my ‘target’ weight and the instructor’s words “Muscle weighs more than fat,” offered me little comfort. I was soon morphing from a fat person into a bodybuilder!

    I changed my exercise program and went back to walking which had yielded results in the first place and was more sustainable than gymming (as it is now called).

    For about two years I managed to walk regularly for 8 km a day but the girls’ school timings changed and I had to squeeze in a walk at 4 am. This was an ungodly hour so I changed to exercising while the girls were playing some sport at the Club.

    Despite a busy schedule of dropping and picking the kids, walking to Bhaji Gulley twice a week for the veggies and the erratic exercise schedule, the pounds kept on piling.

    You become what you eat

    I found a new ‘solution’: dieting. I discovered books like the Scarsdale Diet, Dr Atkins diet and challenged myself to find suitable Indian alternatives to a very impractical American Diet. When that didn’t work, I did the General Motors Diet, the Don’t Eat After Sunset Diet, the Avoid Dairy and All things White Diet, the Give up Sugar Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Only Sambar Diet, Only Fruits Till Noon Diet, fasting on Wednesdays …….. and the list can go on.

    I drank warm water and lemon to kick start my metabolism first thing in the morning. I switched over to green tea. I had the apple cider vinegar shots that actually wore down the enamel of my teeth and made me eventually replace all my teeth with caps and crowns. I brought home a Kombucha Mushroom and nurtured it reverentially till I ran out of people to gift the new one to. I had homoeopathic and Ayurvedic tablets to lose weight and even tried Lavanya Tailam an Ayurvedic massage oil to massage away the cellulite!

    My thyroid was tested and treated for Hypothyroidism , and I continued with my Yoga at home and at various classes through the years. But alas! I still remain fat.

    After half a century ( which is almost my entire life) I have tried to lose weight so the next time you see a fat person please don’t ask “how could you reach this size?”

    We do look in the mirror but unfortunately that doesn’t work .

    Is this your story too?

    Featured image was taken without permission from the net

  • Scammed !

    Scammed !

    After a dry June, Mumbai has been witnessing a very, very wet July. It began raining ever since my cousins arrived ( 29 June) and stopped just around 1pm IST on 21 July. And a lot has happened in the world around me even though I was cooped up at home :

    For instance, during this time there was a landslide at the bottom of the hill and a huge pothole reappeared at the bottom of the road which leads me to believe that the whole road, indeed the entire hill, is slowly being washed away from beneath its tarred surface! I’m not really surprised at this because, for the past several years, many of the elegant bungalows dotting the hill have been torn down and given way to huge skyscrapers that continue to remain unoccupied! I wonder why this area is being re-developed in this way because each new building means excavating the hill at least 40 feet deep. And I’m quite sure it won’t be long before the entire hill is hollowed out leaving the buildings staying up only because of their deep-rooted foundations.

    Seasonal woes

    But that is happening outside my world. In my house, the typical monsoon challenges like damp clothes and pesky flies have a new rival: a sketchy television reception. Considering the fact that TV signals are now transmitted through fiber optic technology, one would have thought that snowy images and static were things of the past. But sadly, they aren’t.

    And my mother-in-law who depends on the TV for company is greatly inconvenienced. Within days of the weather turning damp, she begins to complain about sticky remote keys, blurry images, breaking audio and of course the irritating crackle of static in the background.

    Immediately I have to call the cable operators to complain and as always, they show up grudgingly having had to weather the bad weather. Alas! In a matter of days, the TV goes back to its errant ways, especially after the next heavy shower.

    This year, my own Television decided to join my ma-in-law’s TV. Since Hubby Dear is an avid News watcher and Ms Papaya is a dedicated 2-hour TV watcher for 3 days a week, this was nothing short of a DISASTER. It had to be fixed and NOW!

    Hell! I’ve been scammed

    So I immediately googled the Sony repair service and got a URL that said

    http://sonyservicecentre.co/

    I promptly contacted the number mentioned on the site and was told to WhatsApp my name, address and model number to a given number.

    I got a message back informing me that a technician would come home for a charge of Rs. 2500. I was quite shocked at this astronomical amount and wanted to know the rationale behind this fee. I was told that the fee was high because the product was out of Warranty and that the cost of the parts replaced would be adjusted against this.

    By this time I was beginning to sense something was amiss and when I saw the huge, unprofessional-looking slob walk into my house, I was sure he wasn’t genuine. I asked to see some identification or paper and he brushed it off saying that he wouldn’t have known my TV had a problem unless I had contacted the Service Center.

    Well, it did seem logical so grudgingly I allowed him to see the TV. He yanked it off the wall and pointed accusingly at the dust bunnies clinging to the back.

    “These should be regularly blown away!” he admonished and fiddled around on a gadget that looked like a mobile phone and some information appeared on the screen which had hitherto just crackled and snowed.

    Putting away the gizmo, he opined that the Motherboard was faulty and needed to be replaced. And since it was my lucky day, he had a spare with him and could replace it right away!

    When I asked him the price, he gave me two options.

    If I did it officially I would have to pay Rs. 14000 and if I did it unofficially, it would be Rs.8000.

    I immediately told him I’d rather buy a new TV as it had originally cost me Rs. 29,000, two years ago and if the company’s warranty didn’t hold beyond 2 years, I would be foolish trust his ‘dubious’ authentic Motherboard.

    He then started pleading to let him change the board for Rs. 6000 and would give me a personal guarantee for a year. I told him that I’d think about it and asked him for his mobile number so that I could contact him if I so wanted.

    By now I just wanted him out of the house and handed him his fee and asked for a receipt. He pocketed the money and told me that the official receipt would come by email from Sony.

    Oftentimes receipts are sent by email so I didn’t really doubt that I would get an official receipt.

    After he left, I again WhatsApped the “Service Center” and by this time, I was convinced I’d be scammed. So I made an official complaint to SONY and am in touch with them.

    Getting a new Television

    Getting a new television was of paramount importance as the weekend was approaching and Hubby Dear and Ms Papaya would have been restless at the thought of doing without. However, before embarking on a tedious Internet search for the perfect TV, I decided to switch it on for one last time. A N D ………..wonder of wonders, it actually worked !!!!!

    Beware of websites that mimic the original. And do not get bullied by aggressive salespersons.

    So that was a very expensive lesson learned. We Senior citizens are quite gullible and ignorant of copycat websites. I, who considers herself savvier than her peers was actually taken in.

    But I am still curious as to why my Television didn’t work in the first place and how it started after the scamster had a look at it.

    Ciao

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