Cry With Me

"Oh I forgot the mushrooms!"

I stopped in my tracks. My friend laughed lightly. 

"Its OK!" She reassured. "It will be delicious even without the mushrooms."

We are to travel together, by bus from Dharamshala to Delhi and we are planning what eats we should carry with us. Travelling with friends can be such fun that even the thought of it is enjoyable and we cannot contain our glee.

I'll cook Maggi and carry it."  I announce and mentally plan: Maggi with olive oil to ease the guilt and lots of capsica, cheese and of course mushrooms. But I forgot the mushroom. 
"Koi nahin!" the friend again assured me.

As I cook the Maggi here in my kitchen under the mountains, I cannot gather the same joy I had felt while planning for it. Not today. Not now. This morning as I had sauntered into my office, mind full of the prospect of cheese laden Maggi on a long comfy busride with a friend, I had no inkling what this day had in store.

"Did you hear the news?" my colleague enquired.

I looked at him askance.

"There's been a terrorist attack at Sunjuwan. Soldiers and their families have been fatally wounded!!!"

Sunjuwan???

I did not know how to react.Just six months back,  I had been there. Taking a lecture on some health issue for the wives of officers and soldiers. 

There were people I  knew, friends and acquaintances who lived near by. 

I did not  say much. But it was a shock. And then the whole day was spent in the tedious job of trying to find out who was hurt and where. News kept pouring in, trickling in, a soldier dead, another hit on the chest, a soldier's mother injured by a  bullet, a little boy, a soldier's son battling for life with a bullet wound to his head, another young woman, a daughter hit by bullets..... ....

We are a dispassionate lot, we doctors. We are so used to dealing with the darker side of life that there is nothing that shocks us, hurts us or shatters us...So I worked, diligently, completely detached and then returned home in that same absolutely normal frame of mind.

But here over that pan of yellow Maggi, I began to think and to crumble....

Ayesha died alongwith with her father, a junior commissioned officer. * 

A few days back,  a JCO had come to meet me. 
"Madam, he had said, "My daughter is studyng for her NEET entrance examinations. Could you guide her? She is a good girl. She is working very hard."

 I had of course been more than willing to help.

I do not know how old Ayesha was.  

Was she like this young woman, studying for her NEET PG? Did she wake up today morning with visions of mathematic sums and complex chemical formulas of organic chemistry dancing in her head? Did she make tea for herself and her Dad, warm tea on this cold February morning? Did her mother tell her, "Eat something with your tea, Ayesha. You know how tea on an empty stomach makes you retch?"

My mother would always tell me this when I was studying for my entrance examinations.

Am I sounding a little garbled? Quite possible.

Well, this post is not going to be about nuanced language, about literature, about an attempt at literary art......Today I will write without frill, without acrobatics withour jugglery. I will write without any effort at being contrived. For I need to vent, to reach out to you, to tell you what I feel....An in doing that, if I am garbled, then let it so be.

Nayana was hit with bullets. Her father too was shot. 
She lived. 
He died. 
Bled to death.
Her age I know. 22 years.

You know Jaya, she of the 'An Evening Walk in the Hills' fame? Jaya is thirty. To me she is a kid. What then is a twenty two year old like? 

How was I at twenty two? In college, struggling with Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics. Cramming all night.  Staying awake on Maggi and beaten coffee. Tottering over Pune in my waif like two wheeler Sunny. Crushing gleefully on seniors, college-mates and teachers. Exploring feelings, tastes and dangers. Losing my Dad was not a possibility in my twenty two year old mind. To lie bleeding and watch him bleed, dying slowly was not a consideration even in my most horrendous nightmare.

What would I have done in had I been Nayana's mother? Coco Chanel, how old is your daughter?

And that little boy, only fourteen struggling in the ICU of the military hospital at Jammu, what of him? 

I do not know whether little Sunil can think right at this moment, whether his injuries permit him to be coherent. If he is thinking, is he wondering, "Who are these people, Papa, who put a bullet through my head? I have not been that naughty Papa.  It's true that I sneaked a smoke behind your back and spent the whole day chomping on Lays chips, but how grave are my these crimes? Are they why they wanted to kill me ? Or is it because I am your son and you wear the combat uniform? Papa?"

Who are these people who kill without qualm, who kill for ideals  I cannot understand, who kill without discriminating, who can die just to be able to kill? 

Just now, I cannot figure out the answer. I am too exhausted. My eyes hurt and there is a stale taste in my mouth. These things that divide us, why do they divide us, divide us so sharply that they pollute, convolute and distort humans into ugly things without soul and without feeling, take away our humanity make us monsters who defy description? I do not have an answer.  And I cannot do anything about it. Nothing.

Young people die everyday. They die of disease, of accidents, of murder and sometimes they die wilfully. They get hurt too, in so many different ways. What happened in Sunjuwan today maybe just another unfortunate thing for you. But it has made me incredibly sad today. I don't feel any other emotion within me, no anger, no thirst for vengeance, nothing; just an endless gut wrenching sadness and a sense of futility. 

My Delhi bound bus has just left Dharamshala. It weaves slowly down the winding mountain road as people around me talk, laugh, surf...The bus is warm, the city lights twinkle, the Maggi with cheese and capsicum secure in the overhead shelf and all is well. But I have no sense of assurance, no craving for it just now. My friend is gazing out of the window, letting me type. I've excused myself for a bit, telling her " I'll just finish the post and then we can gossip." But my mind's not on it.

I gaze out of the oversized Volvo window, my eyes filmed over and think, "I've cultivated this bad habit of entreating my blog readers to leave a comment each time I publish a post. But this time, for this post, I'll not ask you for a comment. This time, I'll beg you to think about Nayana. And Ayesha. And Sunil. 

This time I"ll only ask : Cry with me.......

PS* Errata. No young woman was killed. That was misinformation caused by the initial chaos. The brave young woman was hit on her leg and survived. God bless her.

The little boy, though is still fighting his terrible wounds till today. Pray for him. 

Combat Medical Humour

A senior army general was inspecting a military hospital. The General was a seasoned infantry man, a die-hard soldier. He knew everything there was to know about guns and battle but nothing at all about doctors and hospitals. But he respected doctors, especially the military doctors who worked in difficult combat situations and were responsible for saving the lives of countless war-wounded and ill soldiers. He sincerely wanted to do something beneficial for the hospital, something that would improve their working conditions and the quality of care meted out to patients. That day, as he moved from one bed to another, the senior doctor who accompanied him kept him briefed of the malady afflicting the patients and the treatment being carried out. Luckily, this doctor had an engaging style of conversation and because he explained difficult medical issues simply, the General was not at all bored.  Instead, he found himself quite enjoying the briefing and was soon telling himself that Medicine was a pretty logical thing and not at all the difficult subject he had thought it to be. As they moved from patient to patient, the General actually found himself engaged in an animated discussion of medicine. Towards the end of the tour, the doctor showed the General a few Electrocardiograms (ECG). The General was pretty intrigued by the weird squiggle like graphs, some large, some small, that looked for all the world like ancient Sumerian writings. He enquired of the doctor, "Doc , why are the ECGs of some of your patients large and for the others, they are small?"
The elderly doctor explained patiently, "Oh, that is due to voltage differences......"
The General was elated that he had finally found that something where he could be of assistance to hospital.
He gestured to his Aide de Camp, "Please ensure that brand new voltage stabilisers are placed at each patient's bed by today evening. We cannot have such petty things as voltages playing havoc with crucial things like the size of ECGs...!"

PS
( For my non doctor readers)
Electrocardiography (ECG) is the process of recording the electrical activity of the heart over a period of time using electrodes placed on the skin. These electrodes detect the tiny electrical changes that arise from the heart muscle's electrophysiologic pattern of depolarizing and repolarizing during each heartbeat. The overall magnitude of the heart's electrical potential (voltage) is then measured from twelve different angles ("leads") and is recorded over a period of time. The difference in amplitude ( voltage) occurs due to the normal differences between individuals and also due to the particular disease they are suffering from.

For Jaya: An Evening Walk in the Hills

We both walk
On curved roads
Draped across mountains:

Vast mountains; tawny, in the late noon sun.

Our foot-steps
Crunch, then echo,
Breaking the silence-
The warm, russet silence; in our wake.

On, up-hill
In huffs and puffs,
We race with the road
The undulant road, till that lonely gray bridge.

On the way,
Slate-roofed huts,
Cow smells, cow bells-
Tinkling bells: and bright-eyed shepherd girls.

A dog barks-
Engaging wag
Dog-smells on me?
Friendly smells; so it trots with us downhill.

At the bridge
The stream’s all dry-
Naked rocks pray:
Pray for rain; and the raiment of green moss.

We look up:
A shrine. So high!
Red roof shining...
Beckoning. Lets climb there. One day................

A lone cart.
Its name? “Best View”!
Soft momos, steaming-

Steam merging, with the valley mist below.

There is talk,
From heart. To heart;
And songs too - old, loved.....
“Where is Love?”  “Oh, when?” I can only soothe.

The sun sets:
Pink, red, some haze.....
Sprayed across the West.
Keeping West beside us, we stroll back home.

Night descends-
Curtains of cold.
A road-side fire-
Tongues of orange flame and warm orange heat.

Suddenly
We stop and turn-
On a whim. An urge.
The silver urge, of a vast silver moon.

Then, we gaze
All bathed silver,
At that perfect moon-
Our prefect moment: freezing in Time!

Gift of the Magi

A brown paper parcel, frayed at the edges,
My name crumpled into hills and vales
By the transit.

A gift.

For me!

I open it.

Two Lipsticks and a Letter.

I am not much of a lipstick woman.
And pink and peach are not at all my colours.

On my overflowing dresser, I let them lie,
Lonely and lost, amongst the M.A.Cs and Maybellines.

But then, there is the letter.
It is short but says a lot:
Gratitude. Respect. Affection.
Floods my eyes
And my jaded, broken soul.

What is a lipstick actually worth?


Not too sure but I wear lipstick a lot these days.
Pretty Pink and Pale Peach.
Smile at the mirror
And watch my self-worth grow.

A Haiku Morn

It will be a Haiku morn:
Cloud-gray skies
and the cold of the night past-
still floating,
like plumes of unseen evening mist.

Warm smoke
And a pale, green-tea smell from the roadside cart;
Dark moss on the cobbled canal walls.

A few errant leaves will go floating by.......
Unhurried-
Rust boats on that jade-green stream.

Through the trees and the mist,
Fuji will peep: all white and faintly smoking-
An old man,
playing the Hide and Seek game,
From a childhood,
Long gone.

The cherry blossoms will cast a rose-pink shadow-
Bathed in it
I will wait-
Always.............
For you,
On that pink-drenched Rumi field.

Looking Back

The year is ending and it is time to take stock. Of one’s life mainly, but since my life-inventory has not had any worthwhile changes to it, I’d rather take stock of my blog. It would be a much more pleasant task, I think.

I began the blog in the January of 2015 on a whim. A cousin had suggested, “Didibhai, why don’t you write a blog? You could make some money.” Money sounded nice and so intrigued (and tempted) I entered the blogging world, a little hesitantly with a less than ten lined piece called ‘Teething in Blogging Land’. I was pleasantly surprised to receive three whole comments on the piece, all extremely encouraging. Heartened, I wrote some more and then some more and soon it became a habit. I even managed to garner a dedicated set of readers, all close friends and acquaintances including Other Half. In fact, OH’s enthusiasm actually surpassed mine and it was what had fuelled my writing spree in the beginning.

Over the last three years, I have written a lot and when I read back, I realise that my writing has evolved substantially, from the initial juvenile Convent-High School level to a more mature style. I have tried my fingers at many genres, plain blog posts to short stories, to poems and even a novella. I have become more confident of my abilities as a writer, up to the point that I mustered up enough courage to send some for publication. None have been accepted of course (which sadly, is rather telling on the quality of my work!). My blog has achieved more than 25000 views and though I know that some of it is spam; still it’s not a  bad achievement, considering the fact that my readership is limited solely to my friends and acquaintances on just two social media platforms i.e. WhatsApp and FaceBook.

But right at this point, I get a feeling that my blog has reached a plateau in terms of readership. And there are four main reasons (as I see it) for this stagnation.

One, my writing ability and my style of writing have turned stale and quite predictable. I think I should have to change the entire stance and construct of my language to bring to it freshness and appeal.

Two, I get the feeling that my choice of subjects lack ooomph. I think I really need to up the ante if I want to sustain and increase my readership. A nephew while advising me, summed it up succinctly, “Aibee Masi, write something saucy, something scandalous, something that Freud would be proud of.........!!!!!!”

Three, I really need to increase my reader base. With the same old people reading my stuff, I seem to be getting nowhere. So if you are an old reader of mine and if you like what I churn out, do share it with your friends and family and acquaintances. This would have the added advantage of increasing my chances of receiving some constructive criticism. Though I confess I take negative criticism very badly. That is partly because I am not used to it for most of my readers, being close friends are always terribly sweet when it comes to giving a feedback. I can actually count on my fingers the number of times I have received a negative word for my writing. (So now I have taken to assuming that if a reader remains silent about my work, it simply means that she did not like it.) At this point, I would like to recount the one and only time I came closest to being trolled (well almost). This was when I posted my piece called ‘A Cracker Free Diwali’ on an FB group and was hounded by the group members who insisted that it be removed because it was a politically motivated post. I did not know whether to laugh or cry at the insinuations; but I was thrilled that the whole controversy had the welcome effect of boosting readership of that particular post by more than 50%.

And lastly, I have realised that the written word has no longer any appeal as a pastime in today’s fast paced world. How many people actually read a book nowadays in their leisure hours? Most of us would rather see a film, listen to music, watch a sporting event or a soap on TV or surf Social Media on our cell-phones for those mountains of two-bit messages; rather than read a book. (Other Half, my erstwhile avid reader is a case in point. Nowadays, I have to literally bribe him to read my posts.) So tell me, when was the last time that you bought a book? It has been quite a while, hasn't it? The sad reality is that reading is now an outdated hobby and few people have the time or the inclination to read anything longer than a forwarded message on WhatsApp. And there is not much that I can do about it. I think it would wiser for me to start a YouTube cookery channel instead. You never know, it might actually make me famous! So keep your eyes peeled for it...........

PS: A few days back a young colleague read a post from my blog (for the first time) and commented, “Aibee Madam, it reads like from a renowned author!!!”

Wow, BP, thanks. You just made my year!

A Sunday Lunch

I hope you are not averse to pork, for my piece today is a lunch menu where this meat figures prominently. So if you are a meatotaller or a proponent of porkatheid, this post is not for you. In that case, I feel it would be prudent (for the sake of your appetite) to press ESC and switch instead to a virtuous YouTube channel playing something kosher, like say Vicky Goes Veg.

As for those like me who have sinned with pork and would love to sin over and over again even at the prospect of burning in Hell, do linger. You might find this read just to your taste.

“So what would you like to eat for lunch today?” I asked Other Half. As his face took on that particular dreamy expression, I knew at once what it was that he wanted to eat. He didn’t need to verbalise.

“Ok, ok, pork it will be.” I assured him. “Only do dig it out of the freezer, please. It’s like Bakrasur’s cave in there.” I added.

(Other Half treats the freezer like his lair, filling it up with mountains of meats of all kinds: mutton, chicken, pork and of course, fish. And since only he can tell which frozen, fossilised mound contains which kind of protein, I leave it to him to dig out the day’s requirement, which he does quite obligingly, leaving it on the kitchen countertop to thaw. It’s only at this point that I step in, never before.)

Today morning, we had picked up a bunch of Rai leaves from the local vegetable stall. They were a steal at a measly twenty bucks for the whole bunch and I found them to be very fresh, their stalks crunching with all the water inside and their leaves a deep shiny green, edged with purple. With pork thawing on my kitchen counter and fresh Rai greens still in my shopping bag, lunch had to be without a doubt ‘White Rice and Pork with Lai Patta’ and nothing else.

I had picked up this particular menu from Shillong. While in shillong, we had once, gone on a picnic somewhere up in the Khasi Hills and had come upon a few local women having lunch. They had their steel plates covered with a large mound of plain white rice into which they poured a thin green-yellow jhol or curry made up of these huge mustard type greens which they called ‘Lai Patta’. Here in Himachal, replacing the ‘L’ with an ‘R’, the locals call these same leaves ‘Rai Patta’. The jhol was more like a soup for it had no spice other than some salt and turmeric and was more like a pork soup rather than a curry. Each woman ate her rice mound mixing it with this soup and accompanied it with exactly two pieces of pork, one which was a slice of pure fat without a strip of lean anywhere while the other was a piece of plain lean meat. Later while travelling from Guwahati to Shillong, we had had food at an obscure local dhaba where the woman manning the stall had been taken aback and very happy when we told her that we had no qualms about pork and would love to try her rice-and-pork lunch dish. She had served us this simple meal of white rice with the same green-yellow pork soup cooked with lai patta but she had added some potates chopped in half into the soup and had also gave us a searing hot cilantro-garlic chutney along with onion slices and some more green chillies.

I love to cook but I hate to spend too much time in the kitchen. My mental kitchen timer is set to a max of ninety minutes, irrespective of the meal I’m set to prepare and ninety percent of the time I’m in and out of the kitchen well within this limit. Obviously, I love shortcuts in cooking (a major area of disagreement with my MIL who treats the kitchen like a workplace and who loves to do unpaid overtime in there). And because I like shortcuts, I love this ‘Pork-Lai Patta-Rice’ menu. It goes like this:-

Thaw the pork. Actually, if you have a sturdy pressure cooker and have washed the meat before packing it into the freezer, you can safely omit this step. But, wash the Lai Patta well. When I say well, I really mean it. Heed my words (I should know, being a Public Health Woman) and wash it really well, in running water. Then chop it roughly. I just tear it up with my hands, with vengeance, of the kinds you muster to tear up love letters from an ex . Next fill your pressure cooker with water (take a biggish one that can accommodate all the ingredients and the water comfortably), dump the thawed (or not) pork into it, add some potatoes cut in half along with your Lai Patta, include salt and lots of haldi (if you can manage to lay your hands on the famed Lakadong Turmeric of Meghalaya, there would be nothing surpass it) and place it over the hob. Let it come to full cooking pressure 

(that’s one long सींटी, for the uninitiated), then lower the flame and let it simmer.

For how long? Well long enough for you to finish watching Modern Family or MasterChef Australia or for Arnab to complete his ripping to pieces some hapless masochist on Republic. Ok, seriously, 35 minutes would be a good. Now remove the cooker from the flame and let it cool on its own. As it cools, prepare the side dish and the garnish. Slice two red onions and rinse two green chillies. Wash cilantro (Dhaniya patta, my dear), chop it, add a clove or two of garlic, one chopped tomato and salt and run it in the food processor (Mixie its only your Mixie) till ground to a fine paste. You may have to add some water because it may just happen that your Mixie begins to groan and splutter and not budge an inch because some pesky dhaniya has got tangled with the Mixie blades. Once it is done, that is the consistency of the chutney is of a satisfactory paste, add some lemon juice. Taste and adjust the seasoning. My Mom always adds some sugar but since for me adding sugar to a dish with garlic is nothing short of blasphemy, I haven’t mentioned sugar.

Then on a steel plate (has to be steel, fancy chinaware will just not do) place a ladle of white rice (slightly steaming), a bowl of the Pork-Lai Patta duet, a dash of the green dhania chutney, the onion slice and to spice it all up one notch further, the fresh green chillies. Then with your plates in hand, sit in the warm winter sun out in your garden amidst the candy tufts, the dahlias, the pansies and the calendulas, and relish your simple but beautiful Sunday lunch under that deep blue winter sky. You’ll note how that silken green-gold soupy jhol mixes smoothly with your warm white rice, how that pork cooked to perfection in the pressure cooker’s steam is absolutely melt-in-the-mouth, how the slightly pungent now deep olive green Lai Patta  is slippery smooth and how the flavour of the pork soup is accentuated by the tangy heat of the dhaniya chutney and the sharp crunch of the onion ...and how it all seems to be something like a desi version of Chicken Soup for the Soul or something even better..........................

Bon Appetit!

PS: Please use your hands for a fork and spoon can never bring out the flavours in the way your beautiful earthy hands will.

Photo Credits: Taken from a blog by Ms Ruprekha Mushahary called Feelings where she has given a recipe for the same.
http://rupascloset.blogspot.in/2014/06/pork-with-bah-gaaz-and-bhoot-jolokia.html