Growing Sacred Basil

“You  are nice folks but you don’t have a Tulsi plant in your home,” my maid Kailashben had said with some visible annoyance a few days after she stepped into my home to look after the toddlers, some fifteen years ago. Now, Tulsi or Sacred Basil is a must in every Hindu home. It is believed to be essential to a home to ensure happiness. Many legends are associated with the Tulsi in Indian mythology. Tulsi is Lakshmi, Lord Vishnu’s consort, or Radha, Krishna’s beloved. Tulsi means matchless and it is essential in the worship of Hindu dieties.

Tulsi grew wild at my parent’s place. No special care was needed to nurture it as such. However, at my home it was a different story. No matter how hard I tried  to nurture it in my clay pot, it just would not grow. It was at one such point of  time that Kailashben had walked into our lives. Peeved at her admonition, it was priority for  us to get a Tulsi plant, for our home. Off went I and my husband to the nearest nursery, on our way back from work, to choose a Tulsi plant which we hoped would flourish. We selected a healthy plant, ordered the ‘mali’ to repot it with good soil and manure, and zoomed off home with our prized possession. At home we fussed over it, watering it, putting the pot atop a wrought iron stand near the ledge of our little balcony. Enough sunlight and adequate water would do the trick with our sacred plant, we hoped. Alas that was not to be and the plant began to wilt a few days later. The same story was repeated over the years, with the Tulsi just refusing to bloom in the clay pots, which we then threw out in despair. Such was our pleasure to see a blooming Tulsi elsewhere that we felt like stealing it for  home!

Tulsi has many ‘gunas’. A couple of Tulsi leaves in one’s mouth can make one less thirsty. The leaves are medicinal too, giving relief in coughs and colds and taking care of digestive problems too. Tulsi oil also destroys bacteria and other insects.

According to the Padma Purana, even the soil around the Tulsi plant is considered holy. If  a Tulsi twig is used as a lamp for Vishnu it is equivalent to several million lamps. The soul of a dead person whose body has been cremated with Tulsi sticks attains a permanent place in Vishnu’s heaven and is not reborn, it is believed. 

Of ‘ Bangla ranna’ & Gujju friends

When  a friend  recently expressed his love for ‘Bangla ranna’  (Bengali cooking),  having stayed in Kolkata for a while,  I was transported back to my early days of getting familiar with and learning to cook traditional Bengali dishes. My introduction to any cooking at all was rather late. While at my parent’s place as a teenager and also as an adult, studies and other sundry things kept me busy, and my indulgent father found me excuses to slip away from chores to do with cooking, while my mother cried foul.  Having found a job later, I found even more excuses to slip away from it all!

Again, with me being an honorary Gujarati having stayed in Gujarat for long and having more Gujju friends than Bengali, my preferred palate was/is Gujarati, even though Bengali food was a staple fare at home.  However, once into my marital home, I realized that my in-laws recognized only Bangla fare, that food was their world and not being able to tell one ‘maach’ (fish) from the other, was a sin.

And here I was…my knowledge of anything to do with cooking being zilch (I actually couldn’t tell one ‘dal’ from the other leave alone fish!)…at the mercy of incorrigible foodies! Those days I was eternally petrified of being exposed and of putting my foot in the mouth once the discussion veered towards food and cooking. Mercifully, no one actually expected  me to cook a meal in the early days of marriage, so it was quite okay for a while.

A short while later having moved away from the joint family, I had to learn to cook, which I did through trial and error. Hubby of course dared not complain as I burst into a flood of tears once at being ‘told off’ for not having made a dish to his liking, but with in-laws being  in the same city, some kin or the other would spring a nasty surprise by arriving unannounced for dinner. Then it was my turn to dish out the traditional  Bangla fare. Those days the uniquely Bengali five spice mix called ‘panch phoron’  came to my rescue as I cooked every vegetable dish  with this mix and powdered spices! Cooking the ‘dal’ in an open pan on the horrible kerosene stove was a nightmare, and with me being asked about what ‘tadka I would use’  by my ‘guests’, it was even more horrible. Often times my ma-in-law would give me the incredulous look as I told her about what would go into my dish while my pa-in-law who demanded to taste the half cooked ‘dal’ or ‘subzi’ would insist that I was ‘almost there’.  As for the fish, I had to go by my instincts, and hubby’s ‘covert’ help!

To combat the in-laws’ onslaught I armed myself with a book on ‘how to cook traditional Bengali dishes’ to save my face. Much water has flown under the bridge hence and now I can at least cook some Bengali dishes, if not all, with comfort.

Strangely, I received a certificate of sorts from people when I cooked  a simple fish curry – shorshe bata maach (fish with mustard paste)- a great favourite with Bengalis, at a ceremony to mark the passing on of my pa-in-law two years ago. Even though many complex and difficult dishes that my pa-in-law loved were cooked by my kin from the in-laws side, it was my simple fish curry that stole everyone’s hearts that day! And I could almost hear my pa-in-law whisper to me ‘See, I told you, you were almost there, but now you truly are’.

And as for my dear vegetarian Gujju friend, I promise to treat him and his family to ‘luchi’, ‘alur dom’, ‘chholar dal’, ‘begun bhaja’, ‘ tok’  and ‘mishti’ very soon !

Connecting with Nature

A fond memory of my early childhood in Ahmedabad was going for morning walks  with my grandfather when schools closed for summer.  We stayed at the government quarters near the panjra pol in Ambavadi  area then ( Dad being a ‘sarkari karmachari’) and we would walk past the Azad Society to the Mangaldas bungalow and turn towards the’ kutcha’ road that led to the IIM and ATIRA.  My favourite pastime during this walk was to gather frangipani and other flowers  that had fallen off trees and to spend time watching  the turtles and the small fishes at the water tank in Atira with great delight.  Atira and the IIM area had many big trees then and the fragrance of sweet summer blooms   hung heavily around the air.  It was here that I made my first connection with Nature.

 Soon after Gandhinagar was born as the capital city of Gujarat and we moved on there with Dad’s posting at the Secretariat.  Gandhinagar in those days was lush, with many  green fields,  huge mango and  neem  trees in abundance.   There were huge open spaces all around and most people  nurtured their  own patch of green  around the house. We too had our little green space  in  front and the backyard of our house.  My grandfather had green fingers and  soon we had dahlias, zinnias, marigolds and jasmine flowers blooming in our little front garden. Okra, pumpkin, brinjals and tomatoes  grew with a flourish in our backyard.  I enjoyed pottering around the garden with my grandfather, working with the soil, watering the plants and pulling out  weeds from our perfectly made brick rows for the plants.

The kid gang  I belonged to was also always on its toes…a boy in particular had a special knack in finding some rare species of trees…that was always oohed and aahed by the elders.  Others like me were more interested in catching the red velvety bugs  we found after the rains and in providing them  with homes in little match and other boxes that we could lay our hands on.  We filled these boxes with soil, uprooted some grass from the earth, planted  them into the boxes thinking we now had given the little fellows a cosy home!  One particular day we  lustily caught many such bugs and gathered them in my skirt without me realizing that they would  crawl all over me!  The shriek I gave then and the laugh of my comrades- in-arm still rings loud in my ears!!   

Walking through lush green fields to reach the newly opened  St. Xavier’s primary school in sector 20 along with two of our teachers still remains a fresh memory.  A  transport system wasn’t in place then and private vehicles  were few. Often while returning home  from school we kids would hop on to some bullock or camel cart as our legs ached with the long walk back home to sector 17 we then lived. In spite of this I loved Gandhinagar for its green landscape.

During summers we had the privilege of having the choicest of mangoes,  plucked directly from the  trees, at bargain prices. We also stole little green mangoes from the park trees that we played in.  We also plucked jamuns, fresh figs and  yellow berries called ‘rayan’ off the trees in the neighbourhood  and were promptly shooed off some elder telling us that  ghosts lived on those trees! 

I stayed in Gandhinagar till I completed my class VIII and when I returned to it  later after a gap of seven-eight years, it was a pale self of the green Gandhinagar I had known.  Even then I always had my first cup of morning tea strolling around in my garden taking in every little leaf or bud that had grown.   Alas, I had to move back to Ahmedabad again and the only plants I now see are the potted ones, at home. But despite my Amdavadi  friends calling Gandhinagar  a ‘dead city’ or a ‘Babu town’ I still have a soft corner for Gandhinagar even though it is on its way to becoming  another concrete jungle!

Finding Friends

It is strange that at a particularly low point in my personal and professional  life, I should find friends from my early school days, to rally around me.  I spent my adult years away from them, yet at a point which I could call a mid life crisis, I yearned  for them to be around.  Undoubtedly  then I can say  that they have always been a part of my subconscious mind  all along. To say that the days spent with them  were the best  years of my life would, of course, be an understatement.

On the other hand I have my children to thank for finding them again. After avoiding  the annual  reunions for many years because of the state my mind was in, my kids decided it was time  for  me to get going again, and pushed me to attend it this year.  My daughter  selected the outfit I should wear, she even made me put  eyeliner  on my eyes.  My son literally drove me out of the house.

What I  gained from their move  was unsurpassable.   I reached the venue  to find old friends and ‘new old friends’  whom  I had not been in touch with for long.  With everyone having walked along their different paths  for  so many years, it was a sheer joy to be together and relive the ‘good old days’,  again. We exchanged phone  numbers, mail  and personal addresses and promised to keep in touch with one another.  Of course going back to the daily grind made things difficult.  But then the much loved social networking site, the FACEBOOK, came to the rescue.

Having hopped on to the Facebook bandwagon rather late , I had no idea what  the ride on it would be like. But all I can honestly say  now is that life has been a whirlwind since.   So here I am now, happy and at peace with my long-lost friends, via the Facebook.  Incidentally, the movie The Social Network, a semi factual take on the founding of Facebook,  bagged three Oscars this year.  Long live, Mark Zuckerberg!

Influence Of Books

Of all the education that I have had in my school and college years, apart from the fact that I can read, write and understand a little, there has been not been much of value addition to my life. I say this as I now remember nothing of what I learnt from the impractical theoretical methods by which one was forced to learn the lessons. It has been 27 years since I discontinued my formal learning but  life’s lessons have hardly been learnt  from these years at all.

In fact while only some of life’s lessons  have come from books that I read in school, others have mostly come from those I read outside my educational courses. Of course my primary school years shaped a lot of my thinking when I read classics like ‘David Copperfield’, ‘Great Expectations’, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and the like. The hardships faced by the protagonists in these books, the brutality of conditions like slavery, the desire of every boy to be free, adventurous, the windfalls  that shape the life of orphan Pip, the twists and turns in many other tales that I read continue to influence the way I think in life.

Other than that there are two dog- eared 60 pages notebooks of hymns that Sister Tarcissia taught us when I was in classes from fifth to seventh that I draw on in various situations in my life. ‘We shall overcome’,  ‘Count your blessings’, ‘Discovering God’, ‘Peace and Joy’ taught me so much more about life. Morning and evening prayers, prayers for those in distress, prayers for guidance, for strength, for gratitude…all handwritten with pencil…I hold close to my heart till this date and remain a precious part of my life.

My growing up years were mainly influenced by books like ‘The catcher in the Rye’ by J D Salinger which dealt with a youth’s search for his  self and his place in the world, Richard Bach’s ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ where the seagull knew that there was more to himself and life, Kahlil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’ that taught and still teaches me the meaning of life, ‘Gitanjali’ Rabindranath Tagore’s song offerings to the creator depicting the yearning to merge with God and Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ which taught patience and perseverance.

In recent years I have read many fine books but one that remains fresh in my mind is Gregory David Robert’s novel ‘Shantaram’ which is the author’s spiritual journey in life shaped by people and incidents in India.

Gender Bias

Why is it that when I point to the gender biases prevalent all around in Indian society  that my male friends chose to turn deaf and blind?  They either give me that …’what’s your problem’ look or ignore it totally. Does it give them a certain pleasure, I wonder. Stories in the media highlight how certain women have risen above the biases, broken the glass ceiling, to be on the top of the charts. But these are few and far between. Scratch the surface of any woman in India and out come stories of facing biases all their lives. TV serials doling messages that women ought to be in their ‘laxman rekhas’ to have a place in society abound even in these days and times. ‘Na Aana Is Des Lado’ is one such serial on the Colors channel at prime time. The horrors that womenfolk of Ammaji’s household face here is unbelievable. But it strikes me as a true and a living example of instances seen in society. When I cringe at the torture the womenfolk face while watching the serial, I get laughed at by my family, who feel that it is nothing other than melodrama. Yet I have seen instances of girls being made to slog at homes, being deprived of an education, being married off to unsuitable grooms, beaten black and blue for daring to have a VOICE. So it comes as a ‘no surprise’ when the morning papers reiterate that on gender issues, India, does lag alarmingly behind. It states, “Be it the skewed sex ratio or the number of crimes against women, statistics again and again remind us about the distance we need to cover. While on paper there are enough laws to tackle every social menace, clearly that is not enough.” The paper also carries an  article showing Indian males as being number one in sexual violence. “Twenty-four per cent of Indian men have committed sexual violence at some point in their lives.”  And this is just one of the shocking findings made during a recent survey by International Men and Gender Equality Survey, conducted in six developing countries across four continents, to map attitudes and practices related to gender equality.

Moderation

Often when an emotional person like me gives full vent to my state of mind at that particular time, I seem to be getting  a lot of stern advice. I have been told in no uncertain terms to ‘control the feelings’, moderate them or not show  them at all!  Perhaps there is a certain wisdom in controlling what one strongly feels about, which I do not know of, and which they suggest I do.

When I have expressed feeling glum or low, comes a flurry of advice ranging from ‘Don’t be so sad’ to   ‘Hang in there, you are just bored’ and the like. I don’t doubt that my friends want me out of my cheerless phase but what the hell can’t they allow me the natural process of feeling low and sad before I’m ready to step out of it?  I wonder why they should negate the validity of my natural state?  But no, they only issue me a warning to zip up my feelings, once and for all!

Of course that I do so for the fear of losing a valued friend  is a mere statement.  

On the other end again when I feel elated and when I want to share my happiness with friends and family, people who matter to me, come voices that check my thrill. ‘Who has seen tomorrow?’, ‘Destiny is bigger than everything else’ etc.

So in the end it is a lesson in ‘moderation’ that I have to learn in life.