The year was 2007.

 There was fierce rain that day , barging into our bus through its flaky painted green windows. ''Shower facility'', a Nepali boy of about twelve told the foreigner next to him.

I was making a bumpy ride from Kathmandu to Nagarkot so that I will be in a scenic quiet place where I can turn twenty one in peace.

 

When you are traveling there are a few strangers who live in contexts so different form your own but there are very few you remember years later because they said so much about the place you were in , sometimes even about what tourism has done to that place.

The green was wet , gaudy and offset brightly by the red buildings with newari style brown wooden roofs. Childrens' peeping faces were framed by ornately decorated windows. The local bus was packed and precariously chugging along the hairpin bends that will lead us to the hilly heaven of Nagarkot.

The boys talked to CQ , my travel partner and another white guy , Jim. The boys asked the foreigners when they could escape to America. Jim told them kindly that they could attend college in America. One of the boys counted with his fingers , years left for him to be eligible for college and sighed loudly that there were nine years left for him to leave Nepal .

They had adopted the humour that is typical of white tourists in India/Nepal - laughing at the electricity problems, the bad roads
and the state of the country in general. They sounded proud that they could laugh at themselves.I don't remember the details about the boys but just that they sounded so grown up.

But to me , they reminded me of Indians and how Indians too self depreciate in front of white people . I wasn't sure whether that is a bad thing in itself but these boys were so young and so sharply cynical in a somehow innocent way.

Do you know what I mean?

They asked me if I am unmarried - instead of asking if I am married.I replied that I am  .

We reached when the rain had greyed the little town with the exception of a few green stains from the hills. We went to a shack and drank hot chai and then found an old bungalow turned into a hotel to spend the night in, to turn 21 in .

 

 

 

 

The academic wealth hidden in house hunting

 I have rather pseudo-lee declared to many of my friends much to their disgust - especially Marie that I have an academic interest in everything. Like, a Romanian guy once chatted me up in a club and I talked with him for half an hour out of a pure academic interest.

So , while most people would worry (not like I am Piggy Chops or anything) that their mobile number has spread like rabies in the internet, I consoled myself thinking of the academic opportunities that awaited me.

So, while advertising on a website for room mates, I described myself and clarified that only women and gay men can have the honour of being my room mate. 

So within an hour of placing my ad, I received  at least 20 calls , all the callers implied subtly that they were gay but never stated it. 

By then , I had found flat mates so I refused all of them but hey continued to call me. 

Straight men don't fall in my bucket of trust especially if they are strangers so I clarified with all the callers making sure they weren't straight men looking to get laid.

All of them wanted to be my friend which is very sweet.I really need a gay friend in Delhi. But they asked me all sorts of questions.

Why on earth would I want a gay room mate , they wanted to know? Won't you feel bad if the men in the other room were together ...I mean Y if they are kissing or you know...? 

There were others who said they were not gay but were just curious about my wish to live with  gay men. Some wanted to know if I am lesbo.

I didn't actually wish to live with gay men in particular but there aren't that many women advertising for room mates and I thought that broadening my target audience will

help me find someone faster. 

So essentially the random gay men and I had a mutual academic interest in each others thoughts . . I once went for dinner with my gay friend who I will name bike  and his date for the night ( I am an unforgiving fag hag) and I was really open throughout dinner. But this guy got so mad at P for telling me that he is gay because apparently he didn't want to admit this to a woman. And he left after dinner . (such klpd)

So, I was sort of touched by these calls and these questions from men who sounded like they expected to be judged but were sort of intrigued , comforted , repulsed (?)

by this girl who posted an ad inviting them to live with her. 

 

where the trees once were..

I see the gaping hole where the trees once were, where I ate roasted corn with college friends

and think of myself as the person who still thinks of MG road as Bangalore's main road.

A flyover has snaked its way above the road we thought was full. The grey concrete dragon

will transform into the zipping silver of the metro. And like in Delhi, sparkling people will

swipe their cards with a New Yorker's ease

 

Down the road in a little corner, a small slice of an old friend's Rajasthani haveli remains, the ground floor converted into a glitzy store selling guitars, its board placed on top of the placard that says

Estd 1807. Only the first floor retains the architectural details stolen from a desert far away.

 

Beside the house, a little further ahead is the shop 'Show Off' clothing people who frequent the

Clubs around, clothes that shine only in those lights.

 

Opposite is Ram Prasad veg where they serve pungent beautiful sambar that I remember from breaks rehearsing a play at Baldwin Boys School.

 

I wonder    if this happens to people who stay long in a place. But was talking to my friend Anasuya known better as Madam Mahila Mukti about how Bangalore was full of firsts for us, it was our first personal revolution, our first questions, our first foray into pain, into everything adult, the first signs of being grown up.

 So many parts of the city glow like scabs on a child's skin. One is never sure if the beautiful, playful memories overpower the faintly painful nostalgia or the other way round.

But I'll always be back, I guess.

After all, I left then to Chennai and then to Bombay. And nostalgia is homeground.

Have you ever seen the rain? - if you live in Delhi,pay attention

It has been raining in Bangalore , the rain is like a dream , the gentle caressing rain that takes care not to interrupt your day or dirty
your pants but ever so lovingly erases the memory of the ruthless Delhi heat.

It is wonderful to be back to my lovely bright home, to hear birds and drink filter coffee.
It is fun to scandalize my brother with stories of Uttar Pradesh, eat good food and relax for the last leg of my break before I move back to Delhi
and get back to work.

Does anyone know anyone looking for flat mates in Delhi? If yes please post a comment on this post.

I will love you4ever if something works out. :)

Sex,rides and autorickshaws

The other day I got on an autorickshaw which had curtains on the sides and in front. I exclaimed that it is really cool in here and great for the Delhi summer. 

My friend asked (how men think so fast about certain things no) him if he has the curtain so couples  can come and make out. The 'auto guy let's call him

Bholu said that's why he has it. So, he charges 500 Rupees for three hours driving around hormonal couples. He has a pen drive with five hundred songs. 'Punjabi, English, Hip hop, sab hain madam.'

Regular customers call him when they need him.He said, girls call much more than boys. He  makes much more money this way - atleast 1000 Rupees a day only from the autolove business. Cool no, this crazy city is. 

But 150 kilometres away, women are condemned even for wearing make up. Read this. 

Amici

Meal for two: Rs.1300

 

Amici at Khan Market is sort of an Italian Mama's kitchen meets a chic American cafe. Wooden floors and practical furniture make for a relaxing ambience. There are gorgeous black and white photographs on the walls, Italian movie posters and suddenly one of Che Guevara. (This made us wonder if we missed the point.)

We started with a pineapple, green apple and banana smoothie  ( Rs.160) which tasted like banana with sour butter milk so best avoid it but the Oreos shake (Rs.150) is rich , tasty and definitely a safer bet .

The crostini with goat cheese, walnuts and caramelized onion (Rs.200) had a nutty interesting flavour.

The wood fired pizzas are authentic and offer good value for money. Two people can share one. We had one with mascarpone, mozzarella, parmesan  and a generous sprinkle of fresh rocket leaves(Rs.350). It was excellent, thin crust and light but to my companion used to the fire of chilli chicken, a little bland, the chilli flakes gladly came to her assistance.

 The pasta with pine nuts, pesto, parmesan and peanuts (Rs.300) – a grandmother's recipe from Genoa tasted comforting and homely and as if Nonna (naani in Italian) actually stood in the kitchen and supervised every step.

We had the classic aglio olio peperoncino(Rs.260)  - garlic, olive oil and chilli flakes for the uninitiated .

Salty, sharp and garlicky, it made for a good meal except when we found a tiny piece of plastic in it which the waiter insisted was black pepper. When he realised it wasn't, he made up by offering us free Tiramisu (Rs.180)  described in the menu as the best in town and quite close to being it actually.

It had the right level of sweetness and the cream was nicely separate from the intense and bitter coffee.

All in all, a hearty Italian meal – good for a meal out with friends – the meaning of Amici in Italian after all is 'friends'.

 

 

 

 

Faces behind the Commonwealth games

Alok Gangi was resting at a construction site cordoned off from the main road by metal sheets. He was lying on the sand, amidst dug up earth and cables. It is 8 PM and he is alone in a dark puddle at bright Connaught Place. Surrounding him are circles of shining shop lights and fine dining restaurants. He jumps up when I go to him and asks ‘kya hua madam’. What happened?
Alok is one of the thousands of workers helping India get ready for the Commonwealth games.
Slight, light eyed, and handsome in a childlike way, Alok looks younger than he is. He is 17 years old and studies in 11th STD but he left his village, Bacchi Keda in Uttar Pradesh to work in Delhi for a few months. His right ear is covered with a thick bandage. He says he fell at the construction site. His supervisor, he immediately, adds, took him to the hospital and paid for all the expenses.
’I like Delhi’, he says, gushing about the large park and the bright lights at India Gate- which he says is his favourite part of Delhi.
‘But he longs for home, his mothers’ food and care – and is impatient to attend to his dream of being a ‘master’ – a teacher at the government school. ‘Right now, I have holidays but when I go back I will enrol in eleventh standard and I hope to get a job in the village’.
He makes 200 Rupees a day repairing the pavement at Connaught Place and works eleven hours a day – everyday. The money is a treasure by village standards where jobs are few for the landless.
But according to him, there is no sheen to city life, its largeness, its anonymity frightens him.
‘I live alone in a tent in East Delhi, I don’t have friends here and I don’t make the effort to make them.’
‘I went back to the village for Holi for two days but I had to miss out on my salary but it was worth it, acting silly and drinking bhang with the boys from my mohalla.’, he says , his grey green eyes crinkling as he laughed a loud bright laugh . Suddenly, he seemed more alive, somehow larger than our surroundings.

‘Dilli mein to ladkiyan bahut pyari hain’, (Girls in Delhi are very lovable) he adds, but that he will definitely marry one from his village. I ask him if he has chosen one already but he just blushes and looks away.
I ask him what he thinks about the commonwealth games that he is repairing the road for. He says he doesn’t know anything about them and that no one told him anything about it. I start talking about it but he isn’t really interested. Alok has been on the site since eight in the morning and he left home at six. He puts his aluminium dabba into a small green cloth back and gets up smiling at me, saying it was time to sleep. Tomorrow is another day and many more will pass till he can get on with his life as he imagines it.

Southern secrets

Meal for two: Rs.50

A narrow lane behind the PG men's hostel at Delhi University hides a delightful southern secret. Called PG men's' by the students it is an institution of sorts where most students have an account with the Anna who runs it.

He serves up homely South Indian fare with all the flavours right to the dot. There are the crisp masala dosas served with piping hot sambar and fresh coconut chutney (Rs.30). The soft fluffy idlies (Rs.20) make for a quick, light snack. PG mens' does a host of rice dishes as well, the spicy tomato rice is served with raita that it must be admitted has more onion than curd. The lightly seasoned curd rice (Rs.20) is a hit in the summer months.

The ambience is basic and the restaurant is demarcated by a lovely shrub fence separating the lane from the hostel. It is a no fuss joint and the service is quick but no one is pleased to serve you or anything like that. Expect to eavesdrop on jhola sporting students or boys from the hostel discussing notes photocopied from diligent students.

Obviously being the student eatery that it is, PG men's' serves the ubiquitous creative styles of maggi- egg, cheese, vegetable etc.(Rs.20) The many experimental possibilities that the humble maggi noodles offers might horrify the gourmand but the students here seem to love it and it tastes great so what's the harm?

The hygiene score would be 50% but students don't care about this so if you want to go there you have to think like one. All in all great for a quick bite of authentic, tasty South Indian food and it costs very little so if you find yourself in North Campus and craving for the flavours of the South, head here. 

Sambar by gora? Thanks, but no thanks!

Remember the time when there was talk of Sonia Gandhi becoming Prime Minister and everyone was angry about why a 5000 year old culture, a country with one billion people needs a foreign prime minister? Indians have pretty much the same attitude about food – we’ll eat all types but we don’t want the goras and the expats messing with our culinary traditions, do we?

I mean, I don’t mind.
I love it when the food boundaries splinter and you can have a khichdi that’s sort of a ‘’ non-syrupy Indian basmati risotto’’ or ‘’Gul-aam- gulab jamun with aam ki kheer’’, scallop brochettes with raw mango and black lentil khichdi.
I love it when cuisines blend like water colours ever so harmoniously. Obviously my first experiments in blending unlikely flavours began in boarding school when we’d crush boiled egg into sambar or put jam in the porridge. For a while after though, I was fated to eat only boxed cuisine like paneer butter masala and butter naan or adai with avial. There is the occasional paneer dosa, the concept of which I abhor, Schezwan idly which can be nice and since I am a pizza purist- paneer on pizza is blasphemy.

There is this fashionable vegetarian restaurant in Edinburgh – David Bann where for instance you can have Chilli with sweet potato and chocolate sauce-
A chilli of butterbean, kidney bean and tomato with roasted sweet potato and corn cake. Served with green beans, guacamole, chocolate and chilli sauce with crème fraiche
Now, in Switzerland I went to Restaurant Hirscheneck, the rebel among restaurants – the only place in Basel where you will find more than one woman with a nose stud and a long colourful skirt.
Bright, informal and loud in a welcoming way, the chefs here pick elements from Asian and European styles of cooking and come up with a different menu every day. Locals say it was a hotspot during the student protests of the 70s and 80s and it seems like a relic from that time and spirit.
But the menu is as new age globalization as ever – Sweet potatoes served with a Thai sauce and Swiss cheese. (This was divine). These two restaurants were my first experiences of creative food, of food as an art, as a representation of the world we live in where we’ve learnt to adopt each other’s cultures in some parts of our life – culinary or otherwise.
C is an expert at inventing recipes although cooking is relatively new to me.
As he says one of the yummiest ’fusion’ things he makes is a roll made of Mexican chapatti(tortilla), sugo all'arrabiata (tomato sauce with herbs and chilli) , Asiago cheese and lots of fresh rocket leaves – essentially Italian and Mexican influences. But it worked- the sharp flavour of rocket and the rich full bodied spiciness of the sauce nicely balanced by the mild cheese.
He just put these things together and it worked.
Now getting to my point about experimental Indian cooking, this article talks about why India is the toughest market for modern Indian food. A part of the reason they say is the attitude that foreigners can’t do better what we’ve been doing for hundreds of years.
We don’t want someone from Dover to reinvent Dal Makhni for us but apparently that’s what expat celebrity Chef Vineet Bhatia does in Delhi.’’ Dal Makhani that’s first scorched and then scolded in a liquid grinder into a thin, intense buttery sauce, and finally laced with truffle oil to give it shine’’ And spicy foie gras that even Bikki Oberoi admires.
There is this restaurant I remember in Belfast (out of all places) that did Indian tapas. Even I laughed. The first time I heard of Tapas is when I ate at Zara in Chennai but Indian Tapas seemed like a strange idea to me. Not anymore.


Ofcourse, only when food types accquire snob value do they make it to magazines.
Because oppossite the World Trade Centre in Cuffe Parade,Bombay, 5 enterprising men set up a makeshift stall every evening and sell the most magical invention ever - Mongolian pasta. This costs hundred bucks but we know that only South Bombay people would pay that much for street food, that is if they ever eat it at all.
Come on guys, Puritanism in food is passé.


(Photos from Tehelka)
1)Gul-aam
2)Patti aloo with beetroot khichdi
3)Roast lobster with brocolli khichdi
You might like to read about ME and the art of cooking.

Science

Explaining and defining reality only through science is like looking at the Pacific ocean through a hole in the wall and thinking what you see is what it is.

Delhi diary

 

 

Love:

Jhola look always in, colonies- not apartments ,maggi sold at the local chaiwalla,metro,queue to get into the metro,being able to order rocket leaves on pizza,

cheap sexy clothes,free Hair like events,wide roads.

 

Hate:

aggression,commonwealth rights violations.

 

Tolerate:

Heat

 

Improve:

Hindi

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paying girls to stay in school

Sam (Virendra Singh) retired as one of the top bosses at DuPont. But instead of settling down in a shiny happy American suburb, he returned to Anoopshahr, a small village in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr district, to start a girl's school that pays girls to stay in school.  

"I never did social work in my life. I was born in a feudal family and did 'macho' work all my life," says the septuagenarian founder of the Pardada Pardadi vocational school for girls.  

After 35 years in America, Sam realised he was never one of them; he was always conscious of his identity as an Indian.  

In 1984, Sam was in charge of DuPont's Virginia plant. When the Bhopal gas tragedy happened, he had the uneasy feeling that his employers would trust him less as manager of a chemical plant because he was Indian. He couldn't deal with the India that was portrayed in the West -- poor and underdeveloped. He wanted to transform that sense of shame into something productive.  

So when it was time to retire, Sam knew he wanted to go back to the village where, for generations, the women in his family weren't important enough to be mentioned in the family tree; they were invisible wombs to bring male heirs into the family. 

The literacy rate for women in rural Uttar Pradesh is 43%. In a strongly patriarchal society there is little incentive to send girls to school and, in 2000, when Sam started Pardada Pardadi, many girls were marrying at the young age of 13.   More here.

Vedanta

is a single principle, Capitalism, and teaches that the believer's goal is to transcend the limitations of human rights norms and realize capitalism's superiority over humanity.

What makes Vedanta symptomatic of mining and bigcorporate malpractices?
Vedanta is one of the worst companies I have come across but what's most shocking is that it's happening in the 21st century. This company is misleading the world with its incredible PR campaign. It is making people believe it wants to do good for the people, that it will build a university etc, but this is all fiction. Here's just one example of the kind of things they have been doing. In Bandhaguda, a place very close to their [alumina] refinery, in 2002, the company told the village that they would build a factory, give employment to everyone, displacing only one village. They have already displaced four, and I have been told that they promised one lakh rupees to those who had land titles (as you know, very few have land deeds, especially tribals) and Rs 50,000 per acre to those who had no titles in exchange for their rights, and worse, Rs 1,000 to those willing to give up their houses. One thousand rupees! That's just over $20! It's shocking. And of course they haven't given them jobs. I think there are some 57 foreigners who are running this refinery. So, in 2003, when the people in this village saw that the company had started cutting down the forests way beyond the declared area, and that all the promises made were false, they decided to demonstrate outside the construction site. About 400 people gathered — men, women and children. The police jailed all the men for seven days. When they were released, they were told they had become outcaste and needed to go to Puri to pray and redeem themselves at Lord Jagannath's temple. The state police were used alongside Vedanta company goons to forcibly take them to Puri, while they built the refinery wall. In violation of customary law, their ancestral graveyard was destroyed and the area illegally enclosed in the Vedanta compound. This meant the people could no longer go to pray. This is a serious human rights violation, and it is extraordinary that all this was done in collusion with the police and the Orissa state. All the documents I have show the collusion between the state and Vedanta. When I arrived at the Biju Patnaik airport in Bhubaneswar, I was struck by a billboard that said "Mining happiness for the people of Orissa". What a cruel irony. The aluminium refinery has brought nothing but misery, disease and impoverishment to the communities in the area, and if Vedanta's bauxite project is allowed to go ahead, it will endanger the very survival of the Kondhs.

More here.
I must link my friend's excellent piece on Vedanta here.

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Delhi Free

We went for an animal rights protest where Delhi of a certain kind turned up in Fab India pyjamas to protest the killing of stray dogs for Delhi's beloved Commonwealth games.

The goal apparently is to make dog free.(Dust free, pollution free , germ free , hunger free, DOG FREE?BEGGAR FREE?who does Sheila think she is- Jesus Christ?)

 

 

While a lot of the protest was taking indirect jibes at the commonwealth by alluding to how animals are our common wealth and talking about how all our (Hindu) Gods have

animals for transportation.Thankfully , Vinod Mehta came and stated the clear goal of the protest- against killing of strays.I am an animal fanatic who can tolerate leather, meat etc but the needless inhumane killing of sweet , lovely stray dogs? Don't give me arguments about how they are a menace.We are just sharing the world with them and have no right to kill them. Period..

 

Jaya Jaitley came and made some sense - she spoke about how we want to break perfectly okay pavements to build new ones to impress goras who will probably never

walk on it in the two week duration of the commonwealth games.India is not a sanitized country and it will never be , she said and asked why we should try to impress our colonizers and prove to them we are just like them after which she apologized for being political.

 

Yesterday , Marie and I won one of our first battles ( we've had many in the past few weeks). So, we booked tickets to watch Date Night at Select Citywalk. Since it is close to where I live, I spend an unhealthy amount of time there - I confess despite the risk of being labelled a mall rat.

 

We prebooked tickets . (500 for both of us- 5 summery skirts at Sarojini Nagar) When we reached tlhere, the guard said the mall was shut because of an internal problem.

Not satisfied with his answer, I asked him five times if there is a bomb and finally he admitted there are four.

 

Predictably, it turned out to be a hoax. When we came later in the evening, they refused to refund our tickets saying that they hadn't got approval from the corporate office  and that they could only refund it the next day.I bet they were hoping that no one would turn up to refund their tickets the next day.

We talked to like ten people before finally convincing the manager to refund us. I acted jetsetty and lied that I have an early morning flight out of Delhi.

 

So, yeah , we won.

Happy Hours

I know that is impratical to be humane when India is shining and there is a spirit of progress in the air, in a pub at Khan Market that has Happy Hours till 10 PM on a Saturday Night.
It is a bit like being a spoil sport no? IT is as if your best friend had to choose to die of cancer just when you started dating a hot rich guy with a lamborghini.
Arundhati Roy has her bullshit moments but her writing breaks up our careful layers of pretensions for me so beautifully. I just finished reading the whole of her famous essay about the ''maoist infestation'' .
I will not be academic or even factual.That is not my strength right now.
I will just try and tell a story that I invented in my head. I will try to be helpless against the the state.
Because, the first time I realised that we ( of the blogspot class) can expect anything from the state was when a Sri Lankan friend told me their state schools were excellent and free unlike ours.
You and I probably live in a house in Bombay or Bangalore or any other citadel of flickering shimmer.Any city, in any case which has supermarkets that stock deodarants or where you can get Instant Sicilian pasta sauce.
Let us say that in our apartments, the electricity fails. The bill however arrives as predictably as being burnt on a summer afternoon spent shopping for cheap export rejects in Delhi.
You can choose to not pay the bill which didn’t light up your life, you say. Remember that the Collector Sahib , friend of Chief Justice will hack your head off .
Candle lit dinners are it then.
Supermarkets open on even months for three days. Corporate employees get preference over journalists and by the time it is your turn ,most of the products are sold and you go back home with a packet of haldi , an overpriced can of Chinese stir fry sauce and a bag of jowar which by the way you don’t know how to cook.
Your job as a newspaper reporter hasn’t paid you in three months because the Minister for purification is hunting down the intellectuals and he shut the newspaper offices down so that no body will know.
The plumbing system collapses and you use your toilet to store stolen food.
You are forced to shit on the streets, your bum bared to the collector’s daughters smooth stilletoed legs.
The stench is all pervasive, it piles on top of fresh piles , sashays around your dirty stinking laundry and returns to your morning jowar dosa (or something like it) with a smirk.
You tried to complain to the Plumbing Authorities but they said that when their CEO was having a heart attack and needed medical care, all you could think of was a toilet to crap in.
They raped your sister in anger.
You’d really just like some cheese toast. There is a block of mouldy non blue amul cheese in the fridge and the cows died of an epidemic. Your brother gets prefential treatment because he is older so he eats most of the cheese.You get to eat as much as the amount of ointment needed for your pinky finger.
Imagine that your mother , grandmother, great grandmother and her mother lived this way.
Multiply the hardships and the helplessness by the biggest number you know.Add random acts of injustice liberally like balsamic vinegar in your salad.Build walls where there are questions. Clog holes with bombs that go off at the smell of rebellion.
Kill thought. Recruit compliance. Impose cultures. Flush ancestral heritage and place a steel plant.

Are you going to ask me what the point of this was? Nothing. I just wanted to break your world
a little bit. Break my world. To imagine what it takes for the poorest of the poor to be lured by a violent war against a shining new foetal super power . That's all.

NREGA: Non existent in Uttar Pradesh

I wrote this in March but didn't have some information then so here is the post preceding this one.


I went to meet the Pradhan of Garhera again today. He told me that the ones with the job cards had left. There was one man there who claimed to have a job card.

Me: So you have a job card?

Him: Yes madam

Me: What work have you got in 2010.

Him:Whatever the Pradhan asks me to do .

Me: I mean to ask what projects under the NREGA scheme meant to improve infrastructure for the village have you worked for?

Him:Made toilets and other projects

Me:what other projects?

Him:Woheee madam

I asked him to show me his job card. He said his house was far away. I said that we had a car and we would take him in our car. Then he said he was working for the Pradhan fixing things in his house.

There is no budget for the NREGA for this village according to the Pradhan.Also, remember no one wants a job card because everyone is high caste. According to this 20 households in Garhara are registered job card holders.In the year 2008-09, the budget allocated was 1,72,000 Rupees out of which 50,000 Rupees is recorded as officially having been spent. 72953 people in the Bulandhahr district are registered under NREGA according to www.nrega.nic.in. In 2008-09 , 5000 Rupees was spent on paying five workers for ten days of work each .

He however showed me one example of a job card in which no entry was made for any work done or money received supposedly because the man who owned the job card did not want to open a bank account.

A visit to a 'Below Poverty Line household'.

 

 

 

And then there are people who are 'above poverty line', but cannot afford three meals a day. Very few people have below poverty line cards and roughly 85% of them own land, a television , have an electricity connection and live in pucca houses.

Y and the art of cooking...

Cooking is an art that has evaded me for 22 odd years. When I tried, the vegetables weren’t cooked enough or it was too salty. The idea that I could convert raw material like pungent hing , red lentils or green chilies into edible substances of favourable consistency seemed magical to me.

Except when I learnt. Most human beings have the luxury of a slow progress into cooking. The first time I cooked was when I had to entertain about twenty foreigners keen to try Indian food.

Scary, right ? It gets worse.

I was looking for a beautiful place to live free in and do some work in exchange. I wrote to an eco village in Scotland. The Dutch lady who ran it had an Indian husband .She wrote back enthusiastically saying that I was welcome ‘’especially if I could prepare lovely Indian meals’’ .

I agreed. After all, I had occasionally cooked dal under heavily supervised situations. However, when I arrived I realized here is a woman who can pronounce ‘Dosha’ properly and someone who has yelled at the unsuspecting Bangladeshis running an Indian restaurant in Aberfeldy, the closest town.
As we all know, British food that is actually food basically consists of falafel, pizza and curry. Curry being a generic term for all Indian food ranging from Biryani to Utthappam. Every British town has the ubiquitous Indian restaurant. Recently, a Turkish man living in England wrote to me asking which places in my opinion are the best to research a representative version of Indian food. HE plans to open an Indian restaurant .
Anyhow, my turn to cook arrives. My partner is a British girl , aged 27, who has assisted child births in Africa and has had the babies named after her..When it came to Indian food though..She was pretty clue less. She could only help in chopping tomatoes..
I had enough time to call India and get exact instructions to make egg curry and peas pulao, the best I could manage in the forty minutes assigned to me.

At that time, making a gravy was the scariest thing in the world. I didn’t even have pureed tomatoes and I was too ‘ghati’ to know that tinned tomatoes worked as well.I didn’t know that chopped tomatoes could evolve into gravy. Clearly, blanching was as new to me as neurology will always be.

Anyhow, I managed to make enough gravy to mildly coat each boiled egg and still have some extra left.
The peas pulao wasn’t intensely flavourful or anything but that’s because the basmati in Britain ,
well, sucks..

Anyhow, most people such as the Italian who makes brilliant pizza appreciate my food with a little more than just politeness in their heart. M, who ran the place though didn’t really seem to think I was a gourmet chef . She even later refried the rice and spiced it up.
How does one estimate spice for an audience that believes roclet is spicy and achar is the same as weapons of mass destruction?

I had another chance though. When I managed along with C to make a fragrant coconut based curry, mildly spiced dal and rice..and then my cooking confidence grew enough to start a food blog only to abandon it..so I decided to repost the lone post on dear zteky.

Yum

 

 

 

 

Benares:People

 

 

 

 

Benares : People

 

 

 

 

Golden Temple

 

 

 

 

Wagah

 

 

 

Indians not allowed ...Madam

Marie and I reach Rishikesh after a nauseating but beautiful ride through the mountains overlooking the gorgeous emerald of the Ganga. We spot a couple of signboards for cottages and guest houses that we recognized from the guidebook as cheap places to stay. Marie waits downhill as I carry myself and my yellow bitchsack  of a handbag up the hill to EVERY single guest house there was.

At the first, called New Bhandari Swiss Cottage , if you please, I ask for a room and they take one look at me and say ' No rooms'. I walk up to the next one called 'New Swiss Cottage'. They refuse me.

I go to Mama guest house where a sweet Nepali waiter guides me to meet the Mama who he says will show me the room. When I meet Mama, she takes one look at me and says there are no rooms.

I can see that half their rooms are vacant. Discouraged, I walk on anyway and try THREE other places and I am refused everywhere. In my head, I am sure it is because I am Indian. I went back downhill and asked Marie to go try.

 

So, she goes up to the first place, New Bhandari ''Swiss Cottage'' and gets shown a room immediately.

I am so angry and humiliated by this point that  all I am thinking of is wanting to ''fuck their happiness''. So we go and check in anyway because of the lack of options.

 

At the reception the guy is kind of shocked to see me again with Marie and refuses to meet my eye.  I ask the guy why he lied to me about there being no vacant rooms. He tells me that Indians are not allowed. I told him that it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of nationality. He says that according to rules, he cannot take in Indians (Presumably, he allowed me because a) If I am the friend of a white person, I am safe? b) He just felt awkward about throwing me out  and risked losing Marie as a potential customer.

I continue to argue with him when he finally says ''Madam , since you insist so much , I have to tell you that these guys come from Delhi and disturb the Goras- the goras hate them.'

I am somewhat flattered to think that he believed that I had as much power as a ''bunch of guys'' from Delhi but seriously, why would I a young woman alone be a threat to his stupid Swiss cottage?

 

How can we be treated like this in our own country? Over breakfast , I tried to rationalize it wondering if those people from Delhi he talked about really caused havoc. But then, you can't generalize and I am still really angry and humiliated. What was the right way to respond? Just say that I didn't want the room or insist on my right to stay.

Blessings : On sale

Yesterday we went to see the Mansa Devi temple.She is a wish fulfilling godess and my wishful mind wanted to give this a shot. The cable cars weren't working and we had to make our way up the hill by foot in the bitchy heat and through the harsh ruthless landscape of bare grey decidous trees sometmes occupied by black face langurs sitting like fashionable ladies.

 

Marie was really confident about making it up but me after my greasy chowmein had no energy. Just when I felt I would die of dehydration, a guy stopped and offered both of us a lift on his bike.One wish fulfilled so far.

 

Anyway so we made our way up and while getting off , I burnt my legon his exhaust pipe thing (what is that long silver thing called) so much so that I have a huge burnt patch on my leg that makes me look like I am in an abusive relationship. Ok , I will not romanticize my life further.

 

We entered the temple and came to what looked like a covered slab . A priest grabbed me by the head , put tikka on my forehead and pushed me away doing the same to Marie. After we moved on , he pulled us back shouting at us for not having made a donation. He literally grabbed me by the hand and demanded money so I meekly placed a ten ruppee note on the slab. At the next deity, the same happened and by this point I was practically screaming in anger and at no one in particular about how they are begging.

 

This is the worst experience I have ever had at any religious place.

 

I like going to religious places because I am always overwhelmed by the positive energy, the faith , the sense of surrender. I like to linger in this , to try and meditate .A thinks that I am stealing from the place if I don't participate in some way.  I don't really consider myself religious. The Golden Temple is the only religious place I have been to that is both extremely famous and not commercial. http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar5.htm  . This poem by Larkin captures what  I am talking about well.

 

I will post about that soon.

 

In the evening I had a huge craving for maggi so I decided to cook it in the kitchen of the Ashram we are staying in . Awkward is too gentle a word to describe the girl in a purple dress (with jeans below for modesty) making maggi among Holy men eating their Saathvik food. I was really worried that they might find my maggi impure and come yell at me but they were really nice to me.

Once every twelve years...

the Maha Kumbh Mela happens at Haridwar and we are here for it. The Ganga Aarthi ceremony yesterday the the Hari ki pairi (Vishnu's foot print) ghat was a celebration of the faith of thousands silently harnessed by flames paying homage to the river. It really seemed to me an amazing system of organization till when the aarthi was over and all he pilgrims fought and pushed to be blessed by the flames. We just stood there in the corner trying to get photos and waited for the stampede of sorts to subside.

 

 

From Varanasi we had to make a stop at Delhi because we didn't get direct tickets to Haridwar so I had to willingly suspend disgust during the 15 hour delayed journey on the filthy train to Delhi, I drowned out the smell of sweat and raw onion with mushy hindi songs on my ipod. Despite how snobbish I sound in that sentence, I am actually comfortably in love with travelling Sleeper Class nowadays. Also , when I was a child, I did that a LOT when Indian railways had green berths and yellow lights.

 

 

We reached Delhi looking like tramps and waltzed into the Saravana Bhavan at CP. After 40 days, of endless aloo gobi and roti, I had a sublimely spiritual exprience eating idly sambar and drinking the heavenly filter coffee.

 

Ok back to Haridwar now..the Ganga here is cold, fast flowing and much cleaner than at Varanasi where it is thick , tepid and shining with fecal possibilities.The moment we arrived at the main ghat,  a man in a white kurta and pyjama with kumkum on his forehead approached us with a lecture on the significance of the ghat. We were at the spot where amrut accidentally spilled into the water and was the holiest spot in haridwar, according to  him. While I am always open to trapping free information , this guy started telling Marie that she should learn something instead of taking pictures and acting like a foriegner. By this he meant , we should pay him to do a ganga puja for us.

 

We had been there five minutes and had already met someone Lonely Planet warned us about. Anyway, we just ignored him and went to a quiet corner where there were no pilgrims and dipped our feet in the icy refreshing water.

 

 

 

 

 

Mankarnika nightmares

We have been staying at the horrid Shanti Guest house on the Mankarnika ghat - the main and most auspcious burning ghat for the Hindus. Yesterday, we were lost as usual and we ended up at the ghat up close and personal with the funeral pyres. It turned out that we had to cross them to get to our next destination. (Our hotel is not at the ghat, but near it).

It was dark except the blazing fires of the burning dead. I somehow felt so troubled being so close to it all that I couldn't sleep at night and kept having nightmares featuring Mankarnika. The name sounds so evil somehow.

 

Otherwise, it's been lovely here . We've been hogging yummy cheese at the excellent Brown Bread Bakery like silly tourists, doing Yoga and going to the temples.

The main Vishwanath temple to which Marie isn't allowed because of reasons of terrorism and Hinduism was architecturally spectacular with a golden gopuram.

 

The King of Punjab commissioned the construction of both the Golden Temple in  Amritsar and this temple so there are some similarities. However the street leading up to the temple and the temple itself feel like a war zone completely stripped of the spirituality and the sanctity that temples have. There are gun men everywhere even inside the main temple where the Shiv Lingam is. Obviously it is very crowded, and cops are pushing you around and old men behind you in line are holding on to your waist so that they don't fall in the stampede.

 

 

Just walking along the ghats , with ancient buildings in the foreground, people watching while drinking chai and navigatiing the quaint narrow alley ways of the old town

foraging for silver jewellery,hot  palak pakodas and beautiful photographs are some of the things I like about Varanasi.

 

Off to Sarnath today.

 

 

 

Theatrics at the Wagah Border

A few metres ahead is Pakistan. In India, a stampede precedes fast filling up seats to watch the Border opening ceremony

at the Attari - Wagah border near Amritsar. Indians, being the enthu cutlets that they are are jam packed in the seats. The Pakistani side is still more than half empty.

Punjabis in bling dance to patriotic songs. Girls run up and down carrying the Indian flag. The border between the 'enemies' is about to open.

 

In a display of tourist over enthusiasm - if aggression, the crowd screams 'Hindustan Zindabad'. The crowd on the other side now suddenly alive screams 'Jeeve Jeeve Pakistan'. (Long Live Pakistan).

 

The Indians boo.

 

Our soldiers open the border , go across and shake hands rather violently with our Paki pals. The crowds on both sides are competing on who can out do each other in their cheers and their loud music.

 

I suggest to my friend that maybe I should scream 'Jeeve Jeeve Pakistan'. She looks at me with immense regret for ever having befriended me.I assured her that it was academic interest in the consequences but she told me sensibly that academic interests shouldn't be fatal.

 

 

Above, a few parakeets,my favourite animals in the world flew screeching across unaware of the mayhem below.

 

And then we sat on a roadside dhaba and ate the best maggi on earth with hot sweet milky chai.

 

Pictures and posts on The gorgeous Golden Temple coming up.

Benares

Intense.Overwhelming.Peaceful and everything else that has been said
about Benares before but i beg you - Do not listen to Lonely Planet
whose pick of all budget hotels was Shanti Guest House which is
inaccessable by any relatively modern means of transport such as the
cycle rickshaw.My paapa foot had to be dragged through narrow streets
jammed by cows , piligrims and the journey to the damn guest house
took half an hour. Only to meet lots of other white people who
suffered in similar ways.

Anyway,we took the boat ride across all the ghats yesterday which was
really beautiful.Marie thinksVAranasi is somewhere between a morbid Venice and Las Vegas!

We stopped and watched the evening prayer from what
our charming boatman Sanjay assured us was a VIP position. The Aarti
was a stunning aesthetic display with dressed up Bramhin priests
singing in vibrant voices silencing the thronging crowds around. There
was a sense of surrender.

Sometimes I long to belong to some religion. I made a wish and placed
my parcel of flowers and a diya to float away in the black of the
Ganga which is now so polluted that apparently even the dolphins are
blind.

I followed my diya till it was out of my sight and still burning bright.

--

The Polyester girl

My sense of dressing is best described as Bohemian tramp chic. I have been dying to invest in the village belle look because of many reasons only one of them being Vidya Balan's ethearalising the polyester sari in Ishqiya.  Ishqiya by the way is  a movie I despise except for Vidya Balan's hotness and that song 'Dil to baccha hain ji'.  Maybe I am bitter because the Hindi was too complex.

This village is very much like the one portrayed in the film. Today I finally got around to buying some beautiful polyester(Georgette, crepe, it's all the same no)  material and getting my new friend Preeti to come with me to the tailor and prescribe the village belle look, polyester, semi Patiala et al.

Now the polyester Salwar Kameez is a loaded word among the average breed of bitchy big city women. In my distant youth, I took a French class. A girl in French class asked me what my mother tongue is. I told her that I am a Tamilian. She was like 'No , you don't look like a Tamilian.' 'Tamilians means bindi, oiled hair ....''. She made the worst face ever.

I have the most Tamil looks ever if there is something like that and I love all the stereotypes – jasmine flowers, vibrant Kancheepuram saris, three stone diamond nose studs, Chettinad cotton saris. The Polyester kurta  ( we are getting back to the point) has also somehow been associated with this stereotype.

 

Ok so I bought this cloth.

Deep down I am a true consumerist. I imagined a chic summery look, reinvention of the Patiala trousers – the artsy fartsy element can be added with my jhumkas and the corporate element with my watch. Gorgeous deep brown joothis will add some class to the whole outfit ...and a foxy babe hair cut  will make it very urban( I stole this appalling phrase from Shoba De's generalization of Bangalore girls..!!!) . And weren't floral patialas really in sometime back?

 

I 'modelled' (basically my friend works there and in his words, he needed a hanger for his clothes) for fab India once when they were launching the UK based brand 'East'. East is ajji/aunty/behenji polyesteresque long gowns, lose pants and shapeless potato sack tops.

 

At this event, all these socialite  women came  and admired these clothes garnishing the gentle Bangalore breeze with words like summery, refreshing, floral, smart etc.

 

Maybe that's also where I copied this from but I hope it doesn't die in the corner of my cupboard with all the other ''deviant'' clothes I bought including a Singapore Airlines air hostess costume from 2000. Would you rather I blogged about NREGA?

The fall of the sparrow

I remember birds because I was at Rishi Valley . I forgot them for a while till I came to Anoopshahr where birds burst in many colours from the wheat fields and the trees. Parakeets, hoopoes, drongoes, kingfishers, sun birds, sparrows, peacocks dancing on any random dusty Tuesday afternoon. Sparrows are dying. Can you build a bird feeder in your balcony?

Today is House Sparrow day. Do you remember birds?

Of made up women and women who made my day

(Pictures at Sunai when parents protested children being hit at school)
Yesterday we went to the Sunai village to find out why all students from the village were absent. It turned out that all the parents were upset that one of the teachers was always hitting children sometimes so hard that it resulted in minor injuries. I know that hitting kids in school is pretty commonplace.When I joined in class 6 the school I would pass out from the incentive was ''no exams, no one hits you and no uniforms''.

The parents started screaming at the community mobilizers Neeta and Deepak who tactfully calmed them down by saying they were on the parents' side. They urged the parents to go to school and complain.

 

The parents also said that this teacher made the muslim students stand up on the bus when a Hindu student didn't have a seat. The Sunai village is predominantly a muslim one and the whole village predictably gathered demanding to know why a school that doesn't believe in caste/religion allowed this to  happen. Obviously ideologically it doesn't but it is impossible to completely remove it from the minds of all the local students and teachers over such a short span of time (10 years).

 

 

Interestingly, the muslim parents also said that they trusted this school so much that they sent even their older daughters(Class 6 to Class 10) to school- something they don't do otherwise. However they didn't approve of the fact that this 'beating teacher ' put on make up in the bus while accompanying kids to school on the bus. They asked first of all why she didn't know how to treat children and what sort of a mother she was. We told her that the teacher was unmarried. Then they asked why unmarried women should wear make up and essentially began to assassinate her character. The community mobilizer explained to me later that it was unacceptable for unmarried women to wear make up.

 

Obviously this woman has to face the consequence of violating the school's policy against hitting children but it makes me sad that ultimately the questions asked about her or fingers pointed at her all relate to her sexuality or her future role as a mother.

 

I told CQ about this and he was like (insert American accent ) ''Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan , single women have to wear make up coz they have to get a husband ...it's only married women who don't...''

 

I had to guide him gently from the sex and the city Manhattan of his imagination and habitation to this world.

 

I also met Mamta who has four kids and an absent migrant labourer husband who never sends money .Mamta lives in a small clean one room house with a yard in front plastered with cow dung.  She makes money by tailoring and is hoping to get a job at the school. A) She was so beautiful man ..I couldn't believe she had four kids with her super model body and all.

B) She was basically way below poverty line but she was so spirited and bright and smiley and confident and enterprising that it made my day. C) She charges fifty rupees for stitching a Salwar Kameez. My friend Panty Padmashree( original nick name) who now lives in Miami would pay $$$$$%@@@ times the price for that service in Bangalore.

Also there is this American volunteer who came with me. Mamta offered us water and the volunteer was asking me if it was safe to drink. I don't usually drink the water in the village because it's made me sick before.Chai and fod is fine - I usually have thirty cups of Chai a day. Mamta thought that he was asking about her caste before he could drink the water.

 

This crushed my heart soo badly ..I was feeling so paaapa for her. ( Should I start blogging in English or is this fine?)

 

She said that she was going to educate her daughters for sure because she couldn't afford  a dowry. I told her that maybe an education itself is a dowry.Actually I was quite proud of that line. A lot of times, I can't think fast enough in Hindi to say exactly what I want to say so I feel really inadequate because there is so much I lose out on .

 

Apparently the cheapest dowry here is 50,000 Rupees and it can go up to four lakhs. Her monthly income is 1500 Rupees and she has three daughters.

We are the purest of them all

 

 

We were driving to Garhera, described as the worst village in the surrounding areas. Mr D Singh (DS) who is driving the car tells me that all one caste villages tend to be filthy

because no one is less equal to another.

I ask him what he means. He tells me that Garhera is a village where only Thakurs live. No one wants to stoop down to the level of cleaning the streets.

Enter their houses and be assured that everything is spic and span.Almost everyone in the village owns land- something unique in this area.

Yet, on the outside, the squalor is comparable to that of an urban slum, to the worst of slums.

 

I was to meet the Pradhan.He was sleeping on a charpoy, barechested, wearing only a towel when I arrived.He woke up and ordered for chai .

I made lots of polite conversation and finally asked him about NREGA and about how many people had job cards. He said that this is a high caste village and  no one needed a job card here. I asked him what projects were in progress under the scheme.He said pond construction and the making of pucca structures for the borewells was on the cards.

 

I asked him if I could see these. He said that it was hard to get labourers in the village again emphasizing that high caste people didn't do such work.

 

 

It occurred to me  that in this village of filth , of black stinking water lining every street with houses with grand macho gates , a sense of greatness ran in the blood of its citizen any evidence of which was absent in any tangible form. The ancient delusion of caste superiority desecrated the streets. (Do I sound condescending, sarcastic, angry..? I think I am.Angry.)

 

One of the Pradhan's points taken though. Villages with a high SC population get more funds and privileges under Mayavati's government.

 

 

All the village Pradhans had to contribute 5000 Rupees each for Mayavati's birthday celebrations and 1000 Rupees from the village's ration account share.

 

Let's think about the structures we create man coz if they suck, it's gonna take generations to get rid of them.!That's just how profound I can be right now..

 

 

 

Long and winding roads

 

 

Yesterday, we went for the birthday party of one of the teachers daughers.I like that anoopshahr has both the charm of the village and some of the comforts of a small town but it isn't dismal in a way that a lot of small towns are.

 

The  winding roads lined by gorgeous old houses all roads leading to the Ganga .

Anyhow the birthday party had yummy food, cute kids and it was just really great.

 

Alhough on the way back we were squeezed on a rickshaw travelling in the dark through pot holed streets and I felt like my relationship to gravity was very tentative.

 

Random thought that I woke up with...blame the terrible hangover if you want..but

I wish I could leash my restlessness to the goal post of reality and stay put.

 

 

The sanctity of things

Watching women do the Aaarti to the Ganga is a humbling experience.It's that little bit of Hinduism that is still holding on to a past where our ancestors worshipped the forces of nature, to whom it even occured that a river is sacred .

 

What has happened to the Ganga at Varanasi or elsewhere is an ancient form of corporatization of worship.

In Anoopshahr , it is still only the locals who walk down from their homes and pray to the river, the water is still clean and being on the only boat in the gorgeous sugarcane juice like water is a spiritual experience with the soothing rhythm of the oars and the water.

 

IT's my favourite thing to do here.

 ''To divide anything into what should be and what is, is the most deceptive way of dealing with life.'' Jiddu Krishnamurthi

 

that's a thought i am thinking about now.

 

 

If

Vodafone can reach a forgotten corner of Uttar Pradesh , why can't development is a question I have had about development for a long time.