Reconstructing childhood

The world suddenly is so ruthless. It always was, but now, increasingly, devastations are becoming rule of the day. Flood, earthquakes, accidents, terror attacks – the daily staple of all news agencies, is enough to fill the mind with horror. Inadvertently I seek recluse in the peace of our childhood and adolescent days when the world at least appeared more livable.

The place where you spend your childhood probably has the most lasting impression on your personality. Gomia – the place where I have spent just sixteen years of my life holds a special place in my memory. It is a place perhaps unique on the map and a place that has come a long way. But its journey across time is a story for some other times; to my mind it still remains that intriguing little township that I had left behind in the late 1990s, apparently dormant, but with a strong positive energy. It held variety not just topographically but also linguistically. In fact, it won’t be an exaggeration to call it a microcosmic representation of India. Located in the Giridih district of Bihar, and later in the Bokaro district of Jharkhand, after the state was born, it is nestled between two rivulets, surrounded by a range of hillocks with a rich diversity of flora and fauna. A part of the Chhotanagpur plateau, Gomia is well endowed in terms of topographic and natural diversity. Culturally, it had a vibrant and thriving community comprising of representatives of almost all the states of the country. So probably we grew up in a climate of cultural amalgamation and not alienation. This I think had a lasting effect on our psyche, which is why Gomians in any part of the world can instantly relate to each other, so what if they had never even met there!

The point of unity for the township was the factory – the ICI Explosives Limited, initially an Indo-British joint enterprise, called IEL or the Indian Explosives Limited, established around 1956. The township had grown around it and strangely, the factory had a very authoritative presence in the everyday life of this community. It seemed to regulate every movement of the residents there. The timely sirens emanating from the factory, signifying the change in the shift of the factory employees, peculiarly came to symbolize the schedule of an everyday life in Gomia. It marked the beginning and ending hours of the school in the day, time for children to go out to play in the afternoon, time for dinner and time to bed at night and time to wake up early in the morning. Our parents would tell us to wait for the afternoon siren of five o’clock before we rushed out to play. When the 12 noon siren was blown, the women would gear up for the family lunch as it meant lunch break for their office going husbands who generally returned home for a meal and a short siesta. By 1:30, the warning signal reverberated in the airs of the township, asking those employees to rejoin their office by 2pm. The 1:30 signal also signified homecoming for the school children as the school got over by 1:15.

The school was another interesting feature of that society. Continuously crisscrossing its path with the inhabitants on a daily basis, but lacking in the infrastructural advantages of the urban ones, the school was able to inculcate in its students a hunger for success. Success, not exactly in the material sense of the world; but albeit as a drive to make it well in the world. With a sprawling campus in the folds of nature, the school had the amenities of modern education – library, laboratories, a big playground, pure drinking water, proper toilet facilities, a cheap store cum book shop, etc, etc. yet in an indescribable manner, to me, it seemed to exist in vacuum, not in continuum with the rest of the world. I still find it an enigma as to how could so many of us from such a remote locality could comfortably grab a place the real world of cut throat competition and cutting edge dynamism.

Gomia, interestingly, believed in the singularity of existence – which is why there was a single housing estate, a single hospital, one English medium school, one club with its pool and badminton court, one recreational centre and one rifle shooting club too. Oh yes, there was also one guesthouse, later very popular among the student community, but that will be something to talk about in another time and another blog. Well this point of singularity forced the small population of this town to coexist and there emerged an interesting medley of divergent cultures. Religion had its place too – a Shiva temple, a church, a masjid and a gurudwara – all had their place of pride in the community. A pride which is rare in this world – a pride of peaceful co-existence.

It was a world remote in the true sense of the word. The rest of the world did not have much impact on that quaint little township of the Chhotanagpur plateau though winds of change had slowly started gaining motion by the time we left that place, a couple of years before the change of the millennium. Actually, there was a tenuous connection with the world outside – constantly its young population kept migrating outwards in search of greener pastures and kept revisiting at least as long as their parents' stayed there. Ironically, it was not a place where we had ever dreamt of making a career, yet it is a place almost sacred in most of our hearts. Probably nostalgia, a sense of the impossibility of return and truant memory has invested that place with a good amount of utopian quality as reflected in my writing here. Yet in today’s extremely fragmented and disillusioned world, it seems to be the only recluse for my perturbed heart and mind; even if to others it appears to be a myth created out of my overworked, nostalgic brain.

Bonding and Bondages

Phone calls were now very infrequent. Meetings even more so. Yet, the presence of each other in their lives was constant. Riza, appropriated from Rishani, knew that there were some shoulders on which she could cry unabashed and unquestioned and that is why when her life reached the crisis she straightaway took a train to Delhi. For her Delhi is where heart is. A phone call, few clothes hurriedly dumped into the rucksack along with some essential documents, her wallet, a ticket in Tatkal quota and she was off.

Shivani hurried to finish her office chores. She had to be in time to receive Riza from the station. Sill, short for Shalini, got caught in her own domestic tangles in the last minute and could not go to the station herself. Shina or Shivani was going alone. She missed her friend’s company and her reassuring presence. Shina herself was quite tensed thinking how she would handle Riza, so heartbroken, so despondent she had seemed over the phone. Shina could have done with some company. But that is what life is these days.

Sill required some quick thinking. She knew she could not antagonize her husband now of all the times that she has her best friend coming over. She did not want her friend to get caught in their own domestic cacophony that tended to erupt at all times. She knew Riza was completely shattered by her own experience and at least for the time being she should not be burdened with anything more.

Sill often thought of the women in her life, and men. Life had been generous in bestowing her with friends. She thought of her short stint in the college, her colleagues, her principal – a strong woman of convinctions in her middle ages. That lady had been the strongest influence in her life. In spite of all the clichés in her life – a love marriage gone wrong, a career compromised for motherhood, an insensitive husband and boring domestic chores; there was one cliché she could reject with conviction – that a woman was another woman’s worst enemy. She still thought of the last day meeting she had with the principal. That lady tried her best to convince Sill that leaving job was not an option, especially since her job allowed her with enough time for the family. Perhaps the older one had sensed right then with her experience and intuition that this young, bright assistant professor of her college cannot remain content without her job for long. But just like once her new found love had; now her newly acquired motherhood blurred her discerning capacities. Even her mother-in-law, another woman whose prudence she had learnt to respect with time, had warned her against it. But that was the time when she bloated in a sense of self-sacrifice that motherhood demands. She had probably and perhaps wrongfully expected Rajan to stop her from doing it. And that was where she felt betrayed. Rajan did not stop her, instead said she was free to take whatever decision suited her, he will take care of the family. Was her ego hurt then? She still does not understand.

It was noon and though she had managed to coax Rajan into picking up their daughter home from school since he was working from home that day, he opted out of the chore this morning, excusing himself on the pretext of some emergency conference call. Sill was infuriated. She knew it was a ruse he was making simply to get her worked up. Previously she would have reacted differently. By now she had learnt to keep her moods under control. So instead of getting into useless arguments reminding him of his family obligations, she followed a simpler path of picking up her mobile and getting through Shina. Unmarried still as she approached forty, Shina was often the last minute answer to many of her female friends’ distress calls. And Riza was special.

Shina hurried to finish her full day tasks in half a day even as she thanked her stars for sparing her a male companion for the rest of her life. She had her own demons of loneliness to slay, thoughts of dying alone in her old age, completely unattended, often snatched away her night’s sleep. But she had her means of dealing with them too. She had never viewed marriage through rosy glasses and has become even more skeptic as she saw her best friends drag through their matrimonial existences. What was it, she often thought, that made our parents click and what is it that we lack today. Was it actually what the elders say about this generation – lack of adaptability and self control? Or was it something else? That she herself was an outsider to this institution made her a detached and objective observer. Yet she often found herself to be at a loss. She had common friends marrying each other and she had friends opting for the marriages fixed by their parents. She had heard tales of agony from friends of both genders and she had tried her best to reach an understanding of the situations.

She shook herself out of her thoughts, quickly sent the last of the mails, shut down her laptop and rushed out of her office. She was looking forward to meet Riza after years, though not in the best of times. Memories tumbled one after the other as she approached New Delhi Railway station.

She knew Rajan – a passionate photographer and brilliant student of economics since their student days. Both he and Sill were brilliant in their respective fields. Their attraction for each other had stemmed largely from their mutual respect and their similar interests. Sill being a student in Sociology and he of Economics, both had dreamt of undertaking joint research projects since their post graduation days in the university. But then came marriage in between and overtook all their other areas of interest. Madly in love with each other, both went against their parents to get married and then took up jobs that took them away from their dream careers. When Shreya was about to be born Sill took the decision that still drives Shina mad. Sill chucked her job to be a full time mummy. And problems were born. Rajan’s office engagements grew and he started devoting more time towards his career in order to earn a comfortable living. With the cushion of double income gone, he had to exert himself more. Then he had his photography – a passion that predates Sill. That further ate into their family time. Sill became more and more exasperated with her status as a homemaker which had no need for her academic excellence. Rajan’s promotions made her happy but at the same time made her feel the loss of her career all the more. Being the typical male Rajan was happy in his own world, quite insensitive to his wife’s agony and Sill, the true Indian wife, did not bother to talk it out with her husband. They started drifting apart. Both were engulfed in the circles they had created around themselves and silently blamed the other for incompetence and insensitivity. Initially the cracks in the relationship were latent. Gradually, as time elapsed, they grew more irritable with each other and fissures started appearing on the surface and now, both are happier when the other is not around.

Shina sighed. And her thoughts went back to Riza – the bubbliest one among the entire group. She knew how to be happy, how to live life. And now? Shina flinched at the thought of seeing a heartbroken Riza. Shina had warned Riza against settling for arranged marriage. She knew that her friend was not set for the kind of compromises that such a relationship required. Yet she went ahead, adventurous as usual, with a love for the unknown. Proving all her fears to be untrue, they were extremely compatible right from the day one of their relationship. Shlok was caring, considerate, broadminded, well-employed etc, and etc. It was like a fairytale. But fairy tales have witches and demons too. Shlok had hidden the fact that he was incapable of carrying on a normal conjugal life. He had married Riza simply to retain all the semblances of a normal heterosexual middleclass individual. And he felt guilty about it too. His guilt made him pamper Riza initially to all the goodies of an extravagant lifestyle much beyond what his actual pocket allowed and it took Riza some time to grasp the reality. When the financial burden started proving heavier than he could handle, his pampering gave way to tortures. He would shout at the smallest pretext, call her names and lately had even taken to hurt her. Riza was confused. She had her career to fall back upon. She could do without a child as that, she thought, might put a brake on her flourishing career. But there were times when the lack of physical bonding left her restless, dissatisfied and infuriated. She writhed in agony at the duplicity of her husband. She could not stand being cheated upon. Though she felt bad for Shlok initially, that feeling gradually subsided as his tortures increased. Then one night she decided to call it quits. She simply left that house next morning and boarded the train, not even leaving a note for Shlok.

Shina checked her watch. She was just on time to see Riza stepping down the train. She looked war-weathered. As they hugged each other, their eyes moistened.

Few hours later, as the trio sat on Sil’s terrace sipping into freshly brewed coffee, life seemed to have come a full circle for each of them. They drew strength from each other and looked into the horizon full of possibilities.  

Violence – the latest superhero!!

Being a mother of a six year old child, I have developed a habit of peeping into the television set every now and then during my child’s extremely rationed viewing hours. This of course has also led me to ban quite a number of cartoon shows on account of them being too violent or showing contents unfit to be watched by the children of this age. In my blog on Woman’s Day, I had voiced my concerns regarding on-screen gender representation in these cartoon shows but since then I have discovered quite a number of girl-centric plots which are currently becoming popular. The Barbie shows in the Cartoon Network often retell a number of old fairy tales but in different and more woman-centric settings. The new plots which they bring in are often drawn from similar Fairy Tale classics but what is interesting in these is that here the action revolves around Barbie, the female protagonist. The ‘Winx Club’ also is a story of a group of fairies and a girl from earth who studied magic in a school for fairies and their effort to save the world from the destruction and domination by the evil force of Valtor. These shows are far and fewer as compared to the shows portraying the boy-hero, nevertheless they are like the silver lining of the clouds, a pointer to the fact that we as a society are gradually accepting girls as self-dependent individuals capable of taking charge of situations and not the mere damsel-in-distress waiting for her saviour knight.

Yet the television shows for children, particularly the animation serials once again, continue to disturb me. Their increasingly violent content leaves me baffled and perturbed. I remember our childhood videos of spider-man, super-man, he-man and bat-man. They of course contained actions but those were quite simplistic in their good-wins-over-evil formula. These very superheroes nowadays deal with evil extremely complex and dark in nature. Added to them are the Power-ranger Series, and the more recent Ben-ten as well as the 'Winx Club'. Surprisingly, even the Tom and Jerry shows which consisted of the straightforward cat and mouse chases have added a generous amount of dark complexities in a number of its movies.

 What disturbs me is their target audience. Studies on child behavior have stressed time and again about the impressionable mind of children which requires special and careful nurturing and the lasting effect of childhood visuals on their behaviour. They often believe in the virtual world, accepting them in their face values. Then by exposing our children to such violence in terms of save-the-world movies, aren’t we inadvertently accepting such mindless violence as a way of life and encouraging our children to do the same?

As a mother I feel concerned regarding such rampant violence on kids’ television. I try to shield my child from such programmes and steer him towards cleaner and educative plots like ‘The Little Einsteins’ or ‘The Octonauts’ or simple humour and wit of ‘Akbar and Birbal’. Yet the concern remains. With so many television animation series in kids’ channels focusing on violence as the only solution, it is difficult to keep children out of their almost pervasive influence.  

Red is my Colour!

Each time I picked up my brush

To paint her smile pink,

 It changed to red.

I tried and tried; repeating my efforts.

And I kept failing.

Then I asked that face on my canvas,

Why do you thwart my attempt?

She said:

Red is my colour.

When you assault me, red is my pain

When I recover, red is my spirit

When I see pain, red are my tears,

When I achieve, red is my power.

Human blood flows through my veins.

And that oozes out

When you strike me time and again.

Red is my shame.

I am ashamed -

That I share my humanity with you.

You, who are my friend, my brother, my uncle, my father

That stranger or that lover.

You, whose hands grope for that slightest pretext

Or my slacking vigilance.

You who in so many guises and so many forms

Down the pages of History

Have perfected that one weapon of violating us.

For you I have only one shade:

Red:

Red, forever the colour of my Courage.

Of kadhi and friends!

Whenever I plan to make kadhi chawal, probably the commonest and most popular of North Indian dishes, I am deluged by memories. Memories sweet and spicy – memories of endless nights of chatting, gossips, that lets-take-on-the-world-attitude, midnight cooking, group studies with mandatory coffee breaks, hanging over the balcony for hours, quarrels and the patch ups… so much and more. And I get transported to a time some fifteen odd years back, memories still vibrant in their various colours.

Well you have every right to wonder what has that kadhi got to do with any of these and my answer is – everything.

I was just eighteen when I started from an innocuous little township called Gomia and reached the capital city of the country. Well I was not alone to undertake this journey; in fact we travelled in hordes as, in spite of an excellent schooling system, there was not any provision for further studies there. So we packed our bags and chugged into some bigger cities of the country. Yes chugged only because flying was or still is not an option in Gomia. But for each of us it was, I am sure, more than a journey. It was the first step out of that safe cocoon called Gomia, first step towards independence, first rendezvous with a world already moved far ahead than how we had known it to be and probably lot more.

 Gomia is an interesting place with representatives from almost all parts of the country. We had Kashmiris, Punjabis, Gujaratis, Marwaris, Kannads, Telugus, Malayalis, Tamils, Marathis and of course the neighbouring 3eBengalis, Biharis and Oriyas and more. So right from the beginning we had an exposure to the homemade specialities of various cuisines from our time to time forays into our friends’ house. As we dug our teeth into various delicacies, our mothers exchanged recipes and of course there often came out some interesting fusion cuisine at times.

I know you are still wondering about that special link between kadhi and friends and here I come to it. Now in spite of the culinary diversities of my childhood, somehow this kadhi kept eluding me for the first eighteen years of my life! Its only when I reached Delhi and found myself sharing my room in the PG with another girl from Bihar did I get a taste of it. Even at that time when we were just in the first year  of college, she was a wonderful cook and our ready reckoner for any Bihari recipe. With her I was re-introduced to the authentic Bihari cuisine and even learnt a lot… in fact, she was the one to teach me the very difficult art of making round chapattis.

And yes you guess it right; she was the one who introduced me to the sharp, tangy-smooth taste of kadhis!! Whenever she made kadhi, we had an extended lunch session with friends in PG often continuing for hours. We would talk of studies to politics to movies to our future to god knows what, all the while relishing and praising our own culinary skills. And so kadhi chawal became not just a meal but a pretext of long chatting sessions (not that we actually required any pretext for that).

Today, in a different place, time and scenario, and after a long time I once again thought of making kadhi and found my mind sifting through the pictures of past. It brought to my mind those days of carefree camaraderie, positive energy, small and simple pleasures and a lot more. But I also realized that though I could recall even the minutest details of those years,I had forgotten the recipe completely. My family not being the kadhi lover types, I did not try making this for a long time. And lo! It has got shifted to some irretrievable stack of my mind. That did not of course deter me from my plan. It just took a phone call and there she was – our madam ready-reckoner, ready with her recipe! So once again, I jumped back to my kadhi making mission, and once again abandoned myself to those years which had paved and cemented our bonds of friendship so strong that it still is intact across the deterring parameters of time and space.

And finally the kadhi was complete!!