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!!

Difference

Youth is a happy time
Oodles of Freshness,
Confidence in gallons
The desire to take the world in stride...
All these we know and more.
But what if sita likes to laze around?
What if she shells herself in the anticipated loss of the present?
What if her concerns are more with transience of youth?
Will u then take up the right to ridicule her!
The liberty to odd her out!
And thrust upon her the ignominy of being ignored?

Women's Day!

As I pondered over the content of my long delayed first blog post, we reached another Women’s Day and I thought why not use this day as a platform to launch my blog? Then I started thinking in the clichéd terms, why a women’s day; Why not a human day? I can give numerous arguments for this and you can give me numerous against but still the fact remains a fact. Women are still the Second Sex as Simone De Beauvoir claimed in her much acclaimed book years ago. But why is this so?

A simple question from my six year old son triggered a chain of thoughts in my mind. Having a fight during one of the playing sessions with one of his friends who happens to be a girl of his age, he came complaining to me, “mama, why should she want to be the king? She has to be the princess and I will save her from the demons”. I was shocked! Was this nineteenth century and was I in the world of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales? Girls can very well save themselves and become rulers too – I tried reasoning with my little one. But to my dismay pat comes the reply, but I have never seen such a thing in TV!!

True, I thought as I tried tracing in my mind all the episodes of Chhota Bheem, Doraemon, Ninja Hatauri, Krishna and Balaram, Roll No 21, Bal Hanuman, and so many more that I have watched with him. None of these portray girls with any capacity to be either a protector or even a survivor. They always need a ‘knight in shining Armour’ to come and rescue them. No wonder, these kids, though growing up in the 21^st century are still fed on the beliefs which are centuries old. Or are they? I mean are the beliefs really centuries old or they are very much a part of our everyday life? Worse for these kids, they find a big gap between the real world and the make-belief world of television which they believe to be true; because today’s world fortunately has a substantial number of women making socioeconomic contributions though the small screen or the celluloid world rarely represent them.

Even the commercials which feature children are full of super-achievers most of whom are boys with a marginal representation of girls. Think of all those health drink advertisements or those of school stationery like pencils, etc. Even though I wrecked my brain I could not come up with a proper reason behind this except the fact that all these commercials and television serials were playing safe by continuing the stereotypes. They did not want to hazard their TRP or other determinants of their commercial success by venturing out of the existing norm. Is this then a result of the completely profit-oriented corporate culture that has pervaded throughout the world? Perhaps there were other factors too.

One reason could also be the transitory stage in which our society seemed to be in today. Our generation of females probably has changed lot more than the males. Before you leap to get at my throat, just ponder and think for a minute. Increase in the percentage of educated or career oriented women, changing job scenario, inflation, craving for a higher life-style, lucrative cushion of the double-income system, all these and more have made our men concede to women’s working and also look for working women in marriage market but how much have they prepared themselves to share the domestic responsibilities? Why do women still feel guilty of not being able to be a proper homemaker in spite of having a challenging career? Why, in most cases, she has to sacrifice and play the second fiddle to her husband’s prospering career in spite of being equally, if not more, capable?

So what kind of role models are our children getting in their parents? Over anxious mothers always under guilt trip of neglecting the home front and fathers still confused about their roles towards their wards! Add to this the grossly lop-sided gender representation in the virtual world. If this is what our children’s minds are fed with, coupled with some parental and grand parental advice to boys such as – don’t cry like a girl, don’t sit in the house like a girl; or to girls like – decent girls do not shout or do not go out after dark, etc, etc then of course we cannot ever come out of a society free from gender bias.

Well but I am not complaining. I belong to the hopeful lot. I think we as women have fared quite well over generations and will continue to do so. But it is time now that we teach our children the true balance of gender roles. If that can be done, we can be more secure of our future and leave a better world for both our daughters as well as our sons. And probably dream of a more peaceful old age too!!