E is for ESL (English as a second language)

Shekhawati, Rajasthan, 2014

A six year old is bossing her friends and siblings to sit cross-legged on a chatai (mat) in a cool corner of her grandfather's garden. To the left of this corner is the old shed with its greyish greenish tin roof and to its right--the voluptuous grape vine, hanging heavy with dark green bunches of young grapes. The six year old is behaving just like her grade teacher does with one hand on her hip and the other moving across a blackboard that exists only in the collective imagination of the pretend teacher and her not so willing pretend students. The six year old knows she will  be a teacher when she grows up.

That she'll end up as an ESL teacher, teaching adults in the Arabian Gulf, wouldn't have occurred to her in a million years.

Well, she did. Yes, it's me:) I wasn't a pleasant didi (older sister) at all--if memory serves me right.

Four plus years of teaching the language I love to students who've shown me the warmth, humour, charm and kindness of Qataris has fortified my belief that humans from different backgrounds, cultures, countries, religions, race and gender are all the same. We all have the same needs: to be loved, to be appreciated, to be understood and to live peacefully.

I may have taught them what an adjective is and that in English we put it before the noun, unlike Arabic, where it follows the noun (so old airport becomes Matar Qadeem - airport old) but they opened my heart to a culture I'd only heard of (second or third hand) from friends and visitors.

Unless we talk and exchange ideas, our understanding of another culture is based on our preconceived notions, media images and the news. I've been pleasantly surprised by my students- men dressed in pristine white thobs and women clad in black abayas.

My female students showed me how independent they are. Many choose to stay single and wait for the right life partner instead of settling for the sake of it. Divorce is not taboo. Married women rule at home, just like they do in India and in England. Married men complain about how much their wives spend on shopping, just like the rest of the married men in the rest of the world. Single men have to save money to be able to find a bride (not like in some families in India, where the parents of a baby girl start mustering together dowry from the day she's born). Single girls sometimes spend an entire month's salary on ONE handbag and then wait for the next pay day!

The topic was food. The students were learning new food vocabulary-- we were looking at 'dairy'. A student put his hand up and asked,

'Cheesus, teacher...What food cheesus? Say cheesus...cheesus...in Hollywood film...many, many times.'

'Cheesus?'I asked, puzzled and perplexed.

Moments of pondering and wondering later, it dawned, 'Do you mean Jesus?'

Lessons are peppered with funny moments like this one. Humour comes easily to the Qataris.

A friend of mine was teaching an intro level class; these students know only the alphabet and just a few words of English.

"It's odd, he keeps saying moustache in class. Apart from 'my name is...', and 'good morning', that's the only word he says." shared my friend in the staff room one day.

Both of us did a quick upper lip check for each other to be sure. No, nothing there.

Almost a month later, she found out that one of her stronger students had taught this gentleman that the English word for an 'eraser' is 'moustache'.

I quit my job this year to focus on my writing. I miss the energy and warmth of my students. I miss how some of them would tell me proudly that they were now able to help their children with their English homework or order their meal in a restaurant and not use any Arabic. I miss the pride in their eyes when they scored an 'Excellent' grade. I miss how a thirty-three year old police officer would show the smiley face I'd drawn on his writing practice to his classmate sitting next to him and how his twenty year old coast guard partner would then ask me for one, too. I miss that.  ESL games brought out the innocent child in these men of rank. They fought, tripped each other, cheated, laughed, made fun of the losing team and talked about their win in extremely loud voices over cups of karak at break-time. Lieutenants and Warrant Officers became like any other learners and students I've come across in my teaching career -- willing to give it their best shot.

 I miss the hugs my female students gave me. I miss the teasing, the sharing and the learning.

But most of all, I miss my unlearning -- unlearning the notions I'd grown up with about men in thobs and women in abayas.

Thank you ESL for this unlearning. One day, Inshallah! I may go back to teach and unlearn some more.

My last batch of students -- on a field trip.

I'm wearing an abaya and my students are all in thobs.

A birthday surprise organized by a class of ladies:
the letters on the right are their initials.

D is for Doha

I live in Doha. I've lived here for over six years and I have never written about it.

Why?

I guess, the simple answer is that I've never felt at 'home' here. Our decision to move to Doha was made purely on economic grounds: to save up and leave once enough had been saved.

Enough? How much is enough? Tolstoy's, 'How much land does a man need' is the reality of expat life caught between the current global economic situation and self-imposed standards.

Friends who know me, know my bi-polar love affair with Doha. I love this place when I can step out, garden, go for long walks or run in the park. BUT, escape is all I can think of when the summer sun starts scorching my spirits.

Lucky for you, I'm writing this post in April of 2016. Doha recorded its wettest March this year. We've had rain almost every weekend. I know. I know. Had I still been living in London, I would've whacked myself for being so happy about the rain. I've changed, you see. Or at least, my perspective. The first week here, in 2009, I would pull the curtains back to reveal a cerulean sky everyday. Everyday, it was the same clean blue canvas and not a threat of a cloud to spoil our BBQ plans.

"Let's go to the beach." I would announce every weekend. The children had not turned, yet. I was still boss. They listened to my ideas and actually enjoyed following them through. They will revolt in about a year. But, we enjoyed many sunny days on the beautiful beaches of Doha in that first year we moved here. The husband and I still do with friends, whenever we can. The children grew up and we grew 'uncool'.

(note: a character in a T.V. drama I was watching used 'cerulean' to describe the colour of the sky and the other one said, "You must be a writer." I decided, then and there, that Doha sky will forever be cerulean from now on -- in all my posts)

Ego trip aside, the sky here never fails to impress me: day or night.

The moon, whether it's high in the sky when it's a slice of silver or hanging low on the horizon, full and swollen, has never been this beautiful in any sky in any place I've called home, Dehradun or London. You have to see it to believe it. Sadly, my camera does not capture the night sky, so I will leave it to your imagination. 

I can, however, share some shots of a rising sun  that I took about 30 km south of Doha, at Regency Camp on the 5th of March 2016.

Long walks and not so long jogs and runs (with Danielle) in Aspire Park make the winter months in Doha a real treat. 

Doha feels like home now. It's still not home, but it's starting to feel like it. Strangely, it's the things we hadn't planned to save up for that have turned this transient address into a home I'm happy to come back to. Pottering in the back yard, yoga, reading, writing, cooking for family, sharing with friends, blogging, going for long walks and (till two months ago) teaching have all conspired to drive me from the over-active, over-worked, over-stressed mother of two to my more gentle-paced self of today. For this, I'm grateful to Doha. Its slow pace has made me mindful of the wealth I truly want to amass. Perhaps, it's not about amassing at all. I had it wrong all these years. I'm beginning to feel that it's all about unburdening, dissipating the unnecessary to find the real me.

"We are slowing down,

but waking up.

We are producing less,

but learning more.

We are doing less,

and experiencing more."

says William Martin in 'The Sage's Tao Te Ching.'  

A handful of harvest from my yard this week: Mulberries (grown in pots). These jewels are tart and juicy. 

I have time in the mornings to stand in my back yard, sip adrak wali chai (ginger masala tea) to witness the tug-o-war that goes on between me and the birds to see who gets to the mulberries first. I eat mine discreetly after washing them, of course. They nibble on them on stalks and leave stains on the floor tiles as evidence-- fearlessly!

If you have time, come over and have tea in my back yard with me:)
http://artismoments.blogspot.qa/2014/05/gardening-in-doha-diagnosis-obsessive.html

C is for "Culture is Coriander Chutney."

What is culture, if not the passing of recipes from one generation to the next? 

Culture, according to my trusted Oxford Dictionary, is: "the customs, ideas, and social behaviour of a particular people or group." 

Hmmm... let's see...

The hurried pace of life these days leaves little space for following customs and traditions. Indian weddings, for example, are all about precisely planned and staged performances, instead of the organic singing sessions that sprung up every evening for at least a week before the big day, when I was growing up. Armed with dholak and chammach (drum and spoon), aunties and uncles and elders and youngsters would gather and sing and dance and drink masala chai. The youth would crack unsuitable jokes and then get told off by grannies. The grannies would nudge each other when the room was empty of the young, except the very young, recall the naughty jokes and laugh, shaking in mirth, sometimes covering their denture laden mouths with chiffon duppattas. The very young will remember this and write about them in their blogs.

Ideas change all the time and they should.

This post will become a rant if I get started on social behaviour. So I won't. Suffice to say, I'm not a fan of the screen addiction afflicting the young and the old today. Communicating via 'like' buttons, shared photos and emojis makes today's social behaviour scarily similar to George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty Four'. I shudder.

The only constant, I believe, is food. No, the dictionary doesn't mention food. Recipes, passed down from great-grandmothers to grandmothers and so on, keep culture alive in the bellies, on the taste buds and therefore, in the hearts of children and future generations.

Okay, I agree that culture belongs to the people and by its very nature should be evolving and changing. Stagnation equals lost empires, not progress. But, some aspects of our heritage, wherever we come from, are worth holding on to. Food is the easiest and tastiest aspect of culture we can preserve for our children, not just cooking it but growing it and procuring it ethically, sensibly, like our ancestors did.

I don't know about you, but a lot of my favourite childhood memories link back to my mother's or my grandmother's kitchen. Food is the main ingredient of my nostalgia. What about you?

Today, I'm sharing my mother's coriander chutney recipe that I make often. My son loves it. He's never met her but he loves her food. 

Ingredients: 

A healthy looking bunch of fresh coriander (washed and roughly chopped)

An inch or two of fresh ginger

One/two or three whole green chillies

One medium red onion (cut in quarters)

2 heaped tablespoons of anardana- dried pomegranate seeds. The ones you find in Indian stores have seeds in them so I prefer the Iranian ones which are seedless.

Six or Eight walnut halves.

2 tablespoons of water.

Salt to taste

One lemon (optional)

Instructions: 

I chuck all the ingredients listed above into my Vitamix, except salt and lemon, blend and voila! the chutney is ready. You could do the same in a food processor or a mixer-grinder.

Ready to blitz... I use short, sharp bursts on variable speed because I like chunky chutney, so I don't grind it too fine. Choose the texture you like.

Undo the lid and just smell the hot, sharp and fresh aroma of this simple chutney. Scrape it out into a container/pot/jar.

Add salt to taste.

An observation: If you use Indian anardana, you may need lemon juice to make the chutney tangy. I usually don't need any lemon juice when I use the Iranian variety. 

Play around with the proportions to find what you like; a little less chilly, a little more ginger or for a tangier version, add more anardana.

At home, we eat this chutney with rice and daal or spread on toast or mixed with bhel puri or as a dip with sweet potato wedges or oven baked beets or like I'm doing right now--with garam garam pakore (hot fritters).

Serve it as you like.

Enjoy and let me know if you do try this recipe.

*********************

One of my favourite poems to read to my children (when they were little) and to read aloud in class when I was a primary school teacher and to read to myself when the mood strikes is Michael Rosen's: 

You'll enjoy the rest of this delicious poem too...I'm sure

B is for Brother

A is for April and Angkor

April has arrived
armed with a challenge
at my doorstep.

Alarmed,
I hesitate.

Doubts smudge the blank spaces on my screen.
The cursor pulses and hovers
fingers hang mid-air
unwilling to commit
to the keys on the board.

The muse is missing and the mind is blank.

April smirks.

How could he know?
Did March blab?

He must have.
March was there when my
procrastination morphed into an addiction
I couldn't shake.
Netflix!
House of Cards: series 1,2 and 3
followed
Doc Martin: series 1,2, 3, 4 and 6

But, I'm sick.
I plead my case.

April rolls his eyes and I know he knows:
I'm hiding behind my antibiotics.

His accusations are accurate.

I better switch off that telly.
Get my butt off the sofa.
And type.

Or at least download those pictures I clicked in 2013
in Angkor
and share.

The Sun rises in Angkor Wat

and peeps through the pillars

The Bayon

Sometimes two halves are better than a whole.

And sometimes the mirror reflects more.

(I've used mirror image to create this collage...hope you like it. I do.)

My favourite temple: Banteay Srei

When trees take over:

Ta Prohm temple

Angkor Thom

Sunset rocks

It's been almost three years since my trip to Cambodia, but I still can't bring myself to write about it. The people I met there, the ones who've overcome odds so great I can't even begin to fathom, have become my heroes. But, whenever I sit down to write about them, I hesitate almost like one does when one enters a temple or a church. Am I ready, I ask. Not yet, reply my fingers as they stop typing.

Thanks to the A to Z Challenge, I've managed to download the pictures I clicked in December 2013. This may be the first step, perhaps. Who knows. 

A to Z Challenge 2016

I'm participating in the A to Z challenge this year. This is the first time for me. I'm nervous, excited and totally freaking out!

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-z-challenge-sign-up-list-2016.html

Thumbing through the big, fat copy of Oxford dictionary lying next to my laptop, to find an appropriate definition of the word 'challenge' to use in this post, I find that only two come close to explaining why I jumped into this foray. They are:
1.  a call to prove or justify something, and
2. (someone) to prove their identity.

I guess I'm trying to see if I can really buckle down to write regularly.

At this point in time, I feel utterly unprepared to embark upon this journey, but, try I must.

Starting from the 1st of April, I will be posting daily (except Sundays). The first post starts with the letter A and by the 30th of April, I should be posting something about Z (fingers crossed!)

I haven't picked a theme.

You can expect a collage of poetry, photographs, musings, short stories and anything else that presents itself to me.

I hope you will read and comment and critique and be here for me. But, most of all, dear reader, I hope you and I can have a great adventure together.

See you here on the 1st of April 2016.

To click or not to click in Mana - India's last village.

"No photographs, please." pleaded the priest. The priest at this temple shattered all my prejudices about priests in Hindu temples. Not only was he kind, but he was so patient that for a moment I wasn't sure if he was really a priest. Such humility is rare to see in people who consider themselves keepers of God and religion- rare and beautiful.

"Why not? What's wrong with taking a picture of our God? Why are all the temples so fussy? We come from such far off places..." grumbled the old gentleman, his voice becoming shriller as he went on. His hands jutted forth, shaking with anger and trying to make his point for him.

"Please do the darshan with your eyes and imprint it where you can see his image all the time, anytime." gestured the priest, raising and resting his fingers on the vermilion tilak on his forehead, in between his eyebrows. He closed his eyes. A hint of a smile twitched at the corners of his salt and pepper mustache. When he opened his eyes, they sparkled.

I was putting my shoes back on when this exchange happened. The temple is tiny, so I could witness the scene without intruding. 

The angry gentleman muttered his annoyance to his group in his native language, looked up and caught my eye. I smiled. 

"Was I wrong, wanting to click a picture? You know how difficult it is to come here at my age? Why are these priests so fussy?" he presented his arguments to me, in the hope that I'd side with him. 

I had smiled. I must be on his side. The angry gentleman turned towards me to boost his army. I must have looked like an ally because my camera was lying next to me. 

"Isn't it?" he continued in a much calmer voice as I pushed the bulgy ankle of the woollen socks I was wearing into my trainers.

He stationed himself opposite me. I had to engage. There was no escape. 

I straightened up and said, "I don't know. I love taking pictures, too. Panditji isn't wrong though, is he? I don't recall taking a picture of my daughter when she was born, but I can see every detail of her the first time I saw her. Maybe, sometimes we don't need the camera to take a picture."

I have no idea why I said that. It must be Ganesha's wisdom emanating from the cave and affecting me. I'm the last person on Earth to say that because I love to click. Ask my family how frustrating it gets for them to venture out with me.

Maybe it was the fact that the now-not-at-all-angry gentleman's group was threatening to leave him (or so I assume for they were talking in a language I couldn't identify) or maybe my smile had worked or maybe he was a softie who just got a bit irritated because he knew he wouldn't be able to come on  this journey again. He looked like he was in his mid or late seventies. Whatever the reason may have been, by the time I had tied my shoe laces, he and I were exchanging details of what we'd seen so far and just how beautiful this place was.

When I started writing this story, the kind priest's words came back to me. I tried to recall my most precious moments. Eureka! Not a single special moment of mine is a photo. None. But I can still recall each detail with complete clarity.

Those moments are so perfect that I never had the need to capture them artificially. What an odd thing to say as I sit here today cobbling together the photos I've taken of the last Indian village.

But, that's how I feel. My clicks are of moments I like to capture to look back at or to share with friends- beautiful, stunning moments.

But the perfect ones, like my first crush in grade 7, or the second one in grade 9, or the one in college. Or my secret one-sided love affair with the guy who used to flip rumali rotis in that dhaba I used to pass by in my school bus every afternoon. Throughout grade 10, I sat on the left side (window seat) of the bus for a chance to spot him. He was gorgeous. I was 15. It didn't matter that he didn't know I existed. Hindi films coursed through my veins passionately. I rest my case. Or my first kiss. Or the moment when my children were born. These perfect moments don't need any cameras. It's all here, like Wordsworth's Daffodils:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

**********************

The priest's words stay with me. I may keep my perfect moments for myself, but the beautiful ones need to be shared. Hop on board for the last leg of our journey on this mother-daughter trek in September 2015.

We had gathered at Gobind Ghat to squeeze into a mini bus which would take us to Badrinath. This 25 km drive is breathtaking and scary. I would've preferred to walk, I think. We drove over melting glaciers! Yes, the glacier is packed down with grit to make it easy for vehicular traffic, but when you see water dripping from the piece of ice block your bus is on, you do feel a bit jittery.

Badrinath was silent when we drove in just after mid-day. We were informed that the temple wouldn't open for darshan till 3pm. So the group was led to a restaurant to eat lunch and that's where I devoured this thali. It's a mini miracle that I got this shot...I was soooooooooooooo hungry!

Chillies, anyone?

3 kilometers from Badrinath is the last Indian village, Mana. It's about 24 kilometers from the Indo/Tibetan-China border. We went exploring...

Imprints of the Mahabaratha and its legends are visible all over this tiny village inhabited by the Bhotias (a Mongol tribe). It feels like walking onto a film set of the Mahabaratha. There are two caves here: Vyas Guha and Ganesh Guha, the place where it is believed that Ved Vyas dictated the epic to Ganesha. This is where I met the wise priest.

According to the priest, Ved Vyas needed a scribe when he was ready to dictate the Mahabaratha. Ganesh agreed to be his scribe on one condition -- Ved Vyas should recite the entire epic non- stop. He agreed but put a counter condition for Ganesh-- that Ganesh should only write the verses he understood. This way, while Ganesh was figuring out a verse's meaning, Vyas would compose the next verse and so on. Also, when Vyas needed the loo or a nap, he would recite a tricky verse. So while Ganesh took his time to decipher and understand, Vyas would be done with his bodily functions. Cool story.

Like the priest, the villagers were anti-photographs. I wasn't sure why. The women working in their garden patches, selling woollen hats and woven mats, grinding herbs for tea or tadka for daal, washing wool in the streams all protested aggressively against being clicked.

I asked a lady whose integrity impressed my daughter. She was selling tea leaves. I bought a few packets. She didn't have change. I gestured for her to keep the change.

She promptly gave me another packet and settled the transaction, " Zyada paisa nahin chahiye." (I don't need the extra money) and smiled.

"Aap log photo le kar kya karega? Yeh to humara roz ka kaam hai." What will you do with our photos? This is our daily life. She answered my question with a question.

The Bhotias are hardworking, honest and proud.

I began to understand why they don't like being clicked. I would protest aggressively if you came to my door and started clicking me while I was fixing my morning cuppa. Intrusion is never welcome.

There are those among us who travel like hunters- hunting for photo opportunities. Not a bad thing to click, I agree...but can we show some etiquette please?

As a rule, please ask for permission when you are clicking photos of humans or their property.

Would you be comfortable being clicked by a complete stranger? I know, I wouldn't.

The hunter-gatherer traveller who forces locals to pose with them needs to think how he/she would feel if the roles were reversed.

Clicking photos is not the focus when we meet people on our travels. The people are. The people and their stories enrich my travel experience. I click people I've met, with their consent, to look back and reminisce. Usually, it's after a short/long chat that I ask for their permission. You know instinctively when someone would like to be clicked. I hate being photographed. In my mind, I'm so much more beautiful than what the camera captures. Don't laugh...that's how I feel. The camera doesn't lie, you say...in my case it does, trust me.

So I know how uncomfortable it must get for people who live in places where tourists flock and force them to pose. Tourism brings revenue, so it's not always easy to refuse. But as travellers, let's not forget basic human courtesy.

Before I get all carried away with my rant, let's get back to Mana...

As you get to the end of the village, your ears pick out the gush of roaring water and your eyes are drawn to these huge boulders. They look like two boulders to me, but it's a single rock. This is called Bhim Pul. Legend has it that Bhim made this bridge to help Draupadi cross the gushing river Saraswati when the Pandavas were on their way to heaven.

This pul (bridge)reminds me of Gustav Klimt's Kiss.

The crashing cacophony of the water fills your ears and thoughts. Legend has it that Maharishi Ved Vyas requested the noisy Saraswati to flow quietly so that he could dictate the Mahabharatha to Ganesh without the noise in the background. Saraswati didn't oblige and like a true evolved soul, Ved Vyas banished her to the underground. Yes, this most sacred Hindu river, the Saraswati, plunges underground somewhere near Mana and then reappears (mythical) near Allahabad in  Prayag.

If you'd like to read more about the latest on Saraswati, check this site out:

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/saraswati-underground-15455

On our way back from the pul (bridge), we saw this sadhu. He didn't say anything. I asked if I could click. He seemed extremely ready. He posed. I clicked. I made an offering at the altar. Transaction complete.

It was time to pose and get clicked.

The mini bus drove us back to Badrinath temple. I took some photos on the way and a few before entering the temple. My mother-in-law had warned me of the heaving crowds inside the temple. I wasn't looking forward to jostling my way to God! I'm sure he'd understand.

As luck would have it, our group of seven were the only people inside the temple that afternoon. We sat down and did our own thing -  chanted/meditated/stared/counted our blessings/ thanked the universe. I hopped between reciting the Gayatri mantra, patting my back for being so lucky to be there minus the crowds and admiring the beautiful antique chandelier hanging above me. It was made of silver which had become more beautiful with time. The grayish patina lit up like a faded moon peeping through feathery clouds; alluring in its evanescence. The glass lamps were milky white, soft and welcoming like the froth on top of a tall glass of lassi. It's the most beautiful chandelier I've ever seen. God seemed happy, too.

Parikrama around the temple followed by dipping our feet in the hot spring at the bottom of the temple completed our trip to Badrinath.

It was time to head back. A short walk through the bazaar and we were back in our mini-bus: 

home bound. 

  He may not show it, but he agreed to be clicked:)

"Kuchh de kar jaana." (Give us something), they said.

"Then I can take a picture?"

"Kyun nahin?" (why not?)

I'm all for sensible commerce.

Commerce with courtesy...I like the ring to this phrase.

"...Yadaan aayeean...

Lokee punj wele

Sanu har wele

yadaan ayeean..."

These lines are from a sufi song I listen to often and it translates as:

...memories and thoughts ...

people think of you five times a day

you are with me all the time

memories and thoughts...

Have a lovely day and hope to see you soon.