F is for Freedom

I passed my driving test

in Twickenham

after SEVEN attempts.

FREEDOM! I cried

and kissed the examiner on his cheek

before he could protest.

Ever since then,

I've been imprisoning myself

in parking bays

that keep getting narrower.

I saw you --

the other day.

You didn't look like you any more.

Freedom is what I was after.

You said.

Met him. Found love. Got married. Had kids.

Free to be me--

I thought.

Life on my terms--

I thought.

BUT, fumbling fingers unfasten my bra straps

and cage me in marital bliss--

night after night.

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.