Planting Memories

I enjoy looking at the few potted plants in my balcony. I water them every morning, look for new buds, smile at the newly blossomed blood red hibiscus flowers, notice the new baby leaves. I observe how the twin creepers of Aparajita are gradually growing and strengthening their hold around the railing. Its bright blue flowers. I sometimes even grind fruit peels and mix it up with the soil.

One morning, while looking at the plants I realized I have subconsciously chosen only those plants which I am familiar with since childhood. A red hibiscus (jaba), a basil (tulsi), Aloe Vera, Curry leaves (kari patta, while is called mitha limbda in Gujarati, although I haven't quite figured out what is mitha (sweet) about it). All the plants I now have were there in our house while I was growing up among a few others which need a little more love and care to blossom. I have chosen ones that are easy to maintain and have medicinal or culinary uses too.

My Guru (Grandmother) had a terrace full of potted plants. Watering and caring for them each day on her own.  She never really liked having a mali (gardener) around even when she was much too old to take care of all the plants on her own. I used to occasionally watch her digging up the soil, tossing in used tea leaves and crushed egg shells into the soil. As she went about her gardening, she spoke about which plants needed more or less water, extra fertilization etc. She expressed surprise about how much water the plant was "drinking" in the summer days, like they were real humans. She even told me about the prohibition on planting too much poppy during the British rule since poppy seeds can be used to make a potent drug (afeem).

She liked to have plants that either had medicinal properties or bore flowers (Roses, Dahliya, Poppy). She took great pride when her roses grew big or had a unique color. We even have a picture of her with her roses in full bloom! If she ever got a cut or a burn from working in the kitchen, she preferred to use Aloe Vera pulp over any of the medicine tubes at home. The hibiscus leaf was a great alternative to shampoo and tulsi leaves were often crushed and used as medicine for me for the common cough and cold that I was very commonly affected with during my childhood years.

At that time I did not know what she was imparting and that I was learning. While she was sowing seeds, nurturing saplings, watering plants maybe even she did not realize that she was also sowing seeds of knowledge, planting stories and memories in a child's mind. It has been over two years that she passed away but I guess she lives on in many such small ways, in the way we celebrate our festivals, the food we eat and even the plants we choose to grow and how we use them.

Sometimes, I look at my children's angelic sleeping faces at the end of a day when they have truly tested my patience ( and sometimes even convert me into a screaming mom-ster), I wonder if I am planting some seeds of knowledge and good memories in their heads. Am I nurturing these saplings the right way? Hopefully!

I guess I would find the answers many years from now...till then, we have two small elephant shaped kiddy watering cans to water my plants with.

Kuch Din to Gujariye Gujarat mein!

It is going to be close to two months since we moved to Ahmedabad but it surely feels like a lot more. It was not easy with kids crying every morning before school, missing old friends, getting small things done around the house, getting used to the new routine, home and neighbourhood. We are still getting there I would say, to still feel like we are 'home'.

In the first month of our stay, we experienced rainfall every single day. It rained in the day, it rained through the night, all afternoon and at times continued endlessly for days at varying speeds. On one occasion, we even had to rush to the kid’s school, wade into knee deep water to get them back home. The week after, the schools remained closed for an entire week!

It made me wonder how much it could rain in one place, when it would finally stop and if the entire country’s monsoon clouds had gathered over Gujarat and to an extent it indeed had and Gujarat was in a state of flood. Parts of northern Gujarat and rural areas were badly affected.

Thankfully, even after torrential rains 80-90% of the roads are still where they were and even on rainy days the area we stay in was not water logged and there were no reports of people being stuck in traffic for hours on end. This was a small miracle compared to what would have happened if Gurgaon/Delhi was to get even a fraction of this rainfall. What was even more amazing is that the first day after the rains stopped, there were people at work repairing main roads that were broken!

 After the first few weeks, I have managed to pick-up a few words in Gujarati, recognise the roads and places nearby (big thanks to Google Maps) and even manged to visit a stepwell (Adalaj Ni Vav) and Baroda, which is just two hours away via the super smooth expressway. During this time I have also come across some nuances of staying in Ahmedabad/Gujarat which might be unique to those coming from outside the state.

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• It is difficult to get a white fridge! Yes, I went to several dealers but it seems there is little or no demand for white fridges. People seem to prefer grey or dark metallic shades. Even a lot of buildings here are grey rather than any other colour. Interestingly, when it comes to cars, white is the most favoured colour. Also, the luxury car of choice here is the grand old Mercedes, rather than the more popular Audi or BMW in comparison to north India.

•  Driving is slightly different too. Even with traffic signals on, traffic police need to be present in person to make the citizens move in a disciplined fashion. Drivers honk so much that I have come to believe that they are probably given licenses based on their ability to honk rather than drive. I really do hope this changes before my ears drums are permanently damaged. Parking is usually a challenge, with a general aversion to park in basements, even when it is available free of charge. Once you drive on the streets of Ahmedabad, chances are you won’t complain about driving in Delhi/ Gurgaon, which is famous for 'roadrage'. Even on the expressway, people tend to take the emergency lane on the extreme left to overtake rather than from the right. Surely, our Dilliwalas wont have stepped off the accelerator if they had access to such a smooth express way, but here people stick to the speed limit of 100 kms/hr. 

• Ice-cream everywhere! The frequency and the ease with which you will spot ice-cream parlours (Havmor) is much greater than ATMs and medical stores. There are numerous stores that exclusively sell ice-cream.

• There are certain unique practices too which are new to me, such as, taking footwear off outside homes, stores and even clinics. Most homes have shoe racks placed outside the entrance and sinks fitted right in the dining room for washing hands.
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• Lastly, there are certain grocery items that I was used to and never could have imagined I would not get at the neighbourhood super market for instance– Nestle Dahi, Ananda paneer, breads from Britannia/English Oven or any of the major brands. But, there are alternatives that quickly take that place and this is the land of Amul, so I have been introduced to a wider range of Amul products than I ever knew existed. Amul even makes cookies...did u know?

I also see influence of neighbouring states, Rajasthan and Maharashtra here, in terms of clothing, buildings, and celebration of festivals, but surely Gujarat does have its own distinct flavour.

I am enjoying the benefits of staying in Ahmedabad. Everything is within a span of 2 to 10 kilometres. There are new places to explore on weekends, I am enjoying cleaner air (let me not talk about the hard water here), driving on emptier roads (since I stay in a newly developed part of the city), listening to Gujarati radio (with Bollywood songs), waking up to the calls of peacocks and chirping of birds. I can even hear the train go by on silent nights. Sighting peacocks, mongooses, langoors and even nilgais around the area is not uncommon.

 I am in the mood to enjoy whatever Gujarat has to offer, culturally, historically, gastronomically, and emotionally. And I would encourage my friends to come visit us. Just like Amitabh Bachchan says, “Kuch din to gujariye Gujarat mein!”

Ladies: The shopping is good too, especially for ethnic wear with plenty of exhibitions to go to.

Here's another post on Ahmedabad that I had written sometime ago.

Goodbye Gurgaon!

It’s 5:29 AM and I am awake. Actually, I have been for the last hour or so since he left for the airport. The same feeling of ‘now you are in-charge’ envelops me. It’s the ‘mode’ I put on whenever hubby is away. I tell myself, you can easily sleep for one more hour, but no, my brain refuses to oblige. (Before I got married, I was determined not to be like my mother, a little too alert and anxious when my father travelled, especially though a teen’s perspective. But, as time passes I see myself gradually becoming more like her.)

It’s too early to get out of bed, the kids are asleep, the house and the world outside is silent. With my eyes closed and body still (like I am still pretending to sleep) my mind begins to wander. I think new thoughts and bring back old memories. Some memories are easy to find, like they are on the top shelf of my bedside drawer, but others are lying in the bottom shelf, hard to retrieve, dusty and takes time and effort to pull out.

I think about the last ten years of our marriage and even the time before that. All the years I have spent in Gurgaon, right from the time I was a school girl and Gurgaon was like a budding city with a few residential buildings and even fewer corporate offices. Where finding snakes and mongooses was a common phenomenon. Schools and hospitals were numbered and the bus journey to my school in Vasant Kunj took 20 minutes. The construction of the highway had not begun and to travel to Delhi using public transport (Haryana Roadways) was an adventure in itself. Sounds unbelievable, no?

I witnessed how it grew from being the real “gaon” to the “global village” that it is turning out to be with world class schools, offices, restaurants, shopping centres, hospitals (not to mention traffic and pollution levels). Similarly, it watched me grow from a school girl in uniform, to college student, to office goer, to married woman, to becoming a mother-of two. I have called Gurgaon home for more than 18 years. Right from passing out of school, college, university, job, marriage and motherhood, this has been my base.

I would not have been thinking about it as I had never in all these years, for I had taken it for granted. Even the thought of living in another city never crossed my mind…till a few weeks ago. Soon, it will be reality. It will be time to pack our bags and move. This is more unbelievable to me than the transformation of Gurgaon. Nowadays, I look at everything through the lens of ‘What am I going to miss?’ and I see a lot around me that I am going to miss very dearly, including a lot of friends and family.

It’s 6:30 AM, hubby has boarded the flight and the kids have begun to stir….

P.S: Hubby is moving to a role in Ahmedabad and we are moving with him. The city is not alien to me having visited the city several times (and blogged about it) since my in-laws stay there. My mother says, “After 10 years of marriage, you are moving to your sasural.” Indeed, I am.

The Scent of Love

He came home smelling of perfume...I chose not to question him

The kids had fallen asleep. It was peaceful, dark and cosy in the bedroom. I like this time of the day when there are no more chores, the laptop has been put to rest and I can be ‘me’, relieved of my duties as ‘mother of two’. He was expected to come home late after a daylong conference and dinner at a hotel.

I was blissfully reading The Forty Rules of Love, a book so luxurious and elegant that your life melts as you enter into the lives of the characters, mainly, Shams of Tabriz (a dervish), Rumi the Sufi poet, writer Aziz and a wife and mother in the current day and age, Ella. Right from the beginning I could most clearly picture Ella, her life as a wife and mother of two. 

I had nodded off to sleep while reading about Ella finding out about her cheating husband and her not feeling the need to confront him, even after several hints about his promiscuity. Even without my realising I had drifted off somewhere between sleep and waking, where reality and dreams morph into a weird state of trance. 

I woke up to my reality with a start only when my phone rang and he was at the door. I opened the door with a smile and offered him a glass of water. 

There was a distinct and powerful smell of perfume, too flowery and sweet smelling for a man. It was definitely not what he usually wears. 

Not able to ignore it much longer, I asked “Perfume? This is not yours, right?”

He remained silent, hesitated, and finally said with a smile, “Secret, Secret.”

“This is not yours for sure. Where did this come from?”

“There was a display counter at the hotel and I just tried some on.” There was something about the way he said it. 

“Your story was good, but I can always tell when you lie.” I told him before going into the bathroom. After nine years of knowing him, I knew this was not the truth. It did bother me and I kept thinking about it as I brushed my teeth for the night. But, I was surely not going to ask him about it or argue. Definitely not at this time of the night.

When I stepped into the bedroom and my eyes adjusted to the dim lights, I saw a neatly wrapped pink package waiting on my pillow. 

“Happy Anniversary…in advance!” he said.

“It’s more than a month away…why now?”

“I wanted to keep it hidden and give it to you on our anniversary.”

“Then you should have kept it hidden and given it to me later.”

“No! I know you. You would keep thinking about the perfume on me.” He watched me closely as I unwrapped the package to reveal the exquisite bottle of perfume inside.

“The perfume store is right next to the hotel where we had the conference, so I took the opportunity to buy it today.” He smiled. I was smiling too. Not everything is spoken and words cannot convey everything either. 

I guess the beauty of a relationship is sometimes in knowing the other person better than they may know themselves. 

Feelings are somewhat like perfume, you don’t see them, and you can’t touch them, but only feel their presence and enjoy it while it lasts. 

First published on Bonobology.com. https://www.bonobology.com/marriage/the-married-couple/593-the-scent-of-love-and-the-beauty-of-a-relationship