food chronicles(appeared in Pune mirror 15 Aug 2011)

Food chronicles…

This affair began a long time ago in my life…a time when I was not aware of the long term effects of this association and how much satisfaction this relationship will bring my way….my affair with my taste buds…….

my first encounter with taste was quite a few years ago when I enjoyed eating a white piece of a delicacy which I remember as the first exotic exposure I had for my taste buds…my father tells me now that I had tasted fish for the first time….and that taste still continues to haunt me as ‘sea food fixation’…I feel at ease with fried fish,prawns biryani and solkadi around…as a subsidiary beer and biryani as a combination also leaves me speechless…(pun intended)

yet there are foods which are closer to ones heart…or rather stomach and turn ones emotions topsy turvy at any instance of confrontation with them….Bhel-Panipuri and the family members of the chat clan have this very effect on me as an individual…usually these food articles are associated with the evening as the most suitable time to gorge upon…but I have not limited myself to any such timelines and have shamelessly gulped down plates of those wonderful balls of wonder called ‘ puris’ filled with the nectar of the gods called humanly as ‘imli chatni-jeerajal’ at breakfast times and burped in pure satisfaction…I then classify this entire experience a ‘comfort zone’ prevalence!!!

My culinary expressions are so passionate as I have been exposed to some wonderful pieces of this art form because of my mother since childhood…I will feel humiliated in my own eyes if I feel like eating dahi-wada anywhere else than the ones prepared by my mother.Have you ever felt the wada melt in your mouth?I am sure you haven’t as you have not been fortunate recipients of this amazing dish..

Being a Punekar ,places like Vaishali,Bedekar Misal,Prabha Wada,Blue Nile and Marzorin are not mere eateries for me…they are places of worship where devotees pay respects to their ‘potoba’ and only then think about ‘Vithoba’…

As a mother I feel hugely gratified when my son Divij says he cannot think of eating the palak saag if ‘I’ have not prepared it…and Then I think the world has come to a full circle ….I joke that if the crow is not pecking the rice that has been offered for my soul after my last rites(a hindu funeral related custom),just utter one of the above mentioned dishes and my soul will rest in peace…I swear on my taste buds……

the magic candle

The high tide,tide after tide,wave after wave...will still cut into the strong stone walls of the fort on its shore...

However long the route and changed political geography,the migrating flock of birds will still return to their nest...

The puppy will anyhow smell its way back to the master who fed it with love and care...

parallels will also come together in a prayer of folded hands...

But I am like a 'magic candle'..which is 'designed' not to give away to the temptation of the wind blowing towards it...

its fate is to make the audience laugh and clap in glee because it gives them the sadistic pleasure of witnessing the 'miracle of the candle that does not extinguish'...

poor candle...how much she wants to be blown away by the 'gentle' breeze...

so much for a pleasurable death....'haseen dard'...

i follow you...

I FOLLOW YOU….

Someone asked me the other day...who is your idol? who inspires you the most?...and i did not have an answer to this...i thought of all the names who did something that the world took notice of...mentioning their name would add glamour to my statement...i could relate to none. I then thought of humanitarians who may have made a mark on my soul...sadly i could delve no further...dignitaries i welcomed, thanked, felicitated on so many public daises...no one touched me ...

Am i without an inspiration?? do i look up to no-one?? am i so non-surrendering???...but how could i not realize i was born out of my own inspiration...my parents...the very reason for my existence...not just because they made a combined effort to bring me into this world but because they taught me and still teach me 'commitment' by being very firmly rooted next to me in a time i need them the most...

Today when my father is on the threshold of releasing his first book, i will like to share a piece of my heart with all of you present here ...a piece of the heart ,of 'his' piece of heart...' me'...with due apologies to Ankur...my younger brother...i still will like to say that the 'first' born to any parents always is 'special' in many ways...my dad gave me the feeling of being special because i always thought his name after mine gave me an identity which no one could ever take away from me...whatever i chose to call myself later on in life ..i was 'born' ‘Radhika Arun Kakatkar' and there was not one moment i felt regret for this fact...this name..this identity always commanded respect because of the fine job that he was doing...because of the work culture he was portraying...because of the subconscious impact he was making on my young mind....

I never met baba more than once a week when I was a child…i must say Ankur was luckier in that aspect...but when I was a child he was more married to doordarshan than my mother...but i remember looking forward to meeting him...listen to him talk to various dignitaries...expressing opinions very very boldly...loving passionately and living life king size...(he also smoked four square at that time) ... i saw him laugh the loudest and cry full throated...both with equal genuinity...and that is how i saw life...whether i realized it then or not...today i do...

One of the most important things a parent can do for a child is to show his offspring the most ‘virtuous’ way of life and ‘not’ the most ‘convenient’…my father did the job very efficiently…most of the times without his knowledge…but mine and ankur’s passion for doing anything that we do with 100% sincerity and 200% commitment is because we saw him do the same all his life…

Today…when i myself am a mother of a young boy...i realise how important my parents have been in my life...they are my biggest court of law...if i win a case in their court...i win it for life...

in my time of need they have stood by me not just as parents...but as fellow human beings who understand my need as a human,even if it sometimes does not fit into their frame work of 'good behaviour'...i feel that is the greatest blessing to have in life...next to having beautiful babies...

i follow you aai-baba...without your knowledge and sometimes mine....

uprooted....

dry leaves..rice shifted from fields,erosion of the soil,cotton seeds floating on air,refugees,emigrants,children on the first day of school....

i understand now what all of them go through...a feeling of being uprooted....a feeling of being torn away from your secure core of existence..a situation being forced upon you telling you that you are not a part of this haven any more...whether you like it or not....this haven was never yours in the first place...

earlier in life i had felt this feeling of 'going away'...the day i was sent away with a tearful farewell by my parents...but i was always prepared for this shift as i had been subconsciously conditioned to the scene since childhood...that one 'fine' day i will have to 'go away'....with dreams in my eyes..which were full of tears nevertheless....i felt settled ...in matrimony....

It was a different setting...space..people...things...situations...reactions...known-unknown...i knew i had to live with it...and i LIVED...every single minute i did...i lived with so much energy that i overlooked...dealt ....battled every aversion...every invasion....every downfall...because i wanted to emerge a winner...a winner in the race i had started with myself...a race in perfection...

but all things big and small do not turn out to be perfect...do they...i could battle every external force but unfortunately the 'core' slipped away....i could not hold on to the 'put on' of every thing being perfect for a long time...the elasticity gave way...the rubber snapped...and i got 'uprooted'....

this time the 'farewell' was with dry eyes...'unexpected...shocking...numb...it has disabled me to the core....i no longer recognize myself in the mirror....i don't know if i ever will...i have dry reactions like dry leaves...a feeling of drift like the cotton seeds...,life seems to erode away beneath my feet...houses seem like refugee camps...where is my 'home'????am i an immigrant in my own world???will i ever have roots again????or am i the child whose parents have gone home leaving it on its own on the first day of school???

i am looking around for a familiar face to call my own...is there one left????

i know what 'partition' means....now i do....

crossing 'borders'....

my son can now cross the street across my house....an achievement not just for a child who is all of ten,but also for his mother who was full of anxiety till she could let her mind allow him to do 'it' all by himself.....

"how long will you hold on to him radhika?"...my husband says matter of factly....he understands...he is the 'father'...the more 'adventurous' of the two i guess...but for me it was like letting him out into this 'big bad world' all by himself for the first time...

once he accomplishes this ,there will be no looking back...i felt...

did i have the same feeling when he first drank milk through the bottle and was no longer dependent on me?

did i have the same feeling the day he stopped crying in school and no longer looked for my familiar face outside the class?

did i have the same feeling when he rode the bicycle without my help for the first time?

did i have the same feeling when he could read 'goodnight stories' all by himself before kissing me goodnight?

for me he has crossed borders when he has done each of these seemingly easy and routine growing up tasks...every parent has the same feeling...

soon he will cross borders known-unknown to me...some that he will inform me of...others that he will prefer not to inform...i will still be standing at the side of the footpath waiting to see him arrive at the other end 'safe'...

children across the world take up this crossing borders as a passion and i wonder how their mothers cope up with it...

swimming across the english channel,climbing mount everest,earning and learning in foreign lands,wandering through wilderness to get the perfect photograph...all this and much more...their mothers sleep soundly every night when their offsprings are going through these borders everyday....

and i salute the mothers who let their child stay put on political borders...waiting to cross the border of life eagerly, so that we all can sleep in tranquility...

when i think of this i feel happy and hopeful...my son has 'finally' crossed his first 'border'....

footprints...on lives

'I have not done anyone anything wrong in life...then why lord am i at the receiving end of your wrath'...have we not said that time and again in times of depression...when everything seems to be either in 'pause' mode or too 'turbulent'....but we realise, that unknowingly, we leave our footprints in peoples life...much more bolder prints than we have ever realised...we walk away assuming that with every new wave ,my footprints will wash away...after all it was only sand i walked on...with every new tide newer sand will replace the older...but...we have left footprints which are cemented and no tide washes it away...
i moved on....to a choice of life which i had made....without even looking back at the footprints which walked the sand along with me....these prints faded out at a point where i just flew away to my own paradise....a paradise which offered me so much in return that i forgot the feeling that i had left somebody waiting at the seashore looking at the horizon...somebody for whom my footprints were not mere footprints but they were the way of life....
smart person that i am...i know how to convert these wrong doings of mine into pure 'nostalgia'...i know how to romantisize the vaccum i created in someones life....but the inner of my inner self says...i have sinned....
i have made an irrepairable dent in someones picture,a stroke I made so badly that the entire picture went bad....i am so unjust.. that i call the same picture '...ART"....

IMPACT

I always thought I was one of the 'unaffected' specimens of the human kind ,who very rarely was affected by the shallow emotional 'atyachars' of the television box...very rarely could the idiot box manage to stir any kind of flutter in my mind-heart-brain..sad as i may feel but only serials like 'friends', some episodes of Oprah(only where the American ladies do not wail over stupid problems) and a few reality shows like 'top chef' and 'so you think you can dance',have created a small flutter in my emotional world...until more recently a very very Indian show touched me and shook me from within...balika vadhu...
I started watching the show as a passing activity in the beginning...something that is being viewed by some member of the very joint family types I live in...and even in those brief glimpses the actors of the show somehow managed to grip my attention.I was a show which was on prime time, a commercial, family drama and yet the actors were actually very natural and at ease in their delivery...no 'komolikas' and 'tulsis' in this one...the characters spoke the language, verbal and non verbal of the real India and an almost real life situation was made too come alive...
Anandi,jagdishiya,dadisa,suguna,sumitra,bhairo,bhagmati even the cute phuli are the characters which have come alive because of the lovely performances of all these actors...
Apart from this aspect I think the 'development communication' objective is most certainly fulfilled due to the spoon feeding of thoughts towards the end of the serial which even though might look clique's but are necessary for a large section of the society.This aspect is the one television programme makers are fast forgetting.
I hope the makers keep up the good work and do not let the commercials ruin the quality they have managed to maintain so far...