After the hiatus

So here I am again, after a long break...

Much water has flown under the bridge-- had a lovely baby girl in Aug last year, went back to my home town for nearly 3 months in Oct, got back to Delhi and back to work in Jan 2011. Shifted house in Feb-Mar. Managed without a nanny for my baby up to Mar end, had stay at home guests (family of three) for nearly two months, got thinking about my pending coursework and met my Prof. Plan in place, execution pending. Getting back into the groove slowly... (April 2011)

Status Now:

Had to deal with the nanny's leaving the job without notice (to get married)...have a part-time babysitter now--the arrangement seems to be working fine so far, though nothing compares to the previous nanny (sigh)...

It's September now, and still to execute on the plan on my coursework...

But let's talk of achievements, however small:

• Finished translating "Europa-gi Mapao" to English from Meiteilon
• Flew back to Delhi alone with the baby from Imphal
• Managed without help for the baby for a couple of weeks
• Mustered up enough courage to shop alone, leaving the baby with my sister--Thank God for sisters :)
• Went to visit a friend who lives at the other end of the city, with the baby on the Delhi metro, then took a cycle rickshaw ride...it was drizzling but we enjoyed it!!! :)

Thankful for everything :)

PS: meant to post this in April, but as you can see...so much has happened

Cafe Tales

This morning, feeling quite blue and in serious need for a pick-me-up, I decided to try the breakfast menu at the Barista cafe on the ground floor of my office complex. It turned out to be surprisingly pleasant, considering that this was the first time I had had breakfast alone at a cafe. Maybe it was the ambience that gave me the calm I needed, the time I needed to collect my thoughts, or maybe it was the delicious food, but I felt great and ready to take on the day and the challenges it may present. Mental note: must do this more often.

On another note, it made me think of the cafes and restaurants that I have frequented in the cities that I lived in or visited.

I used to stay in the university hostels of the University of Delhi, located in north Delhi. Kamla Nagar was an area my friends and I used to frequent. It had its share of inexpensive restaurants specializing in Chinese and Tibetan food, and when the Barista and the Cafe Coffee Day outlets opened, we were a happy lot, spoilt for choice when it came to eating out. Majnu ka Tilla, located near the Yamuna, was another place you could go to if you wanted to taste authentic Tibetan food. In south Delhi, my favorites are Dilli Haat (for its myriad offerings of ethnic cuisine from all over India), South Extension Barista, and New Friend's Colony Community Center for its Shawarma, momos and of course, its cafes.

In Hyderabad, sadly, I didn't explore much of its eateries, but my favorite remains that rooftop restaurant--Koyla on Road Number 1. And my undergrad days in Shillong was a gastronomical delight! Almost every Sunday, I'd lunch at the restaurant in Hotel Broadway and feast on palak paneer (I still think they make the best I have ever tasted!) and chili chicken. There also used to be a chain of restaurants serving authentic Chinese food located all over Shillong-- I think it was called Abba, which had the best momos and fried rice and noodles. Nice ambience too. Then there was Palace, right bang in the middle of Police Bazaar, which served the best samosas and dosas in Shillong. And need I mention the traditional "jadoh" stalls run by locals that dotted every nook and corner of the city? A jadoh stall is a place people go to for tea, but mostly for lunch, and it would have an inexpensive but delicious menu that consists of rice prepared in the traditional Khasi way (more on this later) with traditional chicken and pork dishes and fried seasonal vegetables and lentils. This was a place where people, even strangers, bonded over food and enjoyed the easy camaraderie. I should also mention the Chinese restaurant that's run by my friend Chin-Hai (who's also a biker) in Dhanketi. It used to be called Touches (unless he's rechristened it) and served the best Foo Yong in town! Ahh Shillong, it's a foodie's paradise, with its restaurants and cafes, and I miss it so much.

And my hometown, Imphal...it used to have some nice restaurants back in the nineties. As teens, my friends and I used to wait for holidays or weekends to snack at the Lake View near the Kangla Paat (a moat that surrounds Kangla). It used to serve delicious Chinese food and had a nice view of the Kangla Paat. Sadly, the restaurant has long been closed. A restaurant that has seen the seventies and still serves nice food is Airlines (I wonder why they named it that way). It's located in the heart of Imphal on Mahatma Gandhi Avenue, right opposite my alma mater. After school, we used to go and get strawberry ice-cream from there. It seems my parents used to date there and my mom till date swears by the cutlets they serve there! I haven't been there in a long, long time. My husband says the food is still great (he went there last November to meet his buddies), and the impression I get of the place is that it's become a hang out for men, almost like a male-only watering hole, though when I was a school kid, families and youngsters would go and enjoy a nice cup of coffee there. Another restaurant I still like is Naoba's on RIMS Road, which is frequented by office goers and RIMS hospital staff and students. You can have a decent lunch and hang out with buddies there.
Now, the reason I mention that  is that Imphal doesn't have a great eating-out culture which is really sad. Apart from the places mentioned here, there is hardly any decent place to go relax over a nice cup of coffee. Some other exceptions are the Host and the Hotel Nirmala restaurants. Sure, you can see myriad establishments with the tag "restaurant" or "cafe" in their names dotting the city. However, the horror that greets you on entering these restaurants just isn't worth it. For one, these are usually dimly lit places frequented by drug addicts and couples who want some privacy and is NOT a place to have coffee or snacks with your friends or family. Forget about lunch or dinner at these places! These places have given a bad name to the terms 'restaurant' and 'cafe' and so if you inadvertently mention that you'd like to go to a cafe, people would stare at you. If you have friends from outside the state visiting you, you CANNOT think of taking them to try out these restaurants/cafes. Now, there are rice-hotels and tea stalls, where you can go and have tea and some snacks, but these are the poor cousins of the Baristas and the Cafe Coffee Days of the world. Visit these stalls if you are in for an adventure and like to give/get a taste of the local life. The plus point of these rice hotels and tea stalls is that you can taste authentic Meitei cuisine like "tharoi thongba" (escargot curry) and "tharoi angouba" (fried escargot), paaknum (a salty steamed snack made of gram flour and vegetables tempered with fermented fish) and pakoras and kanghou (fried vegetables) and ooti (a traditional curry made with peas). I long for the time when the cafes of Imphal would clean up their act and become family hangouts and serve ethnic cuisine too.

Ailing Manipur

My Manipur has many ills...and I despair at its plight. You may say, every place has its own share of ills, but I think Manipur has far more than is ever high-lighted to the world.

For one, it is a strife torn state. Everyone knows that the denizens of the state are the ones who suffer silently amid the innumerable strikes, bandhs, curfews, economic blockades and bomb blasts. There are those nameless women known only as "Meira Paibi" who try to bring some semblance of order to the chaotic state of affairs and then there are better known activists like Sharmila...Amid the hullabaloo over the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, there are your usual share of thefts, robberies, kidnappings, and natural disasters. Recently, the imagination of the people of Manipur seem to be captured by Muivah's impending visit to his hometown of Ukhrul. So many protests for and against his visit and so much public property destroyed. And to what end? No satisfactory or simple answers there.

And then there are those "relatively mundane" concerns like the power problem that ails the state. Even in the capital of the state, frequent power cuts are the norm and there is a scheduled load-shedding every alternate day. Many have analysed why the state suffers thus, but still there is no viable solution. Life goes on in the meantime with the help of generators, inverters, rechargeable LED lamps, candles and the traditional "podon" and "thaomei" fuelled by kerosene. Some people have even adopted the practice of having dinner before sunset so that they can sleep through the power-less nights. Such is the power of adaptability and flexibility of the average Manipuri. Solar power has been harnessed to a minor degree but not to a sustainable level. No one is bothered about demanding something like clean fuel from the government or asking for subsidies for that when all the world is hassled about carbon credits and  carbon footprints. There are just too many things occupying the mind, like the simple act of worrying about survival. You see, you never know when a bandh or economic blockade is gonna happen. You are too busy worrying whether your loved ones will be home safe every sunset or be the prey to a stray bombing incident, shootouts or encounters...

Potable water!!! Well, it's a dream. Even after years of independence, many localities and homes do not get access to tap water. You can forget about running water inside homes. This has of course kept the tradition of fetching water from the community pond each evening alive. But that's besides the point. Suffice to say that civilization's common fruits haven't reached Manipur.

And the education system--I don't know where to start or where to end. Post independence, my father's generation went to noted government schools like Johnstone, CC, Ram Lal Paul, Tamphasana Girls. These schools had fine faculty members and facilities that a good school of those days had to have. At present, if you happen visit these schools, you can still find fine faculty members there, but the buildings are like ruins and the facilities seem straight out of the forties. The amenities seem to have been frozen in a time warp. I don't have enough context to talk about the state of affairs in privately owned schools. However, I have an inkling that while the rest of the country uses state-of-art technology in their educational institutions, the same cannot be said for those in Manipur. It's actually a wonder that good students still come from the state. It must be quite a struggle. I am told that many people send their kids to private tutors as schools do not cover the syllabi. Of course, people must be aware that last year, schools in Manipur did not operate for months on end in the stand-off between the government and some activists. In this state of affairs, quality education can only be expected to take a back seat. Sigh. It's a vicious circle.

The environment! Pollution hasn't spared Manipur. Age old traditions of Manipuri youth cleaning the community on weekends have disappeared. People are dumping their wastes on the streets and public places have become garbage dumps. Civil works like a purported sewage system installation have added to the mess as the project has been left midway. To add to the woes of the people, come some rains and the roads become a muddy swamp. No one cares, no one has time to fix these ills. After all, you are only worried about survival. Like I said before, all you care about is whether everyone is home safe and sound...and that no dear one has fallen victim to a stray bullet...

Adventure @ Age 3+

I was three already and in kindergarten-- my first year at school. I felt pretty serious about going to school and meeting different folks unlike my younger brother who hadn't yet gotten the chance yet. I had it going well with my uncles and aunts taking turns to drop me off to school on their bicycles or scooters, or better still, getting a chance to go with my Dad on his parrot green Lambretta. You see, Dad's office at the local State Bank of India branch was just next door to school. At noon, school would get over and I would tramp out like the other kids and look for a familiar face in the crowd of parents and guardians come to fetch their wards.

As it went, my grandparents or my aunts usually came by to take me home. With my aunts, the trip always always led us through the busy Thangal Bazaar. As expected, they loved the opportunity to window-shop on the pretext of fetching the niece from school. My grandparents preferred the quieter route which took us past the MG Avenue and over the small bridge to Soram Leirak. We'd then reach the community pond 'Pukhri Achouba' and then after that, it was just a matter of crossing the erstwhile RMC Road (now RIIMS Road) to reach home. I loved it more when my grandparents fetched me as I loved the leisurely walk and the fact that they'd buy me snacks on the way home. With my aunts, it was a short trip home by cycle rickshaw--no fun, no snacks--all cut and dry.

Now, I had a friend named AS who was the most independent kid I had ever known. She couldn't have been  much older than me, but she used to come to school on her own and go back home, again on her own. I  retrospect, I guess it could be because both her parents were working and there was no one else to drop her to school. But the idea of going to school on your own kinda appealed to my 3 year old mind to the point of obsession. What added fuel to the fire was AS's jibe at my being such a kid and being so dependent on grown ups. That was the melting point. I decided that I too could go home alone and to prove that, I was on the lookout for the day when no-one would come to pick me up.

The awaited day arrived soon enough. A few days later, I was overjoyed to see that no one from my family had showed up to take me home. I quickly ran to where AS was standing and told her that I'd go with her unescorted by grownups. I remember saying, "AS, quick, let's go home. No one has showed up today to take me home." We then wasted no further time and quickly made our way home. We took the route that my grandparents favoured and soon enough, it was time for me to cross RMC Road. AS looked one way while I looked the other and between the two of us, we estimated the time that was safe for me to cross the road. "Run!" she shouted. And I ran, half scared, half excited-- scared as I was crossing the road alone for the first time, and excited that I was now on my turf, safe and sound. I waved her goodbye and went home straight. Happily I rushed to the kitchen, where my grandmother sat having her lunch. She was surprised to see me home without any sign of my aunts. Before she could ask me how I reached home alone, I announced to her that I was now quite capable of going to school and coming back alone. As she listened horrified, I narrated to her my adventure of coming home alone. She scolded me, as expected.

Back at school, my aunts were panicking as I was nowhere to be found. They waited till the last of the children were picked up and then went to Dad's office. They were terrified of getting a scolding as they had arrived five minutes late to pick me up (you see, their window-shopping had extended much beyond the usual time). They frantically searched for me and my Dad notified the police. Those days, the only telephone in the neighborhood was with a neighbor who stayed three houses away from us. My grandmother managed to go there and somehow managed to give my Dad the information that I was back home. Safe. After an adventure of coming back from school alone. I can only imagine the mixture of emotions that they must have experienced. The adventure ended for me with a scoldings from all my uncles and  aunts, grandparents, and my Dad. Still, it was worth the adrenaline rush and the sense of independence.

To honk or not to...

Yesterday, on the way back home from work, I saw a cab with a sticker that read, "Do not honk." this wouldn't have warranted comment had I been living elsewhere in the world. You see, "don't honk" stickers at the rear of automobiles are as rare as they come in India. Instead, it is quite commonplace to see labels like 'Horn Please" or "Blow Horn" behind buses and trucks. As a kid growing up in India, I used to think it's quite normal to ask people driving behind you to honk, so you know they are coming behind you. In fact, my first driving lessons included tips like honk before turning a corner, when you come up next to another vehicle, at pedestrians trying to cross the road, and so on. It all made sense then. You had to had to announce to the world that you are coming. Watch out! Sigh.

I realized that it's likely that this common traffic practice is likely to be unique, if not strange, when someone from the US remarked about it. He found it very surprising because it's considered rude to honk elsewhere in the world. More surprise when the logic behind "please honk" labels were explained to him. Come to think of it, it's quite annoying to hear blaring horns. But almost everybody honks in India!!! You just need to be stuck in a traffic jam to see this (and endure the pain of hearing the noise) for yourself. Another place to encounter this is at a traffic signal. No matter that the light is still red, the motorist behind you has to honk. And then everybody starts honking on cue. Is this symptomatic of a culture that shouts for attention, a me-first culture? Possibly...or maybe it is a live example of the saying "when in Rome..."

Well, whatever be, I loved the "Do not honk" poster. It is a symbol of changing mindsets, of being more conscious of our environment and our fellow beings, and of being more polite. As some wise person said, "I do not shout at others with my automobile horn." I am gonna get a similar poster. What about you?

Doppelganger?

One day, I was invited by one of my friends to her room. This was when I was a grad student in Lady Keane College, Shillong, and putting up in the hostel.

I obliged. And then A.A. sat me down, smiling mysteriously all the while. Without a word, she hands me a photograph, face down. I turn it over. Shock. What am I doing in that picture? Who were all these other folks there? And where and when did I buy such clothes? Was I suffering from a split-personality syndrome?

"Where did you take this picture?"

"Nagaland."

"But I have never been there!"

"I know. That's my cousin."

OMG. The resemblance was too striking! Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined looking at someone's face and wondering whether I was looking at my reflection. And here was I.

Couldn't help smiling, wondering, "How?"

Freaked out, but couldn't help wondering at the coincidence. A.A. tells me, "You both are very alike. You look similar, talk in the same style, and buy similar clothes." Well, since we both--my doppelganger(?) and I-- were born in different geographies and speak different languages, I wondered how similar we could be. But I tell you, the similarity in physical appearance--that was too much.

I don't know whether doppelganger is the right word. But it will have to do for now. I was impressed. I still am. Nature works in mysterious ways....

Himalayas

Ain't it lovely? Took it from a recent Delhi to Imphal flight. It was amazing...

Aspirations of a worker ant

Our regular lunch meeting today had an interesting twist. Lemme share what happened.

As we looked outside the window, we noticed workers hoisting large machinery atop the skyscraper coming up next door. The equipment looked uncannily like a giant's shoe, and then, next thing we know, the conversation had moved from giants to little people to life cycles of insects like ants. How long do ants live? Why do they work so hard all year round, if they know they are not gonna live to see the next winter? Do they even know? Do they even consider all this as they toil? Someone said, they are wired to perform whatever role they have in the nest--all instinct, not much thoughts put in there. Very true.

But what if? It would be interesting, if at all, consciousness became a part of worker ant's life, and it suddenly realized that it's working away without putting self-interests into the picture. What then, would the ant want to do? Would it ever aspire to be queen? Would it instead want to be a warrior ant or a drone? Would it spread its thoughts to its fellow workers, much like an enlightened guru or leader do? Would we see revolutions to bring about social change in the ant world? Would the queen ant ever agree to abdicate, or would it heave a sigh of relief at having been decommissioned from bearing armies of offspring? How about the drones? Would they still want to lead the elite life, of being fed and tended to, or would they want to do something more meaningful, like talking about the futility and banality of the bourgeois life? Would they want to be commissioned into the army as a warrior ant or become a worker?

Read all about an ant's life here...meanwhile, for those of you who like to fantasize, you can watch Antz!

Grammar agony

How do you like "everybody have done this" ?
@@?? Everybody have??!!***??

And how do you like, "I complete an year at my workplace today" or "My daughter is an year old"? An year??? Looks like someone mistook year for ear...hilarious! Next time don't be surprised if someone says "my an-year-old daughter has a ear-ache"!!!

Hail the Snail!

This week's secret: I simply adore snails. Not all of them, mind you, but to be precise, freshwater snails. Not as pets in my aquarium (I have one back in Imphal). You guessed right (or didn't?) I adore them on my dinner plate! That's right dearies! Did I hear a yechhh! and a yuuckkk!? Lemme tell you, before you curl up your nose in disgust, that the French consider snails to be one of the ultimate delicacies. They have them cooked with a variety of condiments, picked out of their shells with a special fork...but I like snails cooked the Meitei way--stir fried in their shells with potatoes, seasoned with herbs and red chili peppers--chewy and yet succulent. Yummm. The other recipe is equally tantalizing: herbs, chili, onions, garlic, potatoes and peas all cooked with the snails in their shells to a gravy like consistency...Another yummm. Pick out the snail, scoop up some gravy, and suck out the flesh...quite a task, but entirely worth the effort.

The recipe is of course a secret known only to Meitei moms. Not a mom yet, though I am a Meitei, so I cannot tell you yet! But if you are lucky enough to be visiting Imphal, do visit the local rice hotel and ask for tharoi thongba. Who knows, even if you have been to Paris and tasted escargot, you might want tharoi more!

...Hail the snail
Without fail...