So it goes

Just when you think all is perfect, comes the next big thunder and the screech of a massive blinding lightening. So it goes.

You, my blogger friends, have been with me since 2006 and so it is apt I share that I have been working on a book for what seems like forever now and this jolt seems the necessary finishing touch. 

Am looking for publishers, in India and abroad. Consider this a note to whomsoever concerned who believe in good writing and who also equally believe in paying good for good writing. 

On the Meow Handicrafts front, after much thought, I have collaborated with Keshava Seva Sadhana's School for Special Children and Mineral Foundation of Goa to build a sustainable and profitable business module that employs marginalised sections -- we have started small with ten special children and five women. 

Rest all best, do drop in a hello when you can. Much love, always. Be Meow! 

Aavkaro meetho aapje By Dula Bhaya Kag - Translation

This is one of my favourite songs by Dula Bhaya Kag. Our teacher used to set tunes to the poems we studied and we would all sing together. Such memories. I mentioned this song in a recent column and I regret that I wrongly attributed it to Jhaverchand Meghani, another great Gujarati poet. 

હે જી તારા આંગણિયા પુછીને જે કોઈ આવે રે, આવકારો મીઠો…આપજે રે જી…

 હે જી તારે કાને સંકટ કોઈ સંભળાવે રે, બને તો થોડું… કાપજે રે જી………

માનવીની પાસે કોઈ….માનવી ન આવે…રે……(૨) 

તારા દિવસની પાસે દુ:ખિયાં આવે રે -આવકારો મીઠો…. આપજે રે….જી…. ૧.

કેમ તમે આવ્યા છો ?…એમ નવ કે’જે…રે……(૨) 

એને ધીરે એ ધીરે તું બોલવા દેજે રે -આવકારો મીઠો… આપજે રે….જી…. ૨.

વાતું એની સાંભળીને…આડું નવ જોજે….રે……(૨) 

એને માથૂં એ હલાવી હોંકારો દેજે રે -આવકારો મીઠો… આપજે રે….જી…. ૩.

‘કાગ’ એને પાણી પાજે…સાથે બેસી ખાજે..રે….(૨)
એને ઝાંપા એ સુધી તું મેલવા જાજે રે -આવકારો મીઠો…
આપજે રે….જી…. ૪.

If someone comes calling at your door, give them a warm welcome,

If someone shares grief with you, if possible try to cut it the way you can.

How sad it is that these days men don't seek help from men! 

If in your good times people come to share their sorrows, give them a warm welcome. 

Don't ask, "Why have you come to me?"

Let them speak at ease.

Don't look the other way after listening to them,

Nod your head and show them support, give them a warm welcome.

"Kag" offer them water to drink,

And sit them and share your food,

See them off by walking till the gate,

Give them a warm welcome.

Give them a warm welcome.

Translation (C) Gauri Gharpure 

Dula Bhaya Kag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dula_Bhaya_Kag

Jhaverchand Meghani: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhaverchand_Meghani

Song courtesy: short stories.co.in 

Halim recipe

Am back to the blog after long and it is somehow always food that works as a comeback post most of the times. Here is a halim recipe I tried this week. I referred to many online recipes, including Sanjeev Kapoor's chicken halim recipe, but changed a lot along the way to get the taste I like. 

I prefer halim to be slightly bland, with flavours of the lentil and meat as the stars, and pulling up the dish with garnish. It is garnish of fresh coriander, green chilli, onion, lemon and ghee that brings that simple flavours to another level. 

Here goes:

3/4 cup each - Broken wheat (dalia), mung dal and chana dal

1/2 cup - Arhar dal

1.5 inch ginger - Crushed and use the juice 

8-9 green cardamom - Crush and just use the seeds ground with little water

Garlic - 2-3 pods, finely chopped

Red chilli powder - 2 spoons (adjust according to taste)

Jeera powder - 1 spoon 

Haldi / turmeric - 1/2 spoon

Hing / Asafoetida - 1/2 spoon

Lemon - 2

Salt to taste

Mutton on bone - 300 gm

1) Marinate mutton overnight with red chilli, jeera, turmeric, hing, juice of half a lemon.

2) Wash broken wheat and the lentils well in two-three changes of water and soak overnight.

3) In a heavy bottomed vessel (I used a cooker), put marinated mutton and the lentils with two cups of water and start cooking on slow flame. Add cardamom extract. Cook for about two hours. 

4) Once meat starts falling off the bone, remove the pieces out and de-bone. Grind in a mixer and add to the lentil mix. Add salt. Adjust spices if required. Add garlic. Cook for another half an hour. The mix should be creamy and smooth.

5) Garnish with coriander, finely chopped green chillies, and fresh onion. Add a dollop of ghee.

Most recipes use chat masala/Garam masala as well but I like the taste as is. Experiment along the way as per your taste. 

Halim is a popular dish, especially in Hyderabad, cooked during the holy month of Ramzan.

 

Friday Column

Hello!

Hope you have been good and dropping in once in a while to check for updates. Since June 2015, I started writing a weekly column for The Goan Everyday. Sharing links of some published pieces.

Back to square one 

The goodness of a breakup

One love and nothing else

How old is still young?

Farewell to a soldier

Keep in touch!

Dal Dhokli / Gavar Dhokli - Gujarati food

This is a simple one-pot Gujarati dish with the elements of chapatti, dal and veggies all in one. 

Ingredients:

2 small cups of whole wheat flour / atta

1 cup tuvar / arhat dal

100 gm Gavar beans

1 tomato (Optional)

3 tablespoons of oil

Pinch each of - Mustard, Cumin, Asafoetida, Turmeric for tadka

Salt, cumin powder, coriander powder, red chilli powder

1 medium-sized ball of tamarind soaked in a cup of water

1-2 tablespoons of jaggery

Method:

1) Wash dal properly in two-three changes of water, let it soak for 5-10 minutes

2) Chop the tomato and cook it along with the dal in the pressure cooker

3) Make tight wheat flour dough using very little water, a tablespoon of oil, salt, chilli powder and turmeric and asafoetida. Cover and let it rest while the dal cooks. 

4) Chop Gavar in 1-inch pieces.

5) Heat oil well. Add mustard, let it splutter. Then add cumin. Add asafoetida, turmeric in that order and add chopped Gavar. Let it sauté for 3-4 minutes.

6) Add 4 cups of water, cover the lid and bring the water to boil. 

7) Roll the dough into a slightly thick, big round chappati and cut it into pieces diagonally to make dhokli.

8) Carefully add these pieces in the boiling water. Lower flame and let it cook for 5-6 more minutes.

9) The Dhokli will change colour and come to top of water when cooked. 

10) Next, add cooked dal, jaggery and tamarind paste. Add more water to adjust consistency of dal if required. 

11) Add salt, chilli powder, cumin and coriander powder to taste.

12) Simmer for another five minutes and switch of the gas.

13) Garnish with chopped coriander, add a spoonful of ghee while eating.  

Happy New Year, btw

I forgot the last time I updated the blog it was already the new year. Happy happy for 2015! May you have much hope, faith and a sound sleep :-)

- Gauri

Meow Handicrafts Updates

Here are some latest products made by us:

Happily Unmarried - 'Beware of the Wife' Doormat exemplifies sexist psyche

Just saw these "talking doormats" by a brand called Happily Unmarried advertised on my Facebook newsfeed. Disgusted. 

What is the joke here? That you can belittle your better half right on the doorstep by announcing to the world that she speaks her mind? Or that the product will serve as a tongue- in-cheek reminder to the woman of the house that no matter how many times she raises a point, she will remain just that, a doormat? Or rather as a passive-aggressive challenge for the wifey to suck up the sexist humour and prove she is a sport? 

Someone got humour really wrong at the Happily Unmarried design team. And I hope someone pays for this.

Whether they are married or not (we don't care about their happiness in either case) whether they are men or women - the Happyily Unmarried team needs a lesson or two on what qualifies as design and on what differentiates humour from gender stereotyping. 

Michhami Dukkadam

Micchami Dukkadam means asking for forgiveness for hurting in the past, knowingly or unknowingly. It is also an unconditional owning up to the human nature to err, and asking for forgiveness if one may inadvertently end up hurting in the future. This idea of Jainism appeals a lot, it is one of the most noble, sweet little ideals that a religion could inculcate in its followers. Just like flowers hold no grudge against the child that uproots plants in an impulsive fit, may God also give me the strength to forgive those who have wronged me. It is a very tough call. Anger, hate and envy are more persistent than calm, love and appreciation. Everyday, each disappointment brings with it the potential to push up to either set of emotions. I want the strength and blessings to accept the latter set, the positive. For all my anger and my bluntness, for the times I act selfish...   Khamemi Savve Jiva

Savve Jiva Khamantu me

Mitti me Savva Bhooesu

Veram Majjham Na Kenvi

Michchhami Dukkadam

I forgive all living beings.

May all souls forgive me,

I am on friendly terms with all;

I have no animosity toward any soul.

May all my faults be dissolved.

Meow Handicrafts - Updates

We took up a stall at Goa's happening Saturday Night Market in December. The experience was amazing, encouraging, learning, at times a little too exhausting, but on the whole quite worth it.

For those who have come late to the party, Meow Handicrafts is my venture to sell paper and bead jewellery and a lot of other interesting stuff that I make. It's named after my cat, Meow. We are working  to update our collection on Etsy. A whole new range should be up soon, watch this space for news.

Here are some photos of work in progress :

     Modern Meditation / Meow Handicrafts (C) Gauri Gharpure

     Meow on my mind 

A dog's life

Last night, Lali, our dog of twelve years, died.

She was playing till the last. Indiraben had just let her go out of the house for her night stroll, and about half an hour later, when she went to fetch Lali back, Indiraben found her lying motionless in the middle of the road outside our house.

First we thought a speeding vehicle had knocked her down. We checked her body, but she had no signs of injury whatever. She was still warm, and we thought she moved her ears and eyes. But she was definitely dead; Indiraben and I were only resorting to last-ditch death-defying hope. As I lifted Lali up to remove her to a safer place, her tongue spilled out. It was bluish-grey, pretty much off colour. We concluded a snake bite. A small consolation is that Lali died near us and that we had time to mourn her, to arrange a proper burial. 

Sheeba, her sibling was all confused this morning as they took Lali away. We thought Sheebu would go first, what with her numerous health problems. When Sheebu was recuperating from a surgery some months back, Lali surprised us by pushing in bits of bread for Sheebu through the iron gate every evening. It was as if she also wanted her share of nursing Sheebu back to health. 

Lali's death was sudden as sudden death is. 

In spite of having to digest that dreadful news many times, every time someone dies, the swiftness and the aloofness of the process never fails to amaze me. It makes me feel infinitesimally smaller and helpless. Some people might be put off by likening human death with animal death - I agree both have huge differences - but there are also similarities. When you hold in your hands a dead bird, or a squirrel, a puppy or a dog, the helplessness and strange spiritual anger and disbelief is similar to the devastation and rage on losing a human. 

Lali enriched our life with her constant, unconditional presence quite like a good friend or a loving relative. It was definitely not a dog's life.

Lali (L) and Sheeba in December 2009

Khushwant Singh as Khushwant Sinha on India Today!

Navratra 2013

Was home for the festival after a long time.

Coexistence

Restlessness.

There's a certain amount of restlessness brewing up. An uneasy feeling takes over when you feel something big is going to happen, or that it's about time things change and something big happens, or rather that things don't change at all and instead tread back into time and freeze exactly at those moments you decide.

Calm.

There's also a certain calm. Strange, that it can coexist with restlessness. But there is a realization that whether things change or not, for good or better, the status quo is quite pleasant and that life at this point is such that many may envy.

Every year, there is a certain month and a certain date that creeps up suddenly from behind you and demands a ledger of your life till then. It is on days preceding such dates that you get into a solemn state of mind, curb your jokes and randomness, those  smiles, and everything else that you do to hide your old hurt and wounded self from the world. Most of the times these remedies work.

And when they don't, you snuggle up to your father, or your cat, or imagine a love that could be. Even as you imagine, you remeber to thank God that everything is just the way it is, not an inch better, not an inch worse.

It is the present that is the most mysterious and the most giving; a strange mix of calm and restlessness and I wouldn't want it any other way.

GG

Why 30 is not the new 20

http://youtu.be/vhhgI4tSMwc

Wine

You didn't come into this house so I might tear off
a piece of your life. Perhaps when you leave
you'll take something of mine: chestnuts, roses or
a surety of roots or boats
that I wanted to share with you, comrade.

From Neruda's poem 'Wine'

Dream Horses

...There is a country stretched across the sky
strewn with the rainbow's superstitious carpets
and evening's vegetation:
that way I go - not without some fatigue,
treading grave loam, fresh from the spade,
dreaming among these doubtful greens...

This is a stanza taken from Pablo Neruda's poem 'Dream Horses.'

An accident

This evening a strange thing happened.

 At the exact moment that I decided to push my plate of food away and lean on the wooden railing to gaze at the river and the old bridge, I heard a woman scream. A man had met with an accident. I just saw his dusty footwear and his shaking legs by a truck parked below the restaurant.

 When I ran down to the couple, the man was foaming at the mouth, shaking uncontrollably and a head wound was oozing blood. He was clutching the axe that was lying by his side. The truck was full of sand, and the man, a daily wager, apparently had an attack of epilepsy and fell head down from the truck on the traffic-packed road. The woman was sobbing hysterically and was cradling her man with a passionate urgency.

 As I went up to my food later, the first thought that came was a selfish one. I told myself that the insecurities that had occupied me for the past two days seemed atrociously superficial and criminal to worry about after what I saw. My mind remained clouded with the thoughts of the woman. I can still see how she held her man, how she held his hands tight, pressed his wound with her torn saree and dabbed her tears with the same cloth, touched his cheeks lightly with her fingers to get him to talk to her. I can't forget how the man looked back at her, defeated, tired and very scared. How effortlessly some people get love and how shamelessly some cling to it.

 -Gauri

Childhood, or more specifically, the process of growing up, is perhaps one of the most dynamic subjects for sociological study. Of what I am today, a major chunk must be attributed to the experiences and associations I made from mid-school upwards to graduating from high school. College, then, was essentially an opportunity to refine and modify the experiences of early life and see them play out in the fun sociological web of adulthood.

 Even if you don't have children, don't plan to have any, or are at that stage in life where dealing with adolescents or teens is a distant memory, the care and attention that must go to children must be still relevant to you.

 Why and how?

 Simple. Because every adult has once been a child. It would be a rare (and a blessed) adult who would not want to tweak bits and pieces of his/her upbringing with the hypothetical hope that those few changes here and there in the past might have resulted in them being a better adult. Perhaps, that is why each generation's attitude to the next generation is often vastly different from the previous.

 Countries and cultures also differ in their approach to education and upbringing.
In India, and many of our neighbours in South Asia, children often remain "children" much after the expiry date of 18. Many relevant social questions are evaded by the magic formula, "You won't understand it yet, you are just a child." Of course, continuos guidance and support from elders is required at any stage, but such abrupt fool stops to conversations are not fair.

As a journalist, it amazes me to see the potential of our young adults, and also disappoints me that there aren't enough opportunities available (compared to say, the US) to suitably assist them into making them confident and worthy of exercising their adult franchise.

For my masters thesis at the University of Pune, I chose to do a content analysis of a children's newspaper. It was essentially the in-depth study of the editorial style and content of a weekly supplement of a local English daily that catered to children from mid-school upwards to high school. It was disappointing to note that a large chunk of the paper was devoted to colourful and overly cheerful cartoons and drawings, fables and moral folklores, puzzles and riddles, recipes and fashion suggestions. What was missing was a solid dialogue in issues that would concern these kids directly in the near future, if not now. Civic responsibilities and issues were sparsely discussed, politics was scare and there was no mention of sex education.

By the age of 12, all children start getting highly curious of their surroundings, their questions are much more complex and much more inquisitive, their queries and concerns are genuine and it is essential that during this time we find a way to give them knowledge patiently and adequately. "You won't understand yet, you are just a child," is likely not going to work because if your child has asked a question, it means the neurone spark plug has already been ignited. If you don't respond convincingly and truthfully, the young adult will catch the evasion and find his/her own ways to get to the truth.

Students of Don Bosco High School loved the JuniorScoop concept.
At the end of the short content analysis, I was certain about at least one thing: There is a huge void in the Indian news media that proactively focuses on young adults as their target audience. It is high time that children be given the dignity and the credit for their intellect and curiosity, and that they be groomed to larger responsibilities that they will be suddenly burdened with in near future.

I found a satisfying way of inching towards this goal by joining Juniorscoop.

Juniorscoop is a proposed citizen journalism project that will produce an online video magazine with stories contributed by high school students from five countries- Afganistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. We are a group of alumni of the scholarship programs funded by the US Department of State and our project has emerged a finalist. Out of about 600 proposed projects for the Alumni Exchange Innovation Fund 2013, only about 150 made it to the final round. Juniorscoop is proud to be in the race. If we get support, we might be funded by the US State Department to go ahead with our vision for grooming children as citizen journalists.


If you are a registered alum, sign in at alumni.state.gov and vote for us here

Voting ends June 16.

All my readers, friends and colleagues, please like our Facebook page without fail

-Gauri Gharpure

Fulbright-Nehru Masters Fellow in Leadership Development 2011-2012

MS Magazine, Columbia University in the City of New York

gauri.gharpure@gmail.com

Motherhood Is Not a Gender

My Facebook timeline is flooded with my beautiful friends posing with their more-beautiful mothers. I wouldn't want to classify my reactions to these lovely photos as those mixed with an inexplicable tinge of loss, or void, or any other such negative.

It's just that growing up exactly half my life without my mother, I have kind of forgotten how it feels to have one.

Of course, there are memories, some amazingly endearing and funny ones, but I have to stress all my faculties a lot if I want to remember how she smelt, or her voice, or how her touch felt. The process of recalling those physical memories is so intricate, time consuming and often painful, that I leave those at a safe distance most of the times.

In these 14 years, though, I have discovered how life makes up for one profound loss by infinite, disguised, daily gifts. Most of all, I have learned that motherhood has nothing to do with gender, or relationship, or age of the person who fills up as your mother.

Sometimes, the person may not even know he/she is being trusted with the priced emotional crown of foster motherhood. But, it's best to keep these secret associations to yourself. I don't know how many people I would freak out if I would tell them that for a split second, they became the mother I irreversibly lost.

My father fit in the role of a mother effortlessly. My grandmother then thought it wise to become the (very) stern father figure. If it were my father's turn to leave us unexpectedly that morning, I am sure my gentle mother would have overnight morphed into the man of the house just as well. For friends who have lost both their parents pretty young, God has more than compensated in His mysterious ways in the form of one kindness or the other.

Yes, I miss my mother. But honest to God, I must admit that I cannot imagine how life were to be if she were still around. Some things are not meant to be. The sooner you accept the losses that God orders, the easier it is to discover his hidden scheme of things.

-Gauri Gharpure
May 12, 2013