Goyna Bori- a beautiful food art from West Bengal

For those acquainted with the diversities of the Bengali palate, tiny lentil nuggets called ‘bori’ are nothing new. Bori are different from daaler bora- which are lentil fritters. Bori are also made from lentil paste and moulded into nuggets, followed by drying under the sun. They are smaller than daaler bora which is actually a ready to eat dish. Bori are fried before eating and added to many Bengali dishes for interesting tastes. They are available in different sizes, made from variety lentils and can be added with seasonings or simply sold plain. However, Goyna Bori are a specialty among all available bori. To be precise, they are a form of interesting food art hailing from the eastern Medinipur in West Bengal.

The name Goyna Bori means bori that are shaped like jewelry (Goyna in Bengali means jewelry). This name refers to the interesting shapes that these bori are available in, most commonly in the form of jewelry. This art developed among the women folk of Medinipur village since the place has bountiful harvests of lentils. Commonly used lentil for Goyna Bori is the black lentil (Urad dal). The lentils are soaked overnight and the next day the husk is removed. A sticky white paste is made from them and then the bori makers simply unleash their creativity! The designs are created very carefully and some of them are really awe striking. A thumb rule for laying the bori design to prevent the paste from sticking on the surface is to spread the paste over a layer of poppy or sesame seeds. The seeds add a distinct flavour to the Goyna Bori. Sometimes a thin coating of mustard oil is also placed over them.

Traditionally this Goyna Bori making involved an elaborate initiation to mark the process. The bori maker would invite the women in the locality to the house. The women should be clean and properly dressed. Twelve married women would touch the senior bori maker or the artist heralding the preparation process. The senior or expert bori makers would lay the lentil paste design while the amateurs would learn from them and help them. Goyna Bori had carved out a place for itself in the society as these were given as wedding gifts (tattwa) to the in laws when the daughter of a household got married. Bori (not only Goyna Bori) often form an important serving item on special occasions like Jamae Shashthi when the son in law feasts at his in laws home. The newly married bridegroom and even the bride, have to make space for the delectable bori on their plates.

The intriguing beauty of this food art has found appreciation among several talented and well known men who couldn’t help but give into the temptation. Famous Bengali authors like Bankimchandra, Rabindranath Tagore and others have referred to this unique decorative in their literary compositions. The celebrated Goyna Bori even had a cameo appearance in Satyajit Ray’s film Agantuk! The Goyna Bori is also common in Bengali rhymes and couplets. Few lines of couplets mentioning it:

Khukur mon keno bhari?

Pate nei je goyna bori!

Translation:

Why is our little girl sad?

Because her plate doesn’t have Goyna Boris!

Another one:-

Meye jachche soshur bari

Shongi holo goyna bori

Translation:

Our daughter is leaving for her in-laws

The Goyna Boris accompany her

Recently the Goyna Bori was promoted as a part of creating awareness about Bengal’s dying arts under the Biswa Bangla brand.  Sadly this beautiful indigenous art is dying out. Being a Bengali, I really take pride in the nuanced art forms that my motherland has produced. I feel it is a part of our responsibility to keep these things alive and pass it down to our next generations…..

                                                            

-Abhishikta 

Refection of an undying spirit: The Fault in our Stars by John Green

I borrowed The Fault in our stars from a friend and read it during the last semester break of college. I haven’t seen the movie but the book gave me an insight, which is why I chose to write on this. I found Green’s writing in the book unpretentious and very straightforward. In a simple narration John Green uses harsh reality to weave a sweet heart rending tale of cancer afflicted teenagers. The protagonists are crippled by the disease but their beings shine forth due to their undying spirit. By thumb rule a tale of lovers cannot be exemplified without some strong forces of opposition that endanger their tryst! Here, in The Fault in our Stars Green uses such a predicament that is more real than dramatic, but serves the purpose of making a connection with the readers.

The story sets off with a sixteen year old Hazel Grace a victim of lung cancer and her acquaintance with Augustus Waters, a survivor of osteosacroma. They meet at a support group and build up an interesting relationship over time, getting introduced to each other’s passions and likings. Augustus is drawn to The Imperial Affliction, a book that means a lot to Hazel. Hazel is piqued by Augustus as he draws her resemblance to Natalie Portman in the movie V for Vendetta, which she agrees to watch with him. Hazel also tells him that she wants to meet the author of The Imperial Affliction, Peter Van Houten who has left the story incomplete and she wants to know what happens to the characters thereafter. The story takes an interesting note when Augustus perseveres and uses his wish from the Genie Foundation to take Hazel to Amsterdam and meet Peter Van Houten. Hazel also has to make efforts to make her doctor grant her the permission to go. After overcoming resistances, they make it and Hazel’s mother accompanies them to the trip. But the meeting with Peter Van Houten turns out to be far different from what was expected. Instead of providing Hazel what she expected, the man acts rather insensitively and calls her a failed experiment of mutation. Hazel gets distressed but later they take a tour to the Anne Frank’s Museum and Hazel has to toil to climb the stairs. The place soon enthrals Augustus and Hazel and caught amidst a tide of emotions, they kiss and soon realize how much they love each other. The story takes a tragic twist when Augustus reveals that his cancer had returned. It becomes clear that he won’t survive and he dies following a few days of deteriorating health. The story closes to an end with Hazel receiving a eulogy from Augustus, post his death. She expected that he had written an ending to The Imperial Affliction, but instead receives a piece of writing about how grateful he was to have known her in his life. Hazel also feels the same.

Green takes us through the tenacious struggle of the characters interspersed with moments of joy and fulfilment. The Fault in our Stars explores all shades of probabilities in the relationships of the characters. The reader perceives them in the bonding of the parents with the teenagers, the teenager friends and the ones they develop while interacting with those whose lives are easier than theirs. The characters accept the inevitable, yet their good humoured take on their destinies would make one bound to appreciate their boldness. Augustus’s friend Isaac charms the readers with his wit instead of arousing pity in the reader’s heart for going blind due to cancer. They spare no moment to be in merry and indulge in pleasures as they realize that life is too short for them to keep brooding over their maladies. In the subplot of the story involving The Imperial Affliction, the reader stumbles upon an anti-climax over the meeting of Peter Van Houten. But as the story ends, Green clears all impending queries that arise in the reader’s mind while going through the story.

There is very limited use of rhetoric and as a non-fiction genre, The Fault in our Stars plays upon the delicate intricacies of life, as varied as it could possibly get. This is where I feel that Green scores in creating a warm, endearing story of star crossed lovers with an undying spirit. One should consider reading this book, especially those who are suffering from depression or think that life is too cruel for them. The plot of the book will bring a realization that we are really fortunate for even the most little things in life that make us happy!

My feeble science lab adventures: Part 2

Read into the life of Einstein, you'll find reason enough to cheer for yourself even if you were bad in studies!

Reportedly, Einstein's teacher at school had told his father that there was not much to expect from him as he did very poorly in his lessons. If his teacher had lived long enough to see him come up with E= mc², I'm sure the teacher had to turn ostrich for the rest of her life! 

Of all the science lab sessions I had in my school days, the physics lab sessions were the most dreaded ones. In the chemistry lab you could tweak the chemical experiments and their results in some manner, and a hit and trial identification wasn’t that tough when you could guess the main reacting components. But this was painfully difficult, at least for me in case of the physics lab experiments. Some days back I came across a facebook meme where it mentioned that if the tree had fallen on Newton’s head instead of the apple, our lives would have been a lot easier. With due respect to Sir Issac Newton, I wouldn’t have disagreed to this fact when I was in school. Remembering myself during the physics practicals, I would have wished that a whole lot of these adventurous physicists actually lost their way before they stumbled upon their discoveries. But again, these men changed everything and physics is one of the highly significant branches of science. Anyway, I didn’t feel so magnanimous while figuring out the experiments. The thing that I disliked the most about the physics practical classes was the mathematical calculation we had to sort out with the formulas. Almost all the time invariably, my results would show up highly deviated from the expected range of values.

The physics lab was on the floor just above the chemistry lab and unlike the latter it was well lit and ventilated. As far as I recollect, the first experiments began with some measuring instruments which were taught to us. I clearly remember, there were Vernier callipers and screw gauge. At first sight they appeared to me like tools from Frankenstein’s lab. The Vernier Calliper was a set of sliding scales and it had a metallic strip that could be used for measuring depth. When you extended the scales to their limits, it appeared like a junior AK-47. When teachers didn’t look, kids would love to use the Vernier Callipers to simulate an intense war field targeting the enemy with the supposed lethal weapon. Though initially confounding, using the Vernier callipers turned out to be easier compared to other experiments we later had. And the screw gauge! The screw gauge was used for precision measurements as you could figure out the value till the third decimal place. I felt screwed while counting places of 100 markings. Later more was in store as we came across the application of theoretical physics in the lab practical.

There was torque effect, pendulum and its relation with acceleration due to gravity, electric circuits, real and virtual image using lens, tracing magnetic field (I liked this one) and some more I don’t remember. I was once floundering in my internal assessment when I had to determine the weight of a rock (picked up from the school ground) in a torque effect experiment. There was another weight suspended at the end of a metre scale to balance the weight of the rock. My results were betraying the torque principles and I kind of goofed up the calculations to make things fall in place. I was however happy that I didn’t get the pendulum experiment. Every time I did this experiment during class, the pendulum bob would share a love-hate relationship with me while dancing away under the gravitational acceleration. There was some relationship between the height of suspension and the time taken by the bob to sway on its path. The bob didn’t comply with the laws in my case and I would rather end up copying accurate values from a friend’s copy.

The lens imaging was nice. We used the wall as a screen and the trees outside were used as the objects. A cute little faint image of the trees was captured on the wall. Tracing lines of a magnetic field was also nice. The iron pins would arrange themselves along the lines of the magnetic field and we would then trace it on a paper. I also remember that while setting up a very simple circuit I got a small electric pang that felt like an ant bite. The only thing that was a problem in the experiments was when the calculations of an experiment deviated madly beyond the expected ranges. During tests you could only pray that you guessed really well while trying to match the right values when there was a sign of faltering. In chemical experiments you could take the help of a neighbouring friend as the same test or not more than two test variants were given for assessment to the entire class. This privilege didn’t exist in case of physics experiments as each had unique results and the teacher would later verify with your set of instruments.

The physics practical room was like a huge hall. There were stretches of cupboards or drawers, whose flat tops were used as tables for the experiments. If our teacher was absent for a practical class, the substitute teacher would usually ask us to practice on our own. This was a golden chance to chatter away 80 minutes of a double period practical class while putting up pretence of being deeply engrossed in an experiment with an Einstein like expression. There was enough light coming in and sometimes if you worked near to the window, you might want to stare at the trees outside in our school campus. I liked watching the trees, especially if they bore flowers and their leaves swayed in the breeze.

And all this ended after I passed out my tenth standard board exams. I would only catch a peek into the physics lab later to see how my science stream friends were faring in deadlier experiments. Some obviously aced them and were totally brushed up with all the concepts. And for some who chose science to feel secure among the herd of science opters didn’t appreciate the unexpected complication of the subject! No it wasn’t bad. I realize it now that our teachers were really good in teaching us stuffs that made Salt Lake School produce a brilliant lot of academic achievers. Most of my contemporary friends are doing really well and I feel proud to share the same batch. It’s not been that long I have left school. But I do feel nostalgic when I recollect sweet memories of my schooldays!

The Grecian urn that teases the heart

This is a follow up to my series of tributes to the literature classics that stole my heart. Last time it was Tennyson’s Tithonus, a very beautiful piece of work. This time it is ‘Ode on a Grecian urn’ by John Keats. Now it is really difficult to express my feelings and the flight of imagination that Keats evoked inside me. The reason is very simple. Feelings, especially love and gratitude cannot be put into words. No matter how hard you try, the other person may only get an essence of what you actually feel and you will end up with a feeling that you failed to convey what you wanted. Ode on a Grecian urn is a cherished poem which has left an irremovable impression in my being. This poem is based on a very beautiful observation which is otherwise missing in the vagaries of the mundane human life. Keats’s poem leads me to an amazing insight and I find it deeply spiritual. By spirituality, I mean living one’s life with a feeling of an unseen entity that craftily drives the working of the universe. It gives you a feeling of freedom from the shackles of life. This is what Keats summarizes the poem to. But let me start off with how actually this poem moves on with mesmerizing ideas, one after another.

The entire poem revolves around the multitude engravings of people, nature and things that adorn the face of an ancient vessel- the Grecian urn. Keats admires the urn like an artist admires a beautiful art piece. He carefully unfurls the urn’s beauty like a legendary lore. The scenes carved on the urn’s surface come to life with Keats’s enquiries about what he sees. He beholds beautiful valleys, woods and trees, men or gods- he himself is not sure, playful men chasing maidens, a youth playing a flute beneath a tree and a priest leading a procession with a heifer which is to be sacrificed at a green altar. And what amazes him about all these things? That everyone he can see, is living in eternal bliss. It is because their moments of ecstasy have been frozen for eternity. The tree will enjoy perpetual spring never having to shed its leaves; the young lovers will never face disappointment as they are immortalized in the anticipation of meeting their beloved, the youth will play on sweet melodies on his flute untethered, and the heifer will forever gaze at the skies unsure of his fate. Keats further imagines that the procession that has arrived for the ceremonial sacrifice has left its town desolate for forever. So if anybody ventures into the empty town, there will be no one to inform the visitor about why the place continues to remain abandoned.

Keats stresses upon a very remarkable note- the mutability of the material world. He finds the marble men, maidens, trees and things thriving in bliss, as they will never perish. Here I feel he makes a hint at what mortal pursuits are aimed at, i.e. in finding happiness or bliss. Anything we do in the material world is with a purpose of gaining happiness. But the small moments of happiness or what we expect would make us happy soon fades out. We only get a glimpse of the ultimate bliss when we fulfill our desires in the material world. There are places in the poem which can make one sure that Keats is actually talking about something like this. He refers to the different pursuits of the marble beings as living a life free from ‘human passion’- that cloys your heart and cripples you with feverishness for holding onto the pleasures too tightly. He further upholds the urn as a beacon of hope for people who are steeped in misery. The urn’s wisdom is stressed upon as it ‘teases’ men’s imagination such as the poet himself, as does eternity to a mind that attempts to gauge everything. Remember I spoke about spirituality in the Grecian urn? The poem’s conclusion aptly hammers on this philosophy. Keats pays his homage to the urn by referring to it as an epitome of the ultimate truth- “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”. So the urn that has stood the test of time will continue to convey the beautiful truth that lies above the material world of transience.

If you have made it this far in this post, then I admire your patience and maybe your heart for things. I remember most of my friends in class either dozing off while the poem was being taught or cursing the whole fraternity of romantic poets who made things really complicated for the English exams. We had Keats’s poem for our twelfth standard board examination, and as far as I remember I was lucky enough to get it on the question paper.  Now, taking the entire poem in a literal sense would sum up to an eccentric poet dreaming away with possibilities of varied interpretations of the engravings on an urn which was created thousands of years ago. Visualizing this would be funnier: a man staring at an urn and running his wild imaginations. But again, that’s why poetry acts as a medium for subtle things in life that might not fit into logical facts. Poems like the Grecian urn are made to reflect on aspects of life that revitalizes the passion to live. Yes it is lofty, and those who didn’t like literature (let alone poetry), would rather like to be sent to hell than extricating the poets’ fantasies which never stopped getting loonier for them. For me, I had a heart for such things. The visualization of frozen ecstasies delighted me immensely, such that I have wished in some beautiful moments of my life that those moments could be immortalized on a beautiful urn like the Grecian urn. There are some moments really beautiful in our life where we would want to remain captured forever, beyond time and space. And this is exactly where Grecian urn led me!

In any case, I would recommend all to read the poem for once. Who knows what musings it might lead you to?

No this is not a Grecian urn, it's a huge vase
that Romans loved to keep it in their gardens.
Anyway, it comes close to a sculpted urn......

The dark room

What is the most ingenious thing you can come up with to make a noisy kid running errands to fall in line? Scare him. This is easy. Because no matter how difficult a kid is, he is bound to be scared of something or the other; be it a dog, a scary person, or a conjured up monster or Boogie man who lives under the bed. Yes, this was the perfect tactic for my pre-primary teachers to handle a classroom of fifty odd frenzied and boisterous kids who would drive them nuts. They would often warn a trouble maker in the class about taking him/her (it was ‘him’ mostly) to an ominous ‘dark room’ on the first floor. No matter how naughty a kid was, the dark room sounded scary and this worked till we were in the pre-primary class.

Now, what was this dark room? Since we were in the pre-primary class, it did pique curiosity in our little hearts about how this dark room actually is. My room number was 2, class section B. The dark room was in the first floor while our classroom was in the ground floor. It was visible at a diagonal view from my classroom and always had its doors closed. Pre-primary was the first elementary class of our school. That meant that we were the youngest kids in the school. We were confined to the ground floor and did not ever try to climb the stairs, which was exclusively meant for the seniors who had classes in the top floors. So all we could do is, catch a glance then and now from our classroom, to the above floors that appeared inexplicably large to us. What the above floors looked like was best left to our imaginations. Anyway, the dark room was a mysteriously spooky place which appeared to be a small closed room. And, once again what lay behind the closed doors was fodder for our babyish imaginations.

Well, my teachers kind of trained their creative imaginations upon us while attempting to frighten us with hideous things that lived behind the closed doors of the room. Each one of them had their own creep suited to scare the kids. Some bluffed about a monster in the room with red eyes, horns like a bull and a scary grimace with its fangs jutting out. Some teachers even loved to accessorize the evil monster with a trident or that sort of thing. Some teachers were exceptionally good at giving us creeps about the dark room. I remember one teacher telling us that the dark room was like an endless dark tunnel. She said that whosoever enters it loses his way for forever while grappling in the never ending darkness. The stupid monster created by other teachers didn’t scare me. But this dark tunnel thing really gave me goosebumps.

Some teachers were extra zealous in intimidating kids by pretending to drag them into the dark room. I can’t blame the teachers either, for some children were horribly naughty, and fairly innovative in throwing all sort of tantrums. There were some bullies who loved to poke others with sharp pencils or keep kicking the front kid’s chair and harassing others in all possible ways. And there were fights. Kids love to fight and often these were pretty dangerous with both parties hurling pencil boxes and duster (even school bags at certain times) at each other. Sometimes, one would form coalition with the enemies’ foes and charge the assailants. Blood spill was not uncommon, and the defeated party would immediately report to the teachers’ jury with its indictments. A trial would follow and the guilty would be punished according to his/their degree of culpability. If convicted of high degree non-pardonable crime, the ill-fated criminal would be reduced to tears while the teacher ordered his/her deportation to the dark room. The journey to the dark room was however cut short as the kid would be taken to the principal’s room instead. A brief rebuke from the principal would discourage the kid from creating nuisance for some days.

When I used to peep at the dark room from my classroom, I would find that the teachers entered a room just beside it. It was the teachers’ staff room. Once I caught sight of a sister entering the dark room with a tray and cups. I thought this was for appeasing the dark room creature with some refreshments to keep him satisfied, lest he should venture out and gobble up the kids. However, it was not long before we were promoted to class 1 and we could finally climb the stairs to the first floor, and came across the mysterious dark room.

My class 1 section was just beside the classroom next to the dark room. It turned out that the dark room was actually a small makeshift room with a nice bed used as a sick room. It was also used as storage for sundry eatables including tea, coffee, etc for the teachers. So that explains what I saw earlier. The sisters also used to the dark, albeit sick room for keeping their bags and stuffs. The room soon lost its scary charm and for the rest of my school days, I saw kids screaming and parading in front of the dark room. We soon forgot that this room was once a mysteriously scary place that was used for creating all sorts of imaginative perils that one would never try to discover. The teachers had to take other routes to tame the wild kids.

Few days back I was watching the Harry Potter film, The Chamber of secrets. This is when my ‘dark room’ memory popped up. Our school maybe one-hundredth the size of Hogwarts and the dark room was only a wee bigger than Harry’s closet. But the way the room spooked us, it was not any less intriguing than the dreaded chamber of secrets. And of course, we had our share of magical experiences while running our minds about the heinous possibilities that lay behind the closed doors of the dark room.

My long lost delights of tiffin boxes- cakes!

Some days ago I went to a local grocery shop to buy something. The shop is always decked up with all sorts of snacks, confectioneries, biscuits and stuffs that please your taste buds. A common sight in such shops is packets of chips hanging from the shop exteriors like streamers. In case you want to buy one, you pay the shopkeeper for it and carefully tear off a packet of chips from the chains of hanging packets. Anyway, I wasn’t interested in the chips. I bought whatever I needed and was heading back to my home. This is when my eyes caught the jars filled with the once familiar Bapuji cakes in the tea shop just beside the grocery shop. I remembered how these little cubes of cake were once synonymous with tiffin snacks in my schooldays.

Kids born in the 80s and 90s are better familiar with Bapuji cakes. It still comes in the same intact packaging as I have always seen it- a square cube of cake neatly enveloped within a wax coated paper. The front bears the name ‘Bapuji’ in both Bengali and English inscribed in huge letters. It also sports a bold capital ‘R’ in red, indicating that you choose only an authentic Bapuji cake and be wary of fake ones that tarnish the famous cake brand.  When I check with my oldest Bapuji cake memories, I find that the packaging still continues to come in the same prosaic blue and yellow checkerboard design. This apparently understated yet immensely popular cake was a widely preferred option for a kid’s snack. When I was a kid, Bapuji cakes were a wholesome option at a pocket friendly price. It was always available at the cheapest rate compared to any other cake that was available in the market. I remember it being priced at Rs. 2.50 initially, which later increased little by little, when Bapuji had to keep up with its standards while struggling with the inflating market prices. Now I don’t know how much it costs, maybe around Rs. 8 or 10 I guess, as it has always been the cheapest available option among tiffin cakes.

So, how did this humble Bapuji cake fare in its taste reports (Pun intended)? Well, it was tasty and cheap enough for kids (and their moms) to religiously stick to it as an ideal snacking option when they couldn’t do any better. There were always some die hard Bapuji cake fans who wouldn’t settle for anything else, or at least have the cake as a complementary option along with some other snacks. I remember that I too was a regular with Bapuji cakes in middle school when I started taking tuitions after school hours. The cake had a brown caramelised top and the rest of it was yellow. It had a crumbly texture with a distinct taste, not the usual sugary sweet taste you get in most tiffin cakes. It was pleasantly sweet with a nutty flavour. I assume that the nutty flavour was imparted to it as the cake was loaded with peanuts. It also contained dark coloured chewy raisins, very less amounts of candied papayas and some delightfully large lumps of pethas! I have an attraction for these mushy, translucent white things called ‘pethas’ since my childhood. These sinfully sweet pethas are nothing but dried mounds of pumpkins loaded with sugar syrup. The sweet syrup spreads into your mouth as you chew up the mushy petha. Pethas are common in Indian made local brand cakes (at least in my city) and also in sweet shops. They are generously used by many moms and grandmas while baking cakes at home. You won’t find these in English cakes or at least in those popularly sold brands (Yeah, you know what I am talking about, at least for those who live in India) that decorate the shelves in shopping malls. For when I had a Bapuji cake, my moments of ecstasy would be when I would discover a piece of petha in it. I would cherish it and keep it for my last bite.

There was one more cake I remember which both my Didi and I loved. It was however not as popular as Bapuji was and I remember that it was available only for short period of time in the market. However, this was the best tiffin cake I had ever tasted and I still long for it. It had a name, something like ‘jam sandwich’. I was very small and used to go to playschool at that time. But this ‘jam sandwich’ or whatever it was called, stole my heart. I faintly remember its taste but I do remember that it was very tasty. It was smaller in size compared to Bapuji. It was a plain cake, in a flat rectangular shaped. The cake actually had two slices sandwiching a delicious spread of red jam in between them. I remember having it in my breaks at the playschool. Even Didi enjoyed it, although I don’t know if she remembers. By the time I was old enough for school, this cake vanished from the shops and I was left like a forlorn lover. I regret not even remembering the brand which manufactured it.

There was one more cake-dumping-me story, and thankfully I remember its name and taste as well. This was manufactured by Great Eastern Bakery and used to be available at the Mother Dairy outlets. I remember Baba (my father) buying them for me and Didi. This one was a fluffy cake, larger than Bapuji. I don’t remember it containing any fruit bits or nuts but it had an amazing essence. Its taste was something like bubble gum but it tasted marvellous. I remember myself getting hold of the white plastic covering that contained the cake. I would rupture the covering and gorge on mouthfuls of the yummy cake. Sadly, Great Eastern stopped manufacturing these after some time and once again my cake pleasures were nothing more than a joyous stint. I remember one more cake brand which earned my Didi’s admiration very much. It was called Farini. Though I hardly remember having Farini cakes, I remember that Didi used to gloat over it. At some time we used to eat cakes of a brand named Gemini, and it was tasty. It was not excellent, but its added flavours and artificial scents were somewhat better than the other cakes. I remember Didi comparing Gemini cakes with Farini. So I got an idea of what Farini cakes used to taste like.

Nowadays this niche of small tiffin cakes comes in myriad varieties. You get sliced cakes, cup cakes, cream-filled/ jam-filled centre cakes (doesn’t taste as good as it sounds), marble cakes, and a variety of flavoured tiffin cakes- fruit, chocolate, vanilla, pineapple, strawberry and what not! There are quirky innovations like two in one cakes, and the worst combination I came across was that of orange and chocolate. Sometimes I have been greatly displeased by buying a chocolate tiffin cake and finding candied fruits in them. They made the cake taste worse than Rum balls. However, I do agree that some of them are good. There is a brand named ‘winkies’ available nowadays and its cakes are not bad. Some time back I had a swissroll they make and I liked it.

But what happened to our beloved Bapuji and their likes? They had to make way for fancy junk foods that revolutionised the whole concept of snacks in the fast food genre. Over the last two decades while we grew up, there were chains of fast food outlets expanding, often crowding at places where kids and youngsters hang out. It isn’t that the cakes and other readymade snacks we had exactly topped the ranking on the nutrition list. Oh! And I forgot about instant noodles. It soon became a tiffin staple for many, even though its nutritious value and safety were always debatable by health experts. Our moms usually preferred that we eat home cooked meals in lunch breaks. But I still feel that the whole fast food trend that satiates our taste buds while endangering our health is a major hazard to deal with. The oily, fat ridden, junk foods can easily get the kids addicted as they undoubtedly have a lip-smacking taste. Anyway, I guess people are getting aware these days as these really plump kids afflicted with child obesity run a risk of getting a heart attack like a sixty year old man!

More importantly, I feel sad that we are forgetting to appreciate and be contented with small things in our life. This is the reason I feel is why we find the humble Bapuji cake adorning the jars of a roadside tea stall and it is unlikely that it would ever make a comeback in the lunchboxes. I am pretty assured; if I ask any child to have a Bapuji cake for snack, he would most likely baulk at the idea. Eternally, mothers always have had a hard time making their fussy kids eat their food (even my mom had to coax me immensely). But with the trend of the bar rising in unhealthy plus tasty combinations, moms face even a greater hurdle!

 

A fading delectable!

“Bug-ing” stories

A spider is a neutral option for both parties!

As you grow older, your wisdom grows supposedly. But there always exist some bugging problems that lie beyond the scope of your wisdom. You discover that there are bugging aspects of your life that can be dealt skilfully only by some expert (trust me when I say this).  Literally speaking, what bugs you should be taken seriously, and it is highly advisable that you form strategic alliances for the same.

My didi (elder sister) and I sort of shared a mutually symbiotic relationship when it came to bugs. She was (and still is) afraid of lizards and their kinds, while I was (and still am) phobic of crawling, wormy insects. So there are numerous instances where we would come in aid to one another when the dreaded bugs would imperil our lives. Lizards are not bugs, I admit it. But anyway, since lizards are creepy enough to disgust my sister, I put it under the bugs’ list for convenience. I remember her yelling and screaming when a furtive gecko would pop its head out from behind a tube-light on the wall. Sometimes the sinister creature would tease my didi by dangling its tail while being stationed on the wall. I had a feeling that these lizards kind of enjoyed while stoking panic in her heart. So what did I do when my sister started calling me for help? I rushed to her help and would employ the following strategies to shoo away the troublesome reptile:

PLAN A. = these sly lizards usually positioned themselves high up on the wall, much beyond my reach. When I was small, they were pretty far away from my reach. My plan A would be to clap and yell at the lizard to shoo it away. This would usually follow an episode of chasing the lizard across the walls of the room, while my sister would scream hysterically or simply vanish from the scene. Sometimes these lizards were too obstinate to leave the room and grin at me playfully while I kept on with my unsuccessful attempts. This is when I would adopt plan B.

PLAN B = I would arm myself with anything that was long enough to reach the pesky lizard. It would be anything ranging from a broom, rolled chart paper, clothes’ hangers or better still if I could get hold of a really long stick. I would bang my lethal weapon against the wall to scare the lizard away. This usually worked as a last resort, as the lizard would rush away trying to escape the bangs. My sister would give out a sigh of relief if the creature would escape out of the house. However, sometimes the lizard would run inside an electric socket or behind inaccessible hiding places (the tube lights were their favourites) and this would displease her immensely. A word of caution, in case you want to try out plan B. NEVER touch the lizard or bang on it with your banging weapon (whatever it might be). It often results the sloppy lizard to drop on the floor and it sheds its tail in the process (and I tell you it’s a very ungainly sight). It might also act as if it’s dead, and while you sink in remorse about unintentionally causing the death of an innocent lizard, the cheeky lizard might just run away!

My sister tried several things to keep away lizards from the house. She once heard that hanging egg shells on the walls keep lizards away. She applied the same without much success, as the lizards would rather amuse themselves with the shells. Once we got a gift of peacock feathers from my mom’s friend on our trip to Rajasthan. My didi was immensely delighted when my mom’s friend told her that peacock feathers are very effective in keeping away lizards. Back home I remember she displayed the peacock plumes like a hand fan on the wall of her room. It was effective for some days I remember. The lizards were confounded by the intimidating feathers initially, and I imagined that they would curiously peer at the feathers from their hiding places. But with time, I guess they got bold enough (or bored from missing out some adventure) to carry out their leisurely exploration across the walls. The feathers gathered dust and did not seem to scare the lizards any more.

Apart from lizards, my didi was a brave heart in facing all other sorts of bugs. This is when she came to my help when I performed my antics in the face of my horrid bug adversities. I dreaded wormy crawlers. My didi seized these instances to show her skills in coming up with solutions for those bugs that bugged me. The funny part (although this didn’t amuse me) about these wormy crawlers was that if they were touched by someone, they would roll themselves up like a ring. I guess it is their defence mechanism, and they tried to fool their rivals by acting dead. My didi was however filled with pity. She would carefully pick up the ringed crawler with a piece of paper (or sometimes even with her hands!) and gently throw it outside the window. She would later try to uplift my spirits by lecturing me about how these wormy crawlers were totally harmless and less disgusting (oh really?) than the loathsome lizards. I would remind her that I felt equally compassionate towards lizards and she would vehemently oppose my suggestion. Also, these creepy crawlers didn’t make her run about the house like the lizards did to me. When confronted, they would simply worm up into a ring (gross!). However, there was no way to keep away these crawlers from the house unlike lizards. So I counted on her in my moments of bugging distress.

Neither of us was scared of spiders but in my old house, there were some huge blooming spiders that hid themselves behind the sinks of the bathroom. I didn’t like the big spiders and strangely enough these creatures evoked pity in the heart of my magnanimous didi. I must elaborate why I felt so. When these spiders would breach our territories beyond the sinks, these things didn’t appear very nice at all. They would scurry over the floor and the walls with their eight legs, haplessly trying to figure out where they should be going. This would scare both me and my mom and we would start running about the house calling for help. If my father was not around, my didi would emerge as the hero in the melee. She would again apply her bug-management skills and capture the straddling spider. In her usual compassionate gesture she would bid farewell to the eight legged guy, tossing him outside the window, Touche! Once I remember didi cleaning the bathroom sink and suddenly calling out to our mom. My mom went to discover a huge spider planted itself on my didi’s vest. My didi unperturbed, seemed to be caressing the spider on her belly and asked mom to gently remove the spider so that it doesn’t get hurt.

It’s been over two years my didi got married. Recently one evening while she visited us, we revisited a streak of the lizard phobic episode we were once familiar with. Oddly enough in this house where I currently stay, the lizards are very peculiar. Peculiar in the sense that these tailed creatures almost, always run over the floor. Seldom have I ever caught one of these guys perched on the wall like lizards usually do. They would hide behind cupboards, the fridge or shoe rack- things that would touch the floor. So while we were chatting away on the sofa, a lizard streamed across the floor. It caught didi’s eyes and she screamed as usual. We pacified her, telling her these lizards are not that much of a nuisance (though both me and my mom have to clean up their poop trails on the floor everyday). To her relief, there was no other lizard running on the floor that day.

Anyway, I was always grateful to didi when she saved me from wormy crawlies. After she got married, the job was relegated to my dad. But for my didi this thing has got a little complicated. The reason is that both my didi and my brother in law are scared of lizards. So they have to take many precautions lest an unwelcome lizard enters their home!