2018

2018 is the year I transformed from a woman to a mother, birthing a life, watching it grow into a mischievous son who literally follows my footsteps. It has been a year when I set everything else aside, said 'no' to three prestigious assignments, published my older poems in books and magazines (because I didn't have time to come up with new ones), battled episodes of postnatal depression (brought about by being closeted for six whole months of exclusively breastfeeding my child) by cooking up dishes with unusual ingredients, lost all my pregnancy weight and more in the process, met few people, travelled a little (Mumbai, Pune, Bhavnagar, Ahmedabad, Lothal, Dabhoi), celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary going to bed early, read a lot, became a Netflix and Amazon Prime addict and turned into a scribe-cum-biologist once again by penning by hand day-to-day events in my child's life making it the most important book I have ever written or I shall write. This year has given me two most beautiful gifts - my son and a pause.

#YearEndWisdom

2018

2018 is the year I transformed from a woman to a mother, birthing a life, watching it grow into a mischievous son who literally follows my footsteps. It has been a year when I set everything else aside, said 'no' to three prestigious assignments, published my older poems in books and magazines (because I didn't have time to come up with new ones), battled episodes of postnatal depression (brought about by being closeted for six whole months of exclusively breastfeeding my child) by cooking up dishes with unusual ingredients, lost all my pregnancy weight and more in the process, met few people, travelled a little (Mumbai, Pune, Bhavnagar, Ahmedabad, Lothal, Dabhoi), celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary going to bed early, read a lot, became a Netflix and Amazon Prime addict and turned into a scribe-cum-biologist once again by penning by hand day-to-day events in my child's life making it the most important book I have ever written or I shall write. This year has given me two most beautiful gifts - my son and a pause.

#YearEndWisdom

From Bandar Anzali to Bhavnagar

We took our baby to breakfast at the dining hall of our budget hotel in Bhavnagar and found a group of six extremely fit tall, dark and handsome men turn their heads around and break into chuckles and cackles to grab our boy's attention. We smiled politely and took a table while the waiter had trouble comprehending our order of toast-and-butter and toast-and-jam (we got toast-butter-jam). I grabbed a few words of loud conversation the men are into and one of them was, "Merci." "French," I told my husband, assuming they're Algerian. "Nope, it's a Middle-Eastern language." Then my son babbled loudly and grabbed their attention. They looked adoringly at him. "Where are you from?" I asked. "Iran." I wished, "Salaam." They responded with, "Namaskar." From the Anzali port along the Caspian Sea, they'd come to Bhavnagar in Gujarat, India, most likely on a ship to be broken at Alang's famed shipbreaking yard. They'd followed a route that has been in existence for over 5000 years, we were to discover on our visit to Lothal, a Harappan (Indus Valley Civilization) port on the now silted-up region of the Gulf of #Cambay from where a collection of #Persian artefacts were discovered dating back to 2500 BCE.

#SailorsAndSeas #PersiaAndIndia #5000YearsOfTrade #IndiaAndIran #Bhavnagar #Gujarat #GulfOfKhambhat

Our first wedding anniversary in the middle of a forest in Dang, Gujarat

Flashback December 2009, The Dangs, Gujarat: A year into my marriage, I was in a dilemma whether I should be spending our first marriage anniversary with my husband in Vadodara over a nice dinner or with a bunch of students at a remote campsite in the middle of a teak forest in Gujarat's southernmost and most tribal district, Dang (or the Dangs). The husband said I should go with my students and so sitting by the campfire and missing my husband dearly in a no-network zone, I blurted out that it was my anniversary. The students were surprised that I had decided to take the trip with them. The next day we were in the district headquarters at Ahwa where some of the students were chatting with administrators. One of them asked me if she could use the BPL network on my phone to reach her mom in Vadodara. I obliged but requested her to make the conversation short (anything to save batteries!) The next day we would be making a couple of visits to villages and then heading out to Saputara to meet some people from a couple of NGOs my colleague had contacted. Soon after we hit the main road, I got a call from Rachit. "Your student called me to say that I should come to Saputara to surprise you. Do you think she was joking or should I come?" I was surprised. Of course my students hadn't told me their plans. I cut the call and texted, "Come. They must have planned something." Soon after we reached a 'hotel' for lunch, my colleague and I decided to lie on the grass and chat. Rachit texted, "I am about 20 minutes away. Be prepared to be surprised." I had to suppress my laughter. After half an hour my colleague and I walked in for the lunch. The students had gathered. I saw Rachit. "What are you doing here?" I looked surprised enough. And then there was shouting, clapping and cheering. Later in the day, at the campsite, there was a cake made of jam sandwiches and we finally had some chicken for dinner (after a week of brinjals). It was our last night there. After nine years, it still remains my best anniversary, a shared moment with students who are now friends.
Thank you Jignasha Pandya, Rushabh Gandhi, Ashwini Ajith Nair, Shweta Shetty, Ritesh Gohil Nishita Pereira Priya Patel Himadri Chauhan, Priyanka Patel, Kushan Patel, R Ravi Narayanan and Rinoj Joy for that beautiful memory and my partner-in-crime Rachit, who drove all the way from Vadodara to be with me.

A conversation with a four-year-old

Me to a 4-year-old girl (friend's daughter): Do you want to stay at home with Ronnie (my son) and his Dadi (granny), while we go out with your Mom?
She: No
Me: Why?
She: I don't like Ronnie's Dadi.
(Embarrassed Mom sticks her tongue out.)
Me: Why don't you like her?
She: Because I like my Dadi very very much.
Me: So you can like your Dadi and Ronnie's Dadi too. She's really nice, you know.
She: Ok, I'll like her.

Now, try getting this reaction from adults who don't like adults who are not their own. 🙄🙄

Paisa De, Paisa Le: Happy New Year

The custom in Gujarat on #NewYear's Day is to greet your elders and those of the extended family with a token sum of money. In return, they do the same. The envelopes are out before you touch their feet. If you do the sums, your  earnings are not much (you pretty much gift what you get). Over years, I have found it funny, cumbersome and needlessly transactional, but after demonetization in 2016, I look forward to this event because it's the only time of the year I see notes of different denominations primarily because the ATM next  door spews only Rs 2000 notes. The purple Rs 100 ones, were the prized ones this morning.

New Notes for New Year

The custom in Gujarat on NewYear's Day is to greet your elders and those of the extended family with a token sum of money. In return, they do the same. The envelopes are out before you touch their feet. If you do the sums, your  earnings are not much (you pretty much gift what you get). Over years, I have found it funny, cumbersome and needlessly transactional, but after demonetization in 2016, I look forward to this event because it's the only time of the year I see notes of different denominations primarily because the ATM next  door spews only Rs 2000 notes. The purple Rs 100 ones, were the prized ones this morning.

Painting Rally at CII Yi's Diwali brunch

My Poem, 'Daughter', published in Equiverse Space

Launched on September 18, 2018 at Title Waves bookstore in Bandra, Mumbai

It's always a matter of great pride and joy for me to see my works published in books and magazines. When Smeetha Bhoumik, the editor of EquiVerse Space, asked me to contribute a piece (poetry or prose), I asked her if she liked my poem, Daughter, which I had created three years ago using the #ThrowMeAWord challenge on Facebook. I had then compiled the poems that I made through this challenge where people came up with random words and I'd create a poem out of them, into an e-book by the name Throw Me A Word available on Amazon. She loved the concept and so I submitted it to make this anthology. This is also the first time my poem has been published in India. (I have previously published in the UK and US). Do grab a copy of EquiVerse Space here. 

Travel Surprise: A Fridge in a Mine

Jadugora (Jaduguda), Jharkhand, India, 2006: Name a mining company in the world and you are likely to find its presence directly or through a local partner in the 32Km stretch between Jamshedpur and Jadugora. The area is so rich in minerals that till a couple of decades ago, people with small baskets would sift through and strain the waters of the Subarnarekha river to find gold. We were on our way to see a mine and after the requisite permissions Uranium Corporation of India allowed us a visit. My idea of mines was primitive - dirty places, deep down, miners with lights, crawling and digging - so it came as a surprise when the official summoned a vehicle to drive us into the mine. At some point after 30 metres down under, I thought we might get into some kind of a lift to give us a 'feel' of going down somewhere, but, no, we drove all the way down to 100-odd metres to a spot marked 'x'. On the opposite wall was a refrigerator. A man in a helmet sipped a Coke next to it. The last place in the world I thought I'd see a fridge. Later, when we were back on the surface and I told the official that I didn't expect the mine to be so clean. He laughed, "This is uranium, not coal."

Travel Surprise: Looking for Stones in the Malaysian Rainforest

Juara Mutiara, Tioman, Malaysia, August 2009: Tioman is a tiny island off the eastern coast of the Malaysian peninsula accessible from Mersing by only a ferry. Juara beach is the only beach on the eastern coast of Tioman. It's remote and spectacular. It took us nine hours and different modes of transport - taxi, bus, ferry, 4x4WD - to get to Juara from Orchard Road in Singapore. Soon after we reached, the husband suggested we bike around the island through the lush rainforest. As a South Mumbai teenager, who never had to bike her way to college, my riding skills are less than average (give me a horse instead, anyday). I told my husband. He asked me to try. We hired two cycles from the hotel for RM40 for half day. I started riding and my confidence grew as  picked up speed. Soon there was a narrow bridge I had to cross. The husband shouted to slow down. I tried the brakes but couldn't slow down. Then, from the other side came a giant 4x4 with more tourists. I veered off the path and jumped off the bike. I scraped my thigh, but my bigger worry was the damage to the pedal of the bike. We needed something to hammer it in. The next 15 minutes went looking for something hard enough in a dense evergreen rainforest with such thick undergrowth that even coconut kernels don't dry up. There are few places in the world where finding a stone is a very hard task. This is one fact we missed in our geography classes in school. Since we couldn't do anything with the pedal, we carried the cycle back to our hotel. Lessons learned: 1. learn to ride. 2. Don't look for stones or rocks in equatorial rainforests.

#Cycling #BikingInTheForest #StonesInRainforests

#MeToo and Us

Too many of us know too many sexual harassers, predators and abusers in the media and entertainment industries. We've worked with them, under them, for them and talked about them in hushed voices, about those 'equations' and 'promotions' and those who were fired because they didn't toe the line. Somewhere we all started to believe that's how the industry works. #MeToo is a realisation that industries can work without abuse and exploitation, only if we could use our voices.

#MeToo and Media Education

A few years ago a journalism student asked me what she should do if  the person she interviewed hit on her. I asked her specifics. She said she had gone to meet a famous photographer who said he found her attractive. She was flattered. He wanted her to pose for a shoot. She told him she would do it only if she didn't have to 'expose'. He seemed upset, she said, and they did not meet after that. She asked me if I had been faced with a situation like that. "Many times," I said recalling instances tucked into corners of my mind where interviewees, celebrities and colleagues had 'dropped hints'. "What did you do?" "I gently told them my dad was a commissioner of police. They'd let it drop, right then." (My dad was a senior bureaucrat in the revenue service but there's nothing like talking police to those who are not in the force.) Her question made me think. In journalism courses we teach how to write, edit, report, but we often fail to address the issues of harassment, abuse, exploitation, monetary compensation and threats faced by male and female journalists in the classroom.

#MeTooAndJournalism #MediaEducation

Train travel in the US

Travel Surprise, 2017, USA: Few people vacationing in the US use the railways there. In all my years, I've come across only one person who travelled by train from Seattle to Washington DC and recommended it. I did not have that many days to spare and so I decided to go on a shorter, more popular route, from NewYork's Penn Station to Boston's Backbay, a four-hour journey through the north-eastern coast on an Amtrak. I had booked the ticket a month in advance for $49. My ticket did not show a seat number. I discovered that in Amtrak trains they have free-seating. I took my place opposite a pre-teen boy who was travelling alone. Nearly three months into my pregnancy and suffering from debilitating nausea, I decided to put my feet up on the two-seater and stretch out like we'd do in an Indian train. Only, the Americans, don't want you to do that so the bar below the window juts out to make it very uncomfortable to rest your head on. I made a pillow of my backpack and lay down to watch the ticket-checkers (TCs) who were sitting across the aisle opposite me - all white and seniors and the only ones who were having interpersonal conversations. The rest of the people, including the boy, were plugged in: earphones, laptops, mobile phones. It turned out that in the entire compartment, I was the only one at leisure to take in the breathtaking beauty of the New England countryside. An elderly TC decided to become my guide, brought me a bottle of water and cup of coffee from the pantry and pointed out to the lake from which they get the best lobsters, his childhood home, the wild roses, etc. Accustomed to trains in India where all doors open at all stops, I was shocked that in the Amtrak they announce how many doors shall open at each stop. You have to move with your bags towards the doors that shall open. We disembarked in Boston in pitch-darkness because the tubelights at the platform were not functioning and had to find our way out with the light of our mobile screens. How I missed the little lanterns at tiny Indian stations! Later, when I narrated my journey to an aunt, she exclaimed, "They let you put your feet up and travel like that? Nobody does that you know!" Well, I sure did and it remains one of my favourite travel journeys.

How Christianity Adopted Polytheism

"The monotheist religions expelled the gods through the front door with a lot of fanfare, only to take them back in through the side window. Christianity, for example, developed its own pantheon of saints, whose cults differed little from those of the polytheistic gods...every Christian kingdom had its own patron saint who helped it overcome difficulties and win wars. England was protected by St George, Scotland by St Andrew, Hungary by St Stephen, and France had St Martin. Cities and towns, professions, and even diseases – each had their own saint. The city of Milan had St Ambrose, while St Mark watched over Venice. St Florian protected chimney cleaners, whereas St Mathew lent a hand to tax collectors in distress. If you suffered from headaches you had to pray to St Agathius, but if from toothaches, then St Apollonia was a much better audience. The Christian saints did not merely resemble the old polytheistic gods. Often they were these very same gods in disguise. For example, the chief goddess of Celtic Ireland prior to the coming of Christianity was Brigid. When Ireland was Christianised, Brigid too was baptised. She became St Brigit, who to this day is the most revered saint in Catholic Ireland...The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts."

- In Yuval Harari's Sapiens about how Christianity adopted polytheism

Where the Mind is Not without Fear

Where poets, activists, scholars, lawyers are threatened, the mind is not without fear and the head hangs in shame
Where knowledge is not free
Where the world has been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the surface of falsehood
Where tireless striving gets girdled with oppression
Where the clear stream of reason has lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led into the gloomy days of the past
Into ever-widening gulf between thought and action
Will my country wake up?

- Eisha

New Mom Tales #11: Feeding Draws

After feeding a couple of spoonfuls of a mashed potato to my infant, he figured the silver bowl was more interesting than the contents inside so he grabbed it from my hand, emptied the contents on his table and started licking the outside of the bowl. Not to be outdone by the intelligence of a seven-month-old, I took the bowl from his hand and layered the mashed potato outside the bowl. He grabbed it back and licked it off.

Score: Mom: 1 Infant: 1

#NewMomTales #FeedingDraws

Travel Surprise: Not all forests are green

#Travel Surprise, May 2016, #Gujarat: We had a couple of cousins who suddenly showed up at our door from Pune (you know who you are) and so we decided to take them sightseeing in the Sardar Sarovar Dam area in south Gujarat. A former student of mine had posted a picture of a waterfall in the Shoolpaneshwar Nature Reserve just a week ago. We arrived to find not even a trickle and huge sand-mining equipment. The forest was dry. We were the only tourists. It did seem quite disappointing at first but then I thought, "How many times in my life have I seen a forest without a single leaf? Hills and hills of dry deciduous trees! Never." That shook off the image of forests I had in my head. Not all forests have to be painted green all the time.

#TravelTales #BrownForests #DeciduousForests #SouthGujarat

Travel Surprise: No Alps in Switzerland

My favourite travel surprise was in Switzerland in 2010. Now, like most people in India, I too had grown up watching Hindi film heroes and heroines dancing in the Alps. So we were going to visit our friend there and attend his wedding (Swiss guy, German girl), I thought we'd be dancing in the Alps as well. Only, when we landed in Zurich, it rained. In Lucerne for the next four days we were there, there was dense fog. So I did not see the Alps. Not even an outline. But then how many people go to Switzerland and don't see the Alps? 😊😊

Travel Memories: A Table for Three in Zurich

Flashback 2010, Zurich, Switzerland: On a Sunday evening we trooped down to a restaurant our Swiss friend recommended for the best Swiss food in Zurich. After all, I didn't want to leave Switzerland before tasting the national delicacy: the veal sausage. Our friend asked the restaurant manager for a table for three in German. The man said we'd have to wait an hour and half. We were famished, we told him. We had to wait in the cold and rain outside, he said. A couple of elderly ladies walked in and got a table. After half an hour, we requested again. He said it was a busy day. I asked the man if there was a good restaurant for Swiss food nearby. "This is the best." "But you aren't giving me a taste of the best and so I'll have to find the second-best." He shook his head and in the next five minutes found ourselves seated at a table next to the elderly ladies. The veal sausage and fondue were delicious.

Second Chance

Flashback, November 2016: I fought back tears as the doctor told me that the 11-week-child I was carrying in my womb had died. She feared the onset of sepsis and said I needed to get an emergency surgery. I told her there was a wedding in our family in a week's time. Could I wait? No! I sat in the car and sobbed. I apologised to my husband. He said it wasn't my fault. In less than half hour I had to lecture students at MSU. He told me he'd call up the dean and cancel it. I told him not to. We went home and I broke to news to my mother-in-law and then ran out to the car. My husband dropped me at the university. I climbed the stairs, broken. Thankfully, there was no one in the staff room so I sat there staring at the wall processing what had just happened. The dean walked in an apologised for taking longer than her allotted time. She said she'd given the students a 10-minute break. I didn't mind. I summed up all my strength and entered the classroom. I have never been bothered about the students' attendance because I teach only those who want to know and this time I was really glad that only half the senior masters' class had turned up after the break. I started haltingly, hoping I wouldn't break down mid-sentence. We discussed how videos turn viral and I gave the students a home assignment. Some of them wanted to linger and have a conversation after class. I even laughed when they made jokes. This is what teachers do. We leave our personal tragedies outside the classroom. The next day, I was ushered into the operation theatre to remove the remnants of the foetus. My body hadn't realised that the foetus had died so it took a while for it to recover from the shock. The death of a child, even an unborn one, can be devastating. It took me months to recover emotionally. Then life gave me a second chance and I now have a bouncing baby boy.

Flashback June 2017, USA: Travelling in Early Pregnancy

I threw up a perfectly good plate of pasta among the bushes that line the sidewalk of a fine dining Italian restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. Next day, at an Italian restaurant in Miami, I looked for sauce-less pasta dishes. The lemon juice-garlic sauce-seafood pasta with no cheese, went down my gullet. We flew back to Detroit from Jacksonville and my sickness kept worsening. I was throwing up about six times a day and couldn't stand the smell and sight of cheese, bread, fries and chicken. Unfortunately, that's what American food is about. We drove northwards to Traverse City along the shores of the 1000-metre-deep Lake Michigan (which they call the 'Ocean') and my stomach could not even take water. I panicked. And then I miss my period! This wasn't a combination of altitude sickness, motion sickness and jet-lag. There, in a hotel in America's cherry capital, I found out I was pregnant and the cause of nausea. Next week, in Chicago, I battled sickness riding atop a sightseeing bus by popping the OTC-drug Dramamine. On the way back to Ann Arbor, there's a classic traffic jam on the Interstate and it took us seven hours to do a four-hour journey. My uncle called his GP when we reached home. I told her of my plans to travel from Michigan to Maine. She told me I should continue travelling, the walking would do me good. I asked her if I should see a gynaecologist. She said I would have to wait a month for an appointment because of the July 4 holidays even though I was willing to shell out as much as $500 for a single visit. I texted my gynaecologist in India. She told me to eat anything I could swallow and chew ginger. My condition of debilitating nausea she termed as Hyperemesis Gravidarum. I googled and found it was not uncommon. Relief! Cousin and I decided to fly to Washington DC instead of an 11-hour road-trip. I walked everywhere - museums, galleries, gardens, markets, malls - and tried to eat only desserts because salt was triggering my nausea. The gigantic portions of food made me sick - just the sight. We travelled from DC to Philadelphia to New Jersey to New York. I skipped dinner so I could watch The Phantom of the Opera at Majestic Theatre on Broadway. In Maine, I asked our cousin to prepare egg curry for me for four meals because only that I could stomach with a spoon of icecream. I hated American airports because they smelled of fries and I was so glad to leave them behind when I finally landed in Paris and smelled perfumes in the air. I returned to India having lost 5Kg (a rare feat for anyone travelling in the US for six weeks) and went straight from the airport to the gynaec's table. "Baby is fine." Those three words were the sweetest I had heard. And apparently, the nausea was a sign that my hormones were functioning very well. I wouldn't recommend long travels in early pregnancy, though.

#TravellingWhilePregnant

Flashback 2004: Hindi Journalism for me

In the days before TV news turned into shouting matches, Zee News was a respectable place for Hindi journalism. I love the language and all through school aced in Hindi (making my Bihar-born parents very proud). In the summer break between the first and second year of the university, I thought an internship with a Hindi media powerhouse would be the perfect launchpad for my career in journalism. I applied and was called for my first-ever job interview. Nervous, I entered the room, where they asked me to answer a paper in Hindi: some questions on current affairs. Having studied science through college, I hadn't had the chance to read or write much Hindi so I struggled with technical words related to policy and medicine. I knew I had blown it by the time I finished and turned in my answer sheet so I was very surprised when I got a call next day to come for an interview. Later in the day, I sat opposite three panelists who commended my ICSE scores and then expressed their surprise that in spite of being Bengali, I knew Hindi. The lady in the middle kept interrupting my conversation by calling people on her phone: the sabziwala, driver, assistant, etc. I started shaking with nervousness. She didn't pay attention to anything I said and after about 10 minutes picked up my paper and said, "You don't even know the Hindi terms for 'operation' and 'mandate' and you think you want to do Hindi journalism?" I left defeated in spirit. Next I went to Asian Age where Olga Tellis was more than happy to hear that a South Bombay kid knew the names of Mumbai's eastern suburbs and took me on with half a dozen interns. Over the years, I realised that a half-baked knowledge of English and street-smartness had more chances of getting you a job with the English media in this country than getting into the vernacular with the same skill set. And then suddenly, I started reading English font in Hindi media and words like 'operation' and 'mandate' were sprinkled liberally in Devnagari and spoken by anchors during Hindi news bulletins.

New Mom Tales #10: Tips for those who want to meet new mothers and babies

Tips for those who want to meet new mothers and their babies:
1. Always call and ask the mother if it's okay to drop in for she may be breastfeeding or busy with a fussy baby or may be too tired to entertain you or might just want to spend some time alone with her sleeping baby
2. In case you can't make it, again please inform the mother
3. Do not touch, lift, pat a baby without asking the mother
4. Not all babies like to be cradled or swayed or thrown up in the air or fondled
5. Do not assume that a baby cries only because she is hungry
6. Like dogs, babies do have a sense of who or what they like so if the baby cries in your arms simply hand her back to the mother.
7. Abstain from voicing your judgments about the mother and baby unless asked for
8. Please do not pass the baby around to someone else without the mother's permission

#NewMomTales

New Mom Tales #9: Telling Tales

Since my three-and-a-half-month-old son does not like me looking at a cellphone/iPad screen when he's with me, I've had to reinvent the story of Jack and the Beanstalk as I did not remember the original, learn lyrics of the songs I sing to him well in advance and read my Kindle ebooks and Facebook newsfeed while he's sleeping.

#NewMomTales

Flashback: Jackie Shroff

Flashback 2005: My first week at my first job at Downtown Plus at the Times of India Building in Mumbai. I was tasked to get a celebrity for the cover. We had heard there was a celebrity cricket match at Hindu Gymkhana on Marine Drive. Pradeep Chandra, our photographer colleague and I went there. I chatted with Suniel Shetty, Ritesh Deshmukh and a few others. They were okay with the interview and pictures but did not want to change their sponsored cricket t-shirts. We waited a little and Pradeep spotted Jackie Shroff. They've known each other since the early 1980s. He spoke with Jackie and then introduced me to him. I chatted with him and requested him for the shoot. "After the inauguration, we can go to my old house in Walkeshwar." We waited and I watched some of Jackie's fangirls. We followed him into his waiting Mercedes: Jackie and driver in the front, Pradeep and me along with two other people at the back. We chatted a little as we coasted down Marine Drive. At his old home, Jackie walked us around the dilapidated structure and even touched the feet of the old neighbour. Great shots! We thanked him for his time and I asked the two other people in the car who they were. One was the actor's assistant. The other, it turned out, was a fan who just hitched a ride in a celebrity's car because he wanted to reach Walkeshwar! Jackie thought he was with us. I thought he was with him.

When we bought diesel in Coke bottles

Flashback April 2012: The Rann (salt desert) in Gujarat extends all the way from Kutch through  Surendranagar to Banaskantha. While tourists flock to the other two districts to see the Great Rann and Little Rann (where you'll see the wild asses), the desert in Banaskantha is full of salt pans and little else. Boru, a tiny village of the Rabari community lies just 25 Km from the Indo-Pak border. Closest city is Palanpur, a good 45 Km away. I was working as a documentation consultant with #UNICEF Gujarat and the education consultant for the district wanted me to cover a tiny government residential school for children in the village of Boru. We headed out from Palanpur via Danda where we stopped at an anganwadi. It was late morning and scrubland slowly gave way to sand desert. After driving an hour we reached a point where the only sign of humanity was a rider on a motorbike. Suddenly the driver of our hired car asked how much farther we had to go. "Another 18-20 Km," my colleague said. "What? We are already running on fumes. The fuel tank is empty," the driver said. He hadn't realised that we would be driving this far away from Palanpur. We were on the verge of getting stuck in the middle of the desert with poor cellphone network, no humanity in sight and two litres of drinking water in summer. Great! We went about 100 metres ahead and I saw a man sitting under a thatch selling diesel in two-litre Coke bottles. That was the only person on the road. I asked the driver if we could use that fuel. He shook his head. "It might be adulterated and it may blow us up. Anyways I can't do anything till the owner of the car authorises." So I called the owner (luckily the phone worked). "Madam, it's a big risk. Only you will be held accountable." I agreed and so we bought a Coke bottle of diesel. We managed to reach Boru where the school's headmaster-cum-sarpanch took us on a tour, fed us well and emptied the fuel tank of his Innova to fill ours.

#TravelMemories #Gujarat #Boru #Rann

New Mom Tales #8: Lactation Consultant

A couple of days ago we went to the hospital to get my son vaccinated. I met a woman with a three-day-old daughter and a six/seven-year- old son.
She: Did you deliver here?
Me: Yes
She: Did you have a cesarean?
Me: Yes
She: Who is your lactation consultant?
Me: No one
She (surprised): So you had no breastfeeding problems?
Me: Of course I did. But then you figure things out with time, right?
She: I desperately need a lactation consultant
Me (thinking): Damn! If it hadn't been an emergency cesarean, I might have looked for one as well. Instead, I looked out of the window to see how mother monkey held and fed her little one.

#NewMomTales #LearningFromNature

Go, figure!

If you walk into a shop in a bazaar to buy lingerie/women's undergarments in India, you're more likely to find a bearded old/middle-aged gentleman wearing salwar kameez/pajama kurta showing you the products than a woman your age, aren't you? He will always suggest you try a size larger than what you wear and even try to sell you a few extra pieces always promising to take them back if they don't fit right. Try going to a posh lingerie store in a mall and the slim saleswoman will look at you as if your figure could never fit into any piece of clothing they own.

Featured!

Rhythm Divine Poets & Women Empowered-India has been presenting wonderful women poets everyday during March 15 - 31. The culmination is a poetry reading by Rhythm Divine Poets at Presidency College, Kolkata, forming part of the Women Scream International Festival of Poetry & Art 2018.

The features are running on The Rhythm Divine Poets page and also the event page for Rhythm Divine in Women Scream International 2018 with WE.

My poem, The Cornucopia of Broken Dreams, has just been featured.

New Mom Tales #7: Lexicon

So this gets interesting and confusing:

In Gujarat,

Babo is a male infant and Baby is a female infant (you can't have this any other way) but it's okay to call a boy, chhokri (girl), dikri (daughter), dhingli (I think it's a feminine doll)

Mum is not what a child calls his/her mother but it somehow refers to feeding/food and is often used as 'mum mum'. At what stage/age do kids call food, 'food' or 'khana' I am uncertain but in rural anganwadis they refer to midday meals as 'khichdi' at age three

A diaper could also be called a 'kothri' which usually means a plastic bag

The word used for potty is 'chhee' although you are required to 'potty-train' and not 'chhee-train' your kids

#NewMomTales #lexicon #Gujarat #parenting

New Mom Tales #6: Reading

Finished reading Subroto Bagchi's The Professional. One thing people don't talk about motherhood is that it can be quite lonely. In the initial months, your baby always needs you all the time while the rest of your family can't do much other than help once in a while or keep their distance while you breastfeed your baby. With my baby falling into sleep on my lap most of the time (preferring it to his bed), I thought I'll catch up on my reading 😁 There's a reason why books make good friends.

#NewMomTales

New Mom Tales #5: Diaper Shopping

Like most new-age mothers, I have taken to shopping for diapers online mainly on Amazon and FirstCry. Now you can choose between the combos of diaper pack + Vicks vaporub and diaper pack + wet wipes and diaper pack + cotton nappies... Daad, khaj, khujli ya sardi, what’s the right choice, baby?

#NewMomTales #FirstCry #MahindraRetail #Amazon #Pampers #Diapers #MamyPokoPants #Vicks

Nostalgia: When Amul butter was a novelty in Pune and my cheese was always yellow

Nostalgia: We moved to Pune from New Delhi when I was seven years old. It was 1990. India had still not completely opened up to a liberal economy. Cool-weather Pune was far removed from the hot plains of the north that we were accustomed to. My grand-uncle who lived there had described it as 'so safe that there are no thieves'. So when my dad was posted to Pune, I was thrilled. It changed many things in my life: beginning a school-term in June instead of April, moving from CBSE to ICSE, from a co-ed to an all-girls school with a boarding and teachers with Anglo-Indian and Christian names, from the dusty flat plains to the black lava rocks of the Deccan plateau (there was a time when you would drive towards Pune and you could actually see it perched on top of a table-land), from brick-walled houses in Lutyens to basalt walls of Pune Camp (Cantonment), transitioning almost completely into an English-speaking family (primarily because we didn't know Marathi and, at that time, not many locals spoke Hindi) and the absence of Amul products in our refrigerator. The last one was curious. In the early 1990s, in most of Maharashtra (with the exception of Mumbai), Amul butter and cheese were not to be found. Probably, the local dairies were wary of bringing in the 'outsider'. Dorabjee's had one shelf but you never knew if you'd get Amul butter. Vijaya, Chitale, Aarey and Britannia became our staples. Now in Gujarat (where Amul was born) when I tell people that, they can't believe that for seven years of my life I never saw white Amul cheese. Britannia was yellow cheddar. It's strange how a slice of cheese on toast can bring back some memories. 😝

New Mom Tales #4: Breastfeeding

Watched mother langur (black-faced monkey) nurse her baby. No pressure, job done! I look at my baby. It has been a little over 40 days. 40 days of getting unsolicited advice about what to eat and what not to to increase milk production in my mammary glands. When every other mammalian species on the planet gets along just fine, we humans have to make it hard for our females, don't we? Sure, diet and milk production are correlated, but hey, there's an entire population out there that was produced without the consumption of ghee. Think about it.

#NewMomTales #Breastfeeding

New Mom Tales #3: Languages

A pack of dogs bark in the middle of the night. My baby wonders where the sound is coming from. I tell him they're dogs (English), doggie (English slang), kutta (Hindi, Urdu), kutra (Gujarati, Marathi), kukur (Bengali). If he utters one of the above when he starts talking (after two whole years of repetition), I'll be happy.

#NewMomTales

New Mom Tales #2: "Your child looks like you"

When everyone you meet tells you that your son looks like your husband or you (there is a split vote there), and you reply, "Haan, humara hi beta hai. Kisi aur ke tarah dikhta toh problem hota." ("Yes, that's because he's our son. If he looked like someone else it would be a problem.")

#NewMomTales

New Mom Tales #1: Alphabetimals

While feeding my son, I sing the English alphabet with animals (A for Ant, B for Bear...). I juggle in my head whether I should stick to M for Monkey or introduce the exotic Manatee or Meerkat. Had to Google something for X. Turns out there’s a South American bird called Xenops. How exotic!

#NewMomTales #Alphabetimals

Comedy of Errors

The hospital staff comes rushing to my room.

Nurse: We were told you have a baby?
Me (tired AF): Yes
Nurse (puzzled): But today we found out it’s a boy
Me: Yes, baby boy.
Nurse (laughs): And we’d been thinking it’s a baby all of yesterday
Me (puzzled): Yes?
Nurse: Par aa baby nathi babo chhe (this is hard to translate from Gujarati). Tame loko baby baby kem kahochho?
Me (facepalm): Because baby is an English word. Isn’t it supposed to be chhokra/chhokri or dikra/dikri in Gujarati ?
Nurse: English ma toh baddha baby hoye par Gujarat ma baby girl hoye aur boy hoye to babo hoye.

Babo also happens to be the name of my neighbour’s adopted stray dog.

#BaboAndBaby