“P.P.: Mrs. Aadi”

L-R: photo frame of my father at 20; My mother; My aunt. Pic taken at Calcutta.

Mommy with our eldest paternal aunt... A little frail now, but 'addi' is still just as passionate for the well-being of her kids (including us).

My mother would get me to book these calls for her sister-in-law to Bareilly and would refuse to take her name! I knew ‘Bhaagwanti Devi’, but since the call was from mommy... she insisted I give, ‘addi’ (Sindhi for elder sister) as p.p. or “particular person’ for whom the operator would wait before charging and transferring the call. I presumed, it would be difficult to explain the concept and the Bengali lady would anyways be more comfortable with saying ‘Aadi’, so I devised, “Mrs. Aadi”. And the best part is that without any prior consultation, folks in Bareilly understood that this call from Calcutta was for my aunt from her younger brother’s wife! :D The mechanism took off and continued until the end of trunk call days in metros... Now she has her mobile phoneJ

L-R: Mommy, Addi and I behind Vivek at Haridwar.

Here are Mommy, Addi and me standing behind Vivek getting ‘yagyopaveet sanskaar’ done, along with 3 strangers. Yes, it happened pretty late for him in 2002, but it was a big deal for us to do it the right way, in Haridwaar at the family’s ‘Sai jan’s place (where all our records are maintained!) and without celebration as that is the (‘reet’) tradition in our family. But my mom really wanted addi and her courage beside her, so, even though married daughters of the family are not invited, it was pre-planned that addi should just come for vacation to Lucknow around the time we were to go for this, so then she can just come along!

Prepared for this major event, ever since Vivek’s birth, we learned yet again that there are rites and loopholes and it is ok to allow them in order to fulfill tasks that involve beliefs that are important to people. It felt nice to finally get it done for mommy and the trip was overall great.

Oh, and when Vivek was coming from his bath after fully shaving his head in enthusiasm, wrapped only in ‘gamchha’, just before the ‘janeyu’ rites, a man entering the ‘Sai jan’s place touched Vivek’s feet, assuming him to be a ‘panDa’; Vivek in turn, automatically blessed him also :D

A Visit to Gorai Village

A bunch of us spent from last Saturday evening till Sunday late afternoon at the beautiful “Gorai Beach Cottage” in Gorai Village. It was supposed to be a Tango weekend. My friend Malaika and her mother have relatives in the village and visit often; that is how we came to know of the popular picnic spot. We took the ferry from Borivli and reached Gorai Village.

Incidentally, Deline happened to be there in line waiting for the ferry just like me. We reached together. 

loved the brick wall of this century old house! They're capturing a novel spider's nest.

Deline took me to her cousin’s beautifully solid hundred year old house first, where the rest of us gathered before leaving for the cottage. Let’s hope the century-year old house stays like that for a long time, with all its memories, as we also learned how the village gets flooded now, due to ecological and climatic changes (read inconsiderate development).

Deline’s cousin Syrina made sumptuous East-Indian dinner for us (including very special ‘rice-roti’, chicken curry and daal) and we had Deline’s delicious green-chutney sandwiches earlier and a barbeque before dinner, which included sweet potato (I loved it), capsicum, paneer, chicken and shark. Yes, you read that right. I wanted to taste that before turning back to vegetarianism as Diva and Manya, my nieces have asked me often if I had tasted shark. It was ok:) With so much good food around we could not stay for long on the topic of ghosts.

Paneer by Gaurav, who complained about the colour of flame in his phone

The coals were fanned quickly with an electric table fan, the Resort’s owner, Allen, (it’s Allen Wadi, where we were at) another relative of Deline’s (that’s how we got the place in peak season) helped us with that and the next day, also gave us his home-made black-currant wine to taste! Some of us have duly ordered it for ChristmasJ

view of portico from verandah of the cottage

The resort was well maintained and had recycled old bottles as decoration… Please note the white and blue bottle chandelier on top of the table.

In the morning we had hot “batata- vada” and tried fresh toddy from ’taal-gora’ (tender fruit from a palm tree). It tasted a little bit like pungent coconut water. We were told, if it is stored for a few more hours it will be like vodka. Some people tried that too later, I dared not, as vodka does not suit me at all.

Gaurav, Abhishek and Debrup, clicked by Malaika.

After checking out a large community hall to see if it might be hired for a Tango evening that could be organized later, we went to a cleaner beach (it’s basically a fishing village), a little further from the resort and tried to postpone the coming back trip as much as possible.

We also went to another relative of Deline’s, where we had a little green fruit from the tree, (really sour, very tasty) called ‘bimbli’, and saw the biggest well in the area. This one was uncovered and housed many fish and toads. We fed bits of chapattis to them.

We were all in holiday mood and ended up dancing very little, just before lunch and had had to leave after tea. Oh, the tea was flavoured with lemon-grass, which was farm-fresh BTW, just like all the vegetables we were served.

Deline and Malika (coolest mother-daughter team ever) did all the hard-work and finally came back in the morning. 

This is the picture shared by Malaika, of when they crossed the creek back to Borivli.

I really feel fortunate to have caught a glimpse of the rich Maharashtrian village culture (oh, there are many dialects of Marathi, all over, not that I understand much yet), only a few kilometers from the city... and above all such amazing warm-heartedness!

Looking forward to going there again when we can have a larger gathering and Tango weekend!:)

Besh kore chhi! Happy Birthday, Barkha:)

Besh kore chhi, likhe phele chhi, lekhboyi toh!:)

Happy Birthday, Barkha !:)

You have taught me so much. It is unquantifiable. So, instead of doing ‘ati’, we’ll go with the bare minimum.  Look, in this photo, taken at Simla, you whispered, we should pose differently- in anger:D

Baaron korechhis jokhon, tobe toh likhteyi hobe! :D

Expectation-er aalaada, anno kichhu bhaaba o jaaye, tui toh shikiyechhili! 

Eyi daykh, eyi chhobi Ta tolaar shomay tui toh bolechhis anno ekTa expression dite… mone aachhe?:)

Thanks to your teasing, I've become a little better:) Love you to bitsJ

 ‘Barkhi’ with PapaJ 

p.s: Papa loves you, Mommy loves you, Guddu loves you, my Jijaji loves you, Manya loves you, Diva loves you:)

It is a world of possibilities!:)

This picture was clicked by my friend Dinesh Shenoy, whom I met right there at Radisson MBD Noida, back in early 2005.

Wait, I’ll introduce you to the people here, the one only whose forehead can be seen is Dinesh Kapoor, he had already published books related to Indian history, on his left is a sardar ji I do not recall, towards his left is Dinesh Sood, (Kuljinder’s best friend and partner in a multimedia academy), then it’s me next to Mr. Ashutosh Gowarikar and finally Kuljinder Singh Sidhu, probably wondering about the camera angle… Dinesh Shenoy is a trained Cinematographer, involved in various aspects of film-making.

What had happened was, we (more than 150 people from all over the country) had all gathered in Noida for a 5 day Scriptwriting workshop organized by UPFDC, Mrs. Jaya Bachchan and Mr. Govind Nihalani; conducted by Late Krishna Shah.

Late Krishna Shah had developed a method of writing straight from the heart, fast and with the formula in place. He taught us some processes (around 2 minute meditations) to answer questions about characters that we wished to develop, with some truth that we could identify with. That, for me was a painful process up until recently, but it definitely is the key to it all!

So anyway, during that workshop, Mr. Ashutosh Gowarikar happened to come to Delhi for his latest film ‘Swades’ ‘s promotion, and coincidentally was staying at the same hotel. He asked his film’s Chief-Production-Coordinator-Delhi, Dinesh Shenoy (who was also doing the workshop) to join him. Now, this was just at the end of the first or second day, we were probably all going out for fresh air when someone pointed out, if it was Mr. Ashutosh Gowarikar, over there. I said, “haan, par bolenge kya? Koi script toh hai nahin, idea bhi nahin hai… lekin hare-raam toh kar hi sakte hain”/ ‘yes, it is… but what do we say to him? I don’t even have script or an idea for him? But we can always say hello’. I moved ahead smiling confidently and Kuljinder mumbled to his friend, “who bhi sochega kya tope cheez aa gayi”/ ‘he’ll also think, she must be some important entity’.

I stretched my hand out to Mr. A.G., “Hello… Congratulations!  (pause) for ‘Lagaan’ He smiled resignedly. I explained, “We haven’t seen ‘Swades’, yet.”  “You guys must watch it”. “Yes, we want to”. And soon the conversation drifted to what we were all doing there. He was very happy to learn that so many people were getting trained to write for films.

Kuljinder Singh Sidhu in Yoddha

Here’s to the success of positive beliefs… Wishing Kuljinder, all the very best for his second Punjabi movie ‘Yoddha’… currently running in theatres. The trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-32fF2BewWc