For Months So Stressed, Then One Day Doubly Blessed

 

                                     The Dream they had seen.... the boy in his White Coat! 

More than six years ago, in May 2015, my sister in law came to visit us here in Nairobi for the second time and she had three of her friends in tow. I knew that with eight of us in the house, my class schedule, cooking and taking my guests sight seeing and for shopping in between, meant that I, along with my regular house help, needed an extra pair of hands. And so through my then house help's contact, a young girl, in her early twenties, entered our lives and for the next few weeks helped out as and when needed, until the guests left. Subsequently, school closed for summer and the kids and I left for India. In the interim, my regular house help who was an older lady, had a stroke (she recovered later but was unable to work again) and so by the time I came back from India, the young girl who had been a part timer, now joined us full time. Was she sent to me to pave the way for what was to happen in 2021 or was I sent to Kenya, way back in 2011, to ensure a certain event took place smoothly in 2021? Only God can answer that question, but honestly, what were the odds that this girl, with a brilliant younger brother, would come into MY orbit, a place devoted almost solely (pun intended!) to education? 

For the next two years she worked sincerely and honestly for us. She grieved with us when the meritoriously won medical admissions of non resident Indian students were arbitrarily and unfairly cancelled and rejoiced with us when our daughter secured a place the following year, in a medical college in another country. Most folks who want to do medicine don't get in the first time around, let alone twice!

All this while, her  younger brother, who lived with her and was a year older than my son, continued to shine academically and did very well in the 8th grade Board exams, which are mandatory in the Kenyan system. I had never met the boy but I supported him in whichever way I could, with books, shoes, clothes and then he won the Member of Parliament's scholarship for the four years of High School. We all celebrated with her that day, in 2016. And then with her brother settled for the next four years, she got married.

In 2017, we moved houses and she moved across town with us but soon left for a maternity break. My daughter, though away from Kenya, cried buckets that day and I too was very sad to see her go. We kept in touch and I sent gifts for her baby boy when he was born. Soon it was 2019 and my Dad was hospitalized and I had to  urgently leave for India for who knew how long...My husband was very busy, my son was in high school and there was only one person I could trust to care for my canine kid, manage the house and cook Indian food, while I was away...I called her back.

After my Dad passed away and I brought my Mom back to Kenya with me, our house help too was full of grief and tried her best to make my Mom feel comfortable here, without me having to say a word...One day I asked her what her brother planned to study once he finished high school. " Medicine", she said. I was taken aback as I know, first hand, how difficult it is to get admission and how long and expensive the whole process is....but I said a few encouraging words and kept following up on her brother's progress. 

In March 2020, the pandemic hit, Kenyan schools closed and her brother was back in the village with their mother, in despair, as it was his 12th grade board exam year, but he was not ready to give up on his ambition. He continued studying at home with a few other boys. My own mother was stuck in our home town during the lock down but she wanted to encourage a group of the village boys who were studying together. So she announced a small cash prize, in my Dad's memory, for the boy who would get the highest marks in the test the boy's cousin, who is a teacher, had set for them that particular week. This boy won hands down and we sent him the money but large hearted as he is, he shared a part of it with the other boys! That was the day I decided I would do my best to help him. Little did I know then what that would entail and just how many people the world over would be involved!

 Schools in Kenya finally opened in January 2021 and the board exams were held a couple of months later, with results being announced in May 2021. My house girl was so terrified of the results that she asked me to check them online, just like I had done for his 8th standard board exam results! And here is what I saw! ALL As!

And here is the SMS I received after the results, from a boy I had never met but five years earlier, had sent a dictionary for, as my house girl had told me he needed one. I had forgotten all about it, but he hadn't!

Once the results were out, I was after their blood to keep checking admission applications, requirements and last dates. Due to Covid, everything was online and this boy, back home in a remote western Kenyan village had to go by bus, to a Cyber Cafe in the closest town, every time he needed to check or update anything to do with the university admission. With gadgets popping out of our collective ears, strapped to our arms and glued to our eyes, one truly wonders at the disparity....But one saving grace was that as he had topped his school and county, he was gifted a Laptop by the County Governor, just a few days before he moved to Nairobi.

The admission results were finally out and he had secured a place in Nairobi University's prestigious MBBS ( Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) program. My house help's screams of joy rung around our compound, startling my mother and our neighbours too! Then I began pushing him to apply for the County scholarship and to see if the Member Of Parliament whose office had sponsored him in High School could do so again. The County office kept telling him his name was on the list of applicants but there were no funds and disbursal of scholarships would be delayed. Meanwhile the last day to pay the fees, 13th September was fast approaching, with no money from anywhere in sight. The boy's father had abandoned the family long ago to set up house with another woman, and my house help is now a single mother too, supporting another sister who is in High School, along with her own son, on the salary we pay her. The boy's mother ekes out a living by growing her food on a small piece of land in the village,  and has no income in cash...Where would the fees come from? I finally told him it was my personal guarantee that his fees WOULD be paid on the due date and he would start university this month.

Seeing how upset I was about the lack of the promised scholarships and the prospect of the child losing his seat, my husband said he would pay the fees and my mother too said the same. In the past, my parents have paid the fees for many students doing their engineering, nursing, teaching and other degrees in India, including our house helps' children and other needy students. But I wanted a long term solution as this is Kenya, everything is at least thrice as expensive as India, it is a long course, the requirements are many and we are here only on two year permits....I had to build a community for this boy and we, by ourselves, had to be the last resort.

In desperation I messaged a friend who is part of an education board and asked her if there was any way I could go and meet someone in the M.P's office. It turned out she knew the M.P personally and she spoke to him and got me an appointment for the next day, which was Friday, 10th September. I was beyond grateful! As my house help and I made our way to the M.P's office, I told her to send the boy to the county office one last time to ask about the scholarship, before he came to Nairobi, the following day. The answer, which came even as we were waiting for the M.P, was the same: funds delayed.

My house help and I waited for nearly four hours but the Honourable M.P was delayed in his other office. Finally I had to leave as I had a meeting with my son's cricket coaches, which had been scheduled days earlier and then I had to rush home to teach a class. But I managed to explain the case to the office manager and his assistant, pointing out they had funded the boy throughout high school and asked if there was any chance they could continue the same for university fees. I could not let this boy lose this hard earned seat! They politely pointed out that they had been allotted funds only for needy school students but were suitably impressed with the boy's grades....I left and finally two more hours later, my house help managed to meet the M.P. He listened to the whole story, took down her number and promised her he would be in touch. 

Saturday morning rolled by and there was no word from neither the County nor the M.P and no money. I had already spent sleepless nights where I had chalked out what I would do if we ever faced this very scenario. I had spoken to the Fund Raising site in India which my son had successfully used to raise fees for the engineering student in our home town , during the pandemic, the previous year. They pointed out they could release funds raised only to Indian beneficiaries, whose names were on the admission documents or to their close kin or directly to Indian universities. Then I had researched foreign fund raising sites but not all released funds to Kenya. I finally found one which did but they would release funds only after thirty days. My husband held off paying our credit card bill in case we fell short, since the donations from my friends in Europe and the United States would not be released in time. I had also opened a PayPal account and visited Safaricom twice to activate my M-PESA account, which I had held off doing for the last ten years in Kenya, as PayPal releases funds here only through that. I had to link the online fundraiser to PayPal, as that would free up some of the money faster. I decided to use my mother's account for donors in India who trusted us and I had spoken to my Chartered Accountant back home about taxes on donated funds. He had pointed out there was no exemption and my mother very graciously allowed me to use her account and she would pay the income tax on the raised money from her personal funds, as they would be clubbed with her income. For the donors in Kenya, I had decided to share my house help's number so they could send her any amount they wished to directly, and the money would be ready when needed. So Plan B was more than ready in my head and unfortunately, the time had come to use it. 

By early Saturday evening, once I knew for sure no scholarship money would be immediately forthcoming, with less than thirty six hours left to pay the fees, I launched the fund raiser. It took a few hours for it to be approved, but by close to midnight Kenya time it was finally active and visible! I immediately shared it on FaceBook . Then the wait began and I woke up on Sunday morning with some hope in my heart and my mother and I shared it across the few WhatsApp groups we are a part of and my mother also sent it directly to a few people! 

Our students and a few generous friends in India NEVER disappoint and many donations came through into my Mom's account. A few friends from Nairobi too sent money to my house help. No amount was too big or too small and we were grateful for every single rupee or dollar or Kenyan shilling...One of my Yoga teachers saw the link on FaceBook and asked me on WhatsApp what 'our' target was ... I was so touched that she had automatically included herself in this fund raising effort...She said she would visualize the goal and we would surely reach it. She sent a generous donation and also told me, if we fell short, she would pay ALL the remaining money that would be needed. I was stunned but I assured her that my mother had already told me she would do that herself but then she simply said, "Aunty and I will share that amount then, if needed." 

On the online fund raising site too, money was coming in, with a few of my childhood friends and a school friend who is a doctor herself in the States, contributing, along with a few people from Kenya. By Sunday night, in less than twenty four hours of making the fund raiser live online, we had more than enough funds for fees ( nearly USD 1580, which is, Rs.1,16,000 approximately, before deduction of the fund raiser website charges) the hostel room and for a few other college supplies. One generous gentleman from Kenya, whom I do not know personally, donated and left a note that we should contact him in case there was a shortfall in the fees, he would put in the remaining amount! AND we had a list of people who had messaged to say they would contribute on Monday morning. For the first time in many days, I went off to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Empathy is a double edged sword...it benefits others but can be agony for the empathizers themselves as we are able to put ourselves in other people's shoes only too perfectly. And trust me, those shoes pinch.

I had asked my house help to get her brother, who had arrived in Nairobi by then, with her the next morning as we would go and pay the fees in the bank branch closest to our house, as soon as I finished my Monday morning Kundalini Yoga class. I never miss any class if I can help it, and that day was no exception. Coincidentally, it was with the same teacher who had offered to pay the shortfall in fees, if any! Even as the class was on, ( at yogilateswithnidhi.practicenow.us) at around 9:00 am Kenya time, my house help popped her head in and excitedly told me that the M.P had called. Then she shut the door again. I didn't think much of it and wondered if he had called to ask if she had managed to collect the fees as that was the last day to pay...As soon as the class was over, I excused myself and told the teacher we were leaving to pay the fees and promised to update her. She wished us luck! 

Then I came out of the room and saw that my house girl was nearly delirious with joy! She showed me an SMS which had come at 8:59 a:m. The Honourable Member of Parliament had paid the ENTIRE fees for the first year of University from his PERSONAL funds! I was shaken to the core. What a truly honourable man! It was as if a load had rolled off our collective backs. The first thing I did via Facebook and the WhatsApp groups, was to ask folks to stop sending money, as the fees had been paid. Now we had enough from the fund raiser, to pay for the hostel room, scrubs, white coat, medical tests, eye check up and spectacles, stationery, printouts, legal notarization fees and some amount would be left over as a buffer for the following year, in case the County scholarship did not come through at all. A few folks insisted on sending money even then and we told all the others that we would surely ask them during the second year, if required. There is truly no dearth of generous folks around us....A friend passed by to personally drop off her donation, even after I had stopped the fund raiser, saying students have many needs besides fees, and we could use her money for anything. So I gave her money, along with the amount donated by my mother and our two generous children ( BOTH of whom had separately told me, that since I have access to their bank accounts in India, I could just take whatever was needed, and even break their fixed deposits if the necessity arose, but paying fees on time was very important... I was moved, to say the least!), to the boy, to buy a basic smart phone and a few other things that are essential for life in a hostel. This friend met the boy and gave him some excellent advice, critical for students starting a new life! I was so grateful that this busy lady spent many precious minutes talking to the boy. Another kind friend from India gave permission to use her money to buy clothes for the boy, now that the fees had been paid! One does not realize as one goes about one's cushy life, how much a child needs and how expensive everything is... I certainly realized it while handling donor money, weighing the pros and cons of every item, seeing where we could save, what was essential and what was frivolous, hunting for a reasonably priced notary ( met a lovely lady advocate!), the cheapest government hospital for all the medical tests needed for admission, a value for money phone and giving whatever items I could spare from my house, just to save more donated money for next year.

I had given our night guard the responsibility of tracking down the boy's Kenyan Identity card, as it was critical for admission and had been delayed due to the pandemic. He went and met a very efficient lady on a high post in the relevant office, who managed to expedite the process and in three days he had collected the card for the boy, foregoing some of his precious day time sleep! Help is not always monetary...and so many people we don't even know personally have helped us in this entire process. I wanted the boy to have the right spectacles before he started classes and even those were delayed due to non availability of blue block lenses, but my optometrist managed to finally deliver them yesterday, so he can carry them with him to the hostel tomorrow, since he won't visit his sister again anytime soon. 

As I pointed out to my Kundalini Yoga teacher, if I had bunked class and left earlier with my house girl and the student to pay the fees, they would have been paid twice as the M.P had given NO indication whatsoever that he would pay, the money would be stuck in the university account, until who knows when, and we would have been left with barely anything for the hostel and all the other myriad expenses...As she pointed out to me, "Kundalini Yoga doesn't just wish for miracles, it relies on them!" 

And a miracle, aided by God, many generous donors and a very generous Indian educated Kenyan M.P, it certainly was.... After months of being stressed, this deserving boy has been truly blessed! And since then he has appeared for the County scholarship interview too and if he is awarded that scholarship, his fees for the next few years will be taken care of and all the remaining donated money will be used for hostel costs for next year. Will he be thrice blessed? We will know soon...but we will never forget how donors from across the world, regardless of their religion or country of residence or origin, saved the day for an unknown, economically challenged Kenyan boy who will, one day, be a doctor...He starts his first formal day of classes tomorrow, orientation got over last week! Wish him luck!

And the boy's mother who is very thankful and grateful to you all, sent me this gift from her village, red beans and peanuts... She said she has nothing but she was crying all the time, while we were organizing the fees....A person who shares with others what little he or she has, NEVER has nothing... How I wish you all could taste these Kenyan Kidney beans... I used some today and we had our lunch with a full heart...

Ink Dots On The Quick Sands Of Cyber Space

 For the last few months, from Google Mail just one message has frequently come,

Which makes me want to, in the opposite direction, run.

"You're out of storage space",

And thus to delete some mails began my race. 

"Buy Storage" was the message that would repeatedly flash,

Was this a gimmick to make me part with my hard earned cash?

I'm a Microsoft fan, Hot Mail is my lifeline,

So why should I give Google even a dime?

(Though recent marital allegations against the Windows founder have shocked me to the core,

I still remain staunchly faithful to the Microsoft store).

Classes on Skype, an Android phone and an HP lap top,

An expensive, half eaten Apple has never made my heart stop.

Every day, after classes, I would spend minutes ten.

Deleting mails from the G Mail den.

When I reached 2019, mails from my Dad snaked their way through,

The number of mails from him just grew and grew.

He remained a G Mail fan until the end,

Though "Out Of Storage" messages were currently driving me around the bend.

2019, 2018 were mostly about blood count reports,

The Lab kept us in the loop so we could, our parents, from a distance support.

Suffering from Deep Vein Thrombosis, some had been forwarded by Dad himself with pride,

To show that with INR tests ( prothrombin time) he was making many a stride.

As I delved further and further into my box of mail,

2017, 2016, messages from the time he was fit, began flooding the computer on a large scale.

All the Human Resource programs he had pan India conducted,

He had, with pictures and write ups, meticulously documented.

Then showed up his blog, " From Here And There",

Where he often wrote about life's incidents, unfair and fair. 

Reading those again brought a quick tear to my eye,

Well, I'll be honest, I simply began to cry.

When a person is dead and gone,

The written word does one beckon,

Into times now well and truly past,

Who knew that particular mail would be his last?

2016 2015, then came photos he had clicked of the times we had had fun,

And then mails about all the work for me he had done.

From something simple like a passport scan,

To the more complicated attachments from the dreaded tax man.

More mails followed of scans of insurance payments and property taxes,

Of forms and details of my former educational franchises. 

In those days, I just had to him a mail shoot,

And all my issues in India magically got the boot!

Tech Wizard, crazy Army Colonel, and also a Colonel's son,

He knew how to automatically get things done. 

2014, 2013, 2012, then followed mails of his travel itineraries,

His fear of flying meant road and rail were the beneficiaries!

'Perfect travel planner' describes him well,

Those mails, if published today, will surely those destinations sell.

I couldn't bring myself to hit 'Delete',

Without those, my memories of my Dad in cyber space wouldn't be complete.

I'd only heard about footprints in the sands of time,

To be born, to live, to die is life's rhythm and rhyme.

But then in these past few days, I have discovered ink drops scattered across G Mail,

Can be as poignant as hand written letters in the era of mail by the snail!

Today, as I, to manage our 'Empire' in India, struggle,

And as I, my Mom's bank work, donations, insurance, taxes, simultaneously juggle,

The tiny but persistent thought begins to niggle:

Indian children, no matter their age, really do their parents 'for granted' take,

Our parents' motto is," Anything and everything for their children's sake"! 

I had not realized  how much I had relied on my Dad,

Until Google forced me to check what all in my mail box I had....!

This tiny vignette from my mail box gives a small glimpse, the mails ranging from my Dad's travel plans to Kanha Tiger Reserve, to some life certificate needed by the Life Insurance Company of India for my daughter, to the quotation to get some Air Conditioners installed at home in India, a scan of a picture of my father in law with a former American President that my son urgently needed for his 6th grade social studies class, to some post office investment forms I needed....you get the picture! 

Happy Birthday, Girl!

 Sanjana, our daughter, came into my life at a time when I was buried neck deep in academia. I was in the middle of my first Masters degree then. Commuting back and forth from the university, in my home town, on a two wheeler, staying up at all odd hours to study and asking my doctor if walking up and down in the garden, studying from a book in my hand counted as a 'walk', because I literally had no time during the pregnancy, with exams looming over my head, to even go for a 'proper' walk. She was a 'surprise' baby but had timed her entry into the world so beautifully that I never missed a day of university nor of the 'Advanced Diploma in Italian' I was pursuing then. I went on to top the course, with one hundred percent marks in the finals. In fact, when fellow students called me up to come and  collect the diploma, I had to tell them I was due soon and was avoiding commuting long distances in the final month and would someone please collect it for me. To say they were all shocked is putting it mildly, no one had even guessed I was expecting, when I had last seen them a couple of months earlier. So studying was definitely encoded into her very DNA and needless to say I had a very smooth and easy pregnancy. 

A few days before she was born, my husband had to go to Dubai for a job interview. So, interestingly and most ironically, our baby's first 'shopping', which included a designer Pierre Cardin baby carrier, uncommon in the India of more than two decades ago, was done in the United Arab Emirates. Little did we know then that a mere eighteen years later that baby, by another twist of fate, would end up there to pursue her Bachelors Degree in Medicine and Surgery. My love of chocolates and ice creams is legendary and so of course my husband grabbed all the chocolate he could buy, before he came back to India, just in time for her to be born. I spent the entire weekend, 27th and 28th June, gorging on chocolates and I often tell Sanjana that the weight of the chocolates pushed her out on 29th June, sooner than my original due date of 3rd July. Medical science may not buy this theory, but I definitely do!

Monday, 29th June,1998: Of course I had a problem with the date! I knew at least four other people who were born on that day, all fantastic people ( you ALL know who you are!), but like with our son five and a half years later, I wanted a 'fresh' date for our baby. I was willing to settle for 1st or 3rd July (2nd July is my late mother in law's birthday) but was I given a choice in the matter? No! Just after dawn, on a wet, rainy, soggy, blotchy, dreary Monday morning, my amniotic sac broke and a short while later, just as the sun burst out from behind the clouds in a blaze of glory, my husband, my mother and I drove to the hospital.

The doctor said it would be a couple of hours before I would be moved to the labour room and mercifully a private room was available, so it was alloted to us. I was highly irritable because I was forced to lie down and wait quietly and lying down is not something I do easily! I'm usually to be found actively working, studying, cooking, embroidering or reading at the very least. By the time my son was born, ( do read 'Happy Birthday, Child!'), the doctors knew me and my pattern better, did not impose 'lying down' on me and I was happily strolling around, until they told me to step into the labour room.

That long ago monsoon Monday morning was also when we discovered I had inherited my mother's, maternal grandmother's and great grandmother's pattern of naturally painless deliveries. So I never had any so called 'labour pain' but my daughter, after her stints with wailing, screaming women, in the ObGyn wards of her medical college hospital and summer internships in Pune, refuses to believe me. All I felt was the painless pressure to 'push' but of course the doctors, all three of them, while clustered around me, in the labour room, gave permission for that only in the final moments.

And so much to the astonishment of the doctors, in a surprisingly very short labour for a first baby, to the tune of gentle rain beating down outside, Sanjana was born well in time for me to have lunch at my usual hour of 1:00 pm and leaving the medical staff free to have theirs on time too! Those who know me well, know how particular I am about my meal timings and it looked like our new baby had heeded that too! I had hoped that my newly developed voracious appetite would abate, now that the baby was out, but no such luck. I couldn't wait to get into my room and tuck into a good, hot lunch. I had missed breakfast that morning! The second time around I made sure I had had my breakfast before we set off for the hospital. But I was still starving after our son was born, again well in time for me and the medical staff to have lunch, so that plan didn't work! 

So impressed were the doctors by my calm demeanour and my casual conversation with them at the height of labour, on topics like why episiotomy is not a choice in India, APGAR scores and later why a vaccuum was used for the delivery, that one of them actually went out and complimented my mother on such a daughter! I think, they all, like my daughter many years later, had rarely encountered such a naturally painless experience and couldn't believe it had nothing to do with me or my pain bearing capacity, per se. More than five years later, just after my son was born, in just fifteen minutes of painless labour, the same lady doctor would go on to tell me that with 'my ' pattern she would have had twelve kids! I was ready to hop off and walk to my room after our daughter was born and I had been tidied up, and asked them if I could but the horrified nurses restrained me and transferred me to a stretcher and then I was wheeled to the room. I did not make the mistake of even asking this question the second time around, but quietly gritted my teeth and bore the indignity of being wheeled around on a stretcher, when I felt perfectly fine.

Sex determination tests are, of course, banned in India for reasons well known to all of us, but I instinctively knew beyond any shadow of doubt that we were having a girl. So after anxiously asking if the baby was fine, I only perfunctorily asked my husband what it was. He gave the expected answer and it felt so good to be proved right. And of course all my baby clothes shopping featured pink very predominantly! That very same daughter doesn't approve of associating colours with gender today, but what can I say, I'm old fashioned that way....

Interestingly, she was the only girl born there that day, the rest were all boys, six or seven of them, and one of the nurses had the audacity to tell me that I should have had a boy, just as I was being taken, sorry 'wheeled' to my room. I am rarely rude and usually remain calm but discrimination against women is a 'no holds barred' topic for me. I had just had a baby, less than an hour ago, but that was no deterrent for me to turn around and give her a tongue lashing I'm sure she remembers to this day. I angrily pointed out that what she had just said was the root cause of India's skewed sex ratio, one of the main causes of female foeticide and all the other issues that a son centric, patriarchal society brings in its wake, pun absolutely intended. I pointed out women are the backbone of any society, the very fabric that weaves the two genders together and she should champion the cause of the girl child, not make people hanker for sons. She was duly apologetic, but I wonder if my words resonated in the air that day and permeated into my new born baby's body, mind and soul because today, anyone who knows her, will tell you she is one of the strongest feminists they have ever encountered. Her Senior Seminar topic, when she graduated from High School, was 'Making Misogynistic Monsters' and centered around how a male dominated society contributes to creating men who think they are a cut above women. It was very well received and her paper was among the top ten papers and her presentation made it to the top ten too, a rare honour! 

It wasn't until we came home with her three days later, that I realized I was solely responsible for a newly minted, helpless human being ( my husband left within a couple of weeks to start his new job)  and the saga of caring and nurturing continues to this day...

Soon after, I started my second year of my first Masters program, and so this was a child who spent her neo natal months surrounded by my books. Later when she began sitting up and then toddling, I had started my second Masters and yet again she was surrounded by my books and now hers too! But she was a calm, steady child who loved to eat, be read to, and played quietly by my side, for hours at a time. My research papers and heavy historical tomes would be scattered all around us in her room, but she never even touched or tore anything. I often tell my son it was a good thing she was born first, because had he been born first, I would have had to abandon my own studies and take up cricket as a full time occupation. This boy, born, while India played Australia at Melbourne in February 2004,  began batting as soon as he could sit and I spent hours bowling to him for years, until he began school at the age of three. And, mind you, I had to stand and bowl, sitting and bowling did not cut any ice with him...He began speaking really early, saying a few words at the age of seven months, and one of his first words was 'stand', if I had the temerity to sit down even for a second. Our daughter, on the other hand, inspired by and enamoured of my parents' wonderful dacschund, Speechka, declared at the age of five that she wanted to be a vet and coolly informed Speechka's vet, our beloved Dr. Dhokrikar that she would take over from her one day! She also added, as a side note, that she would call Dr. D to step in whenever she went for a 'modelling' assignment! To say I was embarrassed by her five year old precociousness would be putting it mildly, but our vet was highly amused. Well, she ended up studying human medicine but still loves dogs more....And everyone tells me she could pass off an a model, but mercifully for me, she doesn't model! 

Today is the first birthday I have spent apart from her since the day she was born, so I felt I owed it to her to write her 'birth' day story! When I celebrated my 23rd birthday, she was already in my arms, as a tiny baby! Does she think she could be responsible at her age for another human being? As she very candidly and characteristically put it, in language I disapprove of ( swear words, I did warn you, I'm old fashioned!), when I asked her, " Hell, no!"  

But then she was such an amazing baby, that she made it very easy for me! 

Of Pulverizing Poignant Emotions In Pickle

 

Ruby red chillies and ones that are a brilliant emerald green, 

Coated with fragrant spices, immersed in smoked oil, are through glass jars seen.

Plump, lush lemons, that are paper skinned,

Have been, in cold mustard oil, firmly pinned.

Their colour is still a bright, sunshiny yellow,

Unlike the state of my mind, which is somber and mellow. 

From my online classes I've taken a short break,

And today, I was determined to my favourite pickles make. 

But the state of the world weighed heavily on my mind,

I thought of the many people, worldwide, who are in a bind.

Whole spices did I  roast and pound, 

Sauted, stirred and coarsely ground.

Even as the entire melange in warm oil swirled,

My mind, with deep rooted sadness, whirled.

I absolutely cannot fathom how oxygen cylinders can be sold in black,

Of how many ventilator beds there is a lack.

To, at exorbitant rates, sell what nature gives us for free,

In itself, to me, seems like a crime against humanity.

Such folks have, not just on their faces, but on their collective conscience a mask,

WHO will take these evil hearted criminals to task?

And then I suddenly realized, whatever on my troubled mind had sat,

Had just been fully absorbed into my pickle vat!

I momentarily felt freer and lighter than I had been,

Whether my pickles emerge unscathed from the tumult of emotions, remains to be seen. 

If only it were that easy to make whole a world that is broken,

I'm doing my bit, but it's no more than a token.

Find something that you enjoy doing from home,

There truly is no need to outside roam.

This morning, I was free, I could have chosen to gallivant,

Instead, I chose to replenish my pickle stock that had become scant.

If we have to be out and about, let's double mask up and not oscillate,

Between the decision of to or not , vaccinate!

As soon as you can, get your jab,

At life, it may be our last stab.

Currently I can only WhatsApp my close family from afar,

But soon, I'm hoping I can safely fly black and personally hand over a pickle jar!

Men CAN Cook: The Proof Lay In My Dad's Pudding!

 A few weeks ago, on a Recipe group I follow on FaceBook, a mother had shared a picture of something her twelve year old son had baked. Everyone was praising the boy but one woman commented that how nice it was that a boy was cooking and baking too....This absolutely got my goat, though I didn't say anything on that forum. We live in the 21st century, for heaven's sake and are we STILL saying that it's good if boys cook too? There can be no worse way to unnecessarily distinguish on the basis of gender than by singling out boys for 'indulging' in activities traditionally 'meant' for girls.

In our house, my sister and I ( yes TWO girls born in the 70s, another slap on the face of patriarchy and so proud of my parents for delivering this stinging one, pun intended!) grew up watching my Dad cook. Some of my earliest memories of my Dad stem from watching him make Chinese food every evening, post attending his course, to supply it to a restaurant in Mhow, in Madhya Pradesh, where the Indian Army had sent us then . This, of course, was eons before everything Chinese became an anathema to the world. Our playroom adjoined the kitchen, so that my mother could keep an eye on us, while doing the more mundane chore of cooking three meals a day! But this also ensured that I, as a three year old, had the best viewing point whenever my Dad was gliding around in the kitchen. Ajino moto ( Monosodium Glutatmate or MSG ) became a part of my vocabulary long before I could spell it and much before its hazards were known to the world and it was subsequently banned from our kitchen by my Dad! 

My Dad absolutely loved food and as a young, newly commissioned officer of the Indian Army, was often found in the kitchen of the Officers' Mess. He began garnering a lot of knowledge from experienced army cooks and they, in turn, must have been delighted that a young, newly minted officer was showing so much interest in their profession. Once the Commanding Officer of each Regiment where he was posted every three years, discovered that the new officer had a passion for cooking and was an extremely talented chef, the 'Mess Officer' duties were heaped on his head! So by day he was the Communications Engineer, ensuring seamless communication between officers, soldiers, units and regiments and during parties or VIP lunches and dinners, he was to be found in the kitchen, adding his own unique, signature touch to each dish. No dish left the kitchen until he had been satisfied that its colour, aroma, taste and consistency were exactly as they should have been. The menu du soir ( of the evening) would be artistically calligraphed on stiff card paper and would be placed at the head of the buffet table, during every party. Once, a friend and I sauntered into the Army Mess dining room for a peek at the menu, at a party where kids had been permitted. The first thing the eleven year old me noticed under the main course was ' Peking Duck'. I asked one of the servers to summon my Dad from the kitchen and, eager to show off my knowledge of Geography, loftily informed him that the capital of China was no longer called Peking but Beijing and hence he had made an error! He was highly irritated at being disturbed while he had been neck deep in kitchen supervision and told me no matter what the city was now called, the dish remained 'Peking Duck'! You only have to look up Wikipedia today to see how deep my Dad's knowledge of cuisine was and how ahead of his times he had been...Thirty four years after this incident, which stands out in my mind like yesterday, it is still 'Peking Duck', with Peking being used as an adjective!

As his interest in cooking kept on increasing, he wanted to add more to his already formidable repertoire of recipes. And thus began our cook book collection! When most of India had not even heard of pastas and pizzas in the mid 80s, my sister and I were often found flipping through one of his favourite books on Italian cuisine, 'Mama D's Pasta And Pizza', after we had run out of everything else to read! But more than any book, he cooked by instinct alone most of time, which I believe, is the hall mark of great chefs. Very few 'store bought' ground spices cut ice with him and he often roasted and ground his own spices at home, frequently giving me packets to use in my own kitchen. I remember once, many years ago, I had hosted a dinner for thirty people in our house in Pune. An aunt refused to believe I had made the chick peas myself and kept saying they tasted as good as my Dad's chick peas did! I was highly amused and said that was because I had used his home made chick pea spice powder. She remained unconvinced and felt I had secretly roped in my Dad to make this simple yet highly popular dish! 

But even my dad was not always infallible in the kitchen. A few decades ago, when I was a school girl, he was making a few kilos of chick peas for a party we were hosting in our home town, for my mother's extended family of fifty plus people. He added sodium bicarbonate for the chick peas to cook faster and something went terribly wrong and the whole dish hissed and fizzled and turned completely sour. My dad calmly walked out into our garden and tossed the whole sorry mess under the small mango tree. It remained there for many days and I used to often go out and gaze at it sorrowfully for many weeks (until it finally merged with the soil), because throwing out food is practically unheard of in Indian households...I have never ever used sodium bicarb to speed up the cooking process, so deeply did this incident scar me. On another occasion, when my Dad was posted to Pune and we lived in a huge colonial bungalow, we had invited my then newly married maternal uncle and his wife for dinner. They were fond of fish and so my Dad had especially bought fresh fish for them. But by the time he finished cooking it, he realized all was not well with the fish and being almost as paranoid as I am about food poisoning, he chucked it into the garden again! This time, our beautiful March and Spider Lillies flower Bed was the recipient of this rotten offering. I thank God every single day for turning me completely vegetarian twenty five years ago, so I never have to worry about rotten meat products or fertilized eggs! Yes, you guessed right, it was none other than my Dad who found a half grown chicken in what we in India call 'vegetarian eggs', while making a Spanish omelette....Enough to put me off eggs for life!

The tea and coffee connoisseur that he was, he went the extra mile to buy coffee beans of his choice, roasted them in the Gas Tandoor (oven) at home and then ground and mixed them in the right proportions. On the days when he went through this whole process, trust me when I say our house smelled much better than the pretentious Star Bucks or its more humble Indian avtaar Cafe Coffe Day, both of which burst upon the Indian scene decades after my Dad's gourmet coffee had entered our home. He specially ordered the tea varieties he used, either online, or by requesting kind friends from Assam to send him some. Then he blended them and put them in a jar labelled with his own name, 'Ajay's Tea', and woe betide anyone who touched that jar! He himself was more than happy to make tea for family and friends as only he knew how to make the perfect cuppa from that combination! Today, exactly two years after he has gone, the jar, still neatly labelled, stands empty in my mother's kitchen. No one dares to touch it even today...

In the early 90s, when my Dad was home on leave, our housing society in our home town, hosted a cooking competition. All the neighbours, who knew what a great chef he was, encouraged him to participate. He made a fabulous vegetable biryani ( a spiced rice dish infused with vegetables and yoghurt, topped with browned onions and saffron) and no prizes for guessing who won the first prize! All the home makers who had participated were agog and eagerly wanted to learn some tricks and skills from him. Yes, because in the 90s, it was truly rare for men to cook at home and even rarer to win prizes for it. Whenever my Dad was in the kitchen, neighbours walking past our house would be tantalized by the aromas drifting out on the road and would often stop and call out from the gate, asking if they could pop in for a taste of whatever was cooking! My Dad, ever hospitable like my equally skilled in the kitchen paternal grandmother, would welcome everyone...

When he visited us in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 2006, he cooked a fantastic repast for my daughter's 8th birthday. Everyone who attended that party still fondly remembers the food he had cooked that day. His expertise did not extend to just cooking but also to laying the table in such a way that the food was showcased in the best possible manner . And to top it all, he was great at food photography as well so we have superb photos to remember those bygone days. 

Every single item here was lovingly prepared and clicked by my Dad for his grand daughter's 8th birthday party. 

He was very particular about the table being set perfectly and the crockery had to match and be complemented by the cutlery and the glasses too. He deliberately chose a common design for a dinner set he bought in the 80s, saying that if anything broke during our frequent transfers, it would be easier to replace! We use it in my parents' house on special occasions to this day! 

                                                   This dinner set is thirty five years old! You can also see my parents' collection of glasses and tea sets in the background. Every aspect of cooking and serving the meals truly interested him and food photography, long before Instagram came on the scene, was one of his specialities too. 

From one of the many dinners my parents' hosted before my Dad became ill. Every item was personally cooked by him and both my Mom and their skilled cook were always relegated to sous chef duties!

When my parents visited us in Nairobi in 2012 - 2013, I encouraged my Dad to host a cooking class in my children's school kitchen, organized by the school's Parent Teacher Fellowship, of which I was ( and am!) an active member. All the proceeds would be donated to our PTF fund, to be used for various good causes, throughout the school year. My Dad agreed very readily and we had a huge group of ladies eagerly signing up to learn to cook a few items which are a staple part of Indian cuisine. The venture was a massive success and we generated a lot of funds for the school that day, all thanks to my Dad's skills. We also hosted a dinner party for friends in Nairobi ( yes, seems like a dream in these times, inviting friends over and actually sitting next to each other without masks!) and one of the items my Dad made was rice and corn croquettes. I still vividly remember his fingers, which had been adept at pressing a gun trigger all through his army life, now gently moulding cooked rice and corn together into lozenge shapes, imbued with finely ground coriander and chillies, before deep frying them...needless to say this appetizer was a huge hit later that evening. I then encouraged him to submit the recipe to an international Cook Book the school PTF was publishing and so it was that a recipe of my Dad's appeared in print in Kenya! 

                                                                  That's the recipe book! 

                                        And here is the recipe if anyone would like to try it....

On of my fondest memories is from March 1989, during the Indian festival of Holi, in Gauhati, Assam. My parents never participated and locked themselves in the house along with us, but that particular year my Dad allowed us to go and play with colours with our army and air force gang of kids, probably after we had begged long and hard. When we got home, after a long day of smearing colours on each other and soaking everyone with coloured water, we saw the most perfect, pale yellow, lemon souffle waiting for us on the dining table. My dad urged my sister and me to take quick showers and then come and try the treat. We needed no further bidding and soon we were back, freshly tubbed and scrubbed. The first mouthful of that sweet, light, frothy, lemony goodness was enough to induce food ecstacy and had me craving for more...Such was my Dad's expertise in recreating even this very colonial dessert. For him, cooking was all in a day's work and the proof did, indeed, lie in his pudding. 

And yes, the title for this post was inspired by a cooking show my Dad loved to watch in the 90s. It was called 'Yan Can Cook'! So apologies, Yan! I replaced you with Men! 

 

My Dad, as a newly commissioned officer, that's when he first began taking a keen interest in cooking! 

In Dr.Bach's British Backyard

 This is a time of turmoil. For the entire world, no doubt about that...But it has been especially traumatic for 10th and 12th grade students in India. These are board exam years, the equivalent of the very British O and A levels respectively and the first lock down of 2020 occurred just when the students had started these all important grades, last March. A year down the virus filled road and there is no immediate end in sight. The exams, which should have been nearly over at this time in a normal year, are now scheduled for April and May 2021 and students are plodding on, on line, as schools have shut again after they had barely begun. Imagine the angst, the fury, the helplessness, the sheer fatigue of regurgitating the same material for more than a year, with schools now holding a third prelim (pre boards) as against one or two, which is the norm.

I am away, across the Indian ocean, but the anguish coming through in waves is palpable every time I teach these fifteen and sixteen year olds. And so I have been advising their parents about the Bach Flower Remedies, in case these weary beings would like to try them out. But WHO is Dr. Edward Bach? 

To answer this question, I need to go back exactly thirty years into the past. I was a tenth grader myself and my mother was teaching in a school in Pune. My Dad was on a field posting in far away Jammu and Kashmir, based near India's border, so stress levels were naturally high in our house. One day she came home and told me about these wonderful remedies made from thirty eight flowers, based on the states of the mind, that a colleague of hers had studied about and was successfully using for students who needed them. I am skeptical at the best of times and this seemed rather over the top to me. I did not even take this information with a customary pinch of salt...I point blank refused to believe her.

The very next day, my mother came back from school, armed with proof! She had got home the notebooks of a few of her elementary school students for corrections and she showed me before flower remedies and after flower remedies pages from the notebooks . There was a remarkable difference in the quality of work and in the handwriting too, not just for one student but for each one whose parents had agreed to using the remedies, if the child had academic or emotional issues. I could not deny what was in black and white and thus began my life long relationship with and usage of the Bach Flower Remedies, which had been discovered in the United Kingdom by Dr. Bach in the 1930s. He was an allopathic doctor himself , a physician, pathologist and bacteriologist to be precise, but realized that emotions need help too! Besides our family members, thousands of people and hundreds of students have benefitted from these remedies which are available in all homeopathic shops in India and indeed the world over, and my mother is often invited to give lectures on this topic and conducts workshops too. Her write up about these remedies and their zero side effects and addiction free usage is played on the local radio channel in our home town multiple times a year. My Dad too extensively used these for people in companies and banks where he conducted Human Resource workshops, post retirement. 

August 2019: My husband, my daughter and I were about to leave for a big fat wedding in the United Kingdom. At the last minute, my mother said to me , " If possible, do visit the Bach Flower Centre in the UK." Now this idea took firm hold in my mind, percolated through it all through our long journey from Nairobi to London and helped by Google Maps, I made the decision to visit the Centre. We had a whole day free before the wedding festivities started and my daughter wanted to visit London and take in some tourist attractions. I had seen all I had wanted to see during our holiday in the UK in 1997 and had no desire to see again how money acquired from the colonies had been splurged here nor view once more artefacts and jewels looted from India, displayed in their full glory in the many museums. And pay in pounds to see the loot? Thanks but no thanks. ( The issue of Britain paying India reparation has been officially taken up, so I'm not just shooting my mouth off here). My husband was torn between accompanying the daughter or the wife...I convinced him no harm would come to me and I had my phone which worked for WhatsApp calls and messages, when there was WiFi. I had downloaded the details of the entire journey and so I was set to go. 

We had been put up at a hotel in Kingston Upon Thames, South West London, for the wedding. We took a bus from right outside the hotel to Kingston Upon Thames railway station and here we parted ways. I took a train to London, Waterloo while the other two took one to London, Charing Cross station. I was on my own now, setting off on an exciting adventure in the land of the Famous Five. Since my journey had been mapped out by me on my phone, I had all my tickets ready and just needed to change trains. I disembarked at Waterloo half an hour later and then hopped on to a train to Reading, a journey which would take an hour and a half. Memories of very dear friends of my parents came to mind as this is where Uncle had come in the early 90s, in pursuit of a Ph.D. all the way from Gauhati, Assam. At Reading, I trotted off rapidly to the other platform to catch the train for Didicot Parkway, which is the closest main line station to the Bach Centre . Time was of essence, trains are not too frequent and so I could not afford to miss my connections. I made it and half an hour later, I found myself at the bus stop outside Didicot station. The bus service to Brightwell -cum -Sotwell, the village where the Bach flower Centre is located, runs only once every hour, so I was paranoid about missing the bus, as taxis are very expensive and buses are safer too. I kept asking if the bus was ready to go yet and finally the gentleman at the depot, whom I had been plaguing, told me he was the driver of the bus and there was no way he would leave without me! I heaved a sigh of relief and settled down to wait. Dr. Bach, of course, would have given me a dose of Impatiens! 

I finally hopped into the bus but alas, the London Oyster transport card did not work in this region and the driver did not have change for five pounds. He waved away my money ( which I offered again before getting off, which he refused to take again) and thus I hitched a free ride to the Bach Centre. The grace of Dr. Bach....

Fifteen minutes later the driver signalled to me that my stop had arrived and so I got off,  right in the middle of a lonely country road. I looked around but did not see any signs for the Bach Flower Centre. I could see some houses across the road, so I crossed over to the other side and began wandering around, in vain. Not a soul was to be seen. I had no WiFi. I began to despair that I would probably have to turn back without visiting the Centre, after having come so far. Finally a car turned into the lane where I was wandering and I did something one must NEVER do. I flagged down a strange car. The driver was a young boy and he stopped when he saw me waving desperately. I explained that I was looking for the Bach Centre, he promptly pulled out his phone and searched and then told me to head down the road where I had got off from the bus. I thanked him and he zoomed off, while I scuttled rapidly away to the main road. Ten minutes of walking and nothing in sight... I was nearly in tears by now. With the hot August sun beating down on me, I was berating myself for having ventured all the way here alone. I truly needed Bach's Rescue Remedy at that precise moment. Finally I saw some signs of life , a Dad wheeling a kid in a pram. Somehow men with a kid around seem safer to approach but of course that's never a guarantee. I asked him if he knew about the Centre and he told me to go further up the road and then take a right turn. I marched off again and a couple of wrong turns led me down a narrow path, deep into a wooded area. 

I was not far from Wallingford, where my beloved author and the Queen Of Murder, Agatha Christie had lived for a while and all those murders that happened in the woods in her books came to mind. Remember, I was also in the land of Jack The Ripper. The Bach remedy Mimulus was definitely the need of the hour.... I got a grip on myself, turned around again and reached the main road, almost expecting Christie's famous detective Miss. Marple to pop her head up across a garden wall, and finally stumbled upon the right path. There it was in all its glory, Mount Vernon, the well preserved 19th century cottage and the home of Dr. Edward Bach, surrounded by a rambling yet lush garden, with flowers peeking out from all corners, in myriad hues.

                                                   Mount Vernon, the Bach Flower Centre.

Twenty eight years after we had begun using the Bach Flower remedies, I was at THE place where a lot of the research had been done by Dr.Bach himself and where the remedies used to be manufactured until the demand increased so much that they had to move out commercial production to a bigger place in the 1990s. But classes are conducted here for those who want to learn more about the remedies and visitors like me continue to be enthralled by glimpses of the things that Dr,Bach used, his books, his research papers, his  typewriter, even a beautiful blue pottery plate. A gleaming copper cauldron caught my eye and I wondered which remedies had been frequently brewed in it by him. The whole atmosphere is imbued with calm and there is a sense of trust, as the two people on the premises simply went back to their work, leaving me alone to wander through the rooms. This, I felt, was the very essence of the work Dr.Bach had done and what he had wanted to convey to human kind as a whole...

                                            

Dr,Bach's Workspace

Then it was time to head out into the garden where all the thirty eight flowers, from which the remedies are made, grow in wild profusion. Magical pathways lead visitors up and down the garden, towards a little pond which has an inviting bench, allowing one to sit down and reflect, not just on the beauty of the garden but on the miraculous marvel that these remedies truly are.

Mimulus and Cherry Plum, two plants from which two popular remedies are concocted , grew by the stone edged pond. Very charming! I bumped into another family there who had come all the way from South America to visit the United Kingdom, were Bach Flower Believers too, and hence had come to Mount Vernon. 

Much as I wanted to linger in the garden and examine each plant, bush and tree, time was running on and I had to head back. I bought a few souvenirs from the tiny shop there for myself, my mother, my sister and two friends ( mothers of our former students! ) who had gone out of their way to help us during my Dad's illness. They embody the spirit of Dr. Bach for me. 

As I walked back to the bus stop, with many a backward glance at the house, I thought of the countless people Dr.Bach had helped throughout the world, more than eight decades after his death, and his quote came to mind,   

"Healing with the clean, pure, beautiful agents of nature is surely the one method of all which appeals to most of us” 

- Dr,Edward Bach, 1936

38  Beautifully illustrated flowers, from which the remedies are made, line a wall in Dr.Bach's cottage.

If anyone would like to know more about the remedies, please click on these links. If you know me personally, get in touch, Mom and I are  always happy to help, for free! 

https://www.bachcentre.com/en/remedies/

https://www.bachcentre.com/en/remedies/the-38-remedies/quick-reference-guide/