Homecoming

A moonlit summer night back home. This is our mango tree bursting with this year's harvest. Thanks Bapa, for sending the seasons attached in emails.

So the restlessness has finally made its way into my days. The time has come when nothing, absolutely nothing can inspire me to be at peace with myself. My mind feels like a giant time bomb, ticking away furiously. In just another week I shall have what I have been longing for since what feels like ages. At last, after a year and a half, I will be home, that one word which is so powerfully potent of exciting so many emotions at one throbbing gush. The carnival of faces of your loved ones, the celebration of the familiar, the surprises because so many things have changed...

At the moment I feel a little blurred with emotions and so I have run out of my word bank. I think I must borrow the haunting nostalgia from Agha Shahid Ali's Postcard from Kashmir, which has often been by my side whenever the longing for home has swallowed me up.

Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.
I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.

This is home. And this the closest
I'll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won't be so brilliant,
the Jhelum's waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.
And my memory will be a little
out of focus, it in
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.

Baker's delight

Plum cake, one of my much prized initial successes as a baker

I came across this little piece of truth in one of the cooking websites - "Nothing is more attractive around the home than the smell of fresh baking". It has been a month and a little more since the baker in me has been on a full-throated song. I must have baked more than five cakes, completely mindless of the bursting calories, and thus jeopardizing our fitness routine and dietary resolutions. I have always enjoyed cooking but had never given much thought to the age-old, classic art of baking. The only baking that I had ever dabbled in before was the traditional American fudge brownie from the oh-so-convenient brownie mix. And that ain't much of a talent. So after reveling in the pride of a frequently complimented cook, the time had come to don the mantle of a real baker. I wonder why it took me so long to think about baking from scratch. May be because I am a little idiosyncratic, therefore the 'new' or the 'different' does not strike me immediately. Somehow I am always stuck with the old, repetitive pattern. There are many 'lates' in my life, including Harry Potter and Friends, both of which have become so crucial to my existence that without them my world would seem rather drab. Before I stray any further, let us get back to baking. So there I was, scouring through allrecipes.com for a simple cake, something that ran the least chance of being a disaster. I went for the orange cake for I wanted something exotic as well, and there I was beating eggs and grating orange zest. I had planned it as a surprise for Sam but the heady aroma of orange and baking gave it away. However the cake had turned out really well, the way cakes should be - moist and soft. Hurrah! With such a triumphant debut, there was no stopping me. I searched for variety and more flavours and ended up making them all - orange cake, chocolate cake, banana muffins, fudge brownies and even a plum cake. The trouble is, if I am good at something, I become obsessed with it till I have had enough of it and this is exactly the situation with my current baking spree. It just feels the most perfect thing to do.

What I love the most about baking, other than the hypnotism of the senses, is that it keeps my mind off from wandering away. I feel a soothing calm while baking, as if it was a healing process. The little swirls of aroma crawling out from the oven purge my mind of the buzzing monotone of life. At the end of a messy day, you know when you add eggs and butter to flour, it turns out perfect. And nobody can take this comfort away from you. Absolutely nobody.

In letting go...

To leave and be left behind are perhaps the two ruthless wheels on which the world strides. We have all left someone or have been left by someone at various unfortunate phases of our lives. What is it with me that keeps pushing me to the boundaries till I break? Years after a much cherished bond, one day it just falls out. Just like that. For a bunch of stupid misunderstandings, for reasons so trivial that they were able to toss years of love and laughter into a puzzled silence. It feels so supremely foolish to have had trusted someone with your life and its every little worthless detail. Sure I have lived through times when I would hang on to things that at some point would have hurt me or angered me. But the resentment would not last forever. Somehow things would patch up and the differences would be stocked up for a good nostalgic laugh. This time it is different and much more difficult, probably because we are adults now and the carefree air of childhood that shielded our blunders is no more there. We are all caught in an inescapable domestic quagmire of our own. There are so many new worlds in which we try to fit in and fail miserably. There are people whom you just don't understand, whose remorseless deeds tear you to shreds every time and in spite of all this life has to go on. Therefore this time I have not been able to pick up the shattered pieces and glue them together. May be because I can still see the fractured portions which are too loud to be ignored. Or may be it lacked the togetherness that such timeless relationships stand for. Or may be I am just plain tired.

Since I could neither forgive nor forget, the only other way left was a difficult but wise one. To let go of what is eating you, to get over the lingering gloom. I had never been able to understand the art of letting go because I loved wallowing in self pity. I was, and perhaps still am, obsessed with glorifying my grief. The free spirited child in me could never appreciate the subtle and uninvolved state of stoicism. Sure, I have quit wearing rose-tinted glasses long, long back but still I am a romantic at heart. But perhaps things are changing, and definitely for the better. The wide chasm of the deep rooted sorrow seems to be melting away. When something is just not meant to be perhaps it should be left that way. Although it is difficult to erase attachments that have gone strong for decades, I do feel healed of the anger and the hurt. May be this is a momentary feeling but it does feel light headed and wholesome. Whatever this feeling is, I want it to stay and nourish my weary mind. Because in spite of lugging the emotional baggage people do move on and so must I. After all the world has no time for clingy souls.

The gupchup diaries

Gupchup, puchka, golgappa, paanipuri... Call it by any of these names, the taste remains the same - irresistible. Gupchup, as we Oriyas call it, has very much been a part of my growing up and from the time I could understand the ways of my taste buds, it has remained a steady favourite. It's time I chronicled its meaning and memories during the various phases of my life so far.

1. Summers at Puri, which happens to be my maternal grandparents' home, were the best times of my childhood. Being the only grandchild/niece then, I was quite pampered and often had my own ways. Every evening Ma and my mausis would take me to the beach where I had the time of my life romping in the sand, collecting sea shells. We wouldn't leave before having our share of soggy gupchup and jhaal muri from the beach vendors. None of the brackish winds or the prickling sands dared kill that fun.

2. Probably it was the distractions of teenage or mostly my hatred for the branch of Sciences, but it wouldn't be a lie if I said nothing interested me in those days. After school hours, we would go for afternoon tuitions which would go on for two agonising hours. The only comfort that would keep me sane in these otherwise horrid afternoons were the gupchup sessions that were held regularly after the tuitions. How we friends would circle the vendor and wait patiently for our turns when he would toss the savoury delight into our leaf bowls!

3. I left the secured walls of home for my graduation in Bhubaneswar. In the initial days I found it rather difficult to adjust to the novelties of an independent student life. The only comforting, familiar feel was that of the rows of gupchup stalls right in front of our campus premises. Like every hostel, ours too had one common problem - unpalatable mess food. So the evenings, after a day of longish lectures, meant regular calls to the attractively decorated blue stalls.

4. After graduation I moved to Hyderabad, the mecca for biryani and kabab lovers. Not being a keen non-vegetarian, I would miss the simpler fares that my home state offered. No matter what, my cravings were such that I would go for the relatively bland paani puris and wouldn't notice the vendor's mean stare when asked, "Bhaiya, thoda extra pyaaz dena" (some more chopped onions please).

We have reached the rather sad end of my gupchup diaries. Life in the States can mean so many things to an Indian, culturally and emotionally. Mine is a long list of stubborn yearnings, right out of a Jhumpa Lahiri story. I have tried the tricky but extremely simple recipe at home from the ready-made gupchup pockets that are available in the Indian grocery stores. It turns out fine by home standards, but that nostalgic aroma of belongingness is always missing. Now all hopes are pinned on that once-a-year vacation, the most beautiful dream of every immigrant. Home beckons...

Flashback II

Remember the moon that night?

Burning with all its might and beauty,

with a strange neighbourly expression.

Like she was your confidante,

who could peep into your heart anytime

and play that nostalgic game of hide-n-seek.

I could never fathom these smirks and hushed exchanges.

They were cryptic, probably hieroglyphic.

To be so unmindful and foolish,

when the air was swollen with prophecies,

like the proverbial lull before the storm.

And I oblivious of the lurking fate,

marveled at the swaying gulmohars

and the pristine, ethereal moon!

The moon...ha!

Where was my insight?

My sixth sense, which I was once so proud of?

Where was my heart...

Surely I had it tucked in somewhere safe,

and not just strewn morsels of it on the deserted road

to be trampled on by known and unknown prejudices.

Sure, there it was.