GOZZER HALLELUJAH!

GOZZER HALLELUJAH

A certain feisty Bengali described it as the toughest recipe ever known to humankind. Who am I, a mere highly talented TamBrahm Bengalurean, to contest this description?

I tried to mafunacture it once. It was not easy. I thought, if I myself find it so tough, imagine the plight of poor old humankind! I concluded that there certainly is something in what feisty Bengalis say.

And now, without further ado, I will discuss how to do this tough geezer called Gozzer Hallelujah.

BASIC COMPONENTS
To serve one individual, you will require:
 ~Three gozzers, grated. If orange, then three orange gozzers. If pink, however, then make it three pink gozzers. No more, no less. Three. Orange or pink, as the case may be.
~ A one-inch piece of ginger, grated
~ One small green chilli, slit and cut into small pieces
~ Two elaichis, unpodded and grounded
~ Four cashew nuts, broken into halves and again broken into quarters to make sixteen pieces in all
~ A quarter litre of cow's milk. If cow's milk is not available, go for the yak tetrapak.
~ Two heated tablespoons of clarified butter. If clarified butter is not available, go for ghee. If ghee is not available, come back to clarified butter.
~ Shakkar, sucre, cheeni. Commonly called Sugar, 100 grams. Sow giram, sow shall you heap.
~ On second thoughts, cut out the grated ginger and green chillies. They seem to have lost their way and wandered into this recipe.

EQUIPMENT AND APPARATII
~ Karahi, kadahi, kadai.  Also known as wok
~ Sauce pan. What mothers-in-law use. Kyonki.
~ Ladle. As the name suggests, this is a ladle.
~ Tablespoons, a couple. Matched or mismatched, doesn't matter. To transport the clarified butter or ghee from storage container to kadahi.
~ Pilates.

TOOLS AND TACKLES
~ Knife for cutting gozzers into two. (Useful info: it is known as Naihu in Japanese)
~ Grater for grating. Good, sarp graters are available at the Greater Kailash Grater Wallah.
~ Tongs. If you don't have one, get one. Tong adaao.
~ Lighter, to light stove. If stove is heavier, use heavier lighter to light.
~ Large stirrer with long handle, to stir. Check to see that it works both ways. Clockwise as well as anti-clockwise.

PRODUCTION PROCESS
~ Set kadahi on stove. Left ear of kadahi should face East corner of kitchen for auspicious pakau.
~ Light light stove or heavy stove, as the case maybe, with lighter.
~ Allow kadahi to get heated. Touch with tip of forefinger to check. If hot, remove finger immediately.
~ Pour clarified butter or ghee into kadahi. Allow to hot up.
~ Drop cashew nuts into hot ghee. When lightly brown, pour into pilate and keep aside.
~ Put kadahi back on to stove. Pour milk into it.
~ Heat milk. When hot, drop grated gozzer into it, gently and without making a splash.
~ Pick up large long handled stirrer.
~ Use Continental Grip to hold stirrer. Left hand on top, right hand below.
~ Stir in anti-clockwise direction, starting from 3 o' clock and working backwards.
~ Stir. Stir. Stir.
~ Drop the sugar into the gozzer-milk mix. Mix.
~ Add browned cashew nuts to gozzer-milk-sugar mix. Mix.
~ And stir. Anti-clockwise. Stirring anti-clockwise will take you back in time. Keep going back till you reach your childhood. Don't go beyond childhood or you may have to start crawling. Bad for the knees.
~ Your hands would have become heavier after all that stirring. The milk would have thickened. The gozzer would have more or less ghulled into the milk.
~ Drop grounded elaichi into gozzer-milk-sugar-cashew mix. Mix well.
~ Stir in clockwise direction to come back to present day.
~ Put off flame when you reach to-day.
~ Allow kadahi to cool.
~ Transfer contents to propah storage vessel.

Test. Taste. Bhoot mazaa!
Thanks be.
Gozzer Hallelujah!

-       © Shiva Kumar, 10 December 2017 

Cucumber Sandwich

Kukri Class

Cuke Samwich

What if we don’t have to eat? Lekin paapi peyt ka sawal hai, as the Seth would have said! We hafta. Hafta? Not once a week, but at least thrice daily.

The other day I was just lounging around with nothing much on my mind, which is how my mind likes it. Uncluttered, khaali. I started thinking of this and that but was not able to hold on to any thought for long. I realized it was because I was hungry. So I decided to fix myself what Dennis would call a “samwich”. A sandwich; it might help the thinking process. I have never been able to think clearly on an empty stomach. Empty mind, yes, but empty stomach, no.

I made a beeline to the fridge and pulled out the container of butter, a small cucumber and the small container of pudina chutney that my wife had made a while ago. Then I picked up the loaf of bread I had picked up the day before from the friendly neighbourhood loafer and proceeded to make what has proven to be one of the most convenient quick fix foods.

Ingredients (Samagri):

> Sandwich bread, sliced, kata hua double roti. For some strange reason, some people call bread “double roti”!

> Butter, Maska – not molten, but unfrozen. Pighla hua. Pagla kahin ka. If frozen, unfreeze.

> Cucumber, kheera. If uncut, cut. Fine slices. Ultra thin. Don’t aks ussenennary questions like an anpadh.

> Pudina Chutney (“cold mint sauce” in Angrezi?).

> Salt, Namak.

> Peppered powder. No, sorry, that should read “powdered pepper”. Pepper that has been to Pisa. Kaali Mirch, pisa hua.

Method (Tareeka):

1. Take two slices of bread, one by one.

2. Apply butter liberally on inner surface* of both slices – zabardast maska lagao.

3. Cut uncut cucumber into ultra thin slices, enough to cover the surface area of one slice of bread.

4. Apply pudina chutney over the cucumber.

5. Place cucumber slices over one buttered slice of bread. 

(NOTE: Don’t much like pudina? Don’t care for a hint of mint or the green tint? Then abandon step 4 and go for the black-on-white treatment, steps 6 and 7, instead.)

6. Sprinkle salt, lightly, over the cucumber.

7. Switch off all fans nearby.

8. Sprinkle pepper, liberally, over the cucumber.

9. Invert second slice over the cucumber.

10. Trim off the edges of the loaves. Use edge trimmer. Don’t use hedge trimmer.

11. Cut diagonally to make two triangular sandwiches.

Procedure (Prakriya):

Hold one triangular sandwich.

Use classic oriental three-finger grip, thumb pushing up bottom slice, fore and middle fingers holding top slice firmly but not pushing down so you don’t crush the slice, the ring finger and little finger pointing stylishly off towards North North East and North East, respectively.

Don’t use the universal five-finger grip. No style.

Don’t even try the peoples’ representative ten-finger grip. You won’t be able to ungrip.

Bite into it (the sandwich, not the thumb).

Relish.

When hunger threatens to tear you asunder

Two slices of bread, one cut of cucumber

Butter ‘em up real good, don’t be the skimper

One slice atop the cuke, the other down under

Salt and pepper, fans off, or face the thunder

Put together a sandwich to remember

*inner surface > the surface that faces up when you hold a slice of bread in your hand horizontally, parallel to the ground

~ Sib Bahut Dur

© Shiva Kumar 

MADHUBAN MERA DHIKA NAACHE RE

MADHUBAN MERA DHIKA NAACHE RE

My Hindi was not always so rusty. It was worse. To begin with, it was non-existent. As I grew up and studied Hindi as my second language in school, the “akshars” started to become barely comprehensible. You see, I studied in a “convent” school and the Hindi taught there was not very complicated. Rudimentary, in fact. “Thora thora”, as the “gora goras” would say. Besides, I hardly had any Hindi speaking friends, so the language remained rather difficult to overcome. Tough. Kathin. Mushkill. Still is.

I became friendlier with Hindi during my school final years, when I started seeing Hindi flicks, as we called films or movies those days. But more than the films, it was the film songs that did the trick. Mushkill became a little more aasaan. But it remained, and still remains, one uphill of a language. Unmasterable. Isko master karna mushkill hee nahin, namumkin hai.

Namumkin! That’s a word whose opposite I learnt from a song where the fellow says it is possible that he may drift or go off at a tangent because he is intoxicated, oiled, and in the grip of a nasha*¹. That particular line was reprised by the tall and angry ‘eng man in another song in another phillum.

Hindi film songs brought to my ears many Hindi and Urdu words I had never heard before. They sounded exotic to my ears!

When I was in college, I had a couple of friends from the Hindi-Urdu belt and one of them was from the heartland. A dear, dear Lucknowi, though his surname sounds Punjabi and reminds me of camphor. He was my go-to guy for anything that felt, smelt, tasted or sounded like Hindi or Urdu. Though I couldn’t tell which was which. For instance, I would go to him and ask him the difference between “guftugoo” and “justujoo” and he would push off to Russell Market in a hurry to get some vital stuff or “bhoot zroory cheese” for the kitchen. On his return, he would come at me with words like “peshkash”, “rawaiyya”, “bewaqoof”, “takalloof” and so on and thoroughly confuse the thunderoons (if I may coin a new term) out of me.

And so it went on.

Until one day, while I was carrying out a rescue act on a particularly recalcitrant differential equation, the door opened and I was greeted by the characteristic bouquet of itr. There, resplendently attired in chikan kurta and pajama, stood my Lucknowi mitr. He wasted no time in button-holing me with a question about a word that was troubling him.

“Ama yaar, is waqt aap masroof toh nahin hain?”

I nodded vaguely and replied, “Pehle aap”.

“One word is troubling me. ‘Dhika’ ka matlab kya hai?”

“Eh?” was my uncomprehending response.

“Deeka” I’d heard, in the popular song by Kishore that starts with “Eena” and “Meena” and has a whole bunch of similar bafflegabby words come tumbling after them in quick succession. But no “dhika”. I was stumped. No clue. For a couple of hours I was scratching around but couldn’t figure it out. When I went home, I decided to ask my sisters, both of whom were far superior to me in Hindi on account of their aggressive nature. But they were flummoxed too.

I went back to my dear friend and asked him where he had heard this ‘dhika’.

“Why, in that song, of course.”

“Which song?”

“That Rafi song ‘Madhuban mera dhika naache re’. Umda gaana.”

I was carrying a rolled newspaper in my striking hand and my first instinct was to strike him three solid blows with it on the back of his head. But as he was already weak in the head, I refrained. As gently as I could, I told him it was not ‘Madhuban mera dhika’ but ‘Madhuban mein Radhika’.

We still laugh about it now, some forty years later, and I still refrain from beaning him with rolled newspapers.

“Tankhwa”. What a dangerous sounding word. To many employed people, it happened at the beginning of every month. A knowledgeable friend, trying to be helpful, told me that “tankhwa” was nothing but an overhead water storage receptacle or reservoir and nothing to worry about, except when there was no water. I had to nod his head thrice. I am told that this word has descended from Akbar’s period.

You see, the whole fault is with these poetic writer chaps and singer fellows. They are allowed lots of liberties to change whatever to whatever else whenever and wherever they feel like.

The other day, I was listening to Mohammad Rafi croon “Let me touch your tender or sensitive (strike off whichever is not applicable) lips”*² and he speaks of sending good ones off badly and it being one of the world’s old habits. I had to listen again before I caught the key words. Send them off? Yes, with my less than poor knowledge of the language, that’s what I thought it meant. Till someone told me otherwise.

Or that other one, where Kishore-da’s son Amit-da talks of someone being some River Mey. Mey? Now from where did that one come? Burma? Why would someone want to be some Burman river? Irrawady, I’ve heard of. Arkavathy too, though it has disappeared. But Mey? No, it may not be. So, what is it? “Tell me you are not the Mey River, I don’t want to live, I want to die.”*³ Quite a powerful line, that.

Have you heard of a surname called Ghabra? No? I have. It is there in a song, where the singer is apparently negating it, along with Sharma. No Sharma, no Ghabra. It’s curtains for the night.*⁴

Then there’s the funny song that says that K. John may walk off but Jiya does not go and Jiya will not if Diya does. Some kind of love triangle, apparently, with poor John (K. John, to be specific, with a rather stylish accent) caught between Jiya and Diya.*⁵ Cheeya. Ain’t no place to be but heya.

And after you’ve already eaten the mango, how can you show it? What a stupid thing to ask, but he does, does the hero. “If you’ve eaten it, show me the mango” he asks. And like a dolt, she tells him to smile first!*⁶

I spent many a sleepless night thinking about these and others like them till realisation dawned on me. The trick is to just sit back. Relax. And unravel the words syllable by syllable. Sooner or later it will all come to you. Like Karan and Arjun. We will have a guftagu over this sometime while I do a justuju. Right? Meanwhile, enjoy the rangaubhu of the songs.

It is a funny language. So is that other one. All funny languages, I tell you.

PS: If you know those 6 songs, please send me a message. But beware the twists. If you don’t, ask me. I will check with that Lucknowi friend and get back.

© Shiva Kumar – A bit of Urdu too on Hindi Diwas, 14^th September 2017

Tuesday Horror Film

Tuesday Horror Film

The proposal was placed before the Residence’s Empowered Committee for Cinematic Expeditions (RECCE) the day before and approved by a 3-1 majority. A horror film was chosen for breaking the 16-year drought. I would have preferred a courtroom drama or a thriller, but a horror flick is good enough, I suppose. We opted for the night show, the better to relish the horror. The intimation was given to me at 8:45, I said yes and we were out of the house by 9:15. My wife preferred to stay at home so she could continue her practice with the kitchen knife.

The mall is a stone’s throw away from my house and we were at the counter picking up our tickets with about thirteen minutes and forty three seconds to spare. I took a look around. Quite a decent sized lobby with a few single sofas placed one behind the other. There was a counter selling some liquid refreshments of the aerated kind, a machine made coffee, and snacks consisting mainly of popcorn in different flavours. But no peanuts. And no “murukkus”, the curled and twisted crunchies. A bit of a disappointment. I like to munch on a murukku during shows but am careful not to crack down on it during courtroom dramas when listening to the dialogues is all that matters. But you can’t crunch on corns that pop. I naturally refused the offer of popcorn.

Anyway, we went inside and found our seats without much difficulty. I sat in the middle, flanked by my two daughters. Slowly, the theatre started to fill up. It stopped when it was about a quarter full. There was a brief lull and then the lights dimmed and the screen came alive with a crackle and a burst.

The first trailer to come on was something by someone who had a long name. The letters rushed at me and stopped just in front of my eyes! I had to rotate my head from left to right to read the name covering the entire width of the screen. GUL and MAR flanking the two ends, with SHANKU in the middle. Reading from left to right, GULSHAN KUMAR. Before I could read the rest of it, it changed. Then they showed someone in such close up that I could almost count the hair on his eyebrows. And the sound was something else. Every syllable cracklingly clear! It plays tricks with you so, swirling around like that!

Sixteen years!

There were some three trailers and one of them was repeated. And then there flashed a message on screen to stand up for the National Anthem. I nodded to myself in agreement. And my daughter, the one on my right, told me that I must stand up NOW. Okay. I stood up. We all stood up. I sang the National Anthem to myself and it sounded good. In the days when I went to movie theatres regularly, the National Anthem was always played at the end of the show.

The movie starts quite quietly, showing a chap in his workshop picking up an eye, a fake one, not a real one of course, and fixing it to the face of a doll and then going out and walking across to his house to scare his daughter and tickle her. Then his wife, the daughter’s mother, joins him and they both tickle her, the daughter. Then the scene changes to morning and they are off to church. After church, they are met by a friend who wonders when his supply of dolls would be delivered. Sort of setting the stage for scariness to appear.

The first scary scene is in the beginning. Later on there are some more. Quite a few, in fact. This house has lots of doors, which creak when you try to open them. There are windows which are all curtained. There are lots of dark corners where you can see “things” if you keep your eyes open. As the film progresses, I try to anticipate the scary scenes. When a corner is being turned, I try looking around it for the lurking scream. At one stage, my daughter, the one on my left, follows the scream with her own authentic version, which is echoed by a group of young men down the line. This is followed by a collective sigh of relief and canned laughter. At the end of another protracted scary scene, the much anticipated scream doesn’t come. Instead, INTERMISSION is flashed on the screen.

My daughter, the one on the left, steps out to the lobby and returns with a huge tub of popcorn popped with cheese. No masala peanuts or murukkus. These theatres must allow murukkus, especially when they screen horror films. Imagine a prolonged moment of tense silence followed by the crack of a murukku being crunched! Good fun, it would be! I had to settle for popcorn.

The movie continues from where it left off, with scary scenes tumbling out one after another. I start munching the popcorn, much as I detest it. There’s no crunch and no one is distracted. From my right, I hear a voice muttering about children going off where they shouldn’t and not being careful and why the idiot adults accompanying them don’t stop them and so on and so forth. The children on the screen, of course, are hardly listening. They don’t even hear the shouts from the audience to them to look behind and see that thing that is it creeping up behind them and take immediate evasive action. As the closing credits roll, the crowd filters out. We stand up and watch the screen, looking for interesting titles and names. We are the last to leave.

Dolls are a good theme around which to build horror stories. The scope is quite large.

We descend gingerly to the basement parking lot and I am thinking that sixteen years is quite a record! Quite an outing this was!

We got into the car, locked the doors and closed all windows. I started the engine, paid the parking charges to the doll seated behind the counter at the gate and sped homewards without looking back.

As I turned into the main road leading to the street where I live, I suddenly saw an old man clad in tattered clothes standing right in the middle of the road, with what looked like a largish doll on his shoulder, legs twined around his neck and hands clutching his head. The doll’s lips were pursed, as if it was whistling a jolly tune. I stood on the brake, but could not stop the car. The old man just stood there looking at me through sightless eyes without budging. The doll too was watching unblinkingly. It was hopeless. As the car was about to hit him I braced for the impact, but none came. The car just went through him! I looked in the rear view mirror but there was nothing there! I flew on without stopping to find out.

As we reached home, we saw another eerie sight. The gate was opening by itself! Not wanting to stop, I entered the driveway in a smooth movement and parked my car. The gate closed behind us and I could see what appeared to be the face of a doll peeping out at us from around the closing gate. It, the face, not the gate, disappeared before I could go and thank it properly for the kind courtesy. The main door opened with a creak and we quickly got inside the house. I locked the door securely.

Apart from these rather unexpected, unusual and unnerving incidents, nothing untoward happened.

My wife was just putting away the kitchen knife as we entered. Feeling a bit peckish after all the action, I asked her if there was anything left at home to eat. And guess what she replied?

“Rice and doll”.

©Shiva Kumar 23 August 2017

Shuttle between cricket and hockey

Shuttle between Cricket and Hockey

Last night, around 10 o’ clock, I was witness to some unusual behaviour by the resident strays of my lane. I heard them howling and yowling and barking and creating a ruckus and went out to the gate to investigate. There was activity at both ends of the lane. Down the lane I saw three mongrels running around crazily trying to bite their own tails. On the other side, up the lane, I spied two retired mastiffs stiffly trying to chase a Bobcat up the hongeˊ tree. Bob of course was hardly perturbed and just sauntered away with a raised left eyebrow and a low growl. I was scratching my head and wondering what happened to cause this contrasting behaviour, with Amavasya still a couple of days away.

It transpired that neither the circling mongrels nor the chasing mastiffs were fed by any of the residents as they usually are, chiefly because of some activity happening in distant England.

I looked left and right. My immediate neighbour to my left was a nonentity and he did not come out. My immediate neighbour to my right was non-existent in the sense that it was a vacant site. It was left to my neighbour’s neighbour, the one whose house was on the other side of the vacant site, whose voice is like a bellow, the retired cop, to come out and enlighten me. He told me a short tale of two games between two neighbours.

The retired neighbour, sorry, retired cop, related with much gesticulation that, on the one hand, India had been humbled by Pakistan in London and, on the other, India had trounced Pakistan in London. Which didn’t make any sense to me, like anything he utters. Utter nonsense. These cops tend to mix up things just to confuse you and extract some confession out of you. I almost owned up to a car theft attempt before I realised that it was my own car and I had got the window open with a steel foot rule only because I had parked the key inside the car and locked it instead of parking the car inside the garage and locking it. Luckily I bit my tongue in time and stopped myself from incriminating myself.

Coming back to the story at hand, it transpired that India played Pakistan. If this was not bad enough, they played them twice in two different games at the same time. In one game they beat them and in the other they were beaten by them. Thumped them in hockey and got thumped in cricket. The mongrels and the mastiffs were not fed by any of the residents who were otherwise preoccupied screaming, ranting and raving in front of their television sets, making them go crazy and behave as they did.

India thumping Pakistan or Pakistan humbling India is big news. When both these things happen simultaneously, it is big, big news. Anything else happening in between is for the moment ignored. With the newshounds busy shuttling between cricket and hockey, a shuttler who also made news was almost forgotten. Almost. The line umpires called him in. He found mention, albeit in fewer words, alongside the cricket and hockey news. Kidambi Srikanth. He won the Indonesia Open Super Series Premier Badminton Singles trophy beating Japanese qualifier Kazumasa Sakai in Jakarta, Indonesia. Super. Kudos!

Hongeˊ or Indian Beech Tree is an outbreeding  legume tree, with a diploid chromosome number of 22, growing wild on sandy and rocky soils, including oolitic limestone, whatever that may be.

Amavasya – New Moon.

© Shiva Kumar – 19 June 2017

Left or Right?

Homeward Bound

Just last Sunday, the last Sunday of April, 2017, I had gone to attend the marriage function of my daughters’ very dear friend. My daughters had reached the day before and I was motoring down alone, my wife having stayed back to be with my mother.

To reach the venue, I had to travel South from home for about 35 km and then turn West off the highway and roll on for another 3-4 km on a narrow winding road past a ‘bhileez’. Halfway down the highway, my car’s AC decided the heat was too much wanted to take the other way. So it went out. I had to vent out the heat through the windows. Fortunately, it being its own day, the sun had likely woken up late and was only beginning to warm up so it was manageable.

My short journey was without incident and I reached just in time for the ‘muhurtham’. The hall was imaginatively designed. There was a central square where the marriage ceremony was conducted. This was surrounded by a tiny moat. On the outer periphery, there was a gallery setting where all the guests sat. Very nicely decorated with flowers and all. I sat in a corner near a huge pedestal fan which was blowing air laden with rose-scented water into my face. I felt like a rose garden. So much so that someone came up to me and asked me “Aap Gulabi ke fother hain?” I rose from there and took another seat. Wah!

Lunch was a quiet affair without much ‘halla-gulla’. There was a tasty pilaf followed by a superb rasam to go with the plain rice. And there was a sweet dish called "pheni" but no rossogulla. Having filled myself right up to the Plimsoll line, I lolled around for some time but forbore to take a nap. The heat, the good lunch courteously served and the absence of a nap all contrived to get me into a half-stupor as I took my leave.

When you get into any kind of a stupor, don’t drive ‘tod upor’. I checked the car AC. It was snoring gently so I decided not to risk any confrontation by waking it up. I rolled the windows down to “hawa aane de” mode. As I drove out of the gate, the heat was beating down and the road appeared to be ululating in front of me. No, not ululating. Pulsating. Doing a jig. I was seeing mirages. The result was that I took a different route out of the village from the one I had used to get in, and got confused not a bit. It would be wrong to say I was lost but maybe I was just a little disoriented. The compass in my head had stopped working. My mobile signal and GPS too appeared to have stepped out for a breather.

I neared what looked like the main road and stopped beside a couple of misguided pimples sitting by the roadside, apparently passing the time of the day, to clarify my doubt whether to turn right or left for Bangalore. Of course, I didn’t know they were misguided or pimples but they had “no good” written all over them. But there were no other excrescences around and these were the only blots I could ask, so I asked them. And I was told to turn right. Something about the tone of the voice put me on alert. It sounded like it was waiting to laugh. The boil who told me to turn right might have slapped the back of his jobless sidekick in glee, but I didn’t see it as I was occupied looking at the road ahead. I did hear a kind of slapping sound, though.

This advice to go right didn’t sound right and I decided to seek a second opinion. I first shook my head three times vigorously, mentally poked my brain awake with the nib of my fountain pen filled with a compassionate violet ink and washed it (the brain, not the nib or the ink or the pen) with cold water. Then, I drove a little further and, slowing down near an old man, put my head out and shouted the question to him, “Bengaluru lefta, righta?” He leaned towards me as far as his neck would allow and told me in an equally loud voice, “Bengaluru leftu!” For good measure, he gesticulated towards the left with his left hand. Two other chaps standing near him nodded to their left in affirmation. I nodded back courteously in appreciation of the sincerity in the voice and the vigorous gesticulations, put my head back in and turned left as advised.

Just then the GPS sauntered back to my mobile holding the signal's hand and told me that left was right and right was wrong. I wanted to go back and shake the old man by his hand and the misguided young rascal by his neck, but calmer sense prevailed and I continued homeward without further let or hindrance. Quite an eventful Sunday it turned out to be.

GLOSSARY:
Bhileez > village

Muhurtham > the auspicious time to perform any important function, like a marriage

Aap Gulabi ke fother hain? > Are you Gulabi’s father?

Halla-gulla > a colloquial term for commotion

Rasam > a kind of a South Indian soup with tamarind juice, tomato, lentils and salt,  seasoned with spices like chilly, pepper, cumin, mustard, etc, and garnished with curry and coriander leaves.

Pheni > a kind of stringy thin rice noodles over which sweetened milk, flavoured with saffron, almonds and cardamom, etc. is poured before it is eaten

Tod upor > a Bengali term meaning “on top of it” or “afterward”

Rossogulla > a highly popular sweet believed to have originated in Bengal and Odisha (there are claims from both regions), made from Indian cottage cheese shaped into round dumplings and soaked in sugar syrup

Hawa aane de > a Hindi term meaning “let the air pass”

© Shiva Kumar, 4^th May 2017

THAT RAIN

THAT RAIN

This thing about going to watch a movie, huh, with me, happens like this:

Earlier in school, I overhear one of my classmates praising Rahul Dev Burman and his music. I don’t know much about RDB or his music. I want to find out for myself.

The show is at 3:30 p.m. Matinee. Rather popular movie, The Train, and still in its first week run so better be at the theatre by 3. Just a stone’s throw away from home. Bricks walk.

3:01 – Entrance to Theatre Lavanya is crowded. Push through the crowd to the Dress Circle ticket counter. Some twenty three guys lining up. All of them seem to be from one group or one family. Though why entire families should come and watch “The Train”, I don’t know. Stupid families. It is something everyone knows about. Second largest railway network in the whole world, one engine pulling many coaches, to stop train pull chain and all that sort of thing. If you ask me, one senior member should watch the fleem and then relate the happenings to his family, friends, neighbours and well wishers over a leisurely dinner. Instead of wasting money bringing Abba, Ammi, Chuchha, Chucchi, Bhaijaan, Behaniya, Chotu, Motu and their neighbours Doosra, Saamy, Murgais, Super, Topi, Motte and Selva too along. The only one left behind must be their mongrel, Leader. Auto ka kharchaan, ticktaan lenaa, phir pop corn aur chipsaan aur mango juicaan ka kharchaan, upar se fleem mein dialogaan kya bhi sunneko, samajhneko sar phiraana, museebataan jhael leko, gaaliyaan de deko thak jaanaa, yeh kya ba pareshaani!

Still and all, having come so far, better not go back without a dekko. Itr lagaa ke line mein lag jaao.

3:10 – Stand in the line for Dress Circle tickets. Everyone is dressed and circling around like birds of prey.  No itr. Only fikr. Suddenly spot “Ondreˊ” Mani (Ondreˊ in Tamil = One and a half). His father is a fleem distributor so he should be able to do something and get me one ticket. Greet him like old friend which, in any case, he is. He understands what I want even before I aks. Just says “Weight hear.” I understand and wait there.

3:20 – Still no sign of OM. Yeh kya ho raha hai? From inside the hall I can hear an excited hum. They have begun to show slides I think. Lights are dimmed in the lobby. Meanwhile, the crowd outside has thinned. Whole families have shifted to one of the other neighbourhood theatres. These theatrewallahs have an arrangement, I suspect, to start their fleems at fifteen minute intervals, to make the left over crowd from one theatre spill over to the next. Bahut smart.

3:25 – There he is! Old friends don’t ditch their old friends. Walks up to me and presses a pass into my hand and says “enzoy”. I thank him and run in. The slides have just stopped and there is a lull. The usher ushers me to my seat and I slide in. Aisle seat, thankfully. Tanks ba!

3:30 – Gun time. Suddenly, there is the sound of curtains being drawn and doors being closed. The lights go off and there is an expectant silence. Time.

3:33 – Fleem starts to roll. Action! And soon there’s a song.

            Lallallalla la, la la la la la la la and so on.

            Bulaagi eyes.

Intermission: Come out and look at the notice board. Scenes from the fleem. Too much of a crowd at the snack counter. Get back inside.

Trailer of some fleem, followed by ‘nuther trailer of ‘nuther fleem.

5:45 or so – the fleem is over and I come out into the cool air. Nothing much to say except that the songs are good.

There was Rajesh Khanna. There was a Rafi solo which was too good and a Rafi-Lata duet which I liked. There was also an RDB-Asha duet which was enjoyable. A couple of other songs. Hummable. I don’t remember much of the story. Fleem dreckted by Ravee Nagaich. Uthaach. Let me watch it again and I’ll post a review. Weight hear.

-          © Shiva Kumar 1^st May 2017

Hello! Olleh!

Hello! Olleh!

I was doing nothing in a lazy, slow sort of way, when I got the call. It fairly jolted me, the “jannngg” of the phone ring. After disentangling my legs from the armchair’s, I put ear to phone. Or was it phone to ear? I don’t remember now. It is not important.  

Right. So I was putting ear to phone or vice versa. I uttered the important word, the password for every one of my confidential tele-conversations.

“Hello?”

“Olleh!¹” The answer was crisp and to the point. The popular return password, given before any business was discussed.

“Is that you?”

“Yes, it is I.”

“I?”

“Me.”

“I or me? Don’t confuse and tangle me. Now I’ll have to ask you the untangle question. Tell me, how many letters does ‘Thippagondanahalli²’ have and how many are repeated?”

“Eh?”

“Okay. It is you. Now pack your case and get ready to travel. Secret mission. Don’t go and tell your neighbour or borrow his suitcase. Usual preparations. Don’t shave. Meet me at the car park of Metro, the station, not the bar, near your house at 6:35 sharp tomorrow evening, pronto, without fail. In case you are going to get delayed by traffic, call and inform beforehand. Right?”

“Right!”

Khat³. The call was cut. Our department was careful to keep calls short and to the point.

I rose to my full height. And remembered that I hadn’t been told how many guns to pack. Shoot! I’d have to call back now and find out. Shoot, shoot! And while I was at it, I must also find out who called me. Shoot, shoot, shoot! How could I have been so careless? I called back the number which had called me. On the second ring it was picked up and he seemed to know what I was going to ask, for he uttered just two words, the first of which was “Two”. The second was “Aleph”.

Khat. The call was cut.

I understood. One, I was to pack two guns. Two, it was Aleph beta (“son”), the third-in-command, who called me.

I quickly changed into my teens and jees, no, actually my jeans and tees, and took an autorick to Comm Street. At the first corner, there is a shop which I patronise. The shopkeeper, simply known as Bhai (“Brother”), sells good quality peanut chikkis⁴ at reasonable prices. He also clandestinely deals in other exotic stuff, a fact known only to a select few. Sometimes he lets me pay later, when he is confident I will return from my mission. Bhai saw me approach and laughed. Comedian. Everything looked funny to him.

He attacked me with questions. “Kya ba? What ba? Tume aati kathi lekin aati nai? You say you are coming but not coming? Kya kissa? What matter? Sab khairiyath? All well?”

I replied, somewhat diffidently “Arrey, pooch nakko, bhai-jaan. Arrey, don’t ask, brother-life.” So he stopped asking.

“Manje do gunnaan diyo. Gimme two guns. Abhich. Right now. Phataphat. Fatafat.”

“Kisi ko maar daaltin tume? Are you going to bump off someone?”

“Shshsh! Secret! Tume pooch nakko, hume nai bataatin so. You don’t ask, I won’t tell.”

“Ho-oh? Do lyaaza. Is that so-oh? Two minutes.”

He stepped out and shouted, “Arrey Chhotu, do cutting cha leko aa re. Arrey Chhotu, bring two cutting teas.” And promptly a small boy appeared carrying a steel frame holding several small glasses of what looked like tea and handed one over to me and one to Bhai. I took a sip. It tasted like gunmetal and brought back memories of that eventful day in Stanbull when that canteenwala had shoved the barrel of a gun into my mouth and demanded payment for the measly cup of cutting chai which he had served me. First time I tasted gunmetal. Those days, plastics had not become popular and guns were still made the traditional way, from metal salvaged by melting old Kadahis⁵ (frying pans). It was this self-same Bhai who paid up for me. We go back a long way. He has never let me pay for chai after that.

Sending Chhotu off and making sure no one was watching, Bhai reached out under the bench he was sitting on and pulled out a small steel trunk secured with a length of naada⁶. Safe. Apparently the naada knot needed a password to open. He quickly muttered “pappa pippi puppu pow” and yanked. Voila! The knot unravelled.

Taking another look around to see that no one was around, he quickly opened the trunk and pulled out some seven or eight menacing looking guns. He explained that they were made by his own chachajaan (uncle-life), from tough unbreakable PVC, the same material used for making overhead water tanks. I nodded. Yesss! Just what I wanted. I checked them all and selected a blue Mausa Tadap (Saat Par Paanch or .65) calibre and a yellow Mausi Dhadak (Tees Par Teen or .33) calibre. These Mausas and Mausis were good. They showed no mercy. As long as they were with you, you were in relative safety.

After a quick bargain and a promise to pay soon, very soon, I shoved the Mausa into the waistband of my jeans at the back and the Mausi into my left sock and ambled off. A couple of minutes later I realised I had forgotten something crucial. I went back and asked for bullets. Bhai gave me two of the latest “Gudbud” non-gradable hard plastic bullets – a large one for the Mausa and a small one for the Mausi, along with two small rolls of tough parachute-nylon string – one end to be tied to the ring at the end of the bullet and the other to a similar ring at the tip of the barrel so that immediately after the bullets hit their targets, they could be yanked back. It was an ingenious retrieval design called “Wapas”, invented and patented by a bulk trader in bhujiya sev⁷ who was experiencing difficulties in collecting payments from his dealers. I was also given a cleaning cloth free of charge. Bhai knew how to take care of his special customers. I thanked him and pushed off. I was armed to the teeth and ready. Don’t mess with me!

GLOSSARY

1.     Olleh = a commonly used return password, the Hello returned.

2.     Thippagondanahalli = The name of a village and of the reservoir situated there which used to supply water to the city of Bangalore. An 18-letter tongue twister word, in which 6 letters are repeated, one of them twice and two of them consecutively.

3.     Khat = the sound made when a telephone call is cut decisively. Dons especially like to end calls this way.

4.     Chikki = a sticky toffee made from peanuts and boiled jaggery. Minus the peanuts, the jaggery toffee was known in the Bangalore of the nineteen sixties as “Stickjaw”.

5.     Kadahi = a bowl-shaped frying pan traditionally made of iron, with handles or ears on either side.

6.     Naada = the string that is used to tie pyjamas around the waist. Also used to secure suitcases and boxes. A naada knot is nearly impossible to unravel.

7.     Bhujiya = a savoury snack which originated in the town of Bikaner in Rajasthan and which doubles as a life saver on Earth.

(Bhu = Earth; Jiya = Life; Sev = Save)

-       © Shiva Kumar 2017