BANANA

Written in 2019 but forgotten to publish here!

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Yes. Continuing my series on fruits and vegetables of India, here is a 1000-word sort of a treatise on the banana.

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BANANA 

Few weeks behind lost year I wrote about the grate fruit called Santra. After it, many friends have wish me on the stupendable article. As per one person it is article of fate. 

Now the general mango people are making a voicy ferocious demand of another article in the name of Banana. I am thinking little bit and then I am agreeing. I am writing Banana article.

What is Banana? It is fruit of masses. Indian landmass is full of people and mostly they eat Banana. It is called Kela Phal in Hindi, Vaazhai Pazham in Tamizh, Baale Hannu in Kannada, Arati Pandu in Telugu and Kadali Phala in Sanskrit and some other names in some other languages. It is a testy versatile fruit.

Indian Banana is growing on trees. Not like Indian people. Indian people are special. They are not growing on trees. But Indian Banana is also special. Near to my home, we are having many bananas which we are calling Pachché Baalé and Yelakki. In our nearbring state, we are having Pulli Pazham and Malé Vaazhai and Rastaali. In our another nearbring state, we are having Nendrum. And so many more scattered all over our landmass. But ultimately and finally they are all bananas. Cuzins, oonts and ankles of one another. 

Banana consist of three parts – Ba, Na and Na. I am joking, hahaha! Actually Banana consist of three parts are Chilka, Phal and Swaad. First two parts are tangible and third part is remarkable. 

Chilka is outer flap or jacket or protective envelope of the audible fruit. You know envelope. Lifafa, it is called. Chilka is the lifafa of the banana. Chilka is not audible for people but enjoyable for cows. If you give chilka to cow, it will chew it and convert it to cud and chew it again. And it is colourful. Not cow but chilka. In the beninging it is green colour but gradually, before you can say “banana” nine times a day for three alternate days, that is, totally twenty seven times in five days, it changes to designer double colour of yellow with black dots spread unevenly all over the surface. If you say “banana” another nine times, it will become totally black and good for throwing at other people only, so don’t count too much. 

Each chilka contains one audible banana fruit inside of itself.

Firstly, the banana is held by one hand, then the chilka is unpeeled by holding the edge of it by the edge of forefinger and thumb of the other hand of the holder and pulling it down, in a downward direction, from top to bottom, dragging the chilka along. Chilka will oblige by being separated in a strip. Similarly, the same procedure is carried out all round the circumference of the chilka. In this manner the chilka is peeled completely and gradually the audible fruit is exposed to the sight of outside humanity. This can be done step by step so that little bit of chilka is available to hold against the fruit as the holder begins to eat it. 

This is how to get phal or fruit outside from inside the chilka.

However, please note, the chilka, once unpeeled, cannot be peeled back or exchanged.

Then comes the swaad.

As already said in the beninging, the swaad is remarkable. Depending upon the type of the Baale Hannu and also whether the tester is myself or my Bengali mitr who makes many laughable joke with smile, the test or swaad can be deliciously testy or terribly testy. It is differently sweet, from simply too good to simply very nice to simply wonderful! And also Banana is having health properties of various healthy items like water, carbohydrates, vitamins, potassium and what not. Even banana is radioactive as per one active radio station! And swiftly digestible.

Banana is having good quality of hunger appeasing. If hunger is coming, instead of saying “khaana banana” you should say “banana khaana” and hunger will go. No doubt you know the song “Hasta manana till we meet again; Have a banana till we eat again”, no? It is the song of a group from Addis Ababa.

Man (means man and woman) is commonly offer banana during worship pooja and cleverly take it back as pooja prasada. Sometimes, man is offer banana to cow and also to the small cough grazing side by side of its mother, due to gratitude and humble attitude. On roadside also banana is available in cots, I mean not bullock cots but the bullock-less push cots, and the cot keeper is keeping one bamboo basket underneath the cot, so the banana buyer can eat banana and extinguish, sorry, distinguish, sorry, dispose the chilka by throwing in the bin which is the basket. Whereupon the cot man take the basket and offer the chilka to the cow and beget many thanks from the cow for himself only. Sometimes the happy cow is giving gentle hit with tail and sometimes it is also giving moose. But small cough is simply grazing by the side.

In South India, marriages are celebrated with grandness and pompity. At the entrance itself, there is a welcomer group. Every enterer is given warm welcome greeting of splashing cold rose water juice by shaking the sprinkler jug violently on his head. After words, the grand lunch is eaten by every attender on banana leaf only. Finally, along with the exit greeting every leaver is given the banana in bag along with the beetle leafs and the nuts and the coconut. So, if person is visible carrying banana in bag along with beetle and nut and coco, it means he has just came from marriage. But I am writing separate story about beetle and beetlenut and coconut so we concentrate the focus on banana only.

 

This is the importance of banana in our republic.

- © Shiva Kumar, 27 Jan 2019

THE MEET TO MEET THE MUMBAIKAR

THE MEET TO MEET THE MUMBAIKAR 

3RD September 2017

Meet to meet Nitin Vaswani

 

 

JKM, VMR, VM, NV, Svl, SK, SP, AV

 

I suggested 1234 as the time for Sriram to pick me up. It has a nice ring to it and for some reason I find it easy to remember. But he wanted to put his own spin into it so he pushed it to 1245. I had to agree, albeit reluctantly, because the gaadi was his and the iraada was his. He provided the tempo and I was a mere traveller.

 

So there I was, running up the steps and across the pedestrian overbridge to the bus stop shelter near the Big Ganesha some six minutes before the appointed time. I paused briefly in the middle of the bridge to wait for my breath which had fallen four-and-a-half steps behind me to catch up with me. Below me, traffic continued to flow, regardless. As my breath drew level, I caught it by the scruff of its neck and together we vaulted down the steps on the other side to await The Coming of Srirama.

 

There was a buzzing in my head because of a song circling around in the upper reaches but not settling down. I had thrown a question at the esteemed members of my group and there were some seven of them working on it, not including our Sat Sanghi who at that very moment was probably ensconced in a cab hurrying across town to join us. Bhaijaan was in Bengaluru for a spot of bhajan singing before joining us for bhojan at JPH.

 

Too many red cars were flitting by on the road but none of them belonged to Sriram. I busied myself looking at the posters and hoardings put up for our general entertainment, but they didn’t hold my attention. They don’t make them like that anymore. I switched attention to my mobile and checked out the posts regarding the song. Hariharan Balakrishnan had pointed out that my initial hum was not right. I took a deep breath and hummed it out again. Hmmm. I was musing on how to improve my humming when there was a ping announcing a comment from good old Anu Venkatesh. She got the song! And it was the right one! No one could have got it righter. She should have been a song righter. Instead, she went and became a painter.

 

And while I was ruminating on paintings and songs, I spied a red car trying to steal up to me. Could this be the one? I peered at the number plate. Yes. It was Sriram. Not on the number plate but inside The Car, looking as if he had been driving all the way from Dakar! I got in and thanked him for not forgetting to pick me up. He mentioned not and we drove off.

 

There was no watchman or waterman at the gate of JPH. It had been raining all week. Too much of water. The poor chap must have gone and wet himself. We drove up the drive. Everything was quiet. I wondered why and realised that the windows were wound up tight.

 

The sun was shining weakly through the trees. The usually energetic bees seemed to have gone down a notch and become unnees, for they were moving around sluggishly with a subdued buzz. Watery nectar, I suppose. We left them to their devices and walked boldly across the car park towards the North West corner.

 

There was a surprise waiting for us at the North West corner. Some unknown bodies with unfamiliar faces had commandeered the seats. I turned my face 12 degrees to my right (not the Centigrade degree but the compass-wala thing) and there they were! Pulin and Sudhir! And Jintoo too (like Bishop Desmond). Good old chaps. And of course the group was there, waiting and wondering where we were. And there we were, right on cue. Svl-sorr was looking dapper in an English checked shirt, a natty suspender holding up his trousers. VMR was brilliantly attired in Turquoise, her favourite colour of the season. And there, sitting with a smile radiating from his face, was our guest, the Sat Sanghi, the Mumbaikar who braved the rains in his nice waterhouse of a city to venture out and grace us with his September presence. The Satrangi was attired in black and white. He was looking upbeat and chuffed. His hair was puffed up in the old Navketan style. Giani Vaswani himself. Swayam Boo!

 

I think (the sequence has become a bit hazy now) that the next person to manifest himself was our own Capman. Swayam Boom! It was a keel-less entry. No one keeled over, but the sun was momentarily eclipsed when he trudged in. He stopped at our usual N-W table, and, finding it encroached upon by aliens all foaming at the mouth on account of too much warm beer, glared at them one by one till they subsided into a frothy silence and then walked over to glare at us. But we know him too well so we maintained our noise level. With his cap and his bag slung across, he looked like he had come to deliver some important post. Just crossing, he told me.

 

VGP was soon followed by the irrepressible JKM. She swished in, blowing away everything in her path. The aliens all stood up as one alien but she walked past them without even a first glance. We all too stood up and greeted her but, unlike the aliens, were rewarded by a bright smile which would have nonplussed the sun.

 

As we were settling down into our seats, VM marched in, looking smart, with a military bearing, like an officer of the Special Forces just out on furlough walking into the regimental mess for his breakfast before taking off for his holiday destination.

 

And, by general consensus, the meet was ON!

 

We began with a short discussion on the origin of our species, or, as certain people are wont to say, “kahan se belong karte hain”. I checked my belongings to note what was where and sat back. JKM spoke of Punjabis marrying Bengalis and introducing their offsprings to TamBrahms and so on and so forth and wondered where would they all go if asked to leave? The Punjab? Bengal? Tamil Nadu? State Bank of Brahmaputra? Where indeed! It was all mixed up. I was nodding in agreement while sipping my beer and glanced at Sriram, who was still unsure whether he spoke Telugu with a Tamil accent or whether his second car should be a Hyundai Accent. He was holding his head in his hands. When I say holding his head in his hands, I don’t mean holding it separately, of course. Don’t be silly. Dashed stupid he would have looked, holding his own head in his own arms. And the watermelon juice that he had called for would have dribbled straight down and been completely wasted. What I meant was that he was holding his head while it was still attached to his shoulder by his neck. You know what I mean.

 

But to get back to JKM’s point, we all agreed that she did have a point. She was, after all, a fauji. Moreover, I remember distinctly as if it had happened just yesterday, she came to our first ever meet with a cauliflower in her hand. Such people can’t go wrong.

 

VMR, who had been having holiday after holiday after holiday, has once again gone back to being busy. When I asked her to elaborate on her job, she told me that she was right then trying to calculate the percentage increase in nett profit year on year over the last five years, of one of her favourite clients, which she had forgotten to do earlier as she had to step out to pick up a box of dry fruit stick-jaw and could I please not distract her from her calculations? I politely backed off and left her to her number crunching.

 

I was also trying to break in and tell some stories of my own but firstly the exceptionally toothsome dry fruit square tricks that VMR had drummed up kept me busy. I washed it down with some good old stuff that came out of small green bottles standing on the wall and when one got empty another came in its place and that kept me busy for some time. Then the story telling took a left turn and went round in a clockwise direction which meant mine would the last story to be told. And by the time my turn came, there was VMR distributing the rotis, strictly in alphabetical order, two per head, with two spoons of doll and two of the veggies. So I never got to tell. Never mind.

 

Svl suddenly announced that he had something to give VGP on behalf of the entire group. Everybody quieted down in anticipation while he dug into his pocket. He came out with a bundle of currency notes which he handed over to VGP and insisted on being photographed doing so. He also made VGP say “Received with thanks from Sri. Svl the sum of (here VGP’s voice became low and inaudible) Pound, Sound, Dollar, Collar, Euro, Iro, Drachma, Drachpa, Dinar, Lunch, Kuna, Tuna, Taka, Naka, Yen, Zen, Won, Lost, Koruna, Varuna, Yuan Renminbi, as the case may be, on this the third day of September Two Thousand No Hundred and Seventeen”, recorded it and mailed a copy to himself. When we all looked at Svl enquiringly, he mentioned that it was VGP’s hafta and because he had international links he hafta be paid in different currencies. Whew, narrow escape for me! I had come prepared with one or two choice things that I wanted to tell him. No one would suspect him of having international links, with his happy smiling face. Hafta hua noorani chehra!

 

VGP told us that he has taken to crossing posts in a big way nowadays. He sends postcards to all and sundry in all parts of the world and waits for their own postcard responses to be sent back to all and sundry in which he is also included. International currencies, international postcards, this man is going global.

 

After this exchange, Svl went rather quiet. Was it because he was on Lent? We asked him why and he simply said “give me a chance to speak”! So we all abandoned our stories and fell silent. Svl, who had been at the helm of the nascent IT industry and knew it like the back of his hand, spoke about the virus that is affecting it and how it (the industry, not the virus) is actually going back to the dark ages while trying to bring in people from the dark ages to take it forward into the bright new age. We had to agree. He branched off into shares and share prices and we hung on to every word like Shrikhand, the hung curd. What I did understand was that the lunch expenses would be shared at the table.

 

While talking of shares, share prices and Shrikhand, we couldn’t ignore the tiger of the akhand share market. NV, a.k.a. the Sat Sanghi, a.a.k.a. the Satrangi. The Tiger takes turns to be the Big Bull and the Big Bear on a fortnightly basis. This week he was the Big Bear on Small Holiday. VMR responded that she herself was modelled on the lines of the constellation SaptaRishi, a.k.a. the Great Bear.

 

It was VM’s turn to tell us a story and he told us an interesting story of how he runs the TCS. It is a tough job but he is handling it without breaking into much of a sweat. TCS runs like a well oiled cycle. Which brought back fond memories of my schooldays when I used to run TCS on hire. Every day, I would pick up a bicycle on hire during the lunch hour to whizz home and come back in time for a bit of boxing in the classroom. Every cycle had “TCS” painted on its back mudguard – for “Thyagarajan Cycle Service”.

 

While we were busy talking, Anu Venkatesh seemed to have materialised from nowhere, and no one had a clue. One moment the seat next to mine was empty, vacant, unfilled and unoccupied, then I turned away for a moment and when I turned back, it was full of Anu Venkatesh. Did she waft in with the wind or manifest herself through some osmotic process? Whatever. Not an apparition. She was actually there because she shook my hand and rattled me.

 

Anu settled herself in and told me that her painting is coming on quite well and she is planning to insure her painting hand as soon as she decides which one it is. She spends all her time with paint and brush and canvas. Her modus paintus operandum uniqum is quite simple actually. She dips her brush into the pot of paint and holds it over the canvas. Art drips from it. Q.E.D. She was once challenged by a retired architect to come up with a work of art in five minutes. She saw a bottle of ketchup lying around, simply dipped her brush into it and let it drip. Voila! It was a work of Arti-Ketchup! The retired architect was flummoxed and decided to retire again.  I am trying to scam a painting from her before she becomes unbelievably famous but that is yet to happen.

 

We were missing a few people, chiefly SM2 and SN, who had promised to make it. SM2 in fact was flying in from somewhere, but at the last minute the pilot refused to land on the JPH lawns on account of the risk of getting sideswiped by the tamarind tree. She was forced to get off at the International Airport along with the rest of the hoi polloi. She went off for lunch with the co-pilot. SN was at home to take care of her little one and her mother who had both reported unwell and had to be nursed. We commiserated with her.

 

AV had broken off from her well begun but half done painting to run and get halwa and laddu for us, packed neatly in little round boxes. Good stuff. NV had got his better half to make coconut barfis and he had got them packed in neat boxes gift-wrapped to be handed over to us. Added to the dry fruit barfis from VMR, it turned out to be quite a sweet day!

 

We made the ritual call to the virtual friend who sits in Kolkata and pretends to be a worm. He seemed to be in fine fettle and promised for the twenty-third time that he would soon grace our fair city. This was followed by another call to our Justice Mohtarma, who, it appeared, was hurrying home after her own group meet. She couldn’t speak to all of us on account of inability to converse while flying on a full stomach. But she promised to double the quota of sweets in recompense when she lands up here later this month. This Kolkatan, who can shake the Sequicentenary Building to its foundations, is crazy and a champion storyteller, if ever there was one.

 

And so it went on, the easy banter between friends with a common interest or two. The post prandial coffee was imbibed. Photos were clicked. Until it was time to leave. Svl left first, followed closely by JKM. Then, one by one, we reluctantly picked ourselves up and headed home.

 

NB: The happenings narrated above may or may not have happened in the order in which they are described. Some of them may not have happened at all. It is recommended to take a pinch of salt while reading this.

E&OE

 

 

© Shiva Kumar – 10 Sep 2017

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The Brolly

 The Brolly

Umbrella or "brolly”, aka “chhatri” or “chhaata” in Hindi, “kudai” or “kodai” in my mother tongue, Tamil and “kodé” in my native language, Kannada.

It is a man-made contraption originally contrapted to protect the user from sun and rain by holding it over the head, of course after unfurling it. When not on overhead protection duty, it is usually carried with its waterproof canopy furled and rolled tightly over the shaft. The shaft is of walking stick length with a curved or a carved handle at one end and a sharp point or spike at the opposite end. It serves to support the walker like a walking stick when the walker walks, often helping to give him a distinguished air. It can also be used like a lance to give poke with the spike to any attacker intent on attacking. Head-on collisions can be avoided by using the poke technique judiciously. Leaf pickers find the spike very useful to pick leaves with, one at a time, without bending.

The umbrella is a very carefully constructed device. It has many other parts apart from shaft and canopy. The canopy resembles an inverted bowl when unfurled. It is made up of five or six triangular panels of waterproof fabric held together by mild steel ribs radiating from a runner or a ring which moves up and down the shaft. The ring supports long rods called stretchers, also made of mild steel, which connect to the ribs of the canopy. The canopy opens up when the runner is moved up the shaft and closes down when the runner is moved down towards the handle. Usually a button is provided near the handle which, when depressed, releases a spring and enables the canopy to spring open. Quite a surprise it can turn out to be, when it opens up in front of the face unexpectedly and without prior notice as it were, and very useful when encountering wild animals like tigers and certain kinds of people face to face.

In some newer models that we see people using these days, the shaft of the umbrella is in two halves, with one half telescoping into the other. The canopy also folds on to itself, so that the brolly can be folded down to half its length to go into a handbag conveniently. But then, it cannot be used as a walking stick except by persons of up to three feet height or those who don’t mind walking bent at the knees. Walking on the knees can be a painful exercise and should not be tried except under expert supervision.

Traditionally, brollies came with their canopies made out of a uniform, near-black charcoal-grey coloured waterproof fabric but nowadays, tradition has been thrown to the winds and these things, now made out of modern lightweight fabrics, come in many colours and all sorts of designs on them, from multi-coloured checks to polka dots to what nots.

Clearing cobwebs from out-of-reach corners, putting off remote light and fan switches while lying in bed, tripping up unsuspecting persons with the curved handle, drawing simple sketches or solving mathematical problems on soft muddy ground are some of the other uses that the brolly, of the traditional design, that is, not the folding type, can be put to.

Such is the brolly!

It is a useful man-made contraption that was originally contrapted to protect the user from sun and rain ...

 

-       © Shiva Kumar, 14/15 October, 2018