Of Summer, Home and Holi

Blame it on the last day of February. Or on my significant other, who mentioned the Flame of the Forest as he spoke to me from a train from Ranchi to Jamshedpur this morning. On the way the sunlight dapples the freshly-laundered linen that I hung to dry an hour ago. On the impossible combination of exhilaration and mild panic that still tends to swirl around the back of my head at this time of the year - the kind that can originate only in partly-covered syllabuses. Or on the quiet but sure signs - bright green little shoots sticking out of crevices, a bluer-than-blue sky, Holi - that legendary harbinger of all things spring and summer...or the feeling of newness that everything is imbued with.

I'm a child of the elements, I like to think. The seasons are my best friends. Delhi winters. Mumbai monsoons. Calcuttan autumns - those sublime days of the Sharadotsav. But summer and spring? Summer and spring, in my head, belong to my hometown and all the places around it. I'm probably not alone in this - these are seasons we end up linking with home, most of us.

There's something about the way the world starts to look and feel around Holi. Everything a little warmer, the sun a little brighter. I'm a 90s kid - I'm from the generation that spent entire summer vacations with a dozen cousins and massive amounts of imagination for company. I grew up sticky-fingered from eating ice candies, and making jug after colossal jug of Rasna. I pretended to be asleep when assorted aunts scolded us into bed every May afternoon, and sneaked ice-cold water out of the refrigerator when we were forbidden to drink any, immediately after we came in from a sweaty game of catch or badminton. I took the exam time-table down dutifully, as soon as it was put up. I made schedules and plans and looked at past years' question papers. Like most kids from the East, I discovered that I studied best in the morning - playing with your friends in the evening tires you, and a 5:45 a.m. sunrise means your room will steadily get brighter and warmer even as you determinedly hit the Snooze button. I was your classic nerd - I dreaded and enjoyed taking my ICSE and ISC exams - and funnily enough, the first picture that springs to mind when I remember Mom or Dad driving me to school for each paper is the clean, crisp, summery look that the colony roads wore. Those roads were lined with trees - gulmohar, amaltas, some purple-flowered variety I never learned the name of - and those trees bloomed in all their glory every March and April. It looked so beautiful - all of it - that I'd momentarily forget all about my paper, inhale deeply and break into a big grin.

I'm part of the old-fashioned lot that hung damp bedsheets at their doors and windows in Rez, hoping that would temper some of the blistering heat that the Delhi wind blew in tirelessly from July to September. I'm from the generation that would willingly cart an armload of readings and a bottle of water all the way into Main Corr, just to find a shady little nook to curl up and study in. Our classrooms were not air-conditioned (yes, yes, I'll give you New Age kids some time to recover from the shock), so we strategically chose places under the long-stemmed ceiling fans. And to this day, my answer to summer heat is a lot of nimbu pani, old faded cotton tees, and three showers a day. So all you kids who have more technologically-advanced solutions - more power to you, I say.

And now, excuse me while I go make some Rasna.

Coming back to spring and Holi - well, if you're clued-in enough, you'll know when they're around the corner. Don't ask me how - you just will. It's in the air, literally. I like Holi. I like the absolute abandon with with it is played, I like all the planning and plotting and strategizing involved - I love all the colour and I'd kill for Holi food. (I'm serious - I would.) I haven't played Holi in a while now - not enough company - but each Holi from my childhood and all my Holis from College are special. Those memories are among the things that make these places what they are to me - and that is why, all these years later, too, I find myself yearning for family, friends and food around this time.

Which is why this beautiful time of year is a particularly hard one to be away from home at. You have to see the place to believe it - it's almost as if the land spruces itself up for the festival, and the ensuing summer. The trees are abloom, the sky is clear, the air smells crisp and slightly smoky from the stacks of leaves that are piled up and burned away at regular intervals; the sun is hot but not completely unforgiving (not yet, at least), the hedges and walkways are lush - and the stars are visible at night. Mango trees are covered with flowers, wood apples are beginning to ripen and spring gets ready to make way for the Indian summer in all its raging glory. Local vendors start putting up imaginatively-worded ads for gulaal and such - and if you can get past the questionable grammar, they are actually pretty interesting. Summer frocks and Bubblegummers on little girls, all the boys finally freed of their jumpers, local newspapers beginning to talk about the impending exam season...all signs of a fresh year just beginning to settle in.

It's funny how it's the little things that mean the most - the small details that remind you how far you are from home, and still keep you close to it. It's funny how, when you spot a pack of Rasna in your neighborhood store, you drop everything else to pick it up. It's funny how, even as an adult, you look half-guiltily around to make sure no one is looking when you glug chilled water first thing after a couple of hours in the sun. Maybe we don't ever really, fully grow up. And thank God for that.

Image courtesy Google

The Calcutta Diaries - II: Living Alone, and Loving It

Leaving home for college at eighteen was...well, let's call it a mixed experience. I'd led a happy, sheltered life up to then, and while I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect of exploring life and learning to survive, I was still a little scared, deep down.

Eight years later, I'm confident I can start calling any place home within three hours of arriving there. By the time I've had my first breakfast, I'm fairly settled in - and once I discover the closest place toothpaste is available, and locate the nearest post office, I am officially set. 

But this place I live in here at Cal is, by far, the place I love the most, and will miss the most terribly when I move out. Actually, scratch that. I know Rez is irreplaceable in my memories and my personality. Gurgaon was indispensable, and 32 U.B. brought in something no other place can. But this apartment, here in Ballygunge, is the first place that is entirely my own. It is all mine to do up, the walls and spaces are mine to clutter and declutter as I see fit...and once I shut the door after stepping in from work, it's my safe little cocoon that no one can enter without my express permission; a happy little bubble to float around in till it is time to go back to work. It's bright, happy, kitschy where I want it to be, with lots of space and sunshine and fresh air. There's greenery right outside my window, and I am actually awoken by a shaft of sunlight falling on my face every morning. If I slide the windows open, my curtains billow in the breeze...sometimes, when I've pulled an all-nighter and dawn breaks in, pink and golden, through the cracks in my curtains - or when I can see rain in the golden light of a streetlamp, and feel warm and cosy in my little house - I feel so physically full of contentment and happiness, my heart could explode.

I do the sweeping and mopping, I cook my own meals, fetch my own groceries and do my own laundry. I patiently lodge multiple complaints when the AC or the water purifier goes bust, I replace my own bulbs, I defrost my own refrigerator, and I negotiate with the plumber or the electrician because replacing a faulty plastic tube cannot possibly, reasonably, cost 700 bucks. I've learnt to keep candles and matches where they can be reached easily in the dark; and, even if I say so myself, I've elevated inventorying the contents of the fridge to minimize wastage, to a fine art. I'm crazy house-proud and have been known to politely ask friends to reschedule their visit because the flat is untidy. I can look at a shirt or dupatta and tell you whether to use Surf or Ezee, or baby shampoo; I can also starch clothes to perfection. I can multitask three ways to Sunday - cutting up craftpaper and fooling around with glitter while watching TV and keeping an eye on the saucepan as well as the two new shirts I am soaking together for the first time. These are things that I take as much pride in as I do in my achievements as a student and a professional...more pride, sometimes, because these are things that make me happy. Frequently, they act as stressbusters after a day doing something I am not always excited about. Always, but always, they make everything else I do, worthwhile. You've got to experience it yourself to know what I'm saying. Nothing chases work-induced exhaustion away like coming home to a laundry hamper that's empty because you took care of it yesterday, or a meal sitting in your refrigerator, just waiting to be microwaved, with an additional stir-fry on the side if you're up to it. Independent as I felt during college, and even when I received my first paycheck, nothing beats the high and the sense of self-sufficiency actually - physically - being able to look after yourself gives you.

Does this mean I am a domestic goddess? Far from it. I screw up more often than anyone I know. I guess it's a domestic occupational hazard.

So these are the things I have learnt, mostly the hard way. For those of us who live alone and manage our own houses, these should point you in the right direction.

 - Never step into your white-tiled bathroom in your sneakers, just to retrieve the scrunchie you left on the shelf. It is far easier to remove your shoes and put them back on, than to scrub grime and mud off the tiles later. Been there, done that. Believe me.

- Always keep a tube of quick-fix glue handy. You have no idea what a gigantic sense of security it gives you.

 - Keep Post-Its within easy reach, unless you do not mind running down to the store fourteen times a day.

 - Put your house keys wherever they're supposed to be as soon as you enter. I cannot say this enough. When you live alone, there's no one else to go ballistic over for misplaced keys.

My books! Well, at least the ones that I have not sent back home in three instalments because I had very little room here. I have a huge pile of these just waiting to be read.

I Cook!

As a stressbuster, cooking ranks right up there with clearing and sorting desks and drawers for me. Sure, there I days when I come back so late, so irritated with the world, and so exhausted, that the idea of standing by the hot plate or the microwave is practically loathsome. And sure, more often than not, I make errors of judgment in ingredients and measurements and cooking time, and the end result is just about edible, if that. But I also know that if I can only drag myself away from the comfort of my futon and into the kitchen, I will invariably come out a lot calmer and happier than I went in, even if the original idea for dinner landed in the trash (quite literally), and I've had to resort to milk and toast and apples. It's just that it is incredibly liberating to be able to turn raw material (again, literally), into a meal, and to call it your own. It feels so, so good. And when a cake is in the oven, or vegetables are cooking in a saucepan, the aroma is heavenly, homely, and therapeutic.

I try new recipes off the 'net, from cookbooks that came with ovens and stoves...even some outlandish combination that I've thought up at work. I seldom, if ever, follow measurements to the T - and that has often proved my - and my dish's - undoing. But like in everything else, my gut likes to take over, so I let it. 

I'm good with a knife and chopping board - and not too bad at kneading and whipping. What I am a basket case in, is knowing when something is done. More often than not, I overcook my food. My pasta dissolves into a mushy mess because I boil the bejesus out of it. My oats melt into an unrecognisable mass because I cook the living daylights out of them. And when I simply mean to saute my greens and carrots, I end up boiling them (no, don't even ask). I cut cauliflower into neat little florets and dice my potatoes just so...but then I poke them so enthusiastically with my spatula when they're cooking, my curry looks very sorry for itself by the end of it all. I roll perfectly round rotis, but they're not always perfectly even, which means they cook unevenly...which means little patches of dough show up in the final product. And, heaven knows how, I always burn the bottom of the pan I boil milk in - and then spend the better part of an hour scrubbing the pan in the sink.

So, yeah, it isn't always perfect, or even easy. Sometimes, it gets lonely, this living all alone, doing everything on your own. Sometimes, at the end of a bad day, when your upma is a watery mess, your clothes won't fit into your laundry hamper because it is already overflowing, and the cable is kaput because you forgot the DTH recharge, all you want to do is yell into the walls. But then, when you love your house, it loves you back, and being loved is an amazing feeling. It may not chase away the blues, but it makes them easier to deal with. And that is a wonderful thing.