Saas, Bahu and Machchar!

The wind is rustling violently through the trees, the heavens lightening up repeatedly accompanied every time by a very familiar sounding thunder. A distant, incessant ringing of a bell fills the air already leaden with gloom. Half-eaten chapattis and sabzi watch idly from the sidelines, as the family is huddled closely together, rapt in attention. I take a look at the clock and yawn, rather helplessly. 10 more minutes!

Sitting in a remote town, in one of the more underdeveloped parts of the world, I bring you the single-most unifying thread in the history of India – The Great Indian Joint Family Saga. The saga that plays itself in every abode – from a shack in a village to a duplex in posh city locale, enveloping us all in their world, making their woes and joys ours and our money and time, theirs .

Ekta kapoor has unknowingly stumbled upon an untouched nerve of Indian household. Even though the only joint families remaining in India are found on primetime, their day-to-day struggles with surprisingly dedicated vamps and terminal diseases have really touched a chord with women all over India. And it really warms my heart when I see an executive and his driver, both bitching about their wives’ fixation with Tulsi, Parvati and Mihir, as it goes on to show how saas-bahu soaps have formed a bridge across castes, religion and class barriers and even nations. My father, on a recent visit to China, watched Kyunki… dubbed in Mandarin. Though I don’t know even an iota of Chinese, it would be so cool to watch Baa squeaking, in a high-pitched voice - "Tulsi zong shì fú cóng le zhè ge fáng zi guī zé"(“Tulsi ne humesha iss ghar ki maryaada ka paalan kiya hai”)

When the place I am currently located at, Khatima, Uttarakhand, was elevated to a sub-district or something like that, one of the first demands on the citizen charter was to ensure uninterrupted power supply during 8-11 P.M (any guesses why). Moreover, when Mihir passed away in an accident (the first time), the women of the colony held a funeral to mourn his death. I reckon, when you are riding the simplest of vehicles, even a slight bump can unsettle your bum.

Talking of bumps, quite a few have shown up on my arms and face. Come dusk and the country-side air, supposed to be good for health, is filled with a ubiquitous buzz of mosquitoes. They are so many in number that they have to take turns at having a go at you, while giving the All-Out a royal ignore. Here I came across a new contraption quite popular in Khatima to fight the mosquito menace - Battery-powered electric racquets. They deliver mild electric shocks, just about managing to knock out the mosquitoes for a solitary minute before they rise again to resume their pursuits, sometimes with a hint of vengeance. So it is essential for us to create mosquito-shaped, often permanent, stains on the floor, in order to make a dent in their ranks. Hence, at night you can see the young children in every single house practicing the same maneuver - smash and step. The future of Indian Badminton has never looked so rosy.

"dàn shì wo réng rán shè fa huò dé yī xiē lè qù" (“But I am still managing to have some fun!!”)

On the Road Again!

A Few excerpts from my diary while on the move. Most of them were recorded while traveling in a bus, my handwriting transporting me temporarily to those blissful, ignorant (and shaky) times of 2^nd grade -

In India, whenever someone is going abroad for a long time, there are quite a few rituals to be followed during the last few months at home. One has to earn up some last-minute good karma by say feeding the dogs, please the deities by performing pujas and jaagrans, dodge questions about marrying a firangi and settling abroad, but the most inevitable ritual of all is visiting relatives. And no matter how distant, if you ever gonna see them in your life, the time is now, or so my parents insist.

For me, visiting relatives has always been a painstaking HR exercise of huge proportions. Innumerable that they are, some of them are located in the remotest corners of India. And not the good ones either! Right now, I am headed to Khatima, a small “town” located between two equally weird-sounding, remote “towns” in Uttarakhand. Though the weather is good, and a glimpse outside the window presents a nice scenery, a glimpse inside isn’t half as good. The floor is littered with the all-pervading moofali-ke-chhilke and empty raj-darbar sachets, the seats are a bit rickety and having the last row of the bus, my rear is definitely in for some action.

But all of this isn’t enough to dampen my spirits, as I feel like a student on his last day of school. Even though he cribbed about getting up early in the morning, packing up, rushing through breakfast and catching the dilapidated school bus to be dumped at the place he doesn’t feel the need to go to, on his last day, he sees everything in a new light. The feeling is definitely the same, as I aim to seek adventure everywhere during this last in a long, long time, two-week long trip down to my roots. And though I have been to Khatima a lot of times, if I’ll ever remember a journey to that place, it will probably be this one.

Rest of the journey is quite uneventful, as I fall in and out of sleep, the conversation about recipes and sweater-weaving techniques happening between two ladies on the seat ahead notwithstanding. I’ll post more about the trip later!