Newerways

I have been the errand boy for money since many years and going back and forth between the banks for various reasons has been my enterprise. I have seen banks transition from manual to digital, from hand-counted to machine counted, stapled bundles to wrapped bundles of currency notes and handwritten to electronically balanced passbooks. Whatever, I may have left in this transition history is due to Google not being able to access the site as my home internet has a narrow bandwidth verging into being more obsolete than the dial up connection of BSNL. Recently, I drew a wad of notes to deposit in my loan account and as luck would have it the server never obliged. I walked out, back to my home in 41  degrees Celsius, shielded with a face mask and an over sized white apron maintaining my Coronavirus protection and me ready to dehydrate, pining for water. Yet, the next day I walked again to my holy grail at half past seven in the morning to finish my half-baked project. This time the ca...

  A t no time did I comprehend this old saying could be so exceptionally appropriate for all of us? For a very long time, Queen Mother ruled the roost from the dining table. She would sit there and indiscriminately pursue her instructions, the amount of water I added, the flavor of the ingredients, the position of the pan over the flame, and so on. I barely got a break till I decided to end all this and shifted her throne to the side where she could not see what I was doing.   With a badly bruised ego and the hurt of being deposed, she continued to grumble and fumble and stepped down reluctantly.  Working from home introduced a new cook in our dwelling, my son. All this while he stayed in another city, and we continued to praise his newly found culinary skills through WhatsApp.    This WhatsApp is not a 3D app that shows us the food beautifully presented, while the rest of the kitchen does not matter. I was scandalized when ‘besan ka chila’ was being prepared. ...

                                                               It was an overwhelming  awareness and we had by now begun to accept the fact that we had to learn to live with the deadly Coronavirus and its aftermath. Every day, in lock down was a nightmare, if not for most but for many. I seemed to have been the chosen one since I did not share the sentiment. To avoid the chaos of multiple pages and a digital document that requires endless scrolling,I wrote my to do list on a sheet of paper and photographed it.I overlooked the method over usefulness.It was to be my guiding mantra to live by peacefully in such unusual and extraordinary times.  A self-employed me had enough at hands than to think of spawning more, I looked callously at all those on social websites that  hungered to learn and teach .On one hand they to...

This is from an addicted fan, cornered for being a rebellion and imitating the many on our idiot box, I had few options but to give up whatever little interest I had in family soap operas. This  flaw forced me to explore beyond my realms, History, Engineering marvels, Discovery, News. That was not binging! I missed the spice, a pinch of salt, spoonful of chilies and black pepper. I hunted with relentless determination inching my toes to the edge. I found my niche. There was an absence of makeup, eyes were fiery red and there were surges of adrenaline and a battle with sedatives. I liked this new taste and flavor of chipotle. It was like a burrito different from our rajma chawal, it was hot. I realized a little late this certainly was madness breeding madness. I switched off those debates and my television forever. My entertainment underwent a colossal hit. Advent of technology had transformed my mother and sister in law into movie buffs which they watched over YouTube and H...

         DECEMBER 1988                                               I became what I am today. I thought of the precise moment when my father was just about to leave for his official visit to Germany. A telegram informed me of my admission to King George’s Medical College in the Dental Department. I was excited that I had succeeded in the heavily contested premedical entrance test. When all the dust settled, I thought it to be just dentistry. Some of my friends had been admitted to MBBS while I had trailed despite hard work came to me as a second thought. Dentists reminded me of Dr. Jhatka in Lotpot, a Hindi cartoon magazine, which caricatured him struggling with extractions by raising his tools and forgetting the patient needed a local anaesthetic shot. This comparison was deemed an insult to Dr.Jaidka, our family dentist, a soft-spo...

  Do you know what nice food is? Nice food is one which is prepared by a Hindu lady with lots of love and affection. All the emotions her thoughts are transferred via that food to you. Now this prepared food should be served to you by a Muslim waiter who serves you with such vanity and delicacy. Then this should be eaten by an Englishman in all style. See how he drapes the napkin on his lap then he picks up the knife and fork and eats in style and relishes every bite in no haste. This is what nice food is. That's a story that my grandfather repeated often about NICE FOOD in our family. Kitchen has always been my domain and seldom have the men of household (my husband and two sons) ever tried to cross that threshold and displace me from my highlands. Despite my fuming and fretting of the domestic and professional overload I have not conceded my grounds. Ever since my children went to Kota after their tenth standard my attempts to make them self-relian...

                                                                                        The dynamics of change are indeed difficult to apprehend; one has to consider the attitudes of the people who will accept it, how persistent the change will be, and how the people leading the change will behave. As I sat down to document this, a few things happened in the real world. Thomas Cook went down in history as bankrupt.  The media was abuzz with lessons to be learnt from its failures and with its non-conformity to present-day requirements to serve its clients. True, it is well said by Darwin, “it is not the strongest of the species ...

I came across this lady as our sons were together and friends in kindergarten. Just the passing of smiles had made us acquaintances on the school premises. I was surprised when she came to our clinic carrying a bag that medical representatives did. She was equally startled to find us. The rest is all history. We became good friends even though her son shifted to another school after one year. I pursued her for not doing that. Her nephew was studying in a different school. The family wanted them to be together. What I said never mattered. Nevertheless, we continued meeting more often in the clinic, events of our children, and our homes. . We were similar in abruptness and straightforwardness to a certain extent and had the same issues with the old school of thought. We even laughed at what people, more reasonably, what our relatives had to say for us. That was a joke between us. We never had to explain each other many things.  It was her birthday. I could not imagine what I should ...

 Disclaimer Whatever plagiarism may be only in the name of the title, this journey has little to do with the sad details of the migrant population. It is my perspective of the world today and its problems.   I had been a regular traveler between Delhi and Ajmer after my father passed away, not realizing eight hours would fly away so soon, leaving me wishing Ajmer never came. A regular on the Garibrath Express from Delhi to Ajmer, I preferred to carry my shawl and pull it over me in the AC compartment of the train right at the beginning of the journey only to get up at Jaipur, just a few hours away from Ajmer. It helped me spend an arduous journey in relative tranquility and time to recover to resume my office in the evening. While I made myself comfortable in the side berth of the train, a family of four, husband, wife, son, and daughter, settled in the adjacent berths; the other two belonged to an elderly couple. Their conversation made me realize this elderly couple wa...

Corona crisis just rubbed against my shoulders and my overtly overworked brain was spinning more stories than the virus replicating in humans. Corona hugged me like the Italians and Namaste was deliberately whimpering away from glory. What, if I die of pneumonia with such weak lungs what will my sons do they just don’t know anything about my financial liabilities. Thankfully Netflix never suggested newer problems apart from those of loan sharks, which I have been addicted to in past few months. To me, the subject that required most urgent attention was not mask, gloves or the grocery in lockdown but writing my “WILL”. My son ridiculed me on every call have you written your will, not that he is interested in my inheritance but he tries to encourage me to delve in what I would like to do most. “If you don’t have the time to write your will why don’t you stop seeing the patients and doing all the household chores thrust upon you without your consent? You should first do what is real...

As a student studying in a different city from my hometown, I had to visit the railway station frequently for my train reservations. Life was not as easy; the long winding queues and the suffocating smell of sweat, the heat, and the body-hugging closeness with people around sent shivers down your spine. A single fan on the high ceiling of the Charbagh railway station was the only source of air circulation, if there was any.  At times, we could assert ourselves and make a separate queue for ladies, but most times this feminist move would be rejected by males waiting for hours for their turn. Obviously, railways had no such provisions, at least on the booking counters, even though they provided a seat quota for ladies on the train. In those dreary hours of waiting, I could simply shift my weight from one leg to another, hoping for a miracle to happen. On the other side of the window, the booking clerk himself looked exasperated. Sweat continued to trickle down his face, and he...

I had conveniently forgotten to return “Midnights Children” to my friend who had passed it on to me to read. Glad that I was, of not having returned the book I started reading it all over again more than twenty years down the line. As page by page I progressed I travelled back in time just like the author, down the memory lane. Ours too was a big joint family with three generations, of all ages living together. I could visualize every evening with a hectic preparation in the verandah and the kitchen as clock was ticking too fast and my grandfather was about to return from his office. A chair with armrest was laid out and seating arrangements made. Then came nana ji and we all came running to join him. Someone brought him a glass of water and this was followed by tea. Tea time was wonderful for not only was tea served there was also “aloo ki tikki”chaat with three colored chutneys (every day the menu was different). While we were busy gorging Granny was busy in the kitchen and nan...