Baby Crow Rescue

- By Aishwarya Pramod

It was seven p.m., and we were at my grandmom's house for dinner. My cousin Ramya was there already. We saw a baby crow, fallen out of its nest. It was flapping its wings, trying to get off the ground. If it didn't manage to fly, it was going to be eaten by a cat the minute I went inside for dinner. It was kind of helpless, so I bugged my mom about it, and she finally decided to take it to the Bombay SPCA in Parel.

When we got there, we were directed to the surgical ward. It smelled so medical. Scary. A dog with a frantically wagging tail was on an operating table, being held down by two vets. A vet checked the baby crow. He was fine, just in shock. They placed him in a large cage, and left him to sleep the rest of the night.

In another cage, were 5 beautiful owls, cuddled up together for comfort. They had been rescued from a poacher recently in Powai. They were Indian Barn Owls (tyto alba).

The barn owl rests during the day in dark lofts, shaded corners of buildings, and industrial sheds. It emerges at dark, to feed on mice. It has a long-drawn kheeeeeee screech, which I have heard often in Chennai.

Coming back from the bird cage, I nearly stepped on a slug (ew). Mom filled some boring forms, and then we walked around the place. It was leafy and serene. We saw a stable, where a really thin horse was eating some hay, and a couple of buffaloes were taking a nap. All the animals seemed to be recovering. I'm pretty glad I went to see this place.

Fah-loo-duh!

- By Deepa Krishnan

I don't get it. This whole craze for falooda, I mean. I walked past the Chowpatty food-stalls one evening, and was amazed at the number of people fighting to get to the falooda stall.

So what's a falooda? It's an icky-sweet, luridly coloured, gooey concoction that you half-drink, half-eat. It's got milk, white rice noodles, ice-cream and what looks like pistachios on top. Every time a spoonful goes down your throat, you feel like you just swallowed a sugar coated tapeworm. Yeewww.

But say what you will, the damn thing is hugely popular. There are falooda stalls all over Chowpatty, doing brisk business every evening. I managed to photograph this stall, before the crowds took over.

As you can see, apart from falooda, they also sell a wide range of equally colourful ice-creams and shakes. But it's the falooda that tops their menu. 'Our falooda is famous, madam', the owner said to me. Sure, yeah, but I'll pass.

The other best-seller at Chowpatty is kulfi, Indian ice-cream at its thickest and creamiest. Kulfi is served in little clay pots, or sometimes sliced, weighed, and served on plates.


Even on a weekday, Chowpatty takes on quite a carnival atmosphere. Families are out to enjoy the evening breeze, there are small ferris wheels, kids run around screaming and yelling, there are balloon sellers and other assorted vendors selling toys.

It's not a bad way to spend an evening. Besides, the sunset over the Arabian Sea is quite lovely.

What is Hindu literature?

- By Deepa and Janaki Krishnan

If you can't tell the Aranyakas from the Brahmanas, you might want to check out this brief introduction to Hindu religious literature.

The Hindu scriptures are broadly divided as follows:

The Srutis:

1. The Vedas are collections, of hymns, melodies, rituals and incantations. They are considered the primary texts of Hinduism. According to Klaus Kostermaier, a Canadian professor of religious studies, the beginnings of the Vedic ritual and textual tradition can be traced to 6000 BC in Northwest India.
2. The Brahmanas are commentaries on the Vedas, explaining the rituals. These were composed in the Brahmanic period (900 BC to 500 BC).
   
3. The Aranyakas - literally, forest treatises - are meant for sages living a life of renunciation. Unlike the Brahmanas, which deal with rituals, the Aranyakas deal with the philosophical aspects of the Vedas. The Aranyakas are also from the Brahmanic period.
   
4. The Upanishads are mystical contemplations designed to teach the means of liberation from rebirth and suffering. Thus they are also called Vedanta - the end of the Vedas - since they teach the ultimate secret to reach the highest metaphysical state. The oldest of these dates from the Brahmanic period, but some of the recent Upanishads are from the medieval times.
   

The Smritis:

1. There are several Smritis, or Codes of Law, whose authority is based on the standing of the author. The most well known of these is the Manu Smriti, thought to date between 200 BC to 200 CE.
2. The Itihasas - literally, 'histories' - are older than the Smritis. They include the great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. The epics were composed between 500 BC to 100 BC.
3. The Puranas are texts that provide information about the creation of the universe, the genealogies of kings, rules for life, and mythologies of various Gods and holy places. They are thought to date between the 300 CE and 1200 CE.
   

While the classification of these scriptures is universally accepted, their historical dating is controversial.

The major languages in which these scriptures appear are Sanskrit in the North, and Tamil in the South.

Apart from these, Hindu literature also includes many other treatises - for example, the Sutras are shorter succint versions of Hindism's voluminous primary literature.

The above literature is common to all Hindus. But some Hindu sects have their own sectarian writings - such as the Samhitas of the Vaishnavaites, the Agamas of the Saivaites, and the Tantras of the Saktas.

Blogging from an airplane

Ok, so here I am, on a Jet Airways flight from Bangalore.

They're still boarding, so I have a couple more minutes to type and save this.

Bombay heeeere I come!

A different sort of tea

If you're in Bandra, the coffee shop at the Taj Land's End is a pretty good choice for a relaxed afternoon tea.

The music is never loud. The service is pleasantly discreet, without being hoity-toity. There is a large selection of teas on the menu, but the past 4 or 5 times, I've always settled for their beautiful Makaibari tea.

Makaibari - the 'champagne of teas' - comes from a privately owned estate in the foothills of the Himalayas. The estate is 150 years old, and still owned by the fourth-generation of the Banerjee family.

To me, several things make Makaibari very interesting.

The first is that in a remote rural society that is traditionally dominated by men, Makaibari has several women in supervisory positions managing both male and female tea-pickers. In fact, in Makaibari's Joint Body, the women outnumber men four to one.

The second is their concept of 'biodynamic' agriculture: the idea that agriculture can be entirely self-sustaining, a sort of closed biosphere.

A whopping 70% of Makaibari is under forest cover. The tea bush itself is part of a six-tier system of trees and plants typical of a sub-tropical rainforest. The idea is that when tea grows like this, in a natural setting, it carries with it the fragrances and flavours of Nature.

There are other cool things about Makaibari - they run Project Panther, a program that has actually successfully reversed the decline of the leopard population in the Himalayan foothills. Makaibari has 11 leopards, by the way, and lots of other wild life as well. Most bird watchers get pretty excited when you tell them Makaibari is home to 30 Great Indian Pied Hornbills.

Makaibari is Fairtrade certified. This means workers are paid above established minimum wages, there is no forced or child labour, working conditions are safe, and workers have access to national and international labour protection (such as the ILO).

Most of this is visionary stuff thanks to Rajah Banerjee, Makaibari's current owner, who - apart from being the only cowboy this side of the Himalayas - seems to be a man after my own heart.

But Rajah Banerjee is not the coolest thing about Makaibari.

About fifteen years ago, they found a new type of creature on the Makaibari tea estates. It was an insect the exact replica of a tea leaf. Rajah Banerjee calls it the Miracle of the Tea God. It's a praying mantis that's decided it wants to start looking like Makaibari's best crop. In summer, it looks like a fresh new tea leaf. In winter, the insect carries blisters, just like the tea leaves themselves. Now *that's* what I call cool.

Anyway - the next time you're in Taj Land's End - don't just ask for Darjeeling. Check if they have Makaibari. And before you do, make sure you've read Rajah Banerjee's personal recommendation on how to have the right tea at the right time.

- Deepa

Acknowledgements: The plantation photos came from the Makaibari and Silvertips websites. The first photo at Taj Land's End is from mami, my Finnish friend. While I was enjoying my Makaibari, she ordered white tea - but that's a subject for another post perhaps!

Bet you can't name all of these!

Go on! I dare you!

The Great Mumbai Commute

It was a long conference, and at the end of it, I was glad to pack up my laptop and head home. It was 8:30 p.m. The entire city seemed to be going in the same direction as I was.

The red BEST bus was packed full of commuters. Clicking this photo from the luxury of my airconditioned car, I felt guilty, as if I was personally responsible for the heat and dust and grime.

Ten minutes into the drive, everything came to a standstill.

The reason? This sub-way. It can handle only one lane.

Eventually we got out of the subway. There was a long wait at the intersection, to turn into the highway. The motorcycles were sort of weaving in and out through the rest of the traffic, getting to the head of the "queue".

On the highway it was quite clear who the boss was.

Lettering on the back of a tiny auto-rickshaw. This guy was zipping past the trucks - a brave David in the face of multiple Goliaths!

Unlike me, this was one guy not in a hurry to get home.

Finally we got past the suburbs. No more auto-rickshaws: the black-and-yellow is the king of the roads now. A little more distance - and I'll be home.

Ta-da! And now we do this whole cycle all over again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that...

Idli-vada at Chor Bazaar

I was wandering along Chor Bazaar, when I got hungry. There was nothing around except old gramophone records, movie posters and memorabilia.

Then this guy came along, with his compact little restaurant-on-the-hoof. He didn't speak much. In fact, he didn't even return my big grin. Once my camera came out though, he softened a bit. Can you see the beginnings of his smile?

I bought two plates of idli-vada. Each came with one soft white idli and one brown vada, heaped with coconut chutney.

To keep the chutney from soaking through, the 'plate' was a square piece of plastic - the outer wrapping of a pack of biscuits. I wonder where he got them from, but it kept the chutney on the plate, where my fingers could get at it easily.

Oh, and he hung around while we ate, waiting to see if we needed second helpings of the chutney.

You are what you eat - the philosophy of Indian food

I was in Manchester last week, at the Old Trafford Stadium, for a conference. At lunch, the tables were groaning with food from Spain, France and the UK. There was also a very popular Indian counter, serving rice and curry.

I wanted to try some of the European cuisines on offer, so I walked around with my plate, looking for something vegetarian. I found zilch. Everything looked great, but had some sort of meat or fish or fowl in it. The closest I could find was a Spanish frittata - a rich scrumptious looking thing made of potatoes, eggs and cheese, nicely browned and just begging to be eaten.

I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to eat Indian. So I got some of the Spanish thingy on my plate, scraped the egg off, and carted it off to my table along with some perfectly tasteless green salad. At my table were Wendy and Anna, both tucking away into Indian curry. Wendy is English, and Anna is German.

The conversation turned to vegetarianism.

'So, is it a religious thing with you, Deepa?', said Wendy.

'Not really', I said. 'I was born vegetarian, and I've just stayed that way.'

I should have shut my mouth then, and the conversation would have ended, but no, I had to play the culture card.

I grinned and said, 'Besides, its taken me several births to get here. Why regress?'

Anna turned to me. 'Sorry, what was that?'

So I set off on a long discussion about the cycle of rebirth, of progressing from the animal to the divine, and how food plays a part in the journey towards spiritual awakening. We talked of the ascetic food habits of Buddhist and Hindu monks, about the traditional classification of food in ayurveda, taboos and symbolism, and all the little things that make food such an important part of Indian culture.

At the end of the chat, Anna gestured at her rice-and-curry and said, 'You know what, Deepa? In the UK we walk into Indian restaurants all the time, and we eat so much Indian food - but we know nothing about the entire philosophy behind food.'

I smiled and agreed with her, but I thought to myself - it's not that different in Mumbai.

The concept that eating simple food is a way to progress spiritually has been lost in the holier-than-thou stance of Mumbai's vegetarians. There seems to be, within each little community, an excessive petty focus on establishing purity and superiority over other communities based on food habits. Several upscale localities in Mumbai are becoming exclusive vegetarian enclaves, by refusing non-vegetarian tenants, and by discouraging the sale of meat and other 'impious' food. I know many people who will not accept food or even water from the hands of 'lower' castes.

The idea of food as an inner guiding principle, as a personal living choice, is dying. We're reducing our great philosophies as usual, to taboos and rituals.

Lessons from Dharavi

I watched as the old man shaped the clay carefully. A dull brown pot emerged from the muddy lump, growing, taking form.

I had a brief wild temptation - I wanted to poke a finger in it, and watch the mud groove around my finger. I damped down the thought. 'Act your age, woman', I told myself, and focused instead, on the mesmerising wheel. In one smooth gesture, he scooped the pot away from the wheel, and gave me a smile. I was filled with sudden warmth for this frail yet strong old man.

I was in Kumbharwada, Dharavi, home to potters from Saurashtra. With me was Shelley Seale, a writer from Texas, working on a book about underprivileged children. As part of Shelley's research, I took her on a tour of Dharavi.

The homes of Dharavi's potters are a world in themselves. There is a simple logic in the layout - at the front of the house, on the roadside, the pots are sold. If you enter the front door, you see the potter's home - there is a tiny living area with a television, and a kitchen neatly stacked with steel plates and tumblers. Pass through the kitchen, and you're in a little workshop, where pots are fashioned. Beyond this workshop is a common open area, where you can see the kilns where the pots are baked.

It is a cottage industry. Men, women, children - everyone does a part of the work. Water has to be fetched and carried, the clay mixed to form the right consistency, and finished pots and pans loaded into trucks. In the midst of the bustle, food is cooked, spicy Saurashtra cuisine. Tea is made. Children are bathed and fed and sent off to school.

At the end of the tour, Shelley wrote an article for worldpress.org, about her Dharavi visit. She said -

To me, this place dispels the myth that poverty is due to laziness — that the poor somehow deserve their lot in life because they are lazy or stupid or otherwise lacking in some important character trait that the successful possess. Dharavi is a resounding rebuttal to that belief.

I couldn't have said it better.

Behind the potter's workshop, gunny bags with clay.

Pots and shallow pans, drying in the sun

The kilns are fired using waste material. The pollution and heat is incredible.

Doing the dishes and keeping an eye on the kid.