Mango Madness

15 Nov

Egad! It’s nearing the end of the year and I just noticed that our “Parsipanu” category isn’t exactly chubby, unlike a certain well-fed community member in the mirror. Time to remedy that attar-ghari (right this minute).

Hark back to 1980s Bombay. Your family just made plans to go to the Victoria Gardens, (also known as Jijamata Udyan or the zoo). In their excitement, they invited two neighboring families, and before you know it, there’s a phone marathon about how many akoori sandwiches, chicken patties, and mawa cakes will sustain the hungry horde. The day dawns just like any other, except nobody ever says that in writing. Bright and early, we like to chirp. So bright and early, three families and their hampers pile into their shiny, Parsi-owned Fiats and trundle off in anticipation of a fun picnic.

At the once immaculately-maintained gates of the zoo, a large board announces that today being a bank holiday, the gardens will be closed to the public.

“Chaalo, dhom dhuss ne keri chuss!” declares Uncle Kersi, in a suspiciously satisfied tone.

So we don’t have a picnic, but we do get a brand new Parsi-ism to play with:

“Dhom dhuss ne keri chuss”, it all came to nought.

Pronounced: Dhawm dhoo-s neh ke-ree choos

Direct translation: It all came tumbling down, now suck a mango.

Let’s give it a try:

“What was the point of training so rigorously for Sports Day if you were going to sprain your ankle the night before? Chaalo (come on), dhom dhuss ne keri chuss!”

And one more time:

“Kaiomarz thought his girlfriend was commitment-phobic, so he never discussed marriage. She eventually dumped him. Big fat dhom dhuss ne keri chuss!”

What situations have been a DDNKC for you? Time to share! Everyone wants to know. 🙂

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Joy in Cozy House

14 Nov

They gazed at the soft, perfectly-formed bundle lying on the bed, so new to the world.

They smiled. They cooed. Bringing it home was the best thing they’d done.

They held hands and lay down, staring up at the ceiling in thrill and anticipation.

And that, my friends, is how the Tempurpedic mattress came home.

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Maps of Heart & Time

8 Nov

She rings the doorbell and skips in through the open door, looking at me for a reaction. I smile and tell her I rang a few unnecessary doorbells in my early years. She processes this information, taking in the tall lady with an unfamiliar accent, who cleans alongside her mother because she’s just anal like that.

I take the Swiss chalet from its perch on the bar, gently wind the old key, and open the roof. Sweet, lilting notes fill the air and her green eyes, sun-streaked hair tumbling into them, widen with delight. The smile extends to her mouth and she holds my gaze as I gently shut the roof. And then, because just once is never enough, I open it again and let the music waft between us.

When she picked this little box of joy somewhere in the Alps 64 years ago, Nana couldn’t have known that someday, a 4-year-old Mexican-American girl would share its delights with her granddaughter, who clings to this memory of her beloved spirit’s life.

November 8, 1921. Just the date makes my heart glad.

Happy birthday. Thank you for knowing how to love me.

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Love in the Age of Debussy

31 Oct

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” ~Anaïs Nin

And that, I suspect, is what I am doing today. Among the many posts I have shared about the city of my heart, I have failed to mention a key experience: music by the warm, glittering bay.

I don’t quite remember when I first stepped into the NCPA. Perhaps I was 6. Or younger. But my earliest memories include watching the Peanuts at the Tata Theatre and wearing a pleated plaid dress to watch a comedy at the Experimental, (for which the actors borrowed my water bottle as a prop). Music by the classical masters formed a backdrop to my life, and for this gift, I cannot give enough thanks.

The morning dress-up ritual for school was punctuated by the gentle strains of Strauss’ Blue Danube (keeps tension at bay, Daddy used to say) and I may have developed a Pavlovian response to Sunday dhandar, fried fish, and Mozart. Our neighbor two floors down was a piano teacher, whose fingers would fly across the ivories to amuse herself on weekends, and the strains of her layered, rich playing were heard throughout the building. Time trundled on as it is wont to. My teenage years brought on other, varied musical interests, and our piano teacher-neighbor passed away. But the enduring legacy of my upbringing was an emotional connection to the NCPA.

It was never just about the music. There were rituals, and unspoken codes, and if you were lucky (?) enough to be born and bred into them, then you’d pick them up effortlessly, sailing through the crimson-carpeted hallways with your pearls and grandma’s handbag, knowing not to clap between movements, and acknowledging other regulars with air kisses and tilts of the head. If you were a member, you received the month’s program in the mail, and knew precisely what pieces you’d be hearing that evening. You would know the insiders from the one-offs, who, clad in rani pink or bright orange, would shuffle unsurely toward the bar and food area, not knowing that the cold coffee and chicken sandwiches were the best things on the menu. Or that the delightful Stop Gaps, headed by good old Alfie, would hand out Christmas mementos after every concert of the Festival of Festival Music. And Karla Singh, god bless her, would be her funny, naughty emcee self and have us chuckling year after year.

There is a definitive confidence that comes from knowing your space. From viewing it from the inside out and breathing through the familiar placenta, rather than witnessing from extraneous layers. I’ve watched myself at concerts at London’s Barbican Centre and San Francisco’s Davies Hall. I’ve noticed how my posture, although tall, is just that slightest bit unsure. The music is exquisite. The experience, just as wonderful. But the space and the power that comes from knowing it intimately isn’t mine. At the Jamshed Bhabha or the Tata, I am in my element. I know exactly how many beads of perspiration will break out on my face in the dash from the car to its chandeliered entrance hallway. My shoulders are thrown back, a stole wrapped casually around them, the familiar faces popping up almost right away. That there, is my school English teacher. Over this way, three of my neighbors. Hi there, Cousin, new date? The low buzz and laughter, the making our way over to those familiar crimson seats amid exclamations of delight, hugs and hellos, the gentle bell peals and dimming of lights to indicate we should settle down, and then finally, the collective hush as the conductor strides onto the stage.

The music. The delicate, the thundering, the fragrant, the vicious, the gloom-and-doom, and infinitely worthy of elation, it scoops you up in scented lavender tissue, escorting you through mid-air to plunge you into an expansive pool of bubbling delight. You gasp, the heady rush leaving a buzz in your brain. Your feet are singing. Your fingers move of their own accord. Your liver is yodeling in high Cs. And you are enveloped in the purest delight this universe has to proffer.
You know your cues. And they, you. In these hallways of insiders, being of them matters, even if only just to themselves. There will always be the odd Bollywood superstar who will show up at (only) a big name concert, ruining the experience for the rest of us with traffic jams, security and paparazzi. And this is probably the only place in the world they will be pretty much left alone. For the star of the evening is the melody, and the people who make it flow.

In my misspent youth, I could calculate the seriousness of my relationships by the number of NCPA dates I’d had with the guy. Small wonder then, that I’m married to the one who topped the list. This piece of earth at the tail end of Bombay’s financial district, was, in our days of courtship, a world unto ourselves, a space so private amidst the public, that we still talk about it like we’re there. We still follow each season of the SOI, if only through the emails we receive. We still mention it when Zubin Mehta or Marat Bisangaliev are “in town”. And we wonder what Zane Dalal will be conducting at the grand finale. Plays are eagerly scanned for familiar names, half my college being the Bombay theatre scene today, and I am kept abreast of film festivals and gallery exhibits by a cousin who is a regular.

As the holiday season approaches, we’re already wistfully thinking about what we’ll be missing. Where we now live is undeniably glorious. But every so often, all one needs is one’s own comfortable home, with its breath of recycled air. And no matter where I park my boots, my beloved NCPA and I, we’re an item for life.

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Peas, Potatoes & Parsis

14 Oct

“Aye Mahnaz, ai joh, gilora!” came a voice wafting across the produce-lined aisles of my local Indian store, effortlessly conquering Kumar Sanu’s nostrils. The words crashed against my eardrums. My body continued to move on autopilot. An arm rose to open the door to the refrigerator case while the other grabbed a bunch of cilantro. Meanwhile, deep inside me, everything hushed and I strained to listen.

Gilora. The Parsi word for the vegetable the rest of the world calls “tindora”, among other names. That unmistakable accent that belongs only to my people. Here, in the sunny South Bay, thousands of miles away from our hub in South Bombay, were a full three Parsis of the 100,000 left in the world.

Being one of such a unique minority fosters a strong feeling of extended family. We are alarmingly identical (and near-uniformly mad as coots). It means that when there’s a Parsi in the vicinity, I will almost certainly feel the level of kinship the rest of the world feels for an aunt or cousin. As I turned to face the voices in question, my mental checklist fired through its boxes: short hair, cropped pants, hazel eyes. Check, check, and check. And the undeniable proof, the language we took from the well-meaning Gujaratis, mangled into a linguistic pretzel, and unleashed upon the world, sprinkled with the sugar we’re supposed to be.

There’s a solid reason why reality TV doesn’t cut it for me. Daily life offers infinitely better humor. Exclamations floated across the eggplants as the two merry women planned their menus, rechristened theplas “methi ni rotli“, sang along and thumped cucumbers to Bollywood songs from the ’60s, and yanked an entire roll of grocery bags off its holder, expressing loud surprise when bell peppers flew in four directions. As my body continued to pick out groceries independent of its brain, a smile broke out on my face, one I quickly hid amid the spinach leaves, whilst debating whether to let on that there was a clanswoman in their midst.

In the end, eyeing their increasingly amusing trot around the store and eavesdropping shamelessly on their conversation trumped any spirit of confession I may have harbored, and I remained content to spectate. Paying for my purchases, I turned back one last time, gave them a broad grin, and walked out to my car, chuckling all the way home.

My beloved community, may our foibles never stop and our capsicum always fly.

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Foam Warrior

6 Oct

You may be a gentle soul, but let it not stop you from rising to life’s challenge when it arises.

Fight, even if only that you may reclaim your gentleness when the war is over.

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Coffee and Me

2 Oct

“I suppose Gandhi and Shastri didn’t achieve greatness by chugging caffeine in bed. Never mind. My greatness ship has sailed. I’ll just have that cuppa now.”

~ My first conversation of the day

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No Meat Feat

9 Sep

Hands up those who’re related to well-meaning but bumbling folks who amuse us with their follies. Yup, totally expected that forest of waving arms. I’m no exception, and my community even has a special phrase to celebrate mix-ups, boo-boos, or whatever you want to call ’em.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting:

“Ghotala-ma-goas“, n. a big bungle

Pronounced: gho-taa-laa maa go-s

Direct translation: Meat in the mess-up

 

If you know anything about the Parsis, you will be aware that we’re a bunch of obligate carnivores. Mutton is our Mecca, our Holy Grail is the holy grill and many, many childhoods revolved around the thrill that was the arrival of the Chick Van.

Just like we break an egg on near everything, meat–good old goas–is dunked and simmered in dals, vegetables, rice, and ice cream. Okay fine, maybe not ice cream. So we have paapri-ma-goas, masoor-ma-goas, papeta-ma-goas, tamota-ma-goas, cauliflower-ma-goas, bheeda-ma-goas, and sakarkand-ma-goas, in addition to meat-specific dishes like kid goas (served at our wedding dinner), salli boti, chops, and cutlets.

Now that you have this introduction, you won’t be so surprised to learn that a bungle, in Parsi Gujarati, is called ghotala-ma-goas. Why leave the poor errors out in the cold while we feast on tender, juicy, fall-off-the-bone meat?

Let’s practice with an example:

They landed up at Eros instead of Sterling for the movie! Tsk, tsk. Such ghotala-ma-goas.

You try it:

These people OJ knows fed the same dog twice and starved the other one for 2 days straight. Now that’s a ghotala-ma-goas if there ever was one.

Your turn now: What legendary ghotala-ma-goases have you been a part of? C’mon people, get sharing! Let that be your Parsipanu pound of flesh. 😉

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The New Doormat

1 Sep

“Our family doesn’t have a head.

Only an expanded heart and two bums, typically waggling in time to a tune.

Patriarchy is best parked at the door.”

~ A sign I’m considering putting up at the entrance to our home

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Happy Hausfrau Series: Pancakes From Scratch

29 Aug

Greetings from the home of the happy hausfrau! Don those aprons and follow me into the kitchen, chop chop.

Those of you who remember my post about meeting Ceej in Paris know that it ended with the certainty that we would see each other in another country and another city someday. Because that’s our thing. He’s my people. That’s what we do. So it won’t come as a surprise when I mention that we recently added another continent to our list when he flew into San Francisco and waited the equivalent of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras for me to conquer rush hour traffic and screech into the airport.

Now he’s known me as the local cab-grabbing Bombay girl, and the Goa-in-the-monsoon party girl, and the I’m-in-London-life-is-perfect tourist girl, and the oh-look-Shakespeare’s-house-in-Stratford-upon-Avon girl, and the escargot-gobbling-soaking-in-all-things-French-from-His-Highness-the-Francophile girl, but this time, this time my friends, he was seeing me on home turf. And no one who enters the Happy Hausfrau’s kitchen gets out without a bellyful. So in his honor, I whipped up some super easy, seriously delish pancakes that I’ve made about a dozen times since. Now you can enjoy them too!

First, get your crew in a huddle. A VIP is about to be born.

Gather them all

Top row: Salt the city slicker; Flour the floozie; Sour Cream the sulker

Middle row: Baking Soda the blitzer; Vanilla the vivacious; Sugar the sexxxeh

Bottom row: Butter the badass; Eggs the what-else….eggstraordinary!

In a generous gesture of going the extra mile to show you what else you’ll need for Operation I’m-in-Heaven, I took this picture.

tools of fools

And forgot to add  the 17 and a half measuring spoons you’ll need. Just mentally throw those in, won’t you?

Imagine there’s a picture

It’s easy if you try

Runnin’ outa them spoons

Sure makes OJ cryyyy…..

Ignore me. It’s a disease. Just buy the Boy a drink sometime, if you ever see him lurking in a bar, shadows under his eyes from all the trilling in our stage home stage home.

Where was I? Oh yes, slaving over pancakes, while you folk croon and be a waste-a-time! Some people.

cream it

Scoop dollops of the sour cream into a measuring container and make sure you have one (1) cup.  Isn’t it onederful that ghastly spelling isn’t among the many diseases I inflict upon the world?

dump

Dump it in a big mixing bowl. Who else loves white on white? *raises hand* Go look at this and levitate.

Next, add seven (7) tablespoons of flour. Like thees:

come flour with me

Three guesses what song I’m thinking of when I say “flour”.

[Hint: Say “flour” Southern-style]

[Hint: “Pack a small bag”]

Sigh.

[Hint]

Time to end that white perfection with a dash of brown. Sugar! 2 tablespoons! And yes, if you have a rare form of OCD that compels you to continue the white-on-white-on-white pattern, feel free to use white sugar. We’re just terribly healthy in this home, you see. Sour cream pancakes flipped in butter absolutely must be made in organic, golden-brown demerara.

soda so good

Gently take one teaspoon of pure artisanal baking soda. Breathe a prayer into its aura. Tinkle a silver bell at it. Delicately sprinkle on the mound, taking care not to disturb its electric violet halo. Feel the hush descend on you as the mound….awaits….more……

salz

More white! This recipe is getting holier than the Pope! You think he’d like my pancakes? I could’ve offered eggs benedict to the last one. Pity.

Oh, and in case you are actually following this recipe (who does that?) this is salt. A full half (1/2) teaspoon of it.

eeeeeeeda

Now to change things up a bit. Crack two (2) eggs into a separate bowl. Don’t you deeply appreciate how I’m including the number next to the number name? Like a proper grown-up. It’s fun to pretend.

whiskey

Wield the whisk. In our house, she’s called Whiskey. Which is all terribly confusing when the Boy’s brother visits, because he means the other kind and doesn’t take well to being presented with our wiry beauty in a glass tumbler.

churn, churn, churn

Turn your attention to the Bowl You Left Behind. Give all the ingredients a stir. Don’t kill yourself, though. Less is more. Said the President of the Lazyass Cooking Crowd.

dribble

Time for the two families to meet and Culture Shock to reverberate. Merge. Meld. Combine. The Montagues and Capulets enter an alternate reality even as the Italians want their story back from the clutches of an apron-clad airhead.

more whiskey

Add a half (1/2) teaspoon of vanilla extract and put Whiskey to work again. Don’t bother with your high-powered electric whisks for this effort. We don’t need nothin’ terribly smooth and creamy.

churn, churn, churn part 2

If it looks as smooth as this or George Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty (yes really, those are your options), you’re good. Move on to ze next step. Or l’étape suivante, as Google educates me.

(Ceej! Is that correct?)

griddle

Time to get hawt. Or haute. Let griddle-bottom make contact with stovetop and Turn. It. On.

utterly butterly

Rip open a stick of butter desperately. Pant for effect. Hear it sizzzzzzzle. Ooooooh. Fan me, someone.

caking it on

Quick, don’t let the butter burn, even if you’re all hot and bothered. Turn the stove down to medium heat and ladle the batter onto the griddle . Let batter and butter cook until small bubbles begin to appear on the uncooked surface. Then flip over.

the other side

Like so. And cut away all the oozy gooey stuff that somehow miraculously ended up in my mouth. This kitchen is a spooked place, I tell ya. Cook this side for approximately the same time as you cooked the other. Which should be anywhere between 2 to 4 minutes, depending on how madly attractive your griddle is.

drizzle

Once done, remove the pancake to a plate and repeat the operation with the remaining batter. Or, if you’re greedy like a certain somebody I know, place a small square of butter atop your New Religion, drizzle maple syrup all over, and convert.

finale

Dig in. Take one heavenly bite and watch your fork and mouth form the soul connection of a lifetime. You can burp your thank you later.

No buddies were harmed in the making of this divinity.

Signed,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Pancakes

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