House of the House sparrow

It is "international sparrow day", there couldn't have been a better opportunity to pen down my own romance with the house sparrow in the last few years I have stayed at home working on my thesis.

        The one problem I have been reading about and hearing from my ornithologist friends is that the houses are no more constructed in the way they used to be which has been the cause of dwindling numbers of house sparrows, who make their nests in the "roshandaans" and other convenient corners of the house.
        Hailing from Lucknow and having lived in houses designed to use natural light and air, my father-in-law has constructed his little abode in a similar fashion, albeit, with modern amenities. Every room has a "roshandaan" which not only brings in morning light and air but also some rains to my utter discomfort.
       Yet I haven't been able to seal them off, for I do not want to rid myself off of the pure joy of being woken up by the chirruping house sparrows everyday. Yes these airy spaces have been occupied rent-free by my lovely friends who have made their little nests.
     Every season we wait for them, see them slowly bringing their twigs and other available material and soon the nest is made. In a few days time the little ones start chirruping. There have been very tense moments when these little birdies learning to fly would land themselves in the rain pipes and all of us would breathlessly wonder how she could be saved, too scared of us she would go deeper into the pipe and too scared of her mother who would be ready to attack us, watching from the terrace, we would stand  helplessly, until the mother (house sparrow) went in and brought out her little one. Mothers know best. There have been several summer days spent with the fan off and sweat rolling down our foreheads as the dear little birdie would land herself on the fan and for the fear she may be hurt or even die, we would switch off the fan and wait for her to find her way out.

      The house sparrow has not only kept me occupied in watching her young ones and changing the water bowl everyday which we have placed for her and her little family, she has also given an added responsibility to my maid of cleaning up my almirah which she gleefully uses it as her open toilet. The maid cleans up the mess murmuring "why don't they go elsewhere?"
     Soon the little birdies are also gone and nest is abandoned........we don't remove it....we know she will soon be back again next season.

Solvemyproblem

"Solve my problem ........Did I really hear what you said........Oh you mean you have some issues, okay just got to rush now, will get back to you soon! Don't worry it all be fine, have faith...........we will sort this out.....!"   I haven't heard from that friend of mine till today. You know life is tough, we all go through our daily grind and often faced with problems we just keep taking it all in our stride till some day it becomes the last straw and that's when we decide to actually confront it. Sometimes it is already too late and often the problem has grown much bigger than necessary. Only if it had been attended to in time. Remember the old saying "a stitch in time saves nine!" I so much wish this saying was made a compulsory daily morning chant in all our homes so that our leaking pipes, fused bulbs, pending bills, unwanted clutter................... and the list might go on longer......would have been attended to at the right time and saved many a marital wars! No I am not letting you in to any of our domestic secrets but I guess they are universal issues of bickering in many homes especially when all the members are busy with a career and many other important tasks.
  Well problems are all not so mundane. There are problems of all types big and small, recurrent and not so recurrent, personal and professional, problems that vanish by just sharing it with someone and problems
that need a lot of resources to solve, problems purely of the mind and problems that are created by others.
 Whatever the nature of the problems there is one thing for sure "it is meant to be solved." 
In this busy times and busy world, we in India are so used to also people giving advice on every matter to everyone and anyone. The only thing perhaps you get free in this country is advice. (apart from the gifts given by the political parties during elections). But there is always this dilemma with the free advice "should I or should I not? I remember as a teenager getting advice for my pimples, from clay to castor oil every ingredient in my mother's kitchen had been used only to find a few more pimples just a fortnight later.
    I have grown a few decades older and so have the nature of my problems. But yes I don't have to worry about the unsolicited advice I will get and the dilemma of should I or not. Technology has brought solutions at my fingertips.
   When friends are too busy, family is miles away and you need an expert all you need to do is log-in to your computer and you get solutions to all your problems at one place. One famous advertisement always said "advice to sab dete hain" lekin ham lete kissey hain makes all the difference and when you have an excellent choice of a panel of expert for all your different kinds of problems at one place and just a click away why worry or go anywhere else all you need to do is to log on to www.solvemyproblemm.com .
     

From “Baano” to “Badi Mausi”

Today I called up my four year old niece to wish her for her birthday. Her mother(My sister) called out to her: “Saanvi,” “Badi Mausi”...........I could hear an excited voice enquire and exclaim “Badi Mausi?!” ..........and then with more excitement on the phone she went on .... “Badi Mausi aaj mera birthday hai......I went to school.....cake aayega......and soon she was lost in the excitement of the party and friends in her house...........But the gentle loving words “Badi mausi”.....kept echoing in my ears for a long time after I disconnected the phone.....being the eldest of six siblings and of the whole of my generation in my family “badi” has become an epithet to the different “roles” I Play. Off late I realise my mother always introduces me to her new found friends, the elderly women in the society who spend a few hours together chit-chatting and sunning themselves in the cold Delhi weather in their evening years of their life, whenever I visit her... “Ye meri Badi Beti hai......Nainital se aayi hai”..... It mesmerises me the way “names” and “roles” have changed or has been added in the last four decades of my Life!

I am told by my mother when I was born my mother was staying with her uncle’s family as my father was away in the US pursuing his executive management programme. At Patna it was a family of my mother’s Uncle and my uncles (mamas) who stayed in the city pursuing their jobs and education and I was the only little baby in the family then and so, my mother’s uncle my grandfather named me “Baano”.......the little child then “Baano” is still called “Baano” whevenver she visits them.....not only do I love this name with which I was born it brings me fond fading memories of my childhood.

I am told one of my aunts was fond of the character “Bunty” of a serial story with the same title she was reading in a magazine and gave me the name Bunty which became my nickname for the rest of my life!

Soon it was time to go to school and register an official name and another aunt of mine decided on “Jyoti” as she thought the first child of the next generation of the family befitted this name. It was also the time when caste in India was becoming a disability rather than identity and also that perhaps my father a congresi by ideology and a rather un-proclaimed admirer of one of our nation’s most fiery Prime minister, preferred to suffix “Priyadarshini” rather than the family surname.

Schooling in the southern part of the country I heard very interesting accents of my name and also my teachers and friends liked to take some liberty with my name. One of my favourite teacher till now calls me “Jyotipriya”......which I so love to hear.

When my marriage was fixed, my to be husband’s friends and Bhabhees also gave me names I cherish, one of them called me “Ujala” perhaps associating it with the “Jyothi Laboratories” product, which I still use as a password to many accounts!

When I stepped into my marital home shy to call me by my name my husband always called out “Listen” to which once my mother-in-law remarked “Ye tumne badhiya naam rakha hai “Listen”......... I guess he just translated the commonly used “suniye ji or suno”!

When I was teaching in a college I also had the privilege of the names my students kept for me some of which I know and some I don’t......I often asked them to tell me their nickname for me as a farewell gift in their last semester and once a supposedly brave student said “Mam ye sab aasp se dartey hain aur aapko nahin bata rahe hai......ye aapko “Jyoti Moti” bulatey hai...” I stood smiling to a class of undergraduates fearing about their internal marks !

Few Years ago my sister was blessed with a son and our younger sister was babysitting during her visit to their place and she spent quite some time teaching the three year old about relatives and friends. He was introduced to his “Badi Mausi” at the Bangalore Railway station when we visited my sister a few years ago. I haven’t forgotten the deep brown eyes looking into the mirror of the car sitting in my lap on the way from the station to his house he kept saying “Badi Mausi” several times. Since they migrated to the US I hadn’t heard it in several years. Today again my little niece with her gentle and loving voice took me on a voyage of memories.

“What’s in a name”...... they say, Lots I guess... my names bring me memories, memories filled with love, warmth and identity ........from Bano to Badi Mausi life has been a mixed bag of feelings!

My Empathetic Husband

Being unsure of my suspicion about my maid stealing petty things from the house, one day I decided to confirm it. I counted the number of 'samosas' (the small sized sukha samosas) in the 'dabba' and left it on the table. After the maid left, I went back to count them and not to my surprise the lady had done her job. Happy that I was not just a suspicious lady of the house always untrusting her servants, I decided to convey the revelations to my husband. Expecting his support in many words and a further strategic plan of action against the now confirmed culprit I took my husband to the scene of crime and narrated my 'sting operation'. Listening to my trickery with all empathy my husband picked up one of the samosas of the now few remianing and popping it into his mouth, saying "let me eat one before she steals all of them", went back to his "Tally"....whatever version he was working on!  

Homeless in Homeland

“Didi tum to yehan ki nahin lagti, tumhara ghar kahan hai? ” (Sister you do not look like a native of this place where do you hail from?). No this was not the first time I was facing a question like this. In my almost forty years of life I have been subjected to similar queries innumerable times and every-time it has left me pondering. India is a country so intensely united and yet markedly diverse. It's diversity in language, food, clothes, festivals and etc need no elaboration. It also has diverse races of people who are identifiable and can be attributed to specified geographical regions of the country. Thus the question to a wheatish complexioned north Indian from a fair looking Uttaranchali must seem natural to most local inhabitants. Yet it leaves me reflective and contemplative. I have spent almost two decades of my life in a beautiful town in the southernmost part of the country. Me and my siblings identify more with the people from there than with people from our own native land. Our familiarity with which is only limited to stories of their days there, from our parents and our annual summer holiday trips. Which were later not even annual thanks to the board exams…competitive exams…, and holidays that could not be synchronised as amongst half a dozen siblings some of us in college while the younger at school would have exams and vacations alternatively, leaving our parents no choice on their annual trips. They had to be content with my father making the mandatory trips and my mother would stay back and ensure we did our exams well.
We still enjoy south Indian food, invariably wear south silk sarees on all family weddings. Fondly remember our days there and look for an opportunity to go back there.

After my marriage I moved to my husband’s home, right from the seashore down south to the foothills of the Himalayas up north. Personally for me it has been a beautiful journey, the ups and downs on the ride up the hill have been memorable, enriching and learning experience. My husband is often surprised when he hears me humming the kumaoni folk tune (no I am not much of a singer although) as I make his favourite rawa dosa for a sumptuous Sunday breakfast.

We love the hills and seem to have never got enough of it. Having spent more than half of my life and more than a decade of it here when I am still asked this question by a curios salesman “didi tumhara ghar kahan hai……” I almost feel homeless and abandoned and wake up to the reality life is temporary and my permanent home perhaps lies elsewhere.

The Lonely Leaf

Dark was the night, a few people were still on their way back home after their day’s work, a cyclist was trying hard to make his way out against glaring lights from the trucks on the opposite side, a car full of young boys were whistling their way to a late night movie, a young lady was hurrying up home may be today she had to attend a meeting before leaving her office,….the air was chill she pulled her scarf tight and made her steps faster, the leaf had begun to shake even more vigorously as the air blew……standing by the side of the road this old tree had been there for ages……nobody in the neighbourhood could really tell how long it might have been there but the leaf certainly knew how long it had held its stem and watched life’s play. Sometimes just an onlooker sometimes part of the game itself.
It seems just a few days in a beautiful rainy weather, when the sun shone so pleasantly and the neighbouring puddle was so full of small children jumping and splashing muddy water on each other when the plants around the puddle had fragrant flowers blooming, the leaf felt as if it had been sent to paradise with young fellow-beings on the same stem and the tree was full of many like itself.
Soon the rains were heavy the leaf dreaded the sound of thunder and shivered when there was lightening. A few of its fellow-beings simply fell off, it watched helplessly and silently.
There was a slight chill in the air, fragrance on its own tree, and the flowers soon turned to fruits, ripe and juicy they gave birth to many new saplings around and the leaf felt a mad sense of joy.
Few seasons of rain, sun, snow and spring and the leaf loved every hue.
Today it had turned pale, some of its veins had broken and some felt a crackling in its fold, a portion of it had already withered and the leaf was quiet, sad and lonely.
The cyclist was gone, the car had sped far ahead, the young lady had found her husband who had come looking for her…………………………….there was a gush of strong wind the leaf could no longer hold, it had given up all its energy it just slipped off the tree.

Monkeys in the Mindland

Science has not been able to physically mark where the mind is situated in the human body although it places a lot of importance to the mind and calls it as the central seat that guides all our actions, beliefs and thoughts. There is a lot of research on the human brain but the mind remains an area only discussed by spiritual leaders.
Just like the monkeys in the wild forest jumping from one branch to another and often from one tree to another our mind also keeps wandering. It traverses time from past present and future in nanoseconds and geographical distances in a butt of an eye lid. One moment I am reminded of the snow capped Himalayan mountains which were breathtaking view from the Kumaon in Uttarakhand next moment I feel the wet sands below my feet at the Pondicherry beach. The fragrance of Jasmine in the plaits of women in the buses in south India gush in and the next moment I am transposed to the manikarnika ghat at Banaras where I can smell the burning dead human flesh.
The chirruping of the maina on my terrace, the rustling water against the pebbles in the stream ring in my ears as I close my eyes, the sound of the dhol during the durga pooja opens my eye wide. As I savour the kapoor mixed laddos of tamilnadu, the taste of the chicken momos I ate on my way up to Gangtok from Jalpaigudi fill in my mouth.
Pictures of my maternal grandfather and me in my childhood days at his farmhouse on the bullock cart are vivid in my mind and is flipped just like an old album by my nephew's photo I just saw on the facebook yesterday .
The train pulls to a halt at the station, my husband asks "where were you lost, what have you been thinking looking out of the window all the while?"
"Monkeys in Mindland" I tell him unsure he smiles at me and leads me out of the compartment.