Cashews And ‘Nuts’

As we swept past a turn on the NH66 heading South, a lush green rice field emerged by the roadside.



Sandwiched between the highway and a hill and bounded on the west by a smattering of banana plants along an outer embankment of mud and laterite breached by an opening to channel water into the field, the dollop of green was like fresh lemonade to the eyes in a deciduous landscape and red earth.



Canacona lay 15 kms away.

We had driven through Balli on the NH66 on our way to Cotigao, dodging shadows while they sought to embrace us in the early March morning light filtering through trees, a sight that kept us company all the way through.


Leaves danced on the road, swallowing us up like a blanket moving up and over the head, except this blanket stretched kilometres on end and I was more than happy to let it slide over, and over. To be ‘netted’ without being constrained is to be embraced without being held. It’s a different feeling.



The caress of the road is experienced in myriad ways.

It was a fine morning for the road and I was relieved to be in Goa and about the place. A day of hiking in the Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary beckoned us both. Philip’s binoculars and camera lay in a bag between the seats while my own was hidden away in a canvas bag drawn around my neck.

While early March is not the best time to go cashew hopping in the hills about Goa, for the cashew season is only just about beginning, I was nevertheless struck by the visible absence of the distinctive cashew fruits in trees along the way, not even in the cashew plantation the Government of Goa has undertaken within or along the limits of the Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary that we passed by later that morning. (See photo below).



“Late March and April is when you’ll see the trees awash with cashew fruits,” Philip said. While I was aware of it, I’d hoped to be enlivened by colourful cashew fruits hanging from branches roadside.

In some parts, cashew harvesting is over by mid-April, in other parts it marks the beginning when fruits are harvested for Feni, the local alcoholic drink, and cashew nuts for processing at cashew factories.



A Goan summer sojourn is incomplete without cashews, and mine was saved, however fleetingly, by a local villager a few kilometres out of Balli.


She was walking along the road carrying on her head a large plastic tub heaped with cashew fruits. The fruits still retained cashew nuts. Atop the heap of cashews a small plastic bucket lay face-down, likely for use in collecting cashew nuts once separated from the fruits.



In the day to follow we would be buffeted by the overpoweringly deep and heavy smell (fragrance to some) of cashew distillation roadside, on two occasions each, enroute to Cotigao and back.


One was at Shisheval not far from where we stopped for cold drinks at a local shop across the road from a temple to quench our thirst from hiking in the wildlife sanctuary all day.

In another instance a small makeshift distillery in the open space between houses with sloping roofs was being readied to host a rudimentary distillery. The thatched shelter rose from four wooden supports in the open. The floor was levelled out and probably awaited a coat of cow dung. Early for the season I thought back then though maybe not quite.

Approaching May, the Goan countryside is dotted with local cashew distilleries housed in the open in cashew plantations. They’re mostly constructed from no more than four wooden supports driven into the earth and roofed with coconut fronds to shade the earthen or copper pots used to distil cashew juice obtained from crushing cashew fruits in a basin carved out of laterite rock or in cemented enclosures on raised platforms.

Then it’s time for distilling Goa’s best known alcoholic drink, the Feni.

Urrack, an early by-product of the same distillation process, is only marginally lesser known than Feni, atleast in Goa, and equally in demand among locals if not more than its more illustrious sibling. And so it is for Neero.

Villagers will carry their cashew produce to the local distillery, their own or that belonging to another, to sell the produce for a price. If the cashew distiller will buy cashew nuts they’ll likely offload them too, the price for raw cashew nuts ranging between Rs. 70 – 90 per kilo depending upon the demand for processed cashew nuts in the market. Processed cashew nuts produced by cashew factories sell between Rs. 450/- and Rs. 600/- per kilo subject to market demand.

Manohar Parrikar, after taking office as Goa’s Chief Minister last month, has indicated introducing a minimum support price for Goa’s cashew cultivators, a benefit only enjoyed by areca nut and coconut cultivators. The BJP manifesto prior to its election victory was reported to have promised a support price of Rs. 90/- per kilo of raw cashew nuts.



Watching the middle-aged woman walk with the load on her head, probably eking out sustenance from a few cashew trees in a small plot of land, an income that’s as seasonal as it gets, a minimum support price for cashews would go some minimal way in alleviating finances.

Cashew nuts are currency, a reality that escapes no one in Goa, not even children plotting capers to meet their objectives like the bunch of us ‘Nuts’ did growing up.

Back from school one year the lot of us had financed the purchase of our cricket kit from selling raw cashew nuts at a neighbourhood shop for Rs. 10/- per kilo. If any of our parents had learnt how we’d sourced our cashew nuts, from raiding cashew trees in the countryside, there’d be hell to pay, including a tight slap or two administered to each ‘Nut’ complicit in the childhood caper.

The cricket kit barely lasted beyond two seasons, with the bat we’d purchased second-hand for Rs. 37/- from Tufaan Sports Club, a grouping of local Muslim boys from families with a relative or two working in the Gulf, giving away even sooner, barely two matches into the summer. It splintered along the side quickly enough to stir disappointment and anger amongst us.

At the time of its purchase it hadn’t occurred to us, aged no more than 11-13 years each, that the innocuous tape firmly binding the bottom of the bat was less of a protection for the bat from future blows than from the need to hide the deep crack along its length from past blows.

Much recrimination resulted between us and them. But there’s only so much and only so long 11 year-olds will hold a grudge. Four kilos of cashew nuts went down the drain, not to speak of ‘loss of face’ for having being taken for a ride. Maybe it even served us right, for while I agree in principle with ‘Two wrongs do not make a right’, I’d however make an exception in our case back then.


Soon the woman passed us, walking rhythmically and wiping sweat from her brow periodically.

The road stretched long before her, and us.

Soon we passed her.


Related Link

Read my account of meeting A Feni Consultant In The Jungle.

Coexisting Without Converging

It’s surprising how India’s political history will sometimes play out in the street as unintended coincidences as I found out in Kolkata.

I had little doubt that the freshly painted announcement by the All India Forward Bloc, a Left-wing Socialist party, calling on people to attend its 16th State Conference in 2009 did not intend to announce it with the blessings of the Indian National Congress, nor in its shadow however faint.

However, the juxtaposition of Forward Bloc’s symbol, Leaping Tiger and Hammer and Sickle, with the Hand, the Congress symbol, inadvertently highlighted their historical association.

And the irony of the Hand (Congress Symbol) in the background looking over the Forward Bloc announcement would not have been lost on the politically conscious Bengali, more so considering the reverence with which they hold Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

The All India Forwad Bloc emerged in 1939 after Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, having resigned from the Presidency of the Indian National Congress after a bitter fallout following differences with the leadership, broke away from the Congress and formed the Forward Bloc.

While the presence of the hand-rickshaw puller in the picture, the working class that Forward Bloc sought to represent using the hammer and sickle in its symbol, indicated Forward Bloc’s continuing relevance, its present-day reach however does not quite reflect it, marginalised further with Trinamool sweeping the Left from power last year.

Surely the juxtaposition had to be an oversight, the kind you’d expect from a painter rushing from one job to another, with barely the time to whitewash the wall of all its previous claimants to public attention before painting his new client’s political announcement. In this case he had left the Congress (Hand) alone even if weathered from gracing the wall.



Except that the announcement painted on the wall was across the street from All India Forward Bloc’s Jorasanko Local Committee office in Mukta Ram Babu Street. From above reading boards with local news, its office window looked out acoss the street at the wall opposite.

At the very least, the Forward Bloc sharing the wall with Congress would remind passers-by of its origins and its turmoil within wrought by Sheelbhadra Yagee and Mohan Singh seeking its re-unification with the Congress in 1955 resulting in a split and their expulsion, and the murder in 1971 of its Chairman, Hemanta Kumar Basu, allegedly at the hands of Congress workers.

Given India’s nature and history, it’s possible for coincidences to be mistaken for wilful acts, and for wilful acts to be passed away as coincidences.


Links

All India Forward Bloc Party Conference

Remembering Shigmo On Gudi Padwa

“You should’ve been here at 1:00 O’Clock,” a middle-aged, local man said, probably indicating the time of installation, as I stopped in the temple courtyard to photograph a high ceremonial mast likely constructed from Areca Nut trunk and bamboo and decorated with marigolds, and bananas among other nature offerings, the top surmounted by leaves, similar to the Gudi hoisted on Gudi Padwa.

It rose from a notch in the centre of a raised, square platform where people had made offerings of coconuts to the deity.

Jags and I were returning from a walk along the mudflats and mangroves in Karanjal when I first noticed the high mast erected in the temple courtyard. It was two days after Holi early this month and Shigmotsav celebrations had kicked off across Goa, particularly in the North of the state where traditionally Shigmo (Konkani for the month of Phalguna, the last month in the Hindu calendar) is celebrated from the day of the full moon of Phalgun month to the end of the month that culminates in Gudi Padva, the first day of the Hindu calendar year, that is today.

Only the day before, following Holi celebrations commencing on full moon in the month of Phalgun and lasting a day, I had seen the same sight in the vicinity of a temple in Bhoma as I rode a bus to Panjim. The bus had paused by the temple that sits off the highway, waiting for throngs of people who’d gathered for the installation of a similar ceremonial mast, to make way for the bus. One by one local villagers had come up to the platform from which the mast rose and broke a coconut on the platform as a ritual offering to the deity.

Elsewhere, depending upon the tradition followed at the temples, villagers erect Mango tree trunks or Areca Nut tree trunks though not necessarily restricted to the two. And in the days to follow, given that Shigmo is essentially a festival of music and dance observed largely by Goa’s farming community celebrating the arrival of Spring, villages, and particularly the temples, are transformed by the holding of folk dramas and dances like Khell, Romat, Jagor, Ranmalyem, Talgadi, and Ghodmodni among others.

Villages are not bound by a particular date on which to install the ceremonial mast, each dictated by tradition observed at the temple. Even the commencement of Shigmo celebrations varies across Goa, with South Goa observing it on the beginning of the month of Phalgun and concluding it on Phalgun Punav (Full moon of Phalgun month), while North Goa observes its commencement on Phalgun Punav and concludes it on Padva, today. However, exceptions can be found within each of the two regions. The difference in its observance had to do with the Portuguese banning its observance leading to the colony’s ingenious subjects cleverly disguising its observance along with the Carnival to escape censure and retribution.

“We will keep it until Padwa,” the middle-aged man said when I asked him how long will the ceremonial ‘trunk’ be retained. Today is Gudi Padva, and I believe, with much fondness and piety the ceremonial ‘mast’ will have been lowered. However, the actual Shigmo celebrations involving folk dramas and dances would normally extend only five days from the date of commencement of the Shigmo festival.

The middle-aged man was supervising a few local youth busy putting up a makeshift stage in the corner of the temple courtyard. “Dramas will be staged from tomorrow night,” he said. It’s a scene that repeats across Goa in temples where these celebrations take place. Not all Goan temples celebrate similarly.

“No. Around here you’ll get to see this in Durbhat,” a youth said when I asked him if every temple hosts these celebrations as in dances and dramas and the ceremonial ‘mast’ that he referred to as Shigmyache Holi, a term I felt might not be the original reference. He mentioned two other temples in the vicinity that I cannot remember clearly now.

A sodium vapour lamp cast a gentle glow on the activity below as the men discussed ways to reinforce and shape the makeshift stage where local artistes would stage their plays to villagers crammed in the courtyard. Curious of the atmosphere I made a mental note to ride over to the temple the next day and watch the plays with the villagers. I could not make it to the venue the next day.

However, the rhythmic beating of the drums, that familiar Ghanch-katar-ghanch, ghanch-katar-ghanch had floated on the Spring breeze in the days leading upto Shigmo and in the days since, quivering along quiet roads, stepping across lush green paddy fields, skipping over village ponds, all the while strengthening and waning depending on the breeze carrying the hypnotic beats towards or away as bands of drummers carried their drums from Vaddo to Vaddo, beating the familiar, throbbing beat pulsating with the energy and the promise of Spring, and of life itself.

A day earlier, on our way back through Chorao as we headed for the ferry crossing to Panaji, Philip and I had rounded a turn in the narrow road just before it ran through an open field and happened upon an enthusiastic band of drummers on the roadside hard at their drums.

A few shops and homes with sloping roofs lay on either side of the road, and local men stopped by to talk and offer encouragement. The Sun was descending behind the trees and the evening pulsated to a familiar rhythm from my childhood.

“Will you be participating in the Shigmo parade in Panaji?” I asked one of the drummers as he handed the sticks to a young child before turning to me to answer.

“No, no,” he said, smiling. “For the duration of the Shigmo celebrations, we’ll be moving from waddo to waddo, drumming our way through them.”

In the countryside, Goa resonates to the beat of Spring in Phalgun. Like the season itself, the drums regenerate the landscape, and memories.

And standing on the roadside I imagined children stepping out, as I once did, and dancing to the beats of an ancient people of an ancient land following an age-old tradition.

Ek Prem Kahani, Truck Ki Jubaani

It’s rare for a love story to be boring, least of all those that continue to play out in the heat of the Sun and the dust of the road. And irrespective of the ending, each love story is worth telling for, in its telling and retelling it relives its moment in another’s heart, in another’s eye, in another’s mind.



And everyone has at least one story to tell, including trucks like this one who told her own tale of romance on the back.

TATA Se Chali Main Kunwari,
Bhandup Main Shringar Hua,
Dahisar Main Bani Dulhaniya,
Ketakipada Main Pyar Hua.

(My journey from a TATA factory as an eligible beauty paused at Bhandup so I could be decked up to be a bride before I was married off in Dahisar and swept away to Ketkipada where I fell in love.)

Note: Bhandup and Dahisar are names of Mumbai suburbs, and Ketkipada is a locality in Dahisar (East).

Photographs Of Lilah Wingfield’s Indian Journey To Delhi Durbar, 1911

The elderly, crusty taxi driver in worn whites knew of Nathalal Parikh Marg in Colaba, and waved me to silence with a gesture that betrayed impatience at my attempt to help him figure out the location using directions the young lady from Sakshi Art Gallery had passed on as we made our way through Colaba to the Centenary Exhibition: A Glimpse Of Empire, an exhibition of photographs Lilah Wingfield took of her journey east to India to attend the Coronation Durbar in Delhi of King George V in 1911. The event also marked the formal transfer of the capital of British India from Calcutta to Delhi.

Jessica Douglas-Home has put together photographs her grandmother, Lilah Wingfield, took of her journey through India including accounts from her diaries she maintained of her journey. Lilah Wingfield’s photographs and her account of her journey to and through undivided India is also available in book form and was released by her granddaughter, Jessica Douglas-Home, to coincide with the centenary of the event.

If it wasn’t for the fact the photo exhibition was advertised as The 1911 Durbar through the eyes of Lilah Wingfield I doubt if I’d have been as inclined to make my way to the tree lined street set in the old world charm of stately stone buildings dating back from the Bombay of old.

I was intrigued by the idea of a young British woman all of 23, born and brought up in Ireland and described in the accompanying pamphlet as desperate to get away from an existence that was unbearably claustrophobic, took the opportunity of the King’s Coronation Durbar in Delhi to escape for a few months to India to breathe freedom, an experience that transformed her life.

Such an account promises varying possibilities including wanderlust, adventure, unrequited love, and romance; of the latter Jessica hinted in her interview with HT thus: “The Begum of Bhopal, the only female ruler of the time, became a good friend of my grandmother and invited her to stay with her. Her son, Prince Obaidullah, developed a crush on her. He was quite keen on her and they had a near romance, despite being married.”

To find out more about this and the rest I’d have to read the book that the lady at the gallery counter informed me was sold out. So I made up for the gaps in the visual narratives exhibited in the gallery with my own imagination though it did not take me far.

While the Raj has been sufficiently documented in photographs with respect to the relationship the British Colonial Rulers shared with their subjects, the Indian Princely States, with images rarely varying in their depiction of lives of Kings, Queens, and Princes beholden to the British Rulers for retaining their way of life, there’s little I’ve seen exhibited of viewpoints travellers shared of their impressions of India on their journeys through the sub-continent, little or none beyond the mandatory serving of fakirs, babas, medicants, and snake charmers.



I’d hoped Lilah Wingfield’s photographs would fill one such gap. It does, only to an extent. Still, it’s an important document if for nothing else than for the fact that while photographs from the time will invariably focus on events and occasions in progress as documented by official photographers, typically framing the key moments, it’s left to a meandering traveller, an invitee to the event, arriving as preparations for it reach their climax, to cast their eye about and record moments peripheral to the actual event.


And Lilah Wingfield does offer up several peripheral moments from 1911, centre stage. Among others, photographs depicting tradesmen displaying their wares in the 10th Hussars encampment where Lilah had her tent, the horse Lilah borrowed in the Tented City that came up in advance of the Delhi Durbar to house over 250,000 visitors, the arrival of Ruling Princes and their entourages by train to pay homage to King George V and swear allegiance to their British Rulers with the possible exception of Gaikwad of Baroda, who, Jessica said as she walked the three of us and another visitor through the photographs on display, “stripped off his jewels before paying homage to the King Emperor George V, even turning his back on the Monarch as he made his way back.” A gesture, Jessica explained, designed to indicate “That I’m your equal.”

It created a furore, a scandal.

A photograph on display catches the plainly clad Gaikwad of Baroda in mid-turn as he prepares to turn his back on the seated King Emperor George V before walking back. It’s a moment of defiance, making the viewer linger on for a fraction more, imagining the very moment in the context of the event, the coronation of King George V as the Emperor of India.

I wondered what he must have thought as he walked up to the Royal Pavilion surmounted by a glittering dome. Did he balk at the very last moment considering the inevitable repercussions that would follow his defiance? Did he wish he hadn’t done it as he walked back?

The power of a photograph is not restricted to the moment it frames, instead it lies in the larger frame of the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ it does not capture.

A similar feeling crept up on me as I paused by the photograph showing Lilah in the middle of a street in Chandni Chowk, captioned: Lilah visiting Chandni Chowk for the last time. In the distance she heard the sound of the 101 gun salute from the ridge as the Royal couple departed.

It's a moment that signals the end of her Delhi visit and preparation for her onward journey that would take her to Peshawar and Rawalpindi in the North West Frontier Province, before pointing her in the direction of Lucknow, Benares, Cawnpore, Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, Bhopal, Bangalore, and eventually Colombo, spanning close to four months from the time Lilah arrived in Bombay on 28 November, 1911, snapping up the Bombay Harbour from her cabin porthole with her Kodak, to Feburary 1912.

It must’ve been a moment of anticipation, of trepidation, of excitement. Here was a young woman journeying to a country she’d never been to before but only heard about or read in accounts that must’ve included among other things the inhospitable terrain, the man-eaters, the ‘unbearable’ heat, the alien tongues, ‘strange’ customs to name a few, each contributing to the perception of India as a frontier offering challenges not all of which were easily surmountable let alone hospitable.

To that end, while limited in their representation of the scope of imagery her journeys will have afforded her, considering she traversed terrain breathtaking in their diversity, cultural and otherwise, Lilah Wingfield’s photographs nevertheless acquire a certain poignancy in the context of her willingness to strike out of her own comfort for the unknown of India, for making a choice and exercising it.



It’s in this context that the visitor, having navigated the black and white timeline of her impressions of the Delhi Durbar of 1911, pauses that much longer when brought up face to face with the last one in the series showing the Colombo waterfront with a hotel at the far end among coconut trees leaning out to sea and Lilah Wingfield in a hand-pulled carriage, her head turned for the camera, before catching the S. S. Malwa for England.

A journey to qualify for a lifetime, a lifetime possibly transformed in ways probably not imagined before embarking on the journey. It’s the in-betweens that Lilah did not frame that the images on display nudge the viewer into considering, extrapolating, and reflecting upon.

The exhibition is on at Sakshi Gallery, Tanna House, Opposite YMCA, Colaba, between 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.



Sakshi Gallery is reached barely a few minutes walk from the Regal Cinema circle, past Majestic, and is located adjacent to the Holy Name Church on Nathalal Parekh Road (formerly Wodehouse Road).

The photo exhibition, A Glimpse Of Empire, ends tomorrow, Monday, 19th March, 2012.

Moments Of Quiet With Our Lady Of Glory

The Sunday morning mass is over. The pews have emptied out. Light streams in through coloured glass windows, echoing a bright and sprightly Bombay morning outside as parishioners file quietly to the front of the church to receive Holy Communion from a priest in white robes before turning back from the altar and making for the exit.

On the way out they stop by the Baptismal font and dip their hands in holy water before taking the steps out to the front where they catch up with neighbours and friends in happy banter, waving out to faces familiar from attending Sunday Mass together over the years, revelling in the comfort of fellowship enabled by shared faith, and humanity.



The Priest has followed them to the front-yard and soon becomes busy returning greetings from his parishioners as they stop by to talk to him. There’re smiles all around. In the shade of the towering Gothic church dedicated to Our Lady Of Glory, in the gaze of Jesus, his arms extended, I can feel the warmth about me, floating on voices rising from the Sunday crowd. Soon the grounds will empty and the caretaker will close the doors behind him.



However, a few stay back for a quiet moment with Mother Mary carrying infant Jesus, closing their eyes to say a prayer, make a petition, offer thanks for favours done, or wish for good health for self and loved ones before reaching out with their hands to the Mother, pausing to let the moment linger in a private communication with the almighty benefactor.



A few prayer books rest on pews where some parishioners left them behind. There’s barely a whisper around me. The caretaker looks at me from across the pews. He is old. Wrinkles have just as surely mellowed his face as soulful hymns. Both hard times and good times mellow people, even if differently, one out of compulsion, and the other out of choice.

He’s waiting for me to finish up so he can close the doors. He is patient.

I pick up a prayer book and turn the pages, pausing at Novena Prayers. And, voices that were ringing out only minutes before as the Mass wound down now rise again, in silence, before joining up with solemn voices from memory, from another place and another time long, long, ago.

The weight of time can make memories seem like they belong to another lifetime, even to another person.

My eyes trail each word as they resonate in my ears, voices that silence shapes into faces from memory.

Gracious Father, we thank you for having given us a tender loving Mother to watch over our Parish, to protect and intercede for us. Your son, Jesus has said, “Whenever two of you on earth agree about anything you pray for, it will be done to you by my Father in heaven.”

And so, now as one family through the intercession of Our Lady of Glory and by her precious son, Jesus, we ask you to build our Parish into units of close fellowship, alive and vibrant in faith, where the needs of everyone are taken care of.

Here, I pause for a non-existent chorus to take over, for words muttered under a thousand breaths. Words that shape into personal petitions hurrying to finish before the voice from the front of the church sounds again:

Our Lady of Glory,

And pauses for a rejoinder from the parishioners.

Pray for us.

Before the chorus sounds off thrice with,

Hail Mary.

I make way back along the wall, skirting the empty pews. The caretaker smiles at me before leaning against the door and walking it across.

Mass Timings at Our Lady Of Glory Church

Weekdays: 7:00 am, and 7:00 pm.
Sundays: 6:00 am, 7:00 am (Konkani), and 9:30 am.

NCC Cadets Enroute To NCC Camp At Neral

As the train pulled into the railway station at half past six in the morning today, I was pleasantly surprised to see school students neatly turned out in NCC uniforms, two rows positioned for each bogie, their backpacks in place, caps sporting sprightly red feathers, hands by their side military style, and standing to attention as senior instructors patrolled the platform for signs of the Karjat bound train that’d take them to Neral, the site of their National Cadet Corps (NCC) camp.

They were barely ten years old. Freshly ironed for the occasion, their crisp fatigues that’d do professional soldiers proud only barely managed to hide their childlike enthusiasm but you wouldn’t have imagined it from the enthusiastic YES SIRs that followed each instruction their ‘Sir’, a middle-aged man in checked shirt and regular trousers, issued to them in Marathi, the local language.

Even a ‘So, you’ll have fun for three days’ invited a spirited YES SIR from the young students of Saraswati Vidyalaya, their demeanour barely hiding their excitement about the trip. It soon became apparent that the middle-aged man wouldn’t be accompanying the young NCC cadets when he turned to senior school students carrying rifles slung over shoulders and leading the groups and said ‘Take proper care of them.’

To the back, along the wall, parents come to see them off milled around, watching their wards while keeping an eye out for the train. It was still dark with barely a hint of dawn breaking over the city. A sharp breeze blew in the wake of each train.

Along the way, I had changed my seat to escape the strong, cold wind blowing into the bogie as the train had picked up speed. Half-asleep passengers, mostly men out for work, sat stiffly on wooden seats, their ears covered to keep the cold out. Not many people remember the last time a Mumbai winter had spilled into the second week of February, but no one was complaining. It was a welcome change from the humid coastal climate and the perspiration that accompanies a day out about the city in the summer.

A pair of drums used to accompany march-pasts sat on the platform by the feet of cadets tasked with their responsibility.

The drums reminded me of my time in school when march-pasts would happen to the beating of drums. While I never had the opportunity to enrol as a NCC cadet, for it was restricted to students attending the afternoon shift, whose logic I could never really fathom, I delighted in the sight of crisp uniforms, though different from those I saw today.

Over the loudspeaker the announcer announced the arrival of a Karjat-bound train. In orderly twos and threes the NCC cadets filed into the train in three separate bogies, a far cry from the everyday jostling Mumbai train commuters put up with.

Their parents crowded the windows, wishing them on their way. Just as the train pulled out of the station, an accompanying senior cadet in a white and blue windcheater, a rucksack on his back and a rifle in a cloth bag slung from his shoulder raised his voice and cried out:

Ganapati Bappa

before pausing for the choreographed response from those seeing them off on the platform and the ones inside. Sure enough a chorus returned with:

Morya.

Then he cupped his palm to the face a la Tarzan, lifted his head and cried out even louder:

Shivaji Maharaj Ki

before pausing for the response.

On cue the chorus sounded from the platform and inside the train:


Jai.

With the mandatory invocation to the Maratha King out of the way, quiet returned to the platform as the train picked up speed and soon disappeared into the gathering dawn, carrying a bunch of excited kids learning to behave like disciplined adults. I’d imagine only the uniform kept them from being themselves.

And I stepped out of the station and into the commotion of rickshaws revving their engines while calling out to passengers emerging from the railway station.

I woke up early today, at quarter past three in the morning and had every intention to return to bed later in the day and catch up on sleep if only to do justice to the Sunday morning. But the sight of the energetic lot on the platform has lent a Friday spirit to my Sunday morning.

I believe it’s no different on other Sundays, for only a few weeks ago, alighting from the train in VT on my way for a Sunday morning meandering about the city, I happened upon high school students in Sea Cadet Corps uniforms, Navy Whites, returning from their Sunday drills on their training ship Jawahar based out of Colaba’s Navy Nagar. They were heading back home by train. A few, no doubt hungry from their exertions of the morning, including sailing and other water activities, were tucking into Chaat and Samosas.

The two Sea Cadets I spoke to were in their first year of their training and said they won’t be making their next grade anytime soon. ‘We’re still junior.’ The Sea Cadet Corps (SSC) is a Non Government Voluntary Youth Organisation supported by the Indian Navy. On May 13, 2013, it will complete 75 years of existence in India.

On the other platform, school girls in matching Sea Cadet uniforms awaited their train. Soon enough more Sea Cadets arrived, turning the railway platforms into a sea of white, their distinctive caps and demeanour reminding of the men they’re trying to be.

Many years from now when they’ve settled into professions they chose or those that chose them, they’ll probably look back and remember these Sunday mornings when their day off from school bound them in a camaraderie that connected them to a long and rich heritage of service to the nation, and as a consequence, service to self.

It’s an experience I believe will hold them in good stead.

Related Links

1. National Cadet Corps (NCC), India

2. Sea Cadet Corps (SCC), Jawahar, Mumbai

3. Pictures of SCC Training Ship, Jawahar

4. Sea Cadet Corps, India, Facebook Group

Gateway Photographers By The Taj Mahal Palace

Watching crowds whiling away their evening at the Gateway Of India across the road from the legendary Taj Mahal Palace Hotel facing the Arabian Sea, I’m convinced that not all Mumbai local trains disgorge passengers on their way to work and back, some will send them on their way to Colaba for an evening by the sea, to be charmed by the historic monument and inspired by the survival of the majestic Taj Hotel in face of a relentless terrorist attack launched by Pakistani Islamists on 26/11.

And like a river down the bridge, time too has flown past even if in circles, the radius getting bigger with every circle completed, dampening the ripple the further it curves away from the epicentre but never quite deadening it.

And like a bubble, time grows bigger, and bigger, offering you a transitory view in the momentary cocoon each bubble builds before it breaks, leaving you with a memory of the fleeting moment.

It’s this fleeting moment many visitors to the seafront in Colaba seek to capture with their cameras. Those who cannot afford a camera or haven’t brought one along and wish to frame their day by the Taj and the Gateway will pose for a Gateway Photographer to have their picture taken for a fee.

For a time after the Islamist terrorist attacks on Mumbai the Gateway Photographers were nowhere to be seen. The police had shooed them away, against their wishes. Now they are back, their DSLRs, mostly Nikon, hanging from the neck and waving albums of pictures showing tourists posing by the Taj and the Gateway, pictures of pretty girls smiling into the camera, and beyond.


Every once in while a Gateway Photographer conscious of his looks will seek to make himself more presentable than the stiff breeze blowing in from the sea will allow him, using the camera preview screen for a mirror as he adjusts his hair and wipes his face clean of dust before walking back among milling crowds scouting for visitors looking to have their pictures taken.

He is their medium, the bridge between their moment and its memory.

Suitors Wrestle For The Fair Lady

Murshidabad, 2009.

To The One Who Prevails,
I’ve Promised My Affection,
For, While My Longevity Is A Function Of Age,
In My Desirability, I Seek My Immortality.

The Puppet Seller

Baroda, 2011.

I Hold The Strings
Not So I Can Control The Dancers,
But In The Hope
They’ll Choreograph My Weary Fingers To Life.

Winter Sun Steps Down A Well In Mehrauli

On a freezing cold December morning in Delhi some years ago, two men sought a patch of sunlight along a narrow walkway that runs along each of the five tiers of an old step well dating back from early 1200s, most likely 1230 AD.

Gandhak ki Baoli, as the stepwell located in Mehrauli is known, comprises of a shaft well to provide drinking water, and a main tank the residents once used to clean and wash. Both lay dry when I visited the historic remnant of Delhi’s past, dried largely from neglect and indifference.

While I envied the two men their comforting blanket of warmth, I steered clear of the walkways that got narrower with successive tiers descending to the well. As you descend deeper, down each tier, the approach narrows as if preparing to gather you into an all consuming embrace.

From the uppermost tier the same level as the adjacent street, the steps gradually disappeared from sight before they were swallowed up by an opening at the bottom, dark and mysterious.

In a fanciful moment, the kind frozen feet give wings to, I wondered if stepping into the opening would somehow magically transfer wandering feet back in time by eight centuries and deposit them at the very moment the first digger poised to strike the earth to the plan engineers had laid out for constructing this stepwell.



Leaves from an overhanging tree swept the stones with their shadows as a faint breeze stirred life in the vicinity while the sun warmed them.

We were a couple of hours shy of noon though I couldn’t be sure if sunlight would pierce the drop all the way down at noon. Surely it must be wary of what awaited it at the bottom.

Leaving the two men behind to bask in the sun we climbed the steps back up and reentered the humdrum of the Delhi street. And the winter sprung its embrace once again.

It was the last day of that year, not of the winter though.

Bandra’s American Express Bakery On Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve in Bandra is no time to step into the bakery on Hill Road across the street from the Holy Family Hospital, not far from the intersection with Waroda Road that meanders through the old Anglo-Indian locality of the same name, and find someone to tell you why it’s named as American Express Bakery.

It’s definitely not a good idea to ask after the origin of its name let alone how old it is, not after an undated newspaper piece on the American Express Bakery, titled Some of the finest products in town, and yellowing from passage of time, framed and hanging proudly from the wall, starts off with:

Mr. Ross Carvalho, the owner of American Express Bakery, is unaware of the exact date the bakery [jumbled print from a cut in the paper] be a 100 years old. “It is definitely 65 years old, we have bills dating that far back,” he says.

The black and white photo accompanying the framed newspaper article, Some of the finest products in town, apparently shows the shopfront on Clare Road, Byculla. The one in Bandra we had stepped into on the evening of Christmas Eve last year is one of the three outlets of the American Express Bakery. The other two, the newspaper piece reported, are located in Santa Cruz, and Cumballa Hill. It added, “The establishment at Clare Road is the Head Office and the bakery.”

Since the framed print did not carry a byline, let alone a date, and I’m no expert in dating paper from the degree of yellowing subjected by time, I safely assume that no less than twenty years have elapsed since the piece first appeared in the series titled: Old Curiosity Shoppe . . . No 58.

Twenty years felt just right for the perceptible yellowing of paper. It felt just right to age it by two decades for no other reason than to distinguish it from the changes India began witnessing following its dallying with economic liberalisation, a period that would leave a certain way of life firmly behind, including the character of old that Bombay represented, a character that still survives in Bandra in patches, not in the least in the balconies projecting over the street below where elderly women in floral print skirts step out for air and watch the world go by, hailing familiar neighbourhood faces in Konkani. It was not the moment to dwell on any further, for the shelves along the walls were brimming with cakes and other goodies that typically bring up the end of the year in Bandra.

On a whiteboard, for the benefit of its customers, a roll call of confectionery announced their availability:

Fruit Mince Pies
Date Bars
Christmas Pudding
Gram Sweet (Doce De Grao)
Guava Cheese
Marzipans
Dundee Cake
Ginger Bread Cake
Chocolate Muffins
Cinnamon Roll



There was more in the wooden shelves, in cane baskets labeled, wrapped and lined up in neat rows. A few were empty, either awaiting the arrival of stock or cleaned up by patrons making an early run on the bakery before heading back to their homes to prepare for the evening, and the Midnight Mass when they would make their way to the Mount Mary Church among other churches in Bandra and lend their soul to hyms that would stir the Bandra night, gladdening many a heart within earshot, an uplifting tune in the breeze blowing in from the sea off the road that snakes past the hill along its base.



For last minute Christmas shoppers, a board outside the bakery assured that the bakery would remain open all day on Christmas so long as they didn’t expect the bakery to pack their purchases in plastic bags. In addition to a handwritten notice, a poster in the bakery left little ambiguity in the bakery’s stand on using plastic. It said, rather asked before answering it for the customer.

Want To Help Bandra?

Don’t Ask For Plastic Bags.

And that was that. I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would want to pack their bakery purchases in plastic instead of in a brown paper bag. It’s like drinking Falooda from a beaten steel tumbler when glass beckons. As with brown paper that extends the fragrances of its contents, so does glass heighten the visual appetite for the rainbow coloured Falooda.


Past the Christmas tree blinking with colourful lights and welcoming customers stepping into the bakery, the streets bustled with Christmas shoppers. The winter sun had turned mellow as the evening set in over Bandra. A stocking hung in the front so Santa Claus would not miss it. Either way I doubted if Santa Claus would’ve missed the bakery from the road, for the lights illuminating the shelves announced a variety of confectionary to passersby on their way about town.



Within minutes of our stepping into the small outlet of the American Express Bakery, customers came filing past. From the opening at the back of the bakery the staff came carrying breads, cakes, muffins, and more.



In no time I was window shopping fragrances of freshly baked goodies, including confectionery and snacks and found myself lingering just a wee bit longer by the cane baskets.

If it wasn’t for the consideration of fresh arrivals looking to find their way past the older arrivals I would’ve stayed longer sampling more of the confectionery the shelves advertised.



I need not have worried, for stepping out of the bakery later I noticed a crowd further down the road. On approaching the crowd, A-1 bakery revealed itself. While there was no shop floor to meander about and stop by shelves, A-1 Bakery’s shop front was sufficient invitation if one was prepared to crane one’s neck and reach over heads to place and receive orders.



I cannot remember passing the American Express Bakery’s outlets in Santa Cruz, and Cumballa Hill, for if you’re looking for baked treats in the week heading into Christmas, it’s Bandra you head to. With its decidedly Goan Catholic flavour, and the not inconsiderable Anglo-Indian presence you could be forgiven for thinking that only Bandra’s bakeries do justice to confectionery in the flavours that bring Goa alive.

It’s a perception not without reason. I would readily breeze into a bakery owned by a Carvalho, a Gonsalves, a Rodrigues, a Pinto, a Noronha than walk into one owned by a Kulkarni, a Deshpande, a Jadhav, a Jain and the like even if migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Orissa were to man Noronha's ovens as is very likely. A name is a cultural association; in its longevity is invested a certain integrity by way of being true to its origins, steadfast to its cause; in this case, the recipe. Handed down generations, the feel for culinary heritage shared across generations is expected to make for authenticity. And therein lies its draw, and charm.

It’s inevitable for a city like Bandra, with a culture considerably shaped by and originally identified with the Christian community, given that the Portuguese turned it over to Jesuit priests as early as mid 1500s, to set an expectation among visitors come looking for flavours not readily available elsewhere in Mumbai. Even if they are, it’s likely they’re scattered about. The Roman Catholic churches that dot Bandra strengthen its distinct character.

It obviously matters little now if Bandra’s population shows little or no resemblance to the original mix of Christians of Goan origin, the Anglo-Indians, the Parsis. The impressions and the expectations live on in Bandra’s Bakeries, more so around Christmas time.

Later that evening, we made our way up the hill to the celebrated Mount Mary church and were treated to prayers a group of nuns were practicing for the midnight mass later that night.

In the video below, meander about the Mount Mary Church with me and waft with the mellowing crescendo rolling off the walls and the ceiling, before sliding off paintings depicting the life of Christ, his mission, his travails, and the meaning he sought for the faithful.





Wishing everyone Merry Christmas.