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Help!
Hello there, can anyone tell me how to add colour to my text on tumblr?
Untouchable. 🙋🏻♀️
Jamadar ji used to come to our home to clean the toilets. He would also sweep the kuccha aangan inside our house, with a pretty big seenkh ki jhhadu.
Ma was liberal for her times, educated, and whenever she could manage, he also got a cup of tea. The tea though was served in a chini ka cup.
Unbeknownst to the ‘really’ elders in the family, he would sometimes help Ma by climbing up to the chotta chhat and bringing something down for her.
When he would ring the back- door bell for his salary, sometimes I would go and give him the money. We never touched hands in that exchange.
I don’t know if he deliberately kept a distance - the money would be sort of dropped into his palm. There would be some conversation too. He would call me bitiya.
I discussed him endlessly, with Ma when I grew up enough to understand the malaise of the caste system. To my parents credit, they never made a big deal of his caste. And that he was an Untouchable. (I will ask Abba about it today when we sit for our tea.)
I do recall though, that someone had once told me it was because he did a lot of ‘dirty work’ that we didn’t ‘touch’ him. If he were to bathe and wear clean clothes, it would be just fine.
In my maternal grandmother’s home, the jamadarin was a stunner. She was called Rani ji, and as I grew up, the irony didn’t escape me. A Rani is a Queen. Do you know any queen who picks up the waste matter of hundreds of people? 🤨
She would come and shout from the nallah near our house, resplendent in pink, her silver jewellery in place. “Mata jiiii, paani dal dijiye!”
I never saw or heard of anyone misbehave with her in our home. She too would get tea and something to eat.
Despite this, there was a distance kept between them and us. I don’t recall any of my elders asking us to stay away. But we just did and never played with them like we would with maali baba. Perhaps they too kept the distance, not knowing any better. There were very orthodox people in my family, who would probably take a bath at the slightest encounter with jamadar ji. But those people lived in our ancestral homes.
My maternal grandfather fought for the rights of human scavengers. I have written blogs about how he and his band of boys spent night after night cleaning the town of faecal waste when the cleaners were on strike. They would bathe with mountains of carbolic soap and yet the stench wouldn’t leave them.
And I have on several occasions grit my teeth and stepped into a clogged sewer in my marital home to clean it out. Nana sb could do it, why couldn’t I? There was no shame in it, surely.
No one else would and the entire angry rant was about how the sweeper community had grown such wings!
It was either clean up the mess or watch the sewer gurgle ominously threatening to spill out all over the courtyard. I would clean up and curse the architect who made such a mess with building the house. 🤷🏻♀️ I also hoped I was setting an example for my children.
These memories keep rearing their heads. And I see how life comes a full circle.
Now we will flinch back and not just a few inches when we will encounter someone, even a friend or a relative who is dressed to the nines.
You see, these days, everyone is an Untouchable .
Oh the irony of it all.
Ajmer and Sugarcane juice.
The best part about Ajmer, well almost the best part was this-
Nana sb would have the local sugarcane juice walla, shampoo his machine, wash it, then wash it with potassium permagnate solution and again with water.
Then he would ask the fellow to squeeze out three tall glasses of juice for us.
I would wait eagerly, almost tasting the delicious juice even before I got my glass. It would be spiked with black salt and a squeeze of lemon if you liked.
The wait was well worth it, we never got sugarcane juice in our home- Abba wouldn’t even consider it.
He had after all shown us how unsuspecting, succulent flies would get sucked between the turning barrels of the machine, along with the sugarcane.
The poor things would be simply sitting around, sunning themselves on the sugarcane and occasionally dipping into its sweet goodness. 🤷🏻♀️
In the blink of an eye, they would go Pichhhhhhh and get mixed seamlessly in the swirling juice that fell into the container.
“No, no, never. This is why you can’t have sugarcane juice. It is dirtyyyy,” Abba would say in his typical accent.
And Abba wasn’t Nana sb. He wouldn’t even think of getting the man to clean his machine!
So many summers and so many glasses of ganne ka ras.
The other day, I went to a fancy food store in a fancier mall. Guess what I saw?
Bottled sugarcane juice!
Of course I bought some- but nothing like the ganne ka ras in Ajmer.
Sabka Shahi Tukda.
(Yum!)
“In 1965 or so, Mushtaq Hotel located in a lane near Ghantaghar, in Allahabad, served the best kebabs and shahi tukda. I used to eat there a lot. The shahi tukda was served cold and there was nothing like it. The lane served the best Muslim delicacies and we would die to go and eat there.”
Thus spoke a guest we were hosting for dinner at a premium hotel. He poked at the shahi tukda on his plate, a bit dissatisfied at the presentation. It was quite clear that the dessert served at the five star hotel was not up to the mark.
I have always wondered at how this simple and delicious dish came to birth.
It is merely slices of white bread, cut into triangles, deep fried in ghee till crisp, dipped in sugar syrup (chashni) and topped with either malai like in Mushtaq’s Hotel or with rabdi. Delicious!
I have myself been known to fry small squares of bread and dunk them in left over gulab jamun chashni. Makes for the best quick fix sweet.
But who thought up the shahi tukda and who named it so royally?
After all, it is Christian bread, fried and dipped in cheeni by an innovative Muslim cook and relished by Hindus and Sikhs and Isaais alike. What a brilliant recipe. Truly.
I suggest we all eat shahi tukda and feed it to people too. Because such is the richness of our land and culture.
rate me I could not help but think of this story today. Haar Ki Jeet by Sudershan. Look at us. We won't give anyone a lift, lest we...
Stories of the times that were...
Summer snow. Things I see. #Roomwithaview
It doesn’t matter when you were born-making intelligent choices is a bright thing to do!
We all make choices in life! What sort do you make?
We all carry our burdens. No one is spared! But what do we do with them?
We all carry our own burdens. But what do we do with them is the question? 🤨
Are You A Crib?
Are you a perennial crib? Is cribbing your drug?
Long years ago, I was stuck in a groove- one that was uncomfortable to say the least. When I got down to cribbing about it, I spoke a lot to my closed circle of family and perhaps a friend or two.
I will never forget a conversation I had with my youngest sister, who was perhaps exhausted by my once-again-rant.
She said to me, "Di, do something about it if it bothers you so much. Else don't complain."
Two things happened that day.
One, I possibly felt afraid that the importance of my rant and the gravity of what I was saying would peter out and no one would take me seriously ever again.
And two, complaining won't do anything to resolve the problem and only I, could take action. No one would do it for me.
I would take action only if I sincerely felt the angst, I had so often begin to express.
Else, I had joined the ranks of those who go on and on about their lives and be possibly viewed as frivolous. We all know people who approach us to talk and we groan , "Oh God, not again."
Such people complain, feel better for sometime and then go right back to complaining again- because the problem doesn't go away. It can be a dangerous addiction- much like alcohol or drugs.
We must all stop to consider- what sort of people are we? Non stop, boring cribs? The sort of people who sooner than later, lose all respect.
Or are we the sort who can take action?
Do we gather all our personal resources of courage and conviction and restore our dignity and respect? Respect for our own selves and how others look at us?
This can apply to several things- Work, Marriages, Love, Family, Weight loss too!
It takes courage and honesty to act. And to restore. Only then can the healing begin. We owe it to ourselves.
Know your future with Tarot card reading by tarot reader Ruchira Mittal. Tarot with Ruchira is the best resource of exploring your stars.
My tarot readings for the week! Enjoy ❤️
Chose the morning to post this, so the night does not overwhelm.#night #treesatnight #darkness https://www.instagram.com/p/BwgOQ5CAy5W/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1a2nq0tmneyau
When words die out and fade away...what will then make you stay?
When communication breaks down and words of love fade away, much like colour fades in the harsh sun...what is left?
Time.
Abbaspeak is about conversations with my father. He is tongue n’ cheek, full of wisdom and adorable.