Desicritics Author: Sujatha Bagal

Book Review: Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

Sujatha Bagal — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:25:06 EDT

There's no better way to say it - I'm a sucker for love stories.

Not the kind in which boy meets girl, fireworks explode and the constant excitement is punctuated by frequent bolts of lightning and thunder. Well, not anymore, anyway. I grew out of those, oh, say about fifteen years ago.

The kind of love story that reels me in these days is the one in which the affection is deep, the love is caring and the respect is mutual. You know, the kind that leaves you with that warm, cozy feeling of well-being, comfortable in the knowledge of the myriad, mysterious possibilities of love - long after you've shut the book and consigned it to the bookshelf.

Love Walked In, Marisa de los Santos' debut effort, is just that kind of a story.

It is the story of Cornelia, a thirty-something, five-foot tall storehouse of energy and integrity, who, everybody agrees, is wasting her days managing a coffee house in Philadelphia when she could be doing something worthwhile with her talents. Just what they are (other than a love for and obsession with old Hollywood movies - The Philadelphia Story the prime among them) no one can tell yet.

It is also the story of eleven year old Clare, lost in the wilderness of the problems plaguing the adults around her but holding steadfast with all the discipline and grit she can muster.

Through the machinations of fate and destiny and the stars, Cornelia and Clare meet. Above all other relationships and love connections in the novel, the one that is pivotal to the proceedings is the story of how Clare and Cornelia fall head over heels into adoring affection for each other. Nothing binds Cornelia to Clare - neither familial ties, nor professional ties nor ties of friendship - other than those of love and a fierce interest in her well-being.

As the story progresses, I realized, Cornelia's world is one in which many of us would love to inhabit. To have the friend she has; to have the parents she has; to have the brothers she has; to have the motherly, aunt-type confidant and role model she has; to have the kind of childhood she had; to have the emotional wherewithal to take a broken young child under the wing as she does; and to have the beau (oh, yes!), the love of her life that walks into her world one day.

Cornelia's first person voice - strong and steady for the most part, but doubting as well, of her own ability to carry the burden - guides the reader through this journey. The informality of the language in which Cornelia addresses the reader serves to let him in on Cornelia's innermost workings turning him into a willing participant in the goings on.

Apart from Cornelia's voice, the strongest of the novel's characteristics is the warmth and love cocooning its people, places and events. For a story that puts its characters through various types of wringers - death, divorce, child abandonment, mental illness - that it leaves you happy and content as you turn the last of its 300-odd pages, is quite an achievement.

And you appreciate that achievement even more for the smart, knowledgeable way in which the story is told. Although half the story is told in the voice of Cornelia and the other half from the perspective of eleven year old Clare - who's seen more tragedy and heartache to fill more than one lifetime - de los Santos manages to inhabit both and a panoply of other characters that reside in her book. They are all well-rounded, with just enough of the frailties and failings to give them flesh and blood and make them believable.

Half-way through the story you forget it's a story and you root for the right thing to happen. What more can I say?

Book Review: The Burden of Foreknowledge, Jawahara Saidullah

Sujatha Bagal — Thu, 17 May 2007 00:17:40 EDT

The river whispers maddening things to me in a slow, sinuous rhythm that wraps itself around me.... Her voice burrows within me, flowing inside me. 'Nadee...' she says, in a fluent, gentle cadence, 'there is only one way out of this trap....' Her words rush into each other, colliding and bursting like bubbles in the air before slithering into my ears, filling my mind until they crowd out every other thought, leaving me at her mercy. Others are oblivious to her insidious, hissing, sibilance and go about their business.

Thus reads the initial passages of Chapter Four in The Burden of Foreknowledge. Sensuous writing that transports you from the mundane to a plane where all your senses are on high alert is the hallmark of this fine first novel by Desicritic Jawahara Saidullah.

Over the past few days, I've read this book in a few different settings - at home on the sofa, in bed, in airport lounges and hotel rooms. But each time I pulled my eyes away from the book, it was mildly shocking to come back to my surroundings and realize where I was.

The story is about a young girl we come to know as Nadee and the tragedies that befall her, starting with the loss of her entire family to a flood in the first chapter of the book. From then on, the novel arcs its way, with Nadee, to Kashi (where the raging Ganga dumps her, the sole survivor), Agra and Fathehpur Sikri where Nadee encounters the final twist of her fateful life. All through the book, glimpses of what is about to come flash on the pages as Nadee recounts the visions of the future that come to her, enticing you to read on. Nadee's suffering and her emotionally deadened state are made all the more poignant and stark by the sensory imagery that pervades the novel.

Set in the late 1500s in the time of Emperor Akbar, Burden is chock full of finely etched characters that the author has somehow acquired intimate, thorough knowledge of. Imagining the goings on in a time five hundred years ago is difficult enough, but to imagine them with the kind of detail that is on exhibit throughout the novel is quite something else.

I particularly liked the descriptions of life in the "house of culture", the "house of passion and longing" in Agra and its cast of characters - Nafasat Bai, Amma Jaan, the multitude of servants, the patrons and the rooms in the cavernous house which seem to have lives of their own. Some characters and events are familiar, from the history books of high school, but the novel casts them in a new light, enabling you to see them through Nadee eyes, feelings and individual circumstances. The assured advances of the plot through the familiar terrains of history are a delight.

If you are up for a great story, warmly told, one that transports you to other worlds and constantly leaves you surprised, breathless, feeling that tiny bit off-center and wanting more, then I highly recommend The Burden of Foreknowledge.

The Burden of Foreknowledge
Pages: 178
Price: Rs 295

Restaurant Review: Grasshopper, Bangalore

Sujatha Bagal — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:29:31 EDT

I don't remember a single conversation from all the times I've been to the Grasshopper, but my memories are all of good times spent with good friends enjoying good food in a lovely ambiance.

Grasshopper is housed in a farm on the outskirts of Bangalore off of Bannerghatta Road just past the Meenakshi temple (it's about a 30-minute drive from Jayanagar). The surroundings are beautiful with large, mature trees, some of them mango and sapota (chikoo), and a vegetable garden out in the front. A graveled pathway laid with stones takes you past an industrial looking building on the right and a small pond on the left.

The path leads to a long, wide corridor on your right supported by beams and looking out on to a wide expanse of gravelly ground set with stone benches and more trees.

The corridor is the main seating space for the patrons with the gravelly yard serving as overflow space.

As you can imagine, space is tight and reservations are a must and at least a day before. The restaurant does not cater to walk-in patrons.

The first time we visited Grasshopper we did not know what to expect. One of our friends had heard about it, knew they served salads (after months of Indian food, one thing I positively crave is a salad fix) and that was good enough reason to go check it out.

We called for reservations and the owner, Sonali, asked details about who would eat what - if there were vegetarians in the group, if everyone would eat seafood, whether there were any dietary restrictions and so on. What we found when we went there the next day is the equivalent of a gastronomic oasis of understated continental cuisine in a spice-mad country. The menu is set (eliminating the bother of the menu-perusing and dish-choosing ritual) and the dishes in the seven-course meal are brought out one by one at an unhurried pace.

Since then we've gone back a few times, some times with children, other times not. Children love the space to run around in and to explore the various nooks and crannies on the farm. There are a few beautiful dogs on the farm that become instant friends with the children.

The food is excellent. The combination of the fresh raw materials and the flavors brought together with the minimum of interference in the kitchen is truly a delight to savor. I suddenly realized the last time we were there that the warm breads served right at the beginning to get you started are the only carbohydrates you will get during the entire meal.

The combination of the unhurried service, the quiet surroundings, the uncrowded atmosphere (at the most you can expect one other group to be seated next to you during your entire stay there), the homely feel all combine to relax your senses and let loose. Conversation flows easily and a general feeling of bonhomie envelopes you by the time desert and coffee roll around at the end of about the three or four hours.

All this comes at a price, as you might have guessed. Lunch and dinner are priced at around Rs. 1,500 per person (drinks not included). I understand Grasshopper serves a shorter version during weekdays at lunchtime.

Grasshopper also houses a fashion boutique with designer clothes, sandals and jewellery for sale.

Reservations tel. no.: 98454 52646.

The Upanayanam: A Rite of Passage - For Parents and Child

Sujatha Bagal — Wed, 9 May 2007 02:04:12 EDT

Five plantain leaves lay layered, one on top of the other, on the floor. Four of them, side by side, formed the bottom layer and the fifth lay over them in the center. A silver plate and cup made up the topmost layer. The cook served the food - idlis, chutney, puffed rice, some fried rice fritters, and a sweet dish made of semolina and assorted condiments and side dishes - on the leaves. Intricate rangolis decorated the floor at the edges of the leaves. Two wooden planks against the wall would serve as seats. Perpendicular to these two wooden planks, against another wall, three more planks and three more plantain leaves lay on the floor.

The Mathru Bhojanam

It was hardly seven in the morning, but the priest hurried me and my seven year-old son to the three leaves. The auspicious time for the main part of the ceremony was nearing. Three brahmacharis sat at the other three leaves.

The rest of the congregation - my husband, our parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends - gathered around us and watched me feed my son. Good natured ribbing followed: "You're supposed to be feeding your son, not eating it all up yourself!" "Go easy on the ghee, will ya." "No more stealing from mama's plate, N. This is the last time."

As with many Hindu rituals, especially those involving children, the mathru bhojanam is a poignant affair. It is one of the principal rituals in the upanayanam ceremony and it signifies the last time a son may share food from his mother's plate and the last time a mother may feed her son with her own hands.

In fact, the entire upanayanam ceremony, which is almost as big as a Hindu wedding, is one big poignant set of rituals. Not long ago, this sacred thread investiture ceremony prepared a young Brahmin boy for the study of the vedas and marked his passage from his own home to that of his teacher's.

There is a passage in Jawahara Saidullah's excellent first novel, The Burden of Foreknowledge, that I just finished reading that goes like this,

[My mother] is nervous. Sending a daughter to her husband's house for the first time is serious business. I know this, I have known little else. She has been preparing me for this day since I can remember.... My mother has been teaching me to cook, to sew, to be a farmer's wife.

Until recently, that was the lot of mothers - to prepare children for the next stage in their lives practically from the minute they are born. In the case of girls, it was marriage that took them away from their mothers and fathers and planted them in brand new families, and in the case of boys in Hindu families, it was the upanayanam ceremony.

The vatu

The Sacred Thread

In the course of the ceremony, usually performed right when the boy turns seven, the boy's hair is shaved off, the sacred thread is placed over his shoulder, he is initiated into the ritual of reciting the Gayathri mantram and performing the Sandhyavandanam by his father, he asks for alms (biksha - items that will help him on his journey to his teacher's house) from his family and he's sent off on his way with his little bag of offerings slung on his shoulder.

No matter how purely ritualistic the upanayanam ceremony has now become (young boys don't actually go away to a teacher's house these days and the ceremony itself is now performed minutes before young Hindu men get married just so that they have a thread around their shoulder during the wedding ceremony), it is impossible not to be affected during the rituals. The mathru bojhanam, the biksha ritual and the point at which the son has to worship his father by washing the father's feet are the most difficult to countenance. It was gut wrenching to see him standing there with his bag asking for alms (bikshaan dehi).

Most poignant of all was the grace and equanimity with which N handled the proceedings. A few days before the ceremony the priest walked him through the big day, taking him step by step through all the rituals. He was ready to shave off his hair because the priest said that was the right thing to do (we convinced him otherwise). He woke up at three thirty in the morning because the muhurtham (the auspicious minutes) was only a few hours away, he followed the priest's detailed instructions and recited the mantras meticulously. He patiently bore all the things many different people were doing to him, pulling him in many directions at once.

At the end of it all, he found three kids near his own age among our family and was running around the hall playing tag, screaming at the top of his lungs. Towards the evening we said goodbye to all the guests, headed home and watched a movie.

Hats off to the mothers that came in the generations before mine, but I'm just glad I'm a mother in the 21st century.

Photo Essay: Sakkaré Achchu - The Art of Making Sugar Figurines

Sujatha Bagal — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 03:58:26 EDT

Sakkaré Achchu (in Kannada for "sugar moulds") is the mainstay of many a South Karnataka festival. Celebrations of Sankaranthi and Dussera, and family rituals such as weddings and housewarmings are incomplete without the sugar figurines.

Beautiful to look at, the figurines are used to embellish puja displays, are part of the gifts to the guests and, mostly importantly, simply delicious to eat.

The ingredients are few and the process is painstaking, but pretty straightforward. The first step is to purify the sugar so that there are no impurities and the figurines turn out white instead of a dull shadow of white. The sugar syrup is boiled with curd and stirred constantly to separate impurities from the sugar. After two or three iterations of this, the resulting sugar syrup is simmered on a slow flame in a round-bottomed steel vessel until the syrup develops a thick consistency.

Simmering sugar syrup

The moulds need to be soaked in water and must be damp so that the figurines loosen up easily when they are ready to be removed. Moulds are two wooden slabs with various shaped carved into them, each half a mirror reflection of the other.

A banana-bunch shaped mould

A bird-shaped mould

Just before the sugar syrup reaches the right consistency, moulds are readied by tightly tying together the matching pairs with rubber bands.

Various moulds ready for the syrup

Syrup being poured into the moulds

In a couple of minutes, the moulds are ready to be opened.

Half-open moulds

And this is when you hope and pray that the figurine is weak in some spot and breaks apart so you get to eat the broken one hot off the mould. If you're desperate enough, you try to jinx it by rubbing your index finger the floor, counter-top or your grandma's hand. Trust me (and my gut), it works.

Fresh and still warm figurines. Yummmm

Homemade sugar figurines (with my grandma's and now my aunt's recipe) are the best. The purification process imparts a slightly tangy flavor and balances out the sweetness of the sugar and the constant stirring of the syrup turns out soft figurines that literally melt in your mouth.

No matter how delicious the end result is, the best part of the whole process is the family getting together to make them. Usually one member of the family takes on the onus of making the figurines for the entire family. My grandmother made it for all her daughters and shipped them off to wherever they lived. Now, my aunt, my mother's younger sister's the family sugar goddess. She uses the same moulds that my grandmother did (some of them are losing the sharp outlines and so we have figurines that look like elephant shapes, only sort of).

Yesterday, as we made the figurines for a family function this weekend, much of the talk revolved round my grandmother and how she used to make them and how we used to pester her for the broken pieces (ever the frugal lady, she used to put the broken pieces back in the simmering syrup when we kids weren't looking). I'd asked my aunt to come over to my house to make them so my son could see how they are made. Every Sankaranthi I remember the sakkaré achchus and am glad that my son has some idea of what they are all about.

The Mommy Wars - Mothers of the World, Unite

Sujatha Bagal — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:52:07 EDT

There comes a time in every working mother's life when she has to consider the vexing question of whether she'll return to work once her maternity leave ends or if she will continue to stay home to take care of her child.

Let me say right off the bat that although there are a few fathers who now grapple with this question, the onus of deciding whether to quit work and stay home or continue working and arrange for child care still falls overwhelmingly on the mother.

Aggravatingly called the "Mommy Wars" (no better way to trivialize the issue than to give it an oh! so cute name, right?), the battle lines are well-marked in this debate. On one side of the line of scrimmage are the mothers who can see no way other than to stay home and take care of their children (the Stay at Home Moms or the SAHMs) and on the other side are the mothers who return to work and find alternative childcare arrangements (the Working Mothers).

SAHMs are convinced that Working Mothers do a disservice to their children by leaving their children in daycare while they go to work; they declare that women who want to go back to work after having children should not have children in the first place; Working Mothers look down on SAHMs for not being ambitious enough, for wasting their education and feel they themselves are not depriving their children of anything by going to work - that their children are brought up to be more resilient and socially adept by spending time in daycare. Both sets of mothers co-opt various sociological and psychological studies to argue their position.

Mothers on both sides have their arguments sharpened and at the ready to jab at the slightest hint of a disagreement with their point of view. Not only do they defend their respective decisions to the hilt, but they also have no qualms about declaring that their way is the right way - for everyone.

If you think this post is going one way or the other, no. I'm not going to come down on any one side of the debate. My take on this issue is this - I say, live and let live.

And there are at least three reasons for this.

First, only individuals and the families they belong to know what is best for them. They are the only ones who know their mental make-up and what the circumstances are under which they toil. So how can anyone, particularly strangers, even begin to think they know what is good for the other family? There is no one size fits all solution to this problem.

What do you say to families who need that second income - to care for an ailing parent, to pay for a sibling's education, whatever? Don't have kids? Is having children the domain of only the well-off? Even if a family does not need a second income, then are mothers bad for going back to work? What if a mother feels that she has something of value to contribute to society at large and wants to do it? Is she not allowed to bear a child?

By the same token, is a well-educated woman, thriving in a professional career, not allowed to stay home once she has a child? Why is she accused of wasting her education? Don't children deserve well-educated mothers?

Second, this is an area where quality definitely trumps quantity. A mother who spends all of the 24 hours seven days a week with her children does not automatically make her good, neither are her children guaranteed to be well-adjusted or well-rounded. By the same token, the children of mothers who work are not sad, lonely, ill-adjusted brats.

Third, and this I feel is the most important, whatever arguments mothers advance in support of their positions are defensive and reactionary. Working Mothers are attacked and therefore they go on the defensive about going to work, purportedly neglecting their children and churning out children who will, down the line, turn into aggressive misfits. SAHMs are attacked and therefore go on the defensive about staying home, purportedly wasting a professional education, ditching a job, purportedly stealing seats in professional schools from deserving men (who will not abandon careers and stay home to take care of the children, so the argument goes) and churning out children, who will, down the line, turn into clingy misfits.

Mothers on both sides of the debate make their arguments from a position of weakness, of not being comfortable with their own choices, of feeling guilty about whatever choice they make. These arguments are defensive because mothers are constantly harangued on this issue - by other mothers, by their families, by their employers, by friends who don't have children of their own (and so don't and cannot know or understand even an iota of the agony mothers go through when faced with this choice), by the media that mines this issue for all its worth.

When SAHMs put down Working Mothers or vice versa, it is a sign of the battle and doubt that are raging within their own minds. What should I do? Is what I am doing the right thing? How come she goes to work and still manages to have happy, smiling kids? She must have her priorities all wrong, or else how can she have a child and go off to work? She must like her paycheck more than her children. Her house is so beautiful and well-kept all the time and her children look so healthy and well-adjusted, but look at her, she's so dowdy! She must not have a good education, or else how could she be so happy staying at home? She must be rich, or else how can she afford to stay home (without for a minute countenancing the numerous sacrifices in terms of life style many such families make before or after the child is born in order to be able to afford the mother not working)?

None of this means that Working Mothers who escape the rigors of parenting so they can have extra pocket money to buy the latest Fendi do not exist. Nor does this mean there are no SAHMs who don't have the first clue about running a household let alone parenting. But the vast majority of mothers do not fall into either of these categories. For the most part Working Mothers put in an honest, hard day's work, rush to daycare to pick up their children, pick up grocery on the way, make dinner, help with homework, and try to snatch a few precious moments with their kids before putting them to bed; SAHMs work their butts off running a household, most times on a tight budget, keeping up with their children, trying to figure out imaginative ways to teach their children, and sincerely take pride in being their 24/7 for their children. Believe me, many of the SAHMs too dream about going back to work, to their friends, to the gossip, to the promotions and being thought of as a productive member of society (when, really, what could be better than trying to produce hale, healthy, well-adjusted citizens?). Only they have this desire to devote themselves to their kids in their growing years.

So I say it's time we got comfortable in our own skins. Let's make the choices that work for us and be happy with them. Let us not point fingers at the other mother and say, She's wrong, I'm right; I'm a better mother, she's not. God knows we have enough problems - finding good schools or daycare, dealing with a crabby boss, rising costs, a lackadaisical government, terrible infrastructure - without having to feel like we have to justify our choices to anyone, least of all to people who don't even know us. Let us give the other mother the benefit of the doubt and understand that whatever decisions families make, they must have arrived at it after a lot of thought, guilt-ridden internal debate and hand-wringing, and let us support them whatever they choose to do. Let's not judge.

The last thing either group needs is finger-pointing or blame for their choices.

Love In The Time of Camera

Sujatha Bagal — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:24:19 EDT

My strongest memory of my maternal grandmother is of her making kaai obbattus in her small, dark kitchen at her home on 5th main in Mysore's Saraswathipuram. Ajji was generally very good with her hands. She made all the snacks for all the festivals herself (including Kadubus, chaklis and kodubales).

Her time not spent in the kitchen or her garden was taken up in crafting lovely garlands from strands of cotton and cotton balls, sequins, and foil paper of a myriad colors - gold, red, blue, green, silver. These garlands were in great demand during the Gowri and Ganesha festival. When not in use, Ajii would carefully wrap them and put them away until the next festival came around.

She continued her craft activities when my grandfather retired and they moved to Bangalore to be closer to their children. One day, she received an offer to appear on Doordarshan to demonstrate her skill with the cotton garlands. She was ticked pink and she promptly accepted.

A few days later, a Doordarshan crew descended on their house - complete with cameras, sound equipment, lights, microphones and cables. The program's host, a young girl, smartly dressed in a starched cotton saree, took Ajji aside to prep her, and they both sat down to talk to get comfortable with each other, while the producer busied himself with the lights and camera placement.

It didn't take long before half the neighborhood had found comfortable perches around the living room where the equipment was being set up. Soon it was time to start recording. The producer gave the host some last minute instructions, found a chair to sit in, and the host and Ajji went before the cameras and the lights came on.

The host looked at the producer for her cue. He nodded and she turned to my grandmother. Ajji looked back with a smile on her face and waited for the host to say her first few words, the cameras or the people crowding around not fazing her one bit.

If she was expecting the host to reciprocate her smile, it wasn't coming. The girl was busy freaking out. She opened and closed her mouth a few times but there was no sound. She cleared her throat and tried again, but to no avail. She looked helplessly at the producer.

I don't remember him yelling, "Cut!" but it must have been some equivalent, because the next thing I remember is the producer taking the host out to the driveway to have a quiet chat with her. He looked intently into her face and said some things and she nodded a few times. Then they came back in.

This time around, the voice came out, but it came out all shaky and high-pitched. Ajji, ever the smooth operator, pretended nothing was out of the ordinary and responded to the question. After about 10 minutes of the high-pitched queries delivered in a trembling voice, the producer and the host were back on the driveway. By this time, the host was sweating bullets. Ajji thoughtfully arranged for a glass of water before they returned.

The cameras came back on and the orchestra of the host's problems kept building. Shaky hands made an appearance this time around. Because both the people in front of the camera had to point frequently to what was being shown to the audience, this proved to be rather irksome. The producer continued recording. He probably believed that if they kept going, the host would loosen up and shed her anxiety.

He believed wrongly.

Things went from bad to worse and before long, they were out on the driveway again. We wondered what the problem was. She was not a newbie, she'd hosted a few of these shows before. Was it the people crowding around?

This particular break was a tad longer than the others and Ajji seized the opportunity to stretch her legs. She walked over to us and whispered in a conspiratorial tone, "They are in love."

"What?"

"They are in love. That's why she's nervous."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The camera guy just told me."

Seemed like a weird explanation for the host's affliction to me, but perhaps it was tough to be under the lights and work within 10 feet of the guy everyone knew you were in love with.

The Magic of South Indian Filter Coffee

Sujatha Bagal — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:02:47 EDT

There's something about Indian coffee, and I mean South Indian filter coffee, that is out of this world. Perhaps it's the chicory, perhaps it's the dabara and "tumbler" in which the coffee is traditionally served, perhaps it's the big-bubbled froth (not the smooth kind of the lattes and cappucinos) swaying precariously at the edge of the tumbler, or perhaps it's just intense nostalgia for the way things used to be back in the day.

Growing up, coffee was always consumed in a dabara and tumbler at home. Mugs, cups and saucers came when I was well into my teens and even then we used them only to drink tea. A decade or two ago restaurants also regularly served coffee in dabaras and tumblers, only in the last few years changing over to just the tumblers, which seem to get tinier and tinier by the day.

And of course, dabara coffee is always made in the coffee filter, the mainstay of many a South Indian kitchen.

Coffee Filter

Coffee Filter Parts

Automatic coffee makers were unheard of. French presses are still very rare, and the percolator made a quiet entrance and an equally quiet exit.

These days every home that I go to seems to have an automatic coffee maker, its gurgling, bubbling sounds replacing the "thottu, thottu" sound of the coffee filter as the decoction made its way down from the top compartment to the lower receptacle. And if you go to a restaurant and just ask for coffee (and not specifically ask for South Indian filter coffee), it's more than likely you'll be served the milky, sugary instant variety - either Nescafe or Bru. Ugh!

After years of consuming coffee made in coffee makers sans the chicory, the first order of business when we moved to India and set up a home was to go buy a coffee filter. I bought the biggest size, so big that even my parents laughed.

"Why do you need such a big filter for two people?" they asked.

I didn't have a clue. The filter seemed capable of putting out just enough decoction to fill two of those huge mugs that we had gotten used to drinking coffee in. Of course, that same amount of decoction would be enough for more than five people if they were served in dabaras. I had lost all sense of proportion.

Although I vaguely knew the steps involved, having never actually made coffee in a filter before, I was totally hopeless when it came to figuring out the ratio of water to coffee powder. There are many variables involved, as my dad expounds passionately: the proportion of the coffee powder to chicory in your mix (I steadily made my way up, from 10% to 25% to 35% chicory), how strong the decoction is, what kind of milk you use (whether the ready-to-use kind out of a carton, or Nandini/Heritage/Tirumala milk that needs to be boiled first), how old the decoction is, when the milk was boiled, whether the decoction and milk were boiled together, etc.

After months of trial and coaching by my dad, during which I gave up many times when the end result was not even an approximation of the coffee of my memories, I finally hit upon the right formula - freshly made strong decoction (which must make the "thottu, thottu" sound as it collects, drop by drop, in the receptacle); freshly boiled Nandini/Heritage/Tirumala milk; the two mixed together in the tumbler, i.e. never boiled together; the milk poured into the tumbler from as great a height as you can manage to generate the froth; the tumbler placed in the dabara, and sugar added to taste. The brand of coffee doesn't actually make that big of a difference.

Coffee in a Dabara and Tumbler
The results are excellent, even though I do say so myself. Just the right color, consistency and taste.

P.S. My mom tells me that the dabara set in the photo is nearly 40 years old! It was part of her wedding gift from her parents.

Also, some people have mentioned that the correct term is davara and not dabara. I'll just say that that's what we called it growing up and that's what it is in my family.

On Visiting Mysore Again, Two Decades Later

Sujatha Bagal — Mon, 9 Apr 2007 00:06:07 EDT

Mysore is many things to me. It's the city I associate most with my maternal grandparents, ajji and thatha; it's the city we lived in twice for two years at a time, the first time in elementary school and later in high school and college; it's the city of summer vacations; it's the city of my childhood, in which my aunts and uncles were young, unmarried teenagers or young adults.

My grandmother's house was on a busy main road that intersected 5th main in Saraswathipuram. Buses hurtled down the main artery from a slope to the right of the house and zoomed their way up to the fringes of Saraswathipuram, to Kuvempunagar and beyond. Jataka gaadis assumed a more stately pace, the clip clop of the horses' hooves early in the morning, mixed with a lash of the whip and the clucking sound of the jatakawallah heralding a gaadi full of children being taken to school.

The flour mill a few buildings up the road was busiest in the afternoons, when housewives had a break between lunchtime and preparations for dinner, the high pitch of the motor mingling with the high-speed flapping of the belt that went around the machines. Depending on which of the two mills in the shop was running, we would smell the warm spicy aromas of sambhar or rasam powders, or the toasty smell of rice, roasted wheat or ragi. The aroma of coffee from a shop that sold coffee powder was a permanent fixture, as was the sound from the tailor's sewing machines across the street from the house.

Ajji's garden was her pride. She took great care of the myriad plants and trees in her garden. The sampige tree, well-grown and in full bloom in the summer was a favorite hangout and I would be her flower picker, climbing higher and higher on the tree at her direction, standing at the base of her tree, her pallu filling up with the flowers I dropped from my perch. The scent of the flower and the beautiful golden yellow of their petals are stuff of nostalgic reveries.

The sampige tree was flanked on both sides by two mature coconut trees. My grandparents would watch them carefully, trying to assess the correct time to call the gardener who would climb up the tree and pluck the coconuts and dead branches for them. The garden also had a papaya tree, a curry leaves tree and assorted flowering plants, such as rose and hibiscus and daria, all lovingly tended to first thing in the morning by my grandmother.

Her favorite hangout in the evenings was the Rama Mandira, across the street and off to the side of the house. It was a gathering place for her friends, to listen to hari kathes (I remember one I went to in which the gentleman giving the discourse went on and on about how the planet Shani (Saturn), was in fact, not a bad planet) and Carnatic music concerts, to gossip about goings on among their friends (who got married, who's still available among the younger generation), and to exchange craft ideas and recipes. I was a faithful tagger-along, an able factotum to my busy bee of a grandmother.

When I visited Mysore a couple of months ago on the way to Kabini, the road was busier than ever with way more autorickshaws and two-wheelers than I remembered,

the flour mill and the coffee shop were gone, and, sadly, so was my grandmother's house as it looked in my mind. Someone else lived there, the garden was taken over by a building, and along with it went the sampige tree and the rest of the plants and trees.

The Rama Mandira, on the other hand, remained unchanged. The entire coconut grove as I remembered it was intact, while the temple itself occupied one far end of the plot.

The Rama Mandira

The other thing that remained unchanged that I discovered joyfully, was my school, Christ the King Convent near Ballal Circle (behind Ganesha talkies, which was dilapidated and buried under miles of brush - the result of a family feud I was told). The kho kho field remained exactly the same,

The Kho Kho Field

and on the day I visited, the school band was practicing, just as we did - rat a tat a tat, rat a tat a tat, rat a tat a tat a tat a tat a tat a tat! On a hunch, I walked down to the Staff Room and discovered that my Kannada teacher still taught there! It was a strange experience to see someone who belonged in such familiar surroundings while I was going back there almost a stranger after being away for so long.

She carried my daughter (talk about surreal!), we chatted for a while, reminiscing about my classmates, the fun fair we had (boys were allowed to come in and they did, seizing the only legit opportunity they had to come into an all-girls school and the teachers still talked about the amount of money we collected that year), the other teachers, some of whom had retired and the others had passed away. On our way out, I also met my art and craft teacher and we chatted some more.

School had ended and the teachers and students headed home. I carried my daughter back to the car, rode on the same streets I had walked on and ridden in a bus on all those years ago.

On our way out of the city next day, on a lark, we visited the Mysore Palace,

and that Mysore institution, Dasaprakash, where the prices seem to have frozen on the menu all these years.

Our waiter was an elderly gentleman who waited on us patiently as we tried to figure out what to eat just after eating a full breakfast at our hotel. We settled on a couple of dishes and a round of South Indian filter coffee for all. We were not disappointed.

Spelunking in Virginia - A Mighty Fine Adventure

Sujatha Bagal — Sun, 8 Apr 2007 04:01:00 EDT

This cave was nothing like the caves of my imagination. My idea of a cave was pretty straightforward and straight out of children's books - it had an enormous mouth for an entrance into which once would walk upright, bright at the entrance, becoming darker and darker as one walked farther and farther back into its recesses.

After driving about an hour and a half west of Washington, D.C. to the Virginia/West Virginia border to do some spelunking, we parked the car in a wide expanse of pavement just above an embankment that fell away from the Interstate. We got out, slung our backpacks on our shoulders and gingerly walked down the embankment a few meters. We made a sharp right and S, our guide - who was my college mate and also ran an adventure company - said, "Here we are."

This "cave" we came to was a rather slim, elongated, hole in the wall.

D, another college mate and my adventurer-in-arms for the day, and I looked at each other, "Where?" There was no big mouth, no rounded arch, nothing that looked like it might be the entrance to the cave. "I'll show you how to get it and you follow me, ok?" S plonked his backpack on the ground, removed three miner's lamps, gave one to each of us and strapped his own around his forehead. He slung his backpack back on, walked two steps to the hold, turned to face us and got down on his haunches. He stuck is lower legs into the hole, felt his way around with his feet and slowly lowered himself down with the help of the tiny ledges on the rock wall. Soon his entire body disappeared and all we saw was his face. "Come on in," he called out.

It has seemed like a great idea when I first heard about it. Now I was not so sure. I had all sorts of doubts about being able to get out of there, about snakes crawling in the bowels of the earth, about being able to breathe in there, about even fitting inside the cave. What if it was too small and there was no place to turn. Would I get claustrophobic?

Of course, I kept all of this to myself. Having driven this far, I didn't want to chicken out. I mentally ran through the contents of my backpack just trying to reassure myself that I wouldn't be stuck rotting in a cave where no one would find me (this was the age of no cell phones, to boot) - there were snacks, water, a packet of mint rolls (S had asked us to pack some, we had no idea for what) and a flashlight. Not too reassuring.

But I turned around anyway, getting ready to wiggle myself down the hole. I handed my backpack to S down the hole and inched my way down. It was a tight fit - with my sweatshirt, jeans and tennis shoes bulking up my frame - but finally I was standing on my feet. I took a quick look around. It was spacious to say the least. There was enough headroom, enough space to dance around in even and the cave stretched very far back into the distance and trailed off into darkness.

D made her way down as well and we headed off into the inside of the cave. The floor was damp in places; in others puddles had formed on the floor. As we walked in S pointed to the ceiling silently - bats were hanging upside down, fast asleep. The walls were pockmarked with tiny fossils of fish and other sea life. Two hours west of Washington, D.C. was apparently where the Atlantic Ocean lapped at the shores of America many, many years ago.

It was amazing just how huge the cave was, right underneath an Interstate. I must have driven on that road at least five or six times, on the way to the Shenandoah Mountains, but I would have never guessed that there were these huge caves right underneath. The main cave, where we entered, branched off into separate chambers. S had a specific route in mind and eventually we came to a very narrow slit above our heads. By this time, our clothes were muddied as were our hands and shoes.

There was no way to climb up through the slit other than to wriggle up on our tummies. S went up first as did our backpacks. With the uneven serrations on the wall for toe holds and the ledge about the slit for leverage, I struggled up the narrow opening. As my head came out the other side, I saw that there was nothing but a narrow tunnel. No more standing spaces. We would be on our tummies on damp floor from then on, crawling forward on hands and knees.

Inching forward like a three bogie train, we suddenly came to a small room of sorts with enough space for three of us to comfortably sit but not stand. And here we understood what "pitch black" was. If I thought I had any idea was pitch black was, I was sadly mistaken. Here, in this tiny space deep inside one of the caves of Virginia, I could not see my own hand even if I held it up one centimeter in front of my face. There was absolutely no source of light for this part of the cave.

S asked us to take out our mint rolls and told us to pop one in our mouth and chew. We did, and surprise of surprises, sparks flew out of our mouths and very briefly, we could make out each other's shapes. D and I were mighty tickled.

Our little rest came to an end and we made our way back down the same tunnel and down the narrow opening to the wider part of the cave. There were no museums to see, no fancy buildings, metro systems or monuments, no fountains or sculptures down in that cave. But it was nothing short of amazing and satisfying, just to see a part of nature I had never seen before.

P.S. In India, I hear there's very good spelunking to be had in the caves at Edakkal in Kerala. If you go, do share your experiences.