Life is easy kya karein

It was my youngest niece's birthday. The celebratory lunch was at a restaurant in Powai. I have always had a problem going to this far flung suburb of Mumbai. I have traveled there when I was working and the first of the offices were moving to Powai. We, in hotel sales, full of our uppity attitude, were scandalised to the core of our crepe sarees and block heels. Powai was where IIT and Powai lake was. This was our knowledge of Powai. Hiranandani building flats there never mattered to someone living in a hostel. I never ever dreamt of buying my own house. A house, a foreign holiday or an SUV or a high end watch were never in my purview of things.  I do not think the word SUV was prevalent in those days. I only knew Jeep and Gypsy. Jeep was a police vehicle for me. Gypsy was made by Maruti, the coolest automobile car manufacturer, during my teens. A Gypsy ride was 'the' thing to happen in life. The foreign cars which people owned were bought from some crooked agents or sec...

We are seeing the new generation being so tech savvy. They know everything to do with gadgets and are so good at adapting to newer versions of gadgets and apps. I have that kind of adaptability to kitchens. I can cook comfortably in any kitchen. It has to do with me visiting relatives as a child with my Dadi, Grandmother. When we visited people, it was natural to help them in the kitchen or in chopping vegetables or folding clothes or cleaning wheat and rice. Yes, we had unpolished grains which were not branded as 'organic' and we had to remove little mud and small stones from the grains. First the lady of the house used a tray called ' Soop' pronounced as 'soup', to clean the grains. Around half kilograms was taken in the 'soop' and the grain was thrown up in the air and collected back in the soop. This helped in removing the dirt from the grains. The dirt fell back from the air in the front portion of the 'soop' and the grains came back. Wome...

In Jharia, all our rooms had ventilators. The way the houses had doors and windows, similarly it had small square openings high up in the walls, closer to the ceiling. The ventilators provided air in the room even if the doors and windows were closed. The ventilators were like a little box window with a pattern which was a part of the wall. The pattern were not checks or stripes but usually floral or paisley. Every house had a different pattern depending on the mason who made it. The ventilators on the outer walls of the house, had birds making nests there. During winters sometimes people covered the pattern by stuffing old newspapers in it, to prevent the cold draft from coming in the room. Our Jharia house had ventilators in the inside facing walls of the house too. Usually the ventilator was made above the window or the door but in some cases, it was on the opposite walls to allow cross circulation of air. The ceilings were much higher in the old bungalows and houses. Some of our ...