"The time has come", the Walrus said...

My recent trip to India invoked a flurry of reminiscences. Memories of childhood days, passed idly in my own company, wandering through the ample gardens of my grandmother's home, talking to myself and creating games, visiting the cows or finding abandoned kittens and puppies come flooding easily to my mind. Delightful memories. Though at the time, I didn't see it in quite the same light. I remember the intense sense of loneliness and boredom. Being the youngest in that family was no fun. I listen now to the tales of childhood holidays that my siblings tell. Stories of times spent in the joyous company of cousins, uncles and aunts. Times when gangs of cousins would gather together and get up to no good. Times when the house was filled to bursting with family, laughter and noise...and the many arguments that ensued.

My cousin remembers a time when they all played cricket in the upstairs hall at the ancestral home. Inside. The hall was huge and when the families gathered, this was where the children would congregate to sleep, reacquaint themselves with each other, tell stories, gossip and play. I imagine the excitement. I can see the hall filled with them all, their younger selves. I hear their voices raised in argument, jokes and storytelling in a variety of languages. I hear the giggles and squeals as they delight in each others' company. But they are not my memories. Simply my imaginings of their memories.

My memories are quieter, lonelier. Perhaps even tinged with a little sadness. My memories are of wandering that very same hall on my own. Of the stillness and silence that surrounded me. Of feeling the presence of ghosts and spectres, but not fearing them. My memories are of dusty rooms filled with decaying mounted deer's heads, of oppressive heat in the middle of the day and a silent house as the adults all slept off their lunch. My memories are of sitting in the windowsill of the upstairs room, staring through the ornate wood-barred window and imaging a tale of a princess trapped in her tower. The silence broken only by the call of the postman, the dog barking or the cows lowing. In my memory, there was a permanent heaviness in the pit of my stomach. Nervousness? Loneliness? I don't know. But discomfort certainly. I remember every inch of that garden, of the house, because for me, that was my company. The garden became my magical forest. The place where a thousand adventures befell me. The house was my plaything. Immense and elusive, keeping her secrets well hidden, but tantalising me with the hint of a hidden secret if only I cared to look.

Tamarinds, Alor, Indonesia (Photo credit: GlobalCitizen01)

I remember the exquisite tang of tamarind plucked from the tree, tingling my tastebuds into life. Followed quickly by the sharp slap of fresh green peppercorns, snatched from the vines that entwined the tamarind trees. Saliva fills my mouth as I recall the sourness of the bilimby pulli stolen from the trees on my way to the outside bathroom. Even that bathroom evokes a great sense of joy in me. The time spent waiting in the kitchen with the servant as she boiled the water for my bath. Her remonstrations that I shouldn't touch the pot because I was just a child and I would burn myself. Watching her heft that heavy pot past the well to the bathroom, and then return to the well for cold water for me to mix with the hot to achieve the perfect temperature for my bath. I remember those bucket baths with great affection.

മലയാളം: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I remember also the servants who, with extraordinary patience and kindness, would incorporate me into their daily tasks. Each of them assigning me a job that they would oversee with great gentleness. I remember laying tamarind, chilli and pepper on great white sheets, weighed down in the corners by large stones, out in the bright hot sun to dry. I remember having to shoo the crows who would try their cunning best to steal the drying goods, and claiming a stalk of tamarind or pepper as my reward. I remember learning to light a fire with nothing more than the husk of a coconut and a long metal tube, of nursing those early flickering flames into a healthy fire. Of the smoke that would fill my eyes, nose and lungs. The ring of the servant's laughter as she guided my feeble efforts at fire-lighting.

I spent a long time in my life feeling sad that I had missed the joy of the company of my cousins. I felt somehow cheated of that companionship, that consolidation of our relationships. Now, I choose to see the great gifts I was given by those wonderful people who worked for my family. Their patience, their kindness, their love are what sustained me through many lonely days spent over many years of Christmas holidays. There was so much that I learnt from them. So much about the simple things in life. So much about hard work. And most importantly, so much about generosity of spirit and pure love. For that and for the many joyous days of my childhood, I hold them deeply in my heart with gratitude and thanks.

Food for Thought

This week has been a bad one in terms of the amount of cooking I've done.  Cooking is usually something I am passionate about. It relaxes me, it calms me and it challenges me. I pour energy and love into the food that I make and the act of creating appeals to both my creative and my scientific sides. Cooking is something that engages me intellectually, physically and emotionally. So why has this week been so bad?

My week was thrown out by poor internet connections. Seems ridiculous doesn't it? This week, I realised just how much I treasure my connectedness to the rest of the world. It's my way of staying in touch with current events and with like-minded people. As a result of being so cruelly severed from my happy world by a poorly performing IP, I went into a tailspin of anxiety and my family were left to fend for themselves.

You'd think that would be ok. After all, LomL knows how to cook. He knew how to cook before we were married, has cooked periodically throughout our lives together and used to work in a pizza shop in his misspent youth. LomL, however, does not feel the same passion towards food that I do. He doesn't feel the sensuality of it; the touch, the smell, the textures, the combinations. He just doesn't feel it. So for him, a take-away dinner is the same as something lovingly crafted in the kitchen. Don't get me wrong. He loves my cooking and compliments me on it regularly, but he doesn't get the same joy from creating dishes that I do. So this week, we've had take-away and frozen pizza. I feel guilty and slightly nauseated just writing that!

LomL often jokes that my idea of a quick meal is to make hamburgers from scratch and I wouldn't know a TV dinner or packet meal if someone threw them at my head. Sadly, that's probably true. My inherent perfectionism imbues me with terrible guilt about not providing properly for my family if ever I'm pressed for time and find myself going for the quick option.

I've found that, over time, I've become something of a food-Nazi. Certain burger restaurants (I use the term loosely) are completely avoided by us. Not least of all because I worked there as a teenager and because I was served scrambled eggs with shell still in them...twice...in a row. Pft. I guess the up-side is that I knew they were real eggs and not the powdered stuff. Similarly, we avoid military chicken joints too. Not because we don't love the taste of the food, but because inevitably, every time I eat there, I end up with a terrible stomach upset. Which does make me stop and wonder what precisely is in that chicken to evoke my usually cast-iron stomach into violent paroxysms.

I buy fresh food which has been processed as little as possible. Where available I buy direct from farmer's markets and I choose my butcher because he can source all his meat locally. I don't buy fruit and veg from supermarkets, or meat and fish either. I limit the number of sauces or pre-prepared foods that come into the house and though I don't stop B1 and B2 from eating anything that they like, I do teach them about eating things in moderation. Increasingly, I'm finding there's a strong grass-roots movement that fits beautifully with what we're doing in our family. It brings me great joy when I hear influential people talking about the same things that we practice on a regular basis -  Jamie Oliver in particular.

I believe that food plays an intrinsic part in our functioning, our moods, our energy levels and our capacity to realise our potentials. I truly believe that. I also believe that food should be a pleasure and not just a fuel.

This week, though, it was as much as I could manage to throw something resembling food at my family and return to my mire of depression at the failing of my internet connection.