Category: Article

Mornings arrive inside the lanes and bylanes of Kolkata with a lazy, almost lethargy induced gait, winding it’s way through the twists and turns, knocking on one door standing hand in hand with the cleaning maid, flying into another house sitting atop the newspaper aimed to perfection  by the newspaper vendor and hopping with the sparrows and crows as they move about looking for scraps of food on the kitchen window sills and verandahs. The influx of people over the years into these lanes and bylanes have resulted in filling up of vacant spaces. Today there are houses standing with their backs to each other and literally at arm’s length from each other. Some of the houses are new and they stand out from the older ones, their fresh coat of paint gleaming the morning light as if sticking their tongue out at the peeled, weather beaten walls of the older houses. Trees have been cut down to make way for the new dwellings, the green grassy patches and the haphazardly growing wild shrubs have given way to the monotonous black of bitumen paving the lanes and the artificial garish colours on the concrete walls.

Amidst this growing jungle of concrete, the stray dogs and cats try their best to adjust and survive. The lanes and bylanes are their playgrounds, their dwelling abode, bereft as they are from the grassy patches and tree enclosed plots. Out in the open and amidst the concrete jungle, it’s a tough to eke out a survival, fighting against the weather while trying to scourge for food. They have no options but to depend on the residents, to try and co-exist with the humans, their survival instinct having taught them to do so for past centuries.

Each new day brings with it fresh pangs of hunger. Whatever pain was endured yesterday is forgotten as each stray rises up, stretching their limbs and then getting ready for a jog along the winding lanes with their noses millimetres apart from the ground, trying to smell out any morsel of food that may have been left accidentally by the careless humans on the ground.

Mornings also bring with it the garbage man. With a cap on his head, possibly to beat the glare of the sun and pushing a hand cart ahead of him, he moves from door to door reminding residents of his existence by blowing on the whistle that has been given to him by the municipal corporation. One shrill blast of the whistle and out come the people from their flats and houses, holding plastic packets in which they have accumulated all the refuse generated by them during the previous day. The stench from the left over food and the blast from the whistle are music to the strays of the locality and out they come in droves from wherever they had been lurking or resting, like iron filings to a magnet.

Then follows a cavalcade just like the one that must have occurred when the pied piper played on his flute. The garbage man in front pushing his iron cart, with the iron wheels creating an occasional sharp pitched  clanging sound as their rolling is rudely jolted by the potholes, while the stray dogs following at a trotting pace, some behind while some beside him. The cavalcade winds through the lanes as the residents come out in response to his cries for dumping their garbage into his cart. As the cart fills up, the stench changes from mild to intense till it jumps out of the cart to displace the neighbouring air and begins to pervade in the space instead. This brings in more strays while exciting the existing ones to the point of impatience and they resort to short intermittent barks and whines in a bid to attract the garbage man’s attention. The garbage man is however unimpressed and he addresses the band of strays lovingly in a bid to placate them. The end of the lane is now in sight and the cart is almost full. It is now time!

The garbage man parks his cart by the side of the lane and takes position. Amidst the whining and excited barks of the strays which surround him, he placates all of them with his soothing yet firm voice asking them to maintain silence. From his pocket he extracts two plastic packets which he then proceeds to wear on his hands. Having taken care to en-sheathe his hands, he then dips into the pile of garbage and begins to search for items of food! From heaps of garbage that he has collected from the houses in the locality, he separates scraps of food and then begins to feed the hungry strays. Ignoring the stench of the garbage, he stoops low, searching for that piece of bone which is the favourite of his “Lalu”. Having found the piece, he beckons Lalu with a nod of his head and lets him pick the bone from his hands while the other strays watch. It is “Neku’s” turn now to get a piece of stale bread and he jumps up to receive it from his hands. A piece of roti is discovered hiding under piles of broken saucers. The garbage man fishes it out and thrashes is on the sides of the cart to ensure there is no broken bits of porcelain sticking to the roti. Having ensured that, he proceeds to break it into two and feeds it to “kalu” and “Buri”-the mother daughter duo who wait patiently albeit with drooling mouths.

I watch this spectacle unfolding before my eyes every morning. There is something so beautiful in this relationship that it brings tears into my eyes. In a world that is turning insensitive by the hour, such acts of compassion evokes a sense of optimism and hope. As long as people like this garbage man exist, the world would remain in a state of balance and humanity will not run the risk of being swamped by insensitivity.

There he was, The Great Lord of Tirumala/Tirupati standing at the doorway of a room, lit dimly by light from the burning lamps. He stands, beholding all through his sandal paste ensconsed eyes and through the sheer curtain of the haze created by the smoke from the burning camphor and the lamps; a hand raised in a gesture of reassuring ashirvaad to every one of the thousands who throng to have a glimpse of him every day of each year. Such is the aura that mind automatically submits and commands the body to bend in a gesture of reverence, the eyes to bring forth those tears of emotion and the voice to lend a note to the chanting thousands- “Govinda! Govindaa!!”
This sublime, emotion laced Darshan lasts only a couple of seconds before the devotees are unceremoniously pushed forward by the hundreds of security personnel. The spell breaks, the nascent webs of maya are swept away and reality, in the form of a surging multitude of humanity, grips from all direction. Before you realize the surging crowd has pushed you out of the temple, into the open courtyard outside. You are free from the jostling, pushing crowd of followers, to go and live out your own destiny once again.
The 300 rupees of paid Darshan took two and half hours approximately. Some said we were lucky to have had the opportunity to do Darshan in such a short time.
A short waiting time vis a vis a fleeting glimpse of the Lord; even Gods demand their share of compromises!

On my way back from London in 2007, I brought back a piece of England with me!

 

No, it is not the jewels that adorns the crown and the sceptre of the Queen, neither is it a piece of Chicken curry that has become the national dish of England. It is associated with a beverage that is just opposite to beer, in terms of its beneficial value and the style of its usage. Yes, It is a tea strainer that I bought from Greenwich and carried it back with me as a proud possession and as a reminder of one of the many good things that England stand for!

 

Tea, or the English cuppa, made its way into England rather late and it was not until the Dutch and the Portugese traders had started trading in this commodity than the English East India Company decided to get into this trade.

 

The English society has always placed great importance to tea as a beverage. The English gentleman’s game of cricket has kept an allowance for a special break in the afternoon when the tired players can rejuvenate their spirits and their sportsman spirits with a cup of tea. One also fins mention in many stories about how the English women of the upper echelons of the society in colonial India used to spend much of their afternoon playing host to tea parties on the lawns of their sprawling bungalows. Indeed tea parties have probably been made most famous by Lewis Carol in the book Alice in Wonderland.

 

I read with interest an article on the website of British UK Tea Council that proclaims tea as the cause for spurring of nationalistic feelings in America and ultimately leading to the start of the American war of Independence. The article was certainly referring to the Boston Tea party, an important event in the history of USA and which helped place tea in the books of history.

 

It was therefore with great interest that I visited the museum named after the famous tea clipper Cutty Sark. Prior to the visit I was not aware of this vessel that had been anchored in the dry docks of Greenwich and which is the only clipper to have weathered all storms since 1800. Greenwich, for a common visitor like me, meant the royal observatory and the prime meridian and I had no inkling to the fact that it was home to a part of history associated with the popular beverage in Britain. Having seen the Royal observatory and getting ourselves photographed as standing on the prime meridian of the world, we roamed through the streets of this heritage village and reached the river front. Immediately our sight was attracted by a large area that had been fenced and covered with posters all around proclaiming that restoration work was in progress. It was then that we chanced upon a door that led the way inside, to the make-shift museum that opened our eyes to the history of Cutty Sark and the importance that Britain is placing on restoring this piece of history.

 

Cutty Sark is a tea Clipper and the only such vessel to survive even today. The vessel is a proof of the importance of tea in the cultural life of Great Britain. Cutty Sark was designed and built for John “Jock” Willis who came to be known as “White hat” Willis because he always wore a white top hat. He nurtured an ambition that Cutty Sark should become the fastest ship to be the first to bring home the bounty of tea chests from China to England. In those days the race top bring in the season’s first tea from China to Britain was taken up by the clipper vessels as they were built to be the fastest vessels to sail on the seas. It is believed that White hat Willis named the ship after a Scottish legend that was later turned into a story by Robert Burns. The clippers eventually lost out when the steam ships were built and Cutty Sark was brought back to its present resting place in 1954.

 

While we couldn’t see the ship itself, as the same had been badly damaged in a fire in May 2007, the tour of the museum provided me with a great deal of knowledge about Cutty Sark. The museum has lots of items on display that is related to either the clipper or to tea. It was while looking among the objects of display that I noticed this lovely little piece that was for sale!

 

The object was a simple tea strainer but one that was so wonderfully designed that it immediately evoked my interest. Straining the tea leaves is an important task and the success of a strainer can make or mar the cheerful spirit that is associated with the cup of tea. If one carefully observes the different kinds of strainers that one gets to see in India, it also tells a story of its own, about the taste of the person who would ultimately drink the tea and about the type of tea leaves that the person prefers. The many roadside tea shops that one comes across all over India use a piece of cloth as a strainer. These road-side tea shops cater to the common ‘junta’ on the streets of India; people who do not time to mull over their cup of tea. Tea, for them, is often a form of “pick-me-up” a sort of brew that is meant to rejuvenate them after a hard day’s activity or to make the ‘babu’ keep from falling asleep over the files in the office, after his lunch. Therefore the tea vendor usually uses the tea dust or crushed tea leaves that is meant to provide a strong liquor and not so much of aroma or taste. To strain such a kind of tea, one has to use a cloth filter because the holes need to be miniscule in order to prevent the dust from passing into the cup along with the liquor. At the other end of the spectrum is the silver tea strainer which has a beautifully designed border and a short handle that one uses to hold it while the tea is poured on it from a pot. These strainers have bigger holes because their job is to arrest the tea leaves, known as pekoe in commercial world of tea. The pekoe variety has full tea leaves that are curled and twisted while processing but also ensuring that the leaves do not break during processing. Thus the strainer’s job is easier as it does not have to stop the small tea dust from flowing into the cup and therefore the holes can be bigger and the strainer designed in an ornate fashion. The strainer has lost much of its significance today ever since tea bags were invented and the task of dipping to the desired level of strength and colour was left to the consumer rather than the maker of tea.

 

This strainer that I picked up from the Cutty Sark museum is shaped like a globe split in two halves and made with fine wire gauze, the kind that is used to make tea strainers. Around the equator of this globe is the rim which holds the gauze in its place. The two parts of the globe are joined at the rim with a hinge that facilitates the two parts to be opened in order to fill it up with tea leaves. Having filled the globe with tea leaves, it can snapped shut and then dipped inside a cup or a pot of boiling water. To hold the globe suspended into the pot/cup of water there is long chain attached to end of the globe. The other end of the chain has a cute little piece of tea cup, made of china clay and decorated with brightly painted designs.

 

It is a very handy piece of tea-strainer and it has set me free in a certain way. I dont have to depend on anyone now to get me a cup of tea. Anytime, I feel like, I can always fill the strainer with tea-leaves of my favourite flavour and then dip-dip-dip; into the mug of warm water (the micro-wave has made the life so much easier by boiling water instantly)! Also there’s no hassle of having to stock expensive, branded tea bags. The strainer allows me to taste the various inexpensive-yet-traditional flavours of Darjeeling tea that my local grocery store stocks. I have fallen in love with this piece of purchase from the land that loves its cup of tea. It will, am sure, keep the memories of Greenwich and London fresh in my mind, for a long time.

You sit on the mantelpiece all day, tongue lolling and watch the world go by. We go on, running around, our daily schedule keeping us busy and forcing our thoughts and attention away, away from you. How do you keep so still, I sometimes wonder! You, who used to show your irritation by constant barking and jumping at not being given scraps of our food, you who used to bring the house down by your barks at the slightest sound of a gas cylinder being rolled or pulled against the floor, you who used to jump all over us when we returned back home, you, who never wanted to be left out of any activity that took place in the house! Today, you have become so quiet! I don’t like this silence. I had got so used to your interference in my life. Ever since I bought you home, as a little pup who fitted in the crook of my arm, you have always made your presence felt in this house!
This silence of yours, this sitting on the mantelpiece, framed in a picture frame, is so stifling. It makes me want to cry out in frustration sometimes. Makes me want to beg you to – bark at me, jump on me at least one more time!
Pleeaassseee….