COMMON MAN'S FAST FOOD

Fast food is that type of eatable that can be available for eating and served quickly  and is often taken away to be eaten anywhere, any time. 

In olden days  there was at least one  and sometimes many makeshift shop selling some kind of Indian fast food in every town. The hut had an earthen oven and was called bhadbhooja (भड़भुजा) shop. The eatbles were dry roasted and puffed grains such as roasted gram (chana), roasted fluffed rice and corn and some other such items. In our home my mother used to stir fry in ghee lots of dry poha rice along with raw moongfali (peanut), add salt and pepper and fill it in a container with a tight lid. It was always available to us children whenever we felt hungry which was very often. If this was  not available, there was always a container having several left over chapati which we ate with ghee and sugar or with mango achaar or stuffed  red chilly achaar. There were sometimes deep fried (in pure ghee) nanakpara or shakarpala (wheat flour fried cookies, salted or sweet). All these items were clean, heathy fast food for children and active young adults.

There is the sea change in what we used to eat in childhood and what the present generation of children eat. We have now quick cooking Maggi noodles, variety of salted and sweet biscuits, fried potato containing low grade high cholesterol oils, preservative , antifungal agents, flavouring agents, colour, artificial sweetners and more. When children keep eating them everyday they develop toxins in body which have a very injurious effect on health. 

Children in their school days are made to memorise for their examination how babur came to India, how Sher Shah Suri defeated Humayun, how British subjugated moghuls, what poems  Shelly and keats and others including  Indian poets wrote and what was the deeper meaning of their poems. They are never taught how to keep healthy by choosing correct food, what are the dangers of eating the present day fast food, why commercial drinks are injurious to health and such other things which can help them remain healthy in later life.

The British curriculum for mass producing clerks for the government machinery continues in our education system.

It is time we educate early in life our children on how to keep their bodies healthy, why to choose healthy food and other such subjects which are useful to them in life instead of Shelly keats and Shakespeare. Such stuff can wait till they choose it at their graduation level. 

***

PEARLS OF WISDOM

Inspite of so much wisdom from great philosophers from all over the world over thousands of years the world is full of hatred and greed. Representatives of God set their rules and rule the people. The need of the time is sanity. sanity

Mira Bai

MIRA BAI

Meera Bai was the most famous female Hindu spiritual figure. Her compositions are still popular throughout
India ("mero ♡ to ♡ gridhar ♡ gopal ♡ doosaro ♡ na ♡ koi"). Her poems follow the Bhakti tradition and she was devoted to love of Bhagwan Sri Krishna

" Folklore says that her
love for Krishna was
epitomized by her final
disappearance in the temple of Krishna in Dwarka. She is believed to have entered the sanctum of the temple in a state of singing ecstasy after which the sanctum doors are believed to have closed on their own and when later opened, the sari of Mirabai was seen enwrapped around the idol of Lord Krishna symbolizing the culmination of her union with her Lord."  (wikipedia)

Durga Puja

प्रथमं शैलपुत्री च द्वितीयं ब्रह्मचारिणी । तृतीयं चन्द्रघण्टेति कूष्माण्डेति चतुर्थकम् ॥ 3 ॥  पञ्चमं स्कन्दमातेति षष्ठं कात्यायनीति च । सप्तमं कालरात्रीति महागौरीति चाष्टमम् ॥ 4 ॥  नवमं सिद्धिदात्री च नवदुर्गाः प्रकीर्तिताः । उक्तान्येतानि नामानि ब्रह्मणैव महात्मना ॥ 5 ॥

In navratri Durga pooja pandals have come up all over india. This is a view of a pandal in Chittaranjan park New Delhi on 16th october 2018.

ADDICTION PROBLEM

G+is shutting down. With mass scale security leaks others may soon follow. What will the addicts do ?

OF DOSA BHATURE AND RAS MALAI

Of Dosa Bhature and Ras malai

There was a restaurent in chennai where they served a three feet long dosa in late 1970s. I think It was somewhere near the university area. But the dosa was paper thin and I did not quite enjoy it. I preferred that thicker, smaller, tastier real dosa that was served to me in a small restaurent just outside Madras  central railway station .

In Nagpur there was a restaurant next to Liberty Cinema.This restaurent in late sixties served the best tea in Nagpur and delicious south indian snacks. A lovable cheerful silver haired Nayyar was the owner. Old Nagpur people will recall how crowded this restaurent was !

https://joshignj.blogspot.com/2016/11/nayyar-restaurant.html?m=1)

During the  1970s the best Chhole bhature in Lucknow were served by a tiny roadside kiosk at Sri Ram Towers in Ashok Marg. There was no seating arrangement there and yet the place was crowded all through the day. So many people carried his bhatura packets to their offices for lunch time indulgence ! I even carried them home quite often.

Ras malai is  a delicious sweet dish and the L.M.B. restaurent in Jaipur, once upon a time, was  famous for its Ras Malai . They served very special Ras malai to me in early eighties. But  the most delicious Ras malai enjoyed by me were at a small restaurent at Chetak circle in Udaipur. Heavenly taste !

https://joshignj.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-sweet-tooth.html?m=1

I find that an expensive restaurent does not PER SE guarantee good food. And sometimes the tip-oriented waiter has mischief up his sleeves .  Here is my personal experience :

https://joshignj.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-third-reason.html?m=1

Parting Advice : Enjoy your snacks . Never offend a waiter !

***

SOUNDS WE NO LONGER HEAR

Sounds we no longer hear !

Once upon a time there were Table Clocks. Once every day you had to wind them up to enable them to keep running. In the pin drop silence at mid night one could hear the clock running - Tick .Tock .Tick. Tock. . .. This sound has passed into history.

The  old rotary dial phones required you to connect  a number by rotataing the dial and releasing it a number of times. This produced a typical CLICK... WHRRR ...... sound. We have silent push buttons phones now.

There was a symphony in how the wheels of those massive black railway steam engines moved and how those Hisss and Pufff sounds filled the railway platform as the engines pulled the trains out of the station.

There was a time when as you entered an office   your ears would be greeted with the sound of all those typewriters working at the same time.  These machines were noisy. The Clak...Clak... of each key, the zzzzip of the carriage return, the ggr-r-r-r-r-r-r of the manually rolling the paper up and down…. It was quite a  sound in a busy office. Traditional typewriters are part of history now.

There was one sound that even  most Senior citizens  may not have heard. That was the sound of Telegraph offices' vintage Morse Code Machines  sending the telegraphic  messages - gutttt . .  grrrrr . . . gutttt. . .gutttt.. . .
... grrrr .... That was before the Teleprinters came.

And finally those sounds of the Nature. With urbanisation and pollutions birds and bees  are disappearing. Certain animals are also not seen eg the washerman's donkey. How many of you have heard the cawing of a crow, the braying of the donkey , the humming of the bees, the KOO... KOO... of the koyal or the tuk.. tuk.. of a wood pecker at work ! In the fifties, in smaller town, you could even hear the calls of the Jackals !

How time flies !

***

NATURE'S SECRETS

NATURE'S  SUPER  SECRET

At the ultimate level your body is just a system of ATOMS and nothing else - an interplay of mass and energy.

A similar mass and energy is our UNIVERSE . It is so much more powerful. The electromagnetic fields of all these masses - and they include the mysterious BLACK HOLES, affect all other heavenly body.

All living beings are born under the influence of massive electro magnetic fields of this universe. Whether the atomic structure of living beings is affected by these influences is a matters that was settled in affirmative in the ancient times. But a  deluge wiped those advanced civilizations. With the DELUGE the advanced scientic knowledge got swept away. Dark ages followed.

Modern science is still in the process of developing and is still at a nascent stage. It does not have tools yet for finding out this relationship between living beings and the universe.. It may find an answer to this in times ahead

Planets earth's climate is again changin.The sea levels are slowly rising, glaciers are melting and subsoil water is first disappearing because of excessive use of this water . By the time Science reaffirms the relevance.of astrology in human life another deluge may wipe out the present civilization..

It seems that the NATURE has a design. It does not want humans to know the  ultimate truth !!

OF HEALTH AND HEALING

OF HEALTH AND HEALING

AYURVEDA is an ancient Indian medical science. It maintains that  the living beings are healthy or sick on account of interplay of three vital forces working in the body vata, pitta and kaf. It treats the body to restore the  balance of these forces WITHOUT DAMAGING  any organs of the body.

Homeopathy maintains that inbalance of certain minerals in the body result in ailments and by supplying those minerals in microscopic doses the system gets restored to normal health.

These systems are believed to be NON INVASIVE. They don't damage any human organs in the process of treatment .

Healing one human organ  should not  results in damage to another organs of the body.. If in treating heart the medicines damage liver and kidneys it is not true healing.  True healing would be when healthy cells don't die , when healthy organs don't get damaged. But lately , with modern allopathic system  it is not so. The side effects are, more often than not, quite severe.

There is no doubt that the modern system  of medicine has  contributed a lot to alleviate human suffering. Yet it is time the world took serious note of the old medical systems. Fifty years back Yoga was brushed aside by modern medical science as a total HOAX. Today it is part of the rejuvination plans. Likewise it is time medical science took a note of the alterlnative systems of medicines to understand how their treatment plans avoid damage to human organs.

Medical science should not confine itself to corporate balance sheet. It has social responsibilities too.

#AYURVEDA # health # homeopathy #Allopathy # tridosha #VatPittakaf
#MedicalScience #kidney #liver #yoga
#SideEffect

***

The Importance Of Being An Apple

IMPORTANCE OF BEING APPLE

It has been a long journey since God advised  Adam not to eat apple and Khalil Gibran rejoiced in apples "through all the seasons"  For whatever reason , apple has always been  Centre stage in legends spun around it in ancient and later times. Even Newton had to sit under this tree of knowlege to discover the law of gravity !

Almora once upon a time

"Almora once upon a time"

Once there was a famous Dr Khazan chand in Almora town. He had an old T model ford, the only car in the hill town. It was a weather beaten old car which used to make huge noise. This contraption was famously known as KHAZAN CHAND KA CHHAKRA.

In those days the mall road in Almora did not have any shops. The mall road has now shops on both sides of the road.In those days there was just an open hill on one side of the road and a slope on the other side. It was all open for a distant view of far away himalayan snow peaks.

All buses then  used to pass through the main mall road. But traffic was light and it was possible for children to use it as their  play ground.

The most popular sport was the rolling of an old cycle tyre along the smooth road with the help of a short stick and running behind the fast moving tyre.. It was a game of keeping the tyre moving along the road by constantly tapping it with the stick as far away  as the old chungi (Toll) post.

There used to be a big tree on the road at chausar. It was at this spot that stairs went down to where Dr Murli Manohar Joshi lived much later. Under this tree a kakri (kheera) seller used to sit, doing good business. Unlike the kheera of UP plains, those kheera (cucumber) used to be very big in size. His  masala (spicy) salt was also very tasty.

Buses to Almora used to have two classes - upper and lower. Two front rows were upper class. These buses would start from Haldwani/Kathgogam in   the morning and would take the old longer route via Ranikhet arriving in Almora late  in the evening.

In those days there used to be a halt for lunch midway at Garam Pani, a little ahead of Neem Karoli Baba's Kainchi asram which was opened later.. Several restaurents here used to offer hot meals of poori, aloo ke gutke, kheera (cucumber) raita and an assortment of other dishes.

The subsequent  opening of the new, much shorter,  route via khairna bridge destroyed the lunch time business at Garam paani since people arrived at Almora by lunch time.

**

MAN IS HIS OWN ENEMY

MAN IS HIS OWN ENEMY"

One can write a book on this topic. Human follies are endless.

I will confine today to just one folly.

If you buy a PAPITA (papaya in english) today, 99% chance is that it will be  without seeds. A
few decades back each ripe papita had dozens of black seeds. It is MAN who has genetically  modified this nature's  gift. It is no longer the papita that nature provided as a medicine. It is a changed and pesticides ridden fruit.

And these experiments have just begun!! By the end of this century the whole nature will be genetically modified.

***

The romance of letters

The romance of letters

Travelling through time, as we grow up, is an interesting experience . As you look back in time you see the sharp contrasts in how we have lived our daily life in the distant past.

Recently my niece went to Britain for higher studies. The momemt the plane landed there we got the message of her arrival , with photographs, on our mobiles.That's the magic of smartphones.

In 1952 my fufajee went to England. In those days  there were no mobiles, no internet and travel by air was uncommon and prohibitively expensives and so were the international telephone calls. He went by ship and took a long time arriving there , posted a letter which arrived here after so many more days.

But those were the days of the fine art of letter writing. His letter described his journey by ship, the people on board, the food he ate and so many other experiences. It was a delightful eight page letter on light blue writing pad sheets in his beautiful handwrting. We read that letter, and those that followed, so many times over the years.

we don't write family letters anymore ! Those were the days when the call  of   P.O.S.T.M.A.N.N.N . . . .
made us rush out in excitement !
we seldom see a postman now. He is a vanishing species. The telegram man has already passed into history.

Letters have a great value as historical records. Here is Mahatma Gandhi writing about the condition of the third class railway compartment as he travelled in one.

https://www.catalign.in/2012/10/gandhis-3rd-class-railway-travel-during.html?m=1

And there was a time, earlier still,  when there were no toilets in railway bogies! One had to rush out at a station to attend to a call of nature and rush back in time to catch the train before it moved out of the station. Here is the historically important and very funny  letter that resulted in introduction of toilets in train bogies.This 1909 letter from Okhil Chandra Sen to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in West Bengal is credited with  installing toilets on India's trains. The image presented here is the version displayed at India's Railway Museum.(see photocopy of the letter below)

Alas there will now be no such  letters to preserve for posterity !

# letter #postman #telegram #railway #Britain #England #Gandhi #OkhilChandraSen #1952 #mobile #railway #toilets #1909 #WritingPad

*

HAS MAN A FUTURE

HAS MAN A FUTURE

When I was a kid there were no fertilisers. There were no pesticides in use in agriculture. All that was grown was Organic. There were no chemical colours or preservstives in food nor any taste enhancers.

In one lifetime of scientific "progress" the world has changed. Apart from food loaded with harmful chemical, we have contaminated air , contaminated soil and contaminated  water.

The last fifty years has also seen how plastic menace has spread like wildfire. GM crops is another disturbing development.

Has Man a future ? Is human race moving towards extinction on this planet ?

DONT TRUST US

DON'T TRUST US

Long time back  Delhi city bus service was called Delhi Transport Undertaking (DTU).

Delhi is a highly populated city and it was overpopulated decades back too. Public services are difficult to manage in such conditions and with mismanagement things become worse. This was typically the case with Delhi public transport.People used to wait endlessly at the bus stops for these  buses. For long hours the bus would not come and at times would not stop at all at the bus stop and go racing past it.

These DTU buses never ran on schedule, never stopped where the queue was and were packed, as the saying goes, like sardines. One could not trust such a service. So Delhi walas had a name for these buses - Dont Trust Us (DTU)!

The driver of the bus would invariably stop the bus either several meters before the queue  or some distance ahead of it with the result that the queue was always broken. Even when the bus stopped near the head of the queue there was such  a mad rush to get in that  the queue had no meaning. Law abiding commuters were always left behind and so were most women. In most cases there would be no queue to begin with unless some public spirited person tried to form one.

Here is a representative photo of a bus stop  showing a desperate public spirited man asking people to form a queue. 

But the queue breaks as soon as the bus arrives!

***

IS ASTROLOGY FAKE ? (Part 1)

IS ASTROLIGY FAKE ? (talk 1)

There are two distinct things - the system and those who pratice that system. Medical science may be superb but a doctor may be wanting in its use . You cant blame medical science If a doctor does not test the sensivity of pencillin before injecting it for the first time and the patient dies

The focus of this article is on Astrology.. To practice medicine you need an MBBS. To practice law You need an LLB. To practice engineering you need a B.Tech. To practice Astrology you need nothing.

The result is that the world is full of astrologers. Every newspaper tells your future daily. There are roadside astrologers. And there are hi- fi astrologers catering to rich people. There are popular books on astrology. They are just making money.

Intuition is a mysterious process of getting to solve an intriguing issue. Some doctors intuitively know, in baffling cases, that a particular organ may be at fault. So is with astrology to a greater measure as it is a more complicated process.. The interpretation part of the science of astrology needs a highly analytical and intuitive mind. If you do not have this, you cannot analyse a horoscope properly.

What we have today is CUT and DRIED astrology. Sunsigns books are a case in point. They divide the 7.2 billion people of the world into twelve categories of results. That means tens of millions of people have the same fate which is so absurd.

Even in  individual horoscope the final result is the resultant effect of so many influences ! A full moon in the fourth house means a happy , anxietyless life. But there may be factors to the contrary in the totality of the horoscope. A 'pedestrian' astrologer will cater to your emotion and psychlogically exploit you as he may lack the intuitive capacity to know the truth.

(we will continue with "the ancient Indian astrologers and there research" in Talk 2)

MAYA - THE DECEPTION

MAYA  -  THE DECEPTION
You watch the Sun rising in the east in the morning. . . .  Well, in fact, it is not rising. It is a perfect case of #deception. It is just the other way round. You are in fact moving and the irony is that you can't  even feel it.. . . . .

You see a bright star in the moonless dark sky at night. Well it is quite likely that it is not at all there. If the star  is five thousand light years away from the Earth , what you are witnessing was there five thousand years back.   The #star may have by now disintegrated though you are still  "Seeing" it !  . . . . .

You lie in your cot under the soundless stillness of a  starry night. The silence is there because you cannot hear that constant deafening #cosmic noise of exploding stars and Stellar Storms  because there is no medium in the outer Space to transmit those sound waves . Even otherwise your Power of hearing is very limited to only a small range of frequencies .

And there may be  #ALIENS  sitting right next to you  in your room, watching you. Your power to "see" is also limited to the range of frequencies within the #spectrum  known as #VIBGYOR and you would not see them if they are in vibrations outside this range.

No doubt the ancients of India called it all a #MAYA !!

*

Inviting Trouble

"Inviting trouble"

We all know that there is a mass of water under the ground all over the world. There are petroleum coal and other minerals too. In other words the ground in the cities and villages is resting on these subsoil solids and liquids.

The earth is millions of years old and  until  a couple of hundred years back  there was negligible extraction of subsoil stuff . Then the Age of Science dawned.

In the last hundred years in particular, we have removed massive amount of coal, water and petroleum products from under the sub soil of earth.

A number of lakes throughout  the world are drying or are completely dry due to irrigation and other urban uses .When you slowly keep removing the  subsoil  water, trees start dying. because the water sustains the trees. Land turns barren.Lakes dry  up ( eg. Badkhal lake in Faridabad .)

With the support becoming almost  hollow, the ground surfaces starts sinking very slowly but steadily. To add to the woes of the earth we are now replacing old one or two storey houses with multistorey towers thus putting immence pressure on already sinking land.

A time comes when , particularly in sea shore cities, you will find sea level rising in relation to the city surfaces. SanFrancisco   is already witnessing this.

while we are worried about Climate Change the plunder of the subsoil stuff contimues unabated.

***

The psychopathy of tattered clothes

The #psychopathy of tattered clothes

He was an old begger in #TatteredClothes. He stumbled into the compound of our house and we were sorry to see his plight. He was given food, a few coins and some  old clothes to cover himself bup properly.. .

That was in my #childhood. Long long ago.

I saw a person in tattered clothes again recently. I was pained again, not because he was poor (he was not). I was in pain because things have come to such a pass that #rich people are wearing such clothes.

It is perhaps a psychological problem. I do not know. May be, it is because they want to be noticed. Everyone if the Western world can afford to be well dressed now and good dress does not get you noticed.  So either you  expose yourself to an indecent level to get noticed or your wear clothes that draw attention.

But the joke has gone a little too far because now everybody who is young is trying to follow this fashion.  Recently I engaged a  young boy for a day's work on daily wages basis. While he was tending the plants in  my garden I noticed that he was wearing  tattered jeans. I had a pair of new trousers which I bought by mistake in the much lower size and could not retuen. I offered him these trousers . He carefully inspected the trousers and returned it to me saying 'I don't wear this type of clothes'.  On my asking 'what type of clothes do you wear ?'  he pointed towards his tattered jeans proudly.

***

Disaster in waiting

This summer, in the hill station of Nainital, a portion of  the lower mall road connecting tallital to mallital caved in . In the last few years there have been other such incidents including substantial landslides.

There was a time when no automobiles were permitted into the city  beyond the Tallital bus and taxi stop . There was a time when there were strict building construction regulations in place. These were meant to save the fragile hills of the city from damage. These regulations need reimplementation.

Only e- rikshawa should be permitted  inside the city. Further construction activities need also to be stopped to save it from a disaster similar to the catastrophe of 1880  when devastating landslides  destroyed buildings and claimed hundreds of lives.

Sher-ka-Danda ridge, a densely populated area with houses, commercial properties like hotels and shops, government offices, schools, is particularly at risk of a major landslide. Recent studies have warned of a disaster in waiting.

Blotter Cards

BLOTTER CARDS

No one is now familiar with a #BlotterCard .

Blotters cards were popular before the #BallPens came into use in the #1950s.  Everyone from a school child writing an essay to a man doing office work wrote with a #HolderPen, dipping the nib into the ink pot frequently. And they kept drying the extra ink on the paper with a blotting paper which soaked the extra ink.

Advertisers developed these beauriful  Blotter cards . These had blotting paper on one side and a beautiful glossy #advertisement on the other side. These were usually of the size of a picture post card.

We as children used to get our quota of these beautiful cards from our family doctor , Capt (Retd.) Dr. J.N.Sinha. But Dr. Sinha himself preferred to use the regular common blotter ! He had a beautiful #GlassInkwell for red and blue inks and for resting his holder pens.

These #vintage Blotter cards are available online for a hefty price !

👍

Advertising- Then and now

#Advertising - then and now

A #hawker who yells , " #Tomato 30 rupees a kg, #Potato 20 rupees a kg" as he walks past your house is advertising his products.

When I was a child #Cinema halls in the town used to inform about their new films with a #Joker walking down the road pushing a #BillBoard of the new film on wheels. He was followed by laughing and yelling urchins.

Those were the days of simple advertising. Products were known for their quality As #RalphEmersom maintained , " If you  build a better #mousetrap  the world will beat a path to your door."

You did not mind ads in those days. Senior citizens would recall Binaca Geet Mala of Ameen Sayani which advertised the #BINACA tooth paste.Then there was that sweet #LIRIL Girl and also that #Nirma girl with a " doodh ki safedi ... nirma se aaye ... rangeen kapda bhi khil khil  jaye ..." jingle. And who will forget Lalita  ji of Surf detergent or the " I am the #COMPLAN  boy ..." ad !

Exess of anything is bad . Newspapers have now become advertising pamphlets, TV is giving more ads than useful programmes. And now ads are popping up even on your mobile phones.

The days of enchanting ads are no more !

Vintage travel contraptions

The Ekkah and other contraptions of yore"

Its much easier now ! Just tap a few buttons on your smartphone and a slick OLA cab appears within minutes at your place to take you to your destination in comfort !!

It was different sixty years back, particularly in the small towns. You had to walk down the road looking for a transportation and suddenly you heard the jingling of bells and an Ekkah would be seen comimg.

Ekkah was common in Northern India for many centuries. It had a hard flat wooden platform of about four square feet on which you sqatted along with half a dozen more persons
It was drawn by a half nourished small horse. The driver sat on the bamboo shafts. It could go almost anywhere. It was a cheap transport.An ekkah ride thououghly jolted your bones. The Ekkah had no springs or seats, most passengers having to sit on their haunches on that springless flat wooden board and bear constant jolts transmitted by the wooden  wheels. In my younger days I just once rode an Ekkah and that was a nightmare enough to drive me crazy.

The Delhi iron contraption driven by a powerful motorcycle was another nightmarish ride of the fifties. It was a four or five seater autorikshaw which made a huge noise and vibrations. It usually  left a heavy  trail of black smoke in its wake as it moved along the road.

Then there was "The Tempo" . It resembled a huge black fish and made a shattering engine noise as it started. It carried eight passengers  or so. I travelled in these tempos for a few years in the sixties  before the present auto rikshaws were introduced.

Another tortuous ride was the calcutta hand pulled rikshaw. I once sat in one in early sixties.  It was a precarious ride on  a vehicle without brakes on a busy calcutta road.. And I felt so sorry for the poor rikshaw pullar that I never used it again.

The British time Nainital hand pulled rikshaw was quite another type. It was a very comfortable luxury ride pulled by four or five sturdy Dotiyal  men . And they were paid well for a kilometer trip from Tallital to Mallital on a perfect metalled road of those days. The rate for a trip was rupee one which is equivalent to rupees 150 of today.

*****

The Donkey Years

The Donkey Days

There was a time when all #clothes were #cotton. There was no #detergent powder or detergent soap.No #WashingMachine. No electric irons. Home  washing was tedious.

It was a common sight in those days to spot a washerman moving down rhe road, his #donkey carrying a load of clothes.

Washed clothes were starched and ironed with the traditional heavy iron and delivered home once a week.  Buttons were usually missing after the thrashing the clothes received on stone slabs at the hands of the #washerman at the washing sites.

#Toddy was the favourite evening drink of a washerman after the weary day . Toddy was collected from  #ToddyPalmTree by men skilled in climbing up those tall trees.

*

"Old Lucknow memories"

"Old days Lucknow times "

In the sixties two ChaatWala were quite popular with the university students and young folks of the Lucknow city . One was the DahiVada vender of Ganesh gunj  and the other was the Sharma chaat house, then in a narrow lane in Lalbagh Maqbara colony. King-of-chaat-on-wheels near DM's house was also in the process of getting popular with a certain clientale.

Sharma chaat house was a small shop. It was located a narrow lane in the maqbara colony facing lalbagh. It was so popular that one had to wait for quite sometime to find a seat there. Each dish there cost just 25 paise in early sixties and each dish was quite sumptuous. In fact you could have your fill ,eg, with a plate of big aloo tikki followed by a dish of dahi vadas - both with a liberal amout of dahi and chutney in the large bowl.

Among the tea shops , the best was the cosy small corner shop of  Benbows in Hazratgunj​ - we now have Chhangamal cloth shop there. The   slim old Sardarjee who was the owner of the shop was always behind the counter, dressed in crisp white churidars and kurta and with flowing silver beard. Delicious coconut cookies were among a variety of snacks one could have with his pot of aromatic green label tea. My favourite was a couple of thick crisp buttered toasts with the pot of tea.

The best coffee shop was off course the Coffee House. It was in the building across the road from Benbows . It was the different kind of world inside that legendary coffee house. It was a laid back place, a big hall. There were easy chairs of real cane all painted bottle green at each table. One could order a coffee for 25 paise and sit under the fan for a whole day. The most imposing waiter there, in white and green uniform, was tall and hefty Karim. He would place your dishes on the table and just forget you. If you wanted to pay the bill early and leave, you had to seek him out. It what's your favourite place for a variety of people from journalist politicians to students.

In the sixties there were not many cars in gunj.  There were only two makes of cars available then in India - Fiat and Ambassador . There was much more demand for cars than supply  and one had to book and wait for years to get a new car. 

There was a car parking area in the middle of the road in front of Mayfair cinema. One could ,by the way,  park a car anywhere in Gunj in those days.

The LoversLane was intact then. As you moved along it, the aroma of pop corn from the shop of Mallicks would come wafting. PopCorn was a new fad then and Mallicks was the first shop to install the pop corn machine.

We have a re-designed classic looking Hazratgunj now but the salad days of Gunjing are certainly gone. In these times of Malls, multiplexes and FoodCourts gunj is no longer a JayWalker paradise.

***

As Time rolled on. .

"As time rolled on . . . . ."

Looking back in time from old age is an awesome experience. In the last few decades technology has taken rapid Strides.  It was so different in the past. Most of the things we use now were unimaginable Let me note these down.

Could there be a pen which would write without a nib ?  Yes, Ballpoint pen was yet to come when I was in School. Fountain pens were there but good fountain pene were a bit expensive. Most people including Students used ordinary holder pens which had a nibholder and a scratchy  nib.

It had to be dipped frequently into ink pot. We used pink colour copper G nibs. Unlike these day, we also used to keep a blotting paper handy to soak extra ink as we wrote. Classroom desks had ink wells at the upper right hand corner..And then came ball point pens for hassle free writing.

Wristwatches were then very expensive and most people did not have a wristwatch.

On examination days we used a borrowed watch to keep track of time. A good accurate Wristwatch then Cost over twenty thousand rupees in today's value.

Radio Sets were a status item and anyone having a radio set used to display it in the drawing room. Retrigirators were much rarer items and even rich people did not normally possess a refrigirator.

Transistor radio arrived towards the end of the fifties.

They were from Japan. Suddenly we had music while walking.

Pressure Cooker arrived in the Slxties. It drastically cut down the cooking time and freed the housewife of long hours in the kitchen. Around the same time came the cooking gas in red cylinders. It made cooking much simpler as there was no need now to prepare fire in advance either with firewood or coal, It was the beginning of the era of Smokeless Kitchen.

In late Sixties came electronic calculators. These were very expensive in the beginning  and for a time they remained a new status Symbol for the  rich class. It was only in the eighties that they started becoming cheap.

By early 80s computers were in use in many areas. Indian Railways soon started using it extensively. Slowly they were put into use in many other areas including astrology.

And then came mobile phones. It marked the beginning of revolution in the field of communication. With the arrival of internet we entered a new era, unimaginable a few decades back.

Yes , looking' back into this journey  is an awesome experience.

In the beginning there were Candlestand telephone instruments

and these were available only to a microscopic minority. Now even a daily wage earning poor labourer keeps a personal phone!

xxx

Almora revisited

Almora revisited

Almora is a city in kumaon hills of Uttarakhand. Located on a ridge, it was inhabited long before the British came and built hill stations. Nestled within higher peaks of the Himalaya, Almora enjoys a year-round mild temperate climate.

In my childhood days we  visited Almora often in the summers during our school  holidays. It was fascinating to be in the cool blue hills. It was a different world from the dull landscape of the planes of Uttar Pradesh.

Our grandfather lived somewhere mid point on the mall road in Almora in a double storey house with a court yard. I  think it is called Chausar. Unlike the flat RCC roof  houses in modern Almora, in those days houses there had slate roofs which kept the houses cool in summers and warm in winters.

Grand father's house was also slate roofed house and it was just below the road level. We would often climb up a few  wide stone steps to the road and with a two anna coin buy big pahari kakri (kheera, cucumber) from the man who sat under the small  roadside tree there .He used to  cut the  big kheeras (kakri) into long equal pieces, smear the slices  with plenty of tasty spicy salt (bhanga ka namak) and hand over to us .

In those days there was no pucca shops on the mall road. On the upper slope the either side of the mall road which was mainly for the buses to ply. All buses of kumaon roadways used to pass through this mall road.

The main bus stop was somewhere near the flight of steps leading up to lala Bazaar. In the 1950s there were no cars or two wheelers seen anywhere in Almora. The only exception was an old T model ford of Dr. Khazan chand. It was known as khazan chand ki chhaka (battered car).

Time rolled on.  For many decades I did not visit Almora again. And then I  had the occasion to visit Almora  in 2000 as a barati in Sonu's marriage

By now there were great changes.

The mall road also looked very differenet from what it was decades back. It had become congested with shops on either side and too many vehicles parked along the road.. The entry point into the city  had  changed now. In the fifties  all the buses used to enter the town from the northern end of the mall road, stopping first at the old chungi checkpoint with its chocolate coloured wooden doors and windows. Now the entry into Almora was from the southern end near brightend corner.

The mall road had also been transformed. It was no longer a simple long road with a great open view  towards the west. It was now, over a major length, a market. Some big buildings like the Shikhar hotel

dotted the valley side of the road. In addition to all these changes, Almora now had  too many cars, scooters and motor cycles parked along the mall road and elsewhere.

More changes must have come up since my last visit. I wonder what they are !

***

GOOD OLD RAILWAYS

Romancing the Railways

He peeped out of the train compartment window as the train slowed down and  jolted to a halt that winter morning. Yes it was an unscheduled stoppage at a small railway station with a solitary uncovered platform.

It was all quiet except for the sound coming from the engine as it idled and released steam. Smoke was rising from a chimney in a nearby hutment on that winter morning. He looked out for a tea vendor but there was none. He needed a hot cup of morning tea.

It was an old model first class compartment with an attached attendant's cabin. Mahadev his resourceful travel attendant presently entered with a steaming pot of tea.

" Oh good! where did you get tea ?  he cheetfully asked Mahadev.

" I got boiling water from engines boiler " Mahadev said, stirring the  pot with a spoon  to mix the brewing darjeeling tea leaves , "But there is no milk or sugar"

He was carrying a packet of milk-and-sugar sweets. He crushed a couple of sweets in his cup and poured the steaming hot tea. The cup that cheers was ready !

That was someone in the family travelling across India in the early fifties. He would write letters while travelling,  sharing  his experiences with us. As a kid I eagerly looked forward to reading   those long interesting  letters.

In those days trains had steam engines.Most of the drivers were happy-go-lucky anglo indians wearing purple overalls and a smile.

They would give you boiler's  scalding hot water on request.  Some trains occasionally had to make unscheduled stop at small stations to allow mail trains to pass as there was usually single track connectivity between stations.

Except for the big junction stations, there were no food stalls at the railway platforms. Tea vendors, usually teenage lanky boys, ran across the length of the platforms  calling out  "CHAI CHAI" and stopped to pour hot ginger tea in earthen desposable cups called kullhar to the weary travellers as a train came to a stop.

There would be shouts of "O chai, come here " from numerous train windows. The chai wala boys would dispense tea as quickly as possible and rush from one window to another train window until  the train started moving again.

There were spacious  railway colonies at  railway headquaters towns and these colonies had a high standard of cleanliness and a better  lay out with wide clean road and ample street lighting at night.. When one entered a railway colony he would instantly feel a difference.

AH Wheeler bookstalls were ubiquitous.  There was one in most bigger railway stations selling paperback books , grown up's and children's magazines and newspapers. In the small city where we lived, there was a big A.H.Wheeler stall at the railway station which offered a variety of  good novels and magazines

and we would regularly visit it for our supply of books and magazines.

As time rolled on, platform got overcrowded with passengers and vendors.  Those days of laid back railway times are past, those  vintage railway days. It is all  very noisy now.

There is no longer any  romance in the railways. There is, literally and figuratively, no steam left.

*

.......

TAMING OF THE SHREW

"Taming of the shrew."

No, we are not discussing shakespeare here. No Andrew Bradley quotes either. There is nothing academic infact.

The focus is on an aggressive rat-type creature called  shrew. To be precise it is the Asian shrew. This species (of shrew) is called chuchunder (छछूंदर) in India and is mentioned in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, as a nocturnal inhabitant of houses.

We were living a perfectly peaceful P.G.Wodehouse type life  when one fine morning I found that the telephone cord from the wall to the our telephone instrument

  had been badly chewed. In the following days tell tale signs of other things ravaged came to notice - a curtain, a shoe, a rubber hose. Then one day as I sat on an easy chair next to the telephone  watching a  crow outside on the compound wall pecking at something, I caught the movement of a shrew scampering on the floor along the wall as it prepared to go back to whatever place he lived after his reconoissance mission in the house.

"Hello shrew " I whispered, turning my attention from the crow to the shrew.

A shrew has very sharp hearing power.

He stopped and turned back and tried to locate the source of the sound that greeted him. I tapped with the walking stick close to him so that he would go away  but he attacked the stick violently. Good God, here was a combatant. I was taken aback. I am a non violent person.

As I neither moved nor made any further sound,  he turned back and quietly went out of the room.

I called an urgent meeting of all the stake holders. We decided  to use a non violent  rat trap - a wooden box that slapped shut as soon as a rat entered the box and pulled at the bait.

We set the rat trap near the door and went to sleep. Sometime during the night the shrew was imprisioned in the rat trap.

" I will take the trap in my scooter and open it far away from our house " I declared.

" This chap will come back " was the rejoinder.

That was indeed a possibility. Then someone gave a brilliant suggestion.

"Why not bathe it in a bright colour. If we see a coloured shrew  we will know that he has  come back. "

I had a few bright water colours and I gave the shrew a liberal bath in bright yellow colour as he jumped and squeaked.I kept the trap in the sun to dry. The poor chap would otherwise catch cold.

My fun loving brother-in-law was with us on a visit from USA. He said he would accompany me to watch the shrew-liberation-show.

We scootered a good distance and came to the cantonment area where it was quiet. I saw a Colonel's house across the road on the right where a uniformed guard stood at the gate.

My brother-in-law suggested that it was a good place to set the chap free as there was an open field on the left. We expected the shrew to scurry into the shrubs in the open field.

The shrew had different plans. He crossed the road as we set him free , collided at the gate of  colonel's house with the guard's boots and then rushed  along the driveway into the  house. The guard noticed him and ran after him, his shoes making much noise.

The colonel came out.

" what is all this noise ? " he enquired .

" Sir a bright yellow shrew has entered the house."

" Did you say bright yellow?"

" yes sir. A bright yellow shrew"

" Did you, by any chance,  have a morning dose of rum, just a little?"

" No sir. Definetly not sir"

There was a bemused expression on colonel's face as he  went back into the house.

Mission accomplished we came back home.

I waited and waited for the yellow shrew for a long time but he never came back.

May be, he  preferred army life in cantonment to the mundane life in the house of a civilian! After all he was a combatant !

***

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

"GOOD  OLD  DAYS"

HARAKIRI  is the name of this new game,
and we all, without any exception,  play,  the same.

We have abandoned glass and have adopted plastic,
It is a incedious material but to it we now stick.

Coir, wool rubber and cotton are no longer in furnishings,
we have embraced poisonous polyurethane in pillows, mattings.

milk we do drink but with a new thing mixed,
Yes it is OXYTOCIN  with which the cows are fixed.

We are now increasingly open to radiation's pernicious fog,
exposure to mobile towers, TVs , smartphones do the job.

In the past our food was entirely natural
it is now full of so many chemicals.

There seems no turning back, we are caught in a vice,
Those days are over when life used to be nice.

***

THE WHITE HORSE

"The white horse"

GS, as we called him, was getting  married.

When his marriage date drew close he  started getting  nervous.

GHUR CHARHI (riding a horse) was an essential  part of the ceremony and he was ill prepared for it. He  dreaded   the very idea of  riding a horse . The question was : how to avoid it !

He had never in his life played any outdoor games.  He never ever did any cycling. Riding a horse was simply unthinkable and yet now seemed so unavoidable.

The marriage was in the town of  Unnao, an hour's drive from lucknow. A friend of ours offered to take me to Unnao in his  car.

Our car gave some hiccups on the way. we  reached  there a bit late in the evening,  just in time as the bridegroom's  barat had already started moving out for the bride's house. I

When we arrived, GS was busy pleading with his elders if he could cover the distance to the  bride's place  in the  ceremonial car, skipping the mandatory horse riding. They were horrified.

"No no , how can you " they said shaking there elderly heads of wisdom,  "it is a part of the ceremony.  you cannot skip it.. you have to cover this distance to the bride's house on the horse.".

The white horse was standing there, fluttering his ears, as if  listening intently to this conversation on the general issue concerning him..And the horse was  apparently getting agitated by this crass talk. He was a healthy white horse  not used to stupid discussions by timid riders. 

GS was eventually escorted to the horse, lifted up and deposited on the  horse back. He clumsily sat on it, fearing an impending disaster.  The horse twitched his nostrils,  to assess  the rider. A horse is a very sensitive animal and he doesn't like inept riders.

whlle GS was still trying to grapple with the reins and ackwardly shifting his position,  the horse took a major decision. He suddenly neighed loudly, fluttered his ears, turned around and bolted in the opposite direction away from the bride's place, carrying his hysterical baggage.

There was a mighty uproar. People gave out  shouts and started running after the horse. There was a whole lot of people  chasing it..

we also turned the car and followed the horse down the street.

It was like a scene straight out of  a comic hollywood film
like "Fransis the talking mule"    From our car we could see GS in a crisis situation. He had. now grabbed the horse's  neck,  lyiing flat on his stomach  on the horse's back and shouting for help.

The horse was moving   fast and the frantic cries of GS were heard  all along the road. People stopped and  watched in dismay. The horse was trying to throw GS off his back but  he managed to stick and cling to it, albeit precariously. Somewhere on the way, in this struggle,  he lost his new nagaraa  ceremonial slippers.

Obstructive traffic  on the road made the horse slow down  after a distance and some dare devil  in the lane managed to grab the reins and stop the horse.   GS now slid down the horse back and landed on the road. He hurriedly crawled to the pavement.

GS  was now thoroughly shaken  with fear  as he squatted on the pavement. His family members and friends arrived and took control of the situation.

0urs was the only car available at the spot. So they decided to use it for the grooms journey to the venue of marriage..  It got decorated with a few flowers. It was done  in hurry.  GS was transferred  to the car.  Another person occupied the seat at tbe back with him,  trying to restore the dress, the headgear, the face, the shoes of the bridegroom.

GS was repeatedly muttering "Maine pahle hee kahaa thaa " (I had told this in advance).

The rest of the ceremony was all smooth and without any incident except that GS constantly kept muttering " maine pahle hi kahaa tha" during the entire ceremony !

After this event GS decided to bycott horses. So he stopped using horse drawn tongas .

It is said that years later, while unwrapping a gift from a friend in  Britain he screamed . When his family members rushed to the room they found him staring at the unwrapled whisky bottle.

It was the famous British scotch whisky -  WHITE HORSE !!

***

Then and now

THEN  AND  NOW

There  was a time when there were no ballpens.

There used to be fountain pens. And these were a little expensive even at the lowest price.. Those who could afford it bought  imported waterman, Parker or sheaffers pens costing thousands of rupees in today's value.

Others settled for the much cheaper made in India pens costing a strong Rs 5/- of early nineteen fifties (over seven hundred in today'value)

All school desks had brass inkwells on the right hand upper corner. These were used for the other pen - the holder pen- that had to be contantly dipped in ink pot for writing. For these cheap holder pens one had to regulàrly buy nibs. The most popular nib was the pink coloured Gee nib  made of pure pink copper. There were no ball pens till mid nineteen fifties. When they first came these were a little expensive. Now they are dirt cheap.

Schools had three types of students. The studious , the michivious and the 'none of the above'. The mischief mongers provided entertainment in the class such as wrapping up frogs in the cloth duster (meant for cleaning black board), fixíng ball pins (आल पिन), with sharp point upwards, on teacher's chair or bringing a street dog inside the class room.

Teacher were creative. They found new ways of punishing the students. But the most popular ageless punishment was making a MURGA of the student.

We are in a different world now . No holder pens, no fountain pens, no Murga.

***



Fast Food

Fast food

He arrived at his assigned spot in the market carrying a big bundle on a brass tray on his head and  a wicker stand under an arm. Then he  placed the wicker stand on the footpath and the brass tray on top of it.

 this brass plate he arranged an assortment of eatables. There  was a heap of fried corn too

I had been waiting for his spicy fried corns. He used to come in the afternoon and remain till shops closed .

He proceeded to attend to me. On a large leaf he placed half a cup  of fried whole corn and mixed it with a few masala powders and pastes . Then he squeezed a few drops of lemon over it and handed me this garlic flavoured concoction. It was inexpensive and quite tasty.

That was one of the fast foods of my childhood days. There was no maggi or burger or pizza then. Peanuts,  Roasted chana , puffed rice Laiya or fried or roasted desi pop corn called makki were popular with roadside venders. Some of them sold pani Puri (golgappas) too. 

Fast food joints, loaded with chemically treated food, have since cut into the livelihood of those poor venders. . . . . In the west too the traditional local food is getting threatened by the growing popularity of the likes of KFC and Mcdonalds.

PLASTIC POISONING

"Plastic Poisoning"

We are in an age of synthetics  now. Clothes are  made of chemicals. Bottles, crockery and cutlery  are  made of chemicals which are progressively replacing glass and steel. Food products are packed in plastics. what we eat has chemical flavours, chemical preservatives, chemical taste enhancers ! Furniture is being made of plastics. Most of the electrícal appliances have lot of plastic in them and so have vehicles.

Yes. Plastics are slowly poisoning the planet and its inhabitants.

Life was quite different not very far back. Cotton was then not a rich man's fabrics as it is now. Food was all natural without a trace of pesticides or fertilisers.  Milk and sweets were adulterated with edible cheaper sustitutes and not urea and detergents. The word "organic" was coined later when the poison of chemicals got into food stuff. Packing material was cardboard or wood.

It was a differnt society then. We don't anymore see a traditional Dhobi (washerman) with his donkey. He used to visit houses, his donkey carrying both washed and dirty cotton  clothes.  Most of the clothes in a household  were then washed, starched and ironed by the dhobi. Detergents for home washing  came later.  That was the time when Lalitaji ads took the advertising world by storm flooding the media with motivational message for home washing of clothes. The detergent revolution made dhobi obsolete. Donkeys disappeared and detergent appeared. All the detergent ultimately getting washed down into rivers, polluting them wuth chemicals

All sorts of dreaded diseases are gaining epidemic proportion. We have to stop the use of plastics to save us from disaster. France has already banned plastics totally - from carry bags to crockery and furniture. Other countries are also in the process of banning the use of plastics. It appears to be an almost impossible task in India where people have come to totally depend on plastics.. A Wake Up call is necessary to build public opinion, to galvanise the government.

***

The Flood

The flood

The city was Lucknow. The year was1971. It was monsoon time.

It had been ominously raining for days on end.

Water level in river Gomti had been rising rapidly and alarmingly for sometime. An embankment was protecting the low lying area of the city in the east.

One morning the enbankment could not withstand the onslaught of river  and breached in the area of the Butler Palace colony. The river rapidly spread over  the low lying areas . Panic spread as waters came surging in to inundate  houses and roads.

At the moment when a portion of the embankment gave way, a jeep was moving towards it in Butler palace area. The driver saw the water rushing towards the jeep  and  had barely the time  to reverse and race away from the approaching flood waters. "It was  race against time. We saw a high wall of water chasing us as we managed to escape" said an occupant of the jeep later.

In the nearby Butler palace officers colony a father was taking a bath when his children shouted him to come out. He wrapped a towel and came out to find water rising everywhere. He had no time to dress up. In his towel he rushed up to the upper flat as the ground floor was rapidly  inundated.  All the ground floor  occupants had to shift to first floor flats to save life. 

Authorities swung into action. Army evacuation boats came to the first floor flats of Butler Palace colony and elsewhere to move the occupants to safer places.

I had arrived from Allahabad the  day after the floods and was staying in a safe locality near clay square colony. I set out to see the havoc brought by floods 

The low lying areas in Hazratgunj and beyond were now under water.At Hazratgunj crossing

near the Allahabad bank the road was under water but the pavement at the corner shop of Benbows was  dry.

I sat in Benbows for sometime, sipping tea and eating buttered toasts. I could get the view of the entire area outside from here. The low lying area of Narhi was now under deeper waters. There was lot of water on the road to GPO too.

I paid my bill and came out. skirting the watery road at the crossing I managed to walk along the long corridor of the Indian Coffee House building and then hired a rikshaw  to arrive at Nishatgunj  river bridge.

The brídge here was above water but the approach road was under more than  ankle deep water. we  crossed it in our rikshaw it and, crossing the bridge, we went through dry area of Nishatgunj market up to the beginning of Mahanagar. From here to the north, the entire stretch of mahanagsr colony was a vast ocean. we took a boat to row upto the secretariat colony where my relatives were then living in an upper flat. The lower flats here had disappeared under water. we rowed and I was level with the upper floors as I approached the flat of my relative. They stood in the balcony watching me and  told me that army boats were helping them get provisions from Nishatgunj market. . . . . .

. . . . . . . That was almost half a century back. Lucknow   subsequently got  far stronger embankments and river bed has also been desilted.   The city has further expanded into more low-lying areas and  has so far been spared another crisis of floods. The  memory of 1971 remains. . . . .!

***