The Psychedelia of Homecooked Food - Lockdown Diary 2020

Posto with kacha longka, vegetable chop with bharer cha, malpua with vanilla icecream, narkol nadu, aloo parotha with dhoney ar curry patar chutney, lebu ar mix veg achar -love has many names. It is the deep relationship one shares with one's plate - when each morsel is more than just basic nourishment, it is the outpouring of emotive juices that is affectionately called saliva. That is food for me. But hey, not just any food. It's homegrown food that is lavished with my own hands and has a kiss of the taste I relish so much. Someone once told me poetry is food, it isn't just written, recited or sung - it is felt.

Why do we relish good food? Is it the ancient instinct to lap up anything that is savoury or sweet or is it a creative juice in the brains that echoes "satiated" once you have a mouthful of your favourite something? Or is it a cultural thing? Which is -- the age old dichotomy between my food is better than your's or it is tastier and requires more effort to cook? Or perhaps it is just nothing. Once inside the mouth and out of sight, it is out of mind? Can it be out of mind so quickly, since the creative juices are doing their intense dance inside your system as we talk. The hing (asafoetida) may be kicking the walls of our liver, while the curry leaves are gliding through our duct or the sugar from last night's malpua making music both in our brains and bowels. I am convinced, the food music is nothing short of love or the act of making it. It isn't a delusional piece of something that I gulp in during certain times of the day. It is my religion, my culture, my being. Food becomes me once it  enters me and assumes the shape of my being. It works my muscles, it oils my bones, it grinds through the tumultuous intestines, it rolls over the floor of my liver laughing at my idiosyncrasy. It still is as I talk.

So what with the cultural aspects of food - what to you is donuts (the familiar sugar rush) is for me a freshly fried plate of firmly cooked malpua basking in a pot of sugar syrup laced with elaichi, dalchini and laung. What for you is dum pukt biriyani for me is a plate of chanar pulao steaming with the goodness of the spice mix (that's a home secret) leading to that elusive burrp after food. Your shahi tukda is my rosogolla (assuming its spongy disposition after swimming in a kadal of sweet sugar something). Your bharta is loosely translated into my shukto. Food is opium, it makes you toxic or toxicity makes you once you consume it (whichever way you please).  It is already laboring through our systems to get the best out of the "ingredients" it is made of.

So, what best to consume for your system - food that you have cooked yourself, can see, feel, touch, experience the quality of? Food that carries your emotions into your system and creates a memory that leaves you satiated and happier? Or food you get made or delivered?

 Oh well, you may agree to disagree. Whatever you decide. Food would still need tender loving care to assume a happier form that creates soulful music than a sad bird song (since it finds itself stuck in your gut).

Try it, to cook that is. Your own food is your alter ego speaking in a happy or a sad voice. You chose! Once you do so, try to ask that question to your gut, am I "satiated" or "sedated"? I am sure, you will find your answer.

It's Me

Motional Poetry
Sensual Fantasy
A Petal sunkissed
Clocking in right
Love drips liquid
Razor Sharp Wit
Beaming Shining
Words mull over
Waltz in stilettoes
Ruby woo lip smear
High on Rote Wine
Climbing Life's Pole
Descending on a tip toe
Neatly folded dreams
A mystery takes a long, winding ride

I will

I will be the change, to do to talk to walk to savour to live to thrive
I will not be left behind by this or any other tide
I will give my life a facelift just like the facelift I see in my dreams
I will fly past the crimson clouds and hold me head high in speed
I am love gratefulness achievement passion compassion ambition and dreams
I am the strong willed person who knows how to fly at will

Meanderings of a hopeful mind

Sometimes i wonder would it be nice to have a little breather
Those crimson skies, those warm hues, those rolling meadows and golden groves
Sunlight through the leavy cracks of sturdy mighty branches, the sounds of laughter of children laughing till far and beyond the grasslands
That picnic basket ripe with all the latest produce from the farmers market, the happy family strapped and saddled into their hatchback for their newest meanderings
The sound of grandpa shedding those tears of utter joy on the telephone, grandma talking about the newest bun in the oven while papa and mumma tell them how much life has given them in the shape of this little bundling
The dog flapping it's jumbo ears and salivating to the newly baked bread, the birds chirping in the backyard and making that familiar sound they do when they meet their kindred
That is the warm glow I seek, I find, I lose, I imagine, I dream.... that is the day I carry with myself in my head when all else looks dreary and frightening...

The science of yoga is a wonderful instrument for internal engineering. With manifold health long term health benefits and minimum resources, it is the body’s combative force to the attacks of external forces.

Yoga is the yog or the connection between the mental and physical. An asana is the effort the body makes to reach a pose with controlled inhalations and exhalations and attains physical benefits of good health through optimum mind control.

Each turn or twist the body makes to replicate an asana is the body’s answer to the ask of the mind that calls upon the physical self to collect itself through rhythmic breathing and focus on a particular physical entity whilst observing the going ons of the body…i.e. flow of blood, sound of a throbbing heartbeat or the aches and pains the body is facing. 

Mind through Body

The mind is a subtle entity and the body a more palpable one. To control the body is easier than to harness the dynamic mind. It is the constant flow of water in a gurgling brook or the energetic flapping of a bird’s wings, it is unending, ever-expanding and ever-curious. If mind were the wind that assists the kite, the body is the kite that flutters and flows upon the tug of the main thread of which we have the sole control.

Yoga as is common knowledge is an ancient science going back centuries and has modelled itself on the natural ecosystem. Hence asanas replicate the animal and the plant world.

It is the bridge that transcends a worldly experience and translates into a larger surreal experience as one travels through the physical self and releases itself to reach out to a world which is far beyond its physical capacity.  It is another word for one’s existence realization. 

Institutionalized Yoga Practice

A human institutionalized effort to bring basic yogic practice and comprehensive and tailormade yoga Teacher’s Training program under the aegis of an organization are the teacher’s training programs at the Rishikul Yogshala. Based out of Rishikesh, Nepal, Thailand, Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Mozambique, Vietnam, Khajuraho and Iran, the practices are time bound and manned by experienced yoga practitioners.

Physical perks of yoga practice

Benefits of yoga on physical wellbeing are manifold –

1.       Benefits the spiritual and mental wellbeing by opening up clogged emotions and pent up feelings.

2.       Replaces negative (Nakaratmak) with the positive (Sakaratmak) thinking

3.       Identifies the weaker muscles or organs of the body, through aches and pains  and quivering muscle masses

4.       Effectively deals with stress and mental health issues hence decreased level of anxiety and depression, which are preserves of the modern day life

5.       Brings out physical and intellectual sweat to master yogic practices and control the going ons of the mind

6.       Known to optimize systolic and diastolic pressures

7.        Helps attain samamkaya – to align each and every part of the body without deviation, retraction or contraction

8.       It lets energy flow freely through the chakras whilst controlling body heat and allowing awareness to travel through each cell and vein

9.       Helps improve muscle strength and controls common issues like arthritis, back pain, joint aches, migraine, sinus, heart burn to name only a few

10.    Yoga gives posture a pump up and helps align the spine with the rest of the body, this prevents posture related injury

11.    Yoga assists the joint fluids and protects cartiledges and bones from wear and tear

12.    Yoga helps one lift one’s own weight through asanas and uses the body weight as a prop to achieve optimum weight loss and muscle strength

13.    Yoga is a boost to the blood flow and makes the hand and leg muscles more agile. It is known to pump more oxygen to the cells. Advanced yoga poses that demand a greater twist wring poisonous blood out of the body and allow new oxygenated blood to flow to the primary organs

14.    Yoga improves oxygen carrying hemoglobin and red blood cells and cuts the level of clot promoting proteins in the blood.  It, therefore, deals with heart attacks and strokes with better effectiveness

15.    Yoga raises the combative forces of the body to take on the physical hazards of the external nature. Pollution, stress, weight gain, fatigue, aching muscles, bad spinal column health, breathing problems to name a few

16.    Yoga gives tremendous importance to the anterior spine and regular practitioners of yoga enjoy optimum flexibility and movement for the umber, thoracic and anterior spine

17.    Yoga and pranayama massages interior organs without the need for a surgery. It loosens tight muscles and allows blood to flow seamlessly

18.    Yoga and pranayama are passive reflections and opens the minds gates to newer possibilities

19.    Yoga and pranayama improves nerve health, it ensures the generated energy during the practices reaches the gates or the ends of the nerves

20.    Mindful breathing techniques of pranayama and asana practices are a boost to the happy hormone serotonin and finds it’s correlation with elevated levels of happiness and better immune function

Yoga is the body’s natural response to attacks on its subtle and larger entities, it is a way of existence when not just the inhalations and exhalations but also the pauses between them (Kumbhaka) are stressed upon. Yoga is refreshing and invigorating and opens up clogged pores to facilitate the flow of energy and life. However, any yoga practice requires the practitioner to be under the tutelage of a seasoned teacher, who is not just a regular practitioner but also a sensible human being who is privy to the vast possibilities of this life force and the orbit shift it can bring to one’s day to day existence and also long term well-being. The teacher’s training programs at Rishikul Yogashala  at Rishikesh does just that with its schools within the country and also without it. It is an amalgam of years of practice, controlled learning environment, multiple keen yoga practitioners and one common goal – to lead a fuller, healthier and happier existence.

My First Experience with Yoga and How it Changed My Life.

Yoga is always a first experience for me – each day is a new learning –
each breath is an act of filling myself with a little more of life. I learnt yoga
at the tender age of eight accompanying my father, an avid fitness
afficianado, to the local club. Manned by a stalwart of yoga (Mr India Mr
Manotosh Roy), it was indeed an experience that is firmly ingrained in my
memory and consciousness.
I was the baby in the club and I was delighted by the fact that playfully
accompanying my father and trying out some of the cool breathing in and
out exercises he did (however, incorrectly I may have emulated them),
weren’t as hard as doing other things big people do. I was a possibility
waiting to explore newer horizons and yoga let me do just that. It let me
discover a small little world far away from the physical world I knew, where
I could breathe in and out, just close my eyes and see a galaxy of bright
stars flowing into infinity. I had that experience, it was real.
I was still wanting in the stillness or the calmness that is a salient of doing
regular yoga, but the classes held twice a week, were enough to discover
an abyss of a somewhat quieter world in the restlessness of growing up
and trying to understand things. I may or may not have taken a learning
from the events but it had certainly carved a miniscule place in my brain – a
sweet spot that I could call my den.
Fast forward six years and around the age of 14 or soon after I hit puberty,
I was recommended yoga as a means to better my concentration in my
studies. I was going through that precarious age when emotions (love, lust,
hatred, bonhomie, friendship, loathing, anger, disappointment and
excitement) were all mashed up into one burning ball called hormones. I
was game to discover this evocative language that could shut off the world
and help me slow my pacing thoughts. Yoga was not just pranayama for
me at that time as I later came to discover what this evocative language is
called, it brought with it the perks of bending the body just as I tried bending
my thoughts. Suryanamaskara was and still is my everyday energy drink
and my chance to feel at one with the elements of my surroundings.

I grew up during the age of consciousness and Ayurveda was the
ubiquitous kitchen remedy that conveniently tried to elbow the remedies
provided by the corner pharmacy. My home was a tiny reflection of the
revolution all around and yoga was at the pivot. A sarvanasana,
dhanurasana, halasana, matsasana or chakrasana are as much a part of
my psyche as the good food habits I have inculcated over the years.
Yoga saw me at different phases of my life, first when I was a restless and
curious to learn little girl, who was lapping up whatever the universe threw
at me; then as a teenager who was at tenterhooks, trying to stop the motion
of her emotions and now it’s my everyday wake up call. It is first thing, I do
in the morning and the last thing I do when I call it a day.

If I were to sum up yoga in one word I’d say it’s the touchstone that
changes the route of the mind and gives the body a chance to bend and
reach the subtle entities whilst curing everyday ailments. It is my water
when I am thirsty, air when I am out of breadth and sunlight when I am in
need of good cheer. Yoga for me is living.

Ira - the first morning to school

Ira was the first rains on mother Earth - vibrant, vivacious, restless and almost never letting a dull moment pass her by. She was the apple of her papa's eye and the dolly in her mother's arms. Ira was stocky, coffee coloured velvet skinned beauty a bit podgy with a slow gait that led her ample girth dictate the way she walks. She was bright eyed, dimpled chin and a curious little dimple on her left cheek- needless to say who had taken after her tall and chiseled father. Her mother's genes lent the honey to her voice, her mother was part rebel and part positive light that led her on.

Ira had a happy home - a rented groundfloor apartment somewhere in the outskirts of 80s Kolkata that found a little space in the map but a large space in Ira's heart. She lived her environs like she breathed the morning air from the adjoining park where many a happy moments were spent playing with Ira's friends Shonamoni, Rinki, Putli, Rakhi and the lot. There was, however, one person that Ira always looked up to and somehow tried to be in the good books of - Tumpa. Tumpa was a melting pot of ideas, both insane and exciting. Ira was privy to the execution of many of these ideas. The ghost story marathon on Tumpa's balcony and the sound effect from Tumpa's coconut tree that lightly kissed the balcony rails lent an eerie air to the atmosphere created.

Ira loved the thrills of adventure. She somehow wanted to run away but never wanted to leave the warmth of home. Her home made warm by her mother's lovingly cooked pithe and puli and her father's bull like resilience to see Ira make it big someday.  She was shy and protected, she found the world in her parents' loving embrace. She felt so protected that the slightest thought of her parents going out of sight changed the color of Ira's eyes. They turned watery.

The first day at school was a a usual June morning. There was a nip in the air and the air was a bath in the skin. It was not yet time for the approaching monsoons. Her neatly folded school uniform was kept on the bed and Ira realised for the first time that she was going to school that morning when the usual tussle over the much hated milk and banana for breakfast (from Ira's point of view) was replaced by the sound of her mother's sweet voice. This was the other mother she knew, not the tough, strict and my way or the highway mother, but a doting loving mother smudged with a dollop of ice-cream. She just knew the day was different. Through the househelp bou, who told her that she was about to begin school.

For Ira in her mind, school was a happy place but just that the location wasn't home, all else was the same. It had bubba and maa too, per her thoughts, they would accompany her and stay with her through the day, in another location called school. But that was not to be, as it turned out, a large blue and white bus with babbling kids and a loud conductor would be the vessel to transport her to this new world called school sans bubba and maa. Ira felt choked and scared - why couldn't her bubba and maa come along? Her eyes welled and her thoughts were confusing. Thoughts in her little head with a head full of jet black hair. Her uniform was the color of her mind - blue. She had a small pentagonal pocket with the word A G inscribed on it. For the school it could have meant something else but for Ira it stood for Am (Not) Going. As she fought back her tears, resistance to go gave way to unwillingness and an unusually slow gait.

The bus arrived as scheduled and Ira after taking a photo on her verandah made her way to the bus stand at the end of a concrete road. Her father held her hand and Ira looked into him as if to ask - Is this necessary bubba? Can I not study at home? Bubba may have read Ira's mind that day but his gestures suggested otherwise. He prodded Ira along that concrete lane as a dwindling figure of his maa from behind the grills of the verandah was like a fading image in a watercolor canvas. Ira wasn't game for this, not today, not tomorrow, perhaps not day after either.

The conductor patted the bus as if it was his pet whom he kept under sharp vigilance and the bus promptly stopped. Rinki and company were too happy to wave their parents goodbye, but for Ira it was like walking into a den with no doors. She stepped in helped by her playmates to climb the rather high stairs of the bus and the door shut loud behind her. All she could see was the bobbing head of her doting bubba waving a reassuring goodbye and a glimpse of her friend Noni's pet dog, Puppe, who seem to have joined in the carnival of goodbyes.