Fasting and Feasting - Part 1




Once you leave India, you leave many a things behind, a lot many in fact, which you keep missing every now and then. One such thing is the joy of celebrating festivals. In India, you know for weeks in advance which festival is coming up, the exact dates and times of pooja, the exact items needed for pooja and upvaas and start preparing for it leisurely. But in Singapore, it has happened to us many a times that we just called our parents or relatives to discover that they are busy celebrating some festival and we in Singapore have no clue about it. So, this time Amisha was quite conscious to not miss any of the teej-tyohaars and celebrate them in the best possible way in Singapore.

She was doing quite well, but as it happens, she declared it on the night of 11th Feb, in her usual last-minute-but-cool-down-dude way, that we are celebrating Mahashivratri tomorrow. We will just need to fast for the whole day and pay a visit to a Shivji temple. Now, whoever has ever "casually" fasted in India knows that a fasting-day is nothing but a feasting day, wherein you try to eat as many different varieties of fruits as is available in the market, and since fruits don't really "fill" your stomach, so in order to survive the hunger-pangs and pull-out a day "without food", you just have to eat all the special delicious fasting items (like Sabudaana Khichdi, Rajgeera Atta Pooris, Fariyali Mixtures, Potato Chips with Sendha Namak etc to name a few). So, Amisha, being the Head-Cook, appointed herself with the task of cooking the "fasting" items and I was given the task of fetching the necessary raw-materials (a.k.a. a long shopping list) with a very "challenging deadline" at the dead of the night. Now, I know you guys are thinking that Mustafa remains open 24 hours and Singapore is a really safe country, but that doesn't mean that I should leave my rights to howl and growl about the last-minute-frenzy before obediently heading down to hunt the fasting items and present those indignant missing ingredients at my missus' feet.

So after my usual good-for-nothing whimpers, I went to Mustafa and my spirits immediately lifted to see many more frantic husbands with long shopping lists of pooja items. Some of us exchanged glances sheepishly and dared to smile and laugh after seeing the same list of things added to their shopping carts. Some of us got more involved and discussed in details the advantages of kuttu atta over rajgeera atta. Few even exchanged their mobile numbers so that their beautiful wives can exchange some knowledge about their special fasting recipes.

After completing the shopping and coming back home at a very ungodly hour, I was surprised to find the state of my apartment. It was resembling a factory with all that smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney, it seemed like the factory's evening shift ended hours ago and the night shift workers are working at their peak. On entering the apartment, I heard the splashing & roaring of oil in the kadhaai with potato chips inside it getting deep-fried. There were at least a dozen utensils soaking some fasting grain or the other. Needless to say, it was a war, a war against time, a war against hunger, a war against those "tough" fasts, a war that every NRI wife has to fight before the festive nights, on her own, equipped with limited resources and frowning husbands and hollering kids (if any). I knew this war would go all night and some part of the next day, yeah shorter than Mumbai's 26/11, but far more exhausting, so I decided to help Amisha in my own way and went to sleep.

[Part 2 to follow on public demand and my survival instincts]

Comments

  1. Manoj CFebruary 15, 2010 at 8:36 AM

    Terrific write up... a usual day @ married ppl home. I want to read Part2 soon...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fasting and Feasting - Part 2

Image
So after a huge success of the last post  (before anybody protests, let me remind "success means different things to different people") and enormous public demand (I have the gift to read people's unexpressed thoughts) and having survived the TOUGH fast I am back with the part 2 of the Fasting and Feasting in Singapore. Let me start from where I left in the previous post. I slept with all my mind and house filled with the delicious aromas of the fasting dishes and happily dreamed eating those one-by-ones tastefully with the divine rhythmic chants of  Har Har Mahadev . In the morning, I was getting ready for the office when Amisha casually asked me about the address of the Lord Shiva temple so that she and her friends can visit the temple later. I will leave it to the Cricket connoisseurs to declare it a "clean-bowled" or a "stumped" as even after spending one-and-a-half years here, I have no clues about the whereabouts of "orthodox" sacred ...
Read more

What % of population is required to bring about a change?

So what's the minimum number of people required from a population to bring about a change? Most of the people may say "At least 50% or slightly more than 50%". If you also thought so then you are in for a surprise. According to a research, it takes only 11% of the total population to stand up to bring about  ANY change. Yes, just 11%. They studied all the major changes in the world, all the major revolutions and then arrived at this figure. They found that if at least 11% of population is in favor of something then the rest of it is more inclined to adopt the change. Isn't that a pleasant surprise? We often want to change some thing but don't move ahead because we are afraid that the majority may not be with us. So, the good news is we don't really require a majority. We just need 11% of like-minded people and once we get them and move ahead properly we can see the change happening very quickly. According to a survey, 48% of Indian population is with te...
Read more

Going Home - Part 1

About a year-and-a-half ago, on an evening like this, with nothing to do, I was sitting on a metallic park bench of a HDB unit in Singapore. Sweating. Due to humidity. And possibly also due to the enormous decision that lay in front of me. There was no wind - characteristic of a typical Singapore evening. Some kids playing on neatly manicured grass. Some other kids cycling on a well-tarred narrow cycling cum jogging track. Still others playing on the swings and slides atop a rubberized earth. Constant sounds of basketball dribbling emanated out of the adjoining basketball court where few shirtless teenagers were practicing the sport. Amisha was holding little Vihaan's arms and making him slid on a slide. Vihaan gurgling his excitement every time the descent started. "Let's go back home", shouted Amisha, "he's hungry". "Home is too far. Let's go back to our flat rather", I winked. She smiled. After a small protest Vihaan relucta...
Read more