The Ubiquitous Upma

      The Ubiquitous Upma

Nothing else could present the reality of a Monday morning better than the smell of fresh Upma cooking in the kitchen. As my brother and I got ready for school, and Father for office, the smell of Upma, the thought of having to survive two rounds of battle with it at breakfast and lunch – clearly prepared us for the long week ahead.  If Upma was prepared for a second time in the week, it was a clear indication of hostilities in the family. And as Upma made its way to our breakfast plates, surrenders were imminent.

The dry, powdery, colourless and sometimes tasteless breakfast dish has been referred to as “concrete” by men of wisdom, for ages. This lack of subtlety, uninspired preparations and the “use cases” when Upma is prepared have clearly dented its brand image.

For starters, Upma always served as a substitute and would never be the first choice. I still remember Grandmother having Upma on Ekadashi. And post eclipses, we were all force fed Upma for dinner. The preparations were always in a hurry. Switch on the stove, roast some rava, boil some water, add a couple of green chillies – Upma was ready to be served. The intent was always to fill the stomach – and not serve something that pleases the eyes or the taste buds. And if some quantity was left over, it would invariably find its way to the lunch box the next day.

On the lunch table that day, poor Upma competes with Biriyani, Pulao, Bisibele Bath and other delicacies the whole office has been talking about since morning. The grumpy husband thinks a hundred times if he needs to offer the Upma to colleagues, who are passing the more illustrious preparations and decides against it. He is bound by marital code to finish his lunch box while there is overwhelming temptation to dig his spoon into his neighbours’ plates. The meal starts with anger, transitions through frustration and ends in meek surrender.

With this daily narrative in most homes playing spoilsport, Upma looked for resurgence through multiple avenues. Not least, piggybacking on other ingredients to become palatable. A mishmash of vegetables to begin with. Onions, for instance, lent their flavour and “Onion Upma” was considered acceptable. The more imaginative kitchens added colour with turmeric. A spread of cut beans, carrot, capsicum and curry leaves took the attention away from the bland rava. This “Vegetable Upma” earned a few appreciative nods as well. In a departure from tradition, someone served Upma with Chutney, and the masses almost started looking forward to it.

What definitely changed fortunes for Upma was when it started becoming mainstream. Upma, being a traditional south Indian dish found preference for an evening snack just before the beginning or during the interval of a Carnatic classical concert. However, here, it wasn’t powdery concrete anymore. It was a delicacy – a pleasing green with strategically placed beans and carrot, embellished in ghee and cooked with just the right amount of water to make it semi-solid. The aroma wafted through the halls of the concert, playing with your olfactory faculties as the musician played with the Swaras.

Hotels went a step ahead and carved out a “Chow Chow Bath” – a mixture of Upma and Kesari Bath. Upma was now enjoying equal status with a sweet. Hotels, with their panache for presentation, used a bowl in which to fill the hot Upma. When they emptied the Upma on the plate, the Upma took the shape of the bowl. Powdery concrete was finally history in front of this classy looking Upma – with cashews standing out artistically.

Perhaps what sealed the ubiquity of Upma and gave it a sense of social standing was its role in courtship and weddings. When the prospective groom’s family visits the bride’s home, meals are not served as a matter of tradition. The first alternative that came to mind – was Upma. The perception and the reception of the Upma played a critical role in the alliance progressing to the next level. What if a mediocre Upma drove the groom’s family away from the alliance? Worse still, what if this Upma was not great, and the girl was ridiculed years later by her husband saying the first Upma he had in their home was terrible, yet he went ahead and married her?

More importantly, Upma slowly became the de-facto breakfast in weddings. Again, a challenge for the bride’s family- who generally take care of the food. A good breakfast meant a great start to the proceedings. If guests were displeased at breakfast, it would take humongous effort to get back into their good books. And Upma, quietly shouldered this responsibility.

From the melts-in-the-mouth craftsmanship of wedding Upmas, to mustard infested dump-in-your stomach funeral Upmas, Upma has seen it all: The rage of a husband pushing away a plateful of Upma in contempt, as a worried wife looked on. The delight in the eyes of prospective in-laws, as the groom tucked into the Upma and relished mouthful after mouthful. Yet, what could tug its heartstrings would be a toddler, crying profusely over phone saying “Uncle, rescue me! They are killing me with Upma every day!” Some things would never change!

                                                                                                                 -19th August 2018
The article was subsequently published in the Hindu Open Page column, on 26th August 2018

Father, Son and Matters of Money

Father, Son and Matters of Money

"Done" I said, as my father sat mesmerised. He even received a message saying the transaction was complete. Only, he wasn't convinced by the exercise. He didn't feel the satisfaction of transferring money and helping his son who was in dire need. 

"Something is missing" he kept mumbling. Always.

Not that he is technology averse. But he is someone who still believes in walking the couple of miles to pay out an electricity bill at the counter. The sense of purpose he derives in setting up a separate day for paying these bills, the responsibility of  "handling cash" and the subsequent sweat and satisfaction once he successfully pays those bills and returns home - he misses them with the onset of technology.

"If you can transfer money with the click of a button, where is the value?" he wonders. And somewhere, I connect with him. Cash. The clinking of coins in the piggy bank. Or the thrill when father brought his month's salary home in a white envelope and asked us to separate the five hundreds from the hundreds and the hundreds from the tens - home felt like RBI. Mother would invariably decide how much went where - some notes into the steel container with rice, some into the wardrobe, some more into a secret corner under the cot(I assume this was the sacrosanct emergency fund). We brothers would eagerly wait for a tenner or two(depending on her mood and our behaviour) and drop it into the piggy bank.

Now, all we have got is an abstraction. Or at most, a statement. Instead of the white envelope, my father gets his payslip home. There is an excitement in his voice when he announces the figure - but he misses the envelope. However, we are a generation where our salaries are being credited to an account from the word go. We have plastic cards that melt money in a swipe. I sometimes wonder if what my father tells is actually true. The effort is the same - be it a hundred rupees or a thousand for that matter. I swipe, and the money is gone forever from the account! And in a curious way, there is a sense of detachment - I do not know how the thousand looks like or feels like. It is just a number. All too simple. A decade ago, for my father, a thousand was probably a few hundreds, a couple of fifties and twenties and tenners. The twenties and tenners were probably more valuable than the hundreds - they were results of continuous haggling with the vegetable vendor or the kirana store owner. And to part with it was an emotional loss along with the obvious monetary loss as well.

Online banking, mobile banking, wallets and related applications make our lives terribly simple and relegate paper money into the background. While we revel in the ease of transactions, father still remains skeptic. His debit card pin remains carefully hidden in his shirt pocket, on a soiled piece of paper that has existed forever now. We have never been able to convince him to adopt net banking. He religiously makes that bank visit once every two months to get his passbook updated. While I put it to a certain inertia in embracing technology, I can't help but feel there is an attachment with the bank and its people that he cannot forgo.
"My account has been with the bank for thirty years now" he says proudly. He knows quite a few people there - from the manager to the clerk. "And I never find the bank visit tiresome. You have to work hard to manage money." It is quite a sight to watch him analyse the bank statements in the passbook and match them with his own monthly expense chart  - which is usually a piece of paper. Though we are better off than we were a couple of decades ago when this practice actually started, father carries this exercise on with fervor, a passion bordering on obsession. "It is because of this discipline I was able to afford your education without a loan" he declares, the pride evident everytime. I try to coax him to use one of those money management applications or atleast a spreadsheet, but he hears none of it.

The dissonance doesn't end there. While I find myself browsing every available option to invest and grow my money - from stocks to mutual funds to what not, father finds peace in depositing them in the bank. "Why the risk? You should always play safe with money" he suggests. I candidly admit to him that I want to be rich overnight and retire at forty. And then he starts off...with what is to be gained by working for those extra twenty years.

Through all this, I manage to hold my father in awe by showing how efficient I am when I pay bills through one of those mobile wallets, getting a handsome discount along the way. But my show ends there. It is always him that wins the conversation, with stories of long lost relatives who slept on mattresses whose insides were stashed with cash!






 

A Writer's Woes - 6: Information V/S Imagination

A Writer's Woes - 6: Information V/S Imagination

I stopped writing six months ago. Or writing stopped from me six months ago. The difference couldn't be more profound....and the cycle couldn't be more vicious. When I stopped writing initially, it was due to schedule and stress. When writing stopped from me...it was due to lack of imagination. Lack of imagination triggered a loss of motivation. Then followed the inevitable sense of fear that I could not progress beyond a couple of paragraphs even if I tried to write. The final straw was that the world might not approve of what I write - if my writing wasn't as interesting or as smooth as it was in better times.

The biggest strength for a writer in my opinion is his ability to pause. The ability to pause and stand still when the world around him spins madly and people go about trying to conquer it. When he pauses, a writer finds this unique frame of reference through which he evaluates the world with a completely different yardstick - one that is more emotional and creative and less logical and rational. And the observation brings forth that many questions - questions that trigger imagination. Questions to which all of us could have our own answers and yet modestly concede each other some ground for harmony.

Questions. I can almost feel questions facing an existential crisis in this information age- Information which is just information - information that need not and that will never be knowledge. The moment I think of a person and try to imagine what he is upto....there goes a post of his on social media...clearly showing who he is with and what he is doing; The moment a national event happens, there are opinions that bombard us from all sides - and most of us have little else but to align ourselves with one set of people. And someone else has already formed an opinion for us to embrace. 

The impulse for information - I somehow found it overpowering the sense of imagination. So much so, that one of the first things that I did when I found my writing deserted me was to Google "Why have I stopped writing?" and go through the results rather than introspect. A couple of years earlier, I would take a break and reflect - and curiously my writing would resurface from the depths of whatever was causing the block at that point in time.

Curiosity. An other benefactor of beloved imagination. Till recently, we planned trips to destinations with only the name of the place in mind. What was to be expected at the place remained a mystery. An uncertainty. Someone said the sunset on the Arabian Sea is beautiful. I spent weeks before our trip trying to visualise and imagine the sunset and how the journey could actually play out. Today at the click of a button, I have a clear idea of how exactly the sunset would actually play out...minute by minute if necessary.

Curiosity and uncertainty die an instant death at the hands of instant gratification. An acquaintance from the last generation to this day complains jovially that he never had a chance to look at his future wife till the day of marriage. And that he was confined to imagining her face when his parents described her. He still shows the letters he wrote for her while thinking of her (he never did post them though, out of fear!). Today, his daughter makes sure she looks up her prospective groom on all kinds of social media even before talking to him in person. The generation does it. We want to be "well-informed". And there is so much information available, that imagination hardly has a role to play.

Information is critical to survival today. To leave an ounce of it without consuming, means falling behind in the rat race. However, information breeds familiarity. And therein for me lies its conflict with imagination. We are so well informed, there is hardly anything left to imagine. And this familiarity defines. It defines what is black and what is white...to the point of non-negotiation. If I didn't know what black is...for me black could also be a tinge of grey. This would probably open a new creative field for me which stretches beyond the conventional black. That would be poetic liberty. Today, however, with a clear definition of black and white, right and wrong, there is a sense of stupidity and suffocation as I try to imagine something out of its place. Even as I try to cajole my mind to imagine, it tries to follow a logical trajectory, guided by experience and information.

 And as I try to "Google" a way to end this piece meaningfully (hopefully marking the end of an other "thought drought"), just can't help foresee a new jargon, called "Informed Imagination"!

                                                                                             - 12th November 2015