Blind Sight

A man passed by me close, I asked my way; he said

`Come follow me, my friend` - I followed where he led.

He rapped the stones in front, `Trust me,` he said, `and come`

I followed like a child - A blind man led me home – William H Davies

I was feeling marginalised at home. I was feeling marginalised at work. It’s horrid to be marginalised as a woman (that’s a serious disability – the worst “caste” you can belong to, because you are counted as being lower than the meanest, most “loser”ish, and most misogynistic man!). It’s awful to be considered an “over-the-hill” woman, who has lost the elasticity of youth.

My mind is very elastic (thank you) and is always mulling on new ideas and helps me to get new insights and skills, I think rebelliously. In fact many youngsters are rigid in their ideas, on their way to becoming excellent bureaucrats who worship rules more than the rationales that give rise to those rules! They are just a bunch of constipated stuffed frogs, I fume. Talk of the fence eating the crop!

Back to the scene his morning – I got off the bus at Sony signal, as it was turning off towards Viveknagar. An adolescent boy nonchalantly occupied a “ladies” seat. The conductor refused to ask him to give me the seat. “Misandry, thy name is PDK”, thought I, as righteous anger and contempt at that mean, miserable worm flooded my disgruntled mind. There was one more of that misdirected species, standing there at the stop. He wanted to know if the bus would go on to Domlur. It would, said the conductor, but in a roundabout way. Misandrous thoughts notwithstanding, I decided to enlighten this much-mistaken man!

“Excuse me”, I tapped him on the shoulder, “But the most direct route to Domlur is from the stop across the road, opposite Oasis mall”.

“Where is it?” asked the man – and turned his sightless eyes on me. This was no loser! He had a briefcase and was obviously on his way to work at the early hour of 8:00 AM. I led him to where I wanted to catch my own bus. I chided myself for my earlier disgruntlement, “There, but for the grace of God, go I!”

My new friend said he was getting late and would prefer to go by auto. I hailed him one and saw him into it safely, when he suggested that I should get a drop too. My office was en route to his destination – ISRO, where (I learnt) he was a techie. He phoned his colleague correctly to inform him that he would be a few minutes late. When the auto stopped for gas, he correctly and confidently counted out the fifty-rupee change that the auto-man wanted to borrow.

Soon we came to the Domlur flyover and I wanted to pay my share of the fare. “No”, said the gentleman, “You showed me the way. You took time off for it. This is the least I can do for you! ‘Bye”. The auto sped off.

A blind man led me to my office; cleaned the cobwebs of my brain; and filled me with positivity.

Naale Baa

“Don’t put off till tomorrow what is better done today”. Sister’s admonition is fresh in my memory. Procrastination meant, in the 60s, an hour’s detention after school, copying out “Business first, pleasure after” 500 times.
“CHILL Ma’am!” shouts a young man in my IB class when I remind him of the deadline for the Extended Essay. It’s a different century, and this is a hedonistic generation. Funnily enough, my gray-haired husband echoes the same view: “Be laid back!” That unmitigated bureaucrat! I rather suspect he wrote out “They also serve who only stand and wait” 500 times in school.
Yet the deadlines continued      for me. Finish the portions! Dispatch the manuscripts! Or else finish your work at home! Phew! Did my day have 48 hours in it or something? And that bureaucrat – when some colleague dropped in – “Is there any tea to be had?” Cool! He just has to be laid back, since there is a genie at his beck and call with 48 hours in her day! I have often felt like the poor princess in Rumpelstiltskin, who was told, “By dawn tomorrow, before the cock crows thrice, all this straw should be spun into gold!”
I often wondered why she did not strangle the cock instead.
A few years ago, a most interesting ghost visited Bangalore. It would politely knock on doors before entering. After it visited several households, the incorrigible Kannadigas found an effective way of dealing with it. They wrote “Naale Baa” (come tomorrow) on their doors. The ghost would knock and politely go away, only to be confronted with the same message day after day.
I get the same answer whichever door I knock upon. “Knock and it shall open” said Jesus Christ but He was being unduly optimistic. In a hospital where every heart surgeon performs three or four operations each day, a simple blood test is not ready. Anxious parents wait at the “Reports” counter at 3:00 pm. “Why?” – “Type maadtha idharey. Naale Baa.” After a collective agitation, the lady got off her mobile phone and on with her typing.
In the RTO’s office, they told my son, “We will pass you next Saturday.” After a week of Saturdays he got his DL, considering that he knew the ins and outs of driving before he was even 14!
At school I was struck by Macbeth’s extremely insightful philosophical soliloquy:
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
Till the last syllable of recorded Time …”
He was right! It does creep and merge into gray, misty, foggy blur, rather like the British rain. Yet something in me does not want that sameness. I like my moments to be tight little self-contained drops, separate and discrete, each holding its own defined events or adventures. The syllable need not resonate with the ocean. It is just a note in a birdsong, unforgettable in its utter sweetness!
If they “naale baa” my little gem of wisdom, its echoes will probably fill the “vale profound” with a plaintive disjointed wail, like the Solitary Reaper’s, until it falls to earth somewhere, some day!

Rattus! Rattus!

Rattus! Rattus!

“Eek! Mummy! There’s a rat in the kitchen!” – so started the saga of “Rattus Rattus”. My little one looked at him with awed fascination. He was tiny – about the size of a quail’s egg – peering at us with beady black eyes before bounding out of reach into a nook. He was clever and very agile. We’d uncovered his droppings behind the broom closet. Quick darts and getaways attested to his presence. The four of us opened all the outlets and tried to shoo him to the verandah, only to find him peering at us from behind the musty volumes in the library. “Mum, he’ll eat up the computer’s wires!” wailed my son. Soon I started uncovering half-eaten Maggi packets, and my Gandhian husband had to agree to a trap.

But we underestimated Rattus Rattus. We placed coconuts and bajjis in the trap. Chappie knew how to get the goodies off the hook without getting caught. We’d find the trap wide open and the goodies gone … and yes – more droppings, not to mention a half-bitten packet of instant coffee. We continued setting the trap. When we heard it snap, we all rushed to view the prisoner. Sure, he was there, merrily looking at us with his bright eyes. My admiring family positively cooed and billed at him – “Annimunni Paapu, Chweety-pie” and so on. When I demanded that he should be banished without ceremony, they all behaved as tho’ I was Hitler or someone and – most reluctantly – deposited him in the bin across the road.

That night he was back! A half-bitten file titled “Conduct Rules for Govt. Officers” marked his return. So the trap was set again and Rattus Rattus suffered himself to be caught again. This time the redoubtable Gandhians gave him a joy-ride in our Maruti van and released him among some bushes near Sankey Lake.

The destruction continued! My kids hoped it would be Rattus Rattus. It must have been his wife, for we found a pocket edition of RR – the size of a baby’s thumb – behind the fridge. Mrs RR was caught and deposited in the Sankey Lake bushes. But three tiny ones were scampering around. One tried to climb out of the kitchen sink. We held the trap there. Master RR walked in obligingly, but out again thro’ the bars before we could reach Sankey Lake. We hunted all over. I expect he got back home with us because the tally was still “3”.

Finally, I caught two of them in the trap. They were too big to escape. I took them to the Sankey Lake bushes thro’ the short-cut behind our quarters. There was a Forest Dept maalin there.

“Hey! What‘re you doin’?” she called.

“I’m releasing two rats”.

“We’ll see about that!”

“Howdhaa ….? Well, you can check with CCF Sayabru. He wants the rats released here”. And I released them and walked off!

Still one to go ….if he hadn’t started a family! Not to mention a malevolent maalin, children who were adept at doing “galattey”, and my husband on tour! Upstairs Mami advised me – ”Stuff paper under all the outside doors”.

Simple! Nonviolent! RR II got the message, “The natives are unfriendly”. Hey presto! – No more Rattus Rattus! Hah! I’d seen the last of him. But that was not the last I heard of him, for my incorrigible little ten-year-old daughter said, “Mummy, I miss Rattus Rattus, don’t you?”

The Withered Cord

Oh Ma! I’m confused –
That tunnel of the Past
That I emerged from
I don’t want to explore.
Dark demons lurk in crannies –
Memories of being penned in – grounded,
Beaten for dropping bricks,
While my brother gloated over my predicament!
Do you know – forty-five years later – I still drop bricks?
Oh! I hate you when I think of the injustice.
I never ever understood what I did so wrong!
I never understood why I was a pawn
In your fights with Appa.
Is that why you had me?
In my teens I was obedient, silent.
But in my rebellious heart
You were no less than Lady Macbeth,
Until – in my twenties –
Life almost broke my heart
Dropping a little blue fighter,
Helpless as a tadpole, into my aanchal.
—-And you helped me pick up the pieces;
Fight my little one’s fight to breathe on her own.
Oh! that beautiful baby – but imperfect, not whole.
I’ve walked on, Ma, I’ve walked on,
Filling out the spaces in the jigsaw of my complicated life.
Now you want to draw me back
With your feeble hands – pluck out that one piece in my life’s jigsaw – ME!
To live life your way, follow your script,
With you as the tragedienne, the forsaken heroine.
Well, you can’t reshape ME to fit into your outdated world again!
I’ve no use for your faded colonial world, your “peons”, and your chauffeur-driven cars.
No more feudalism here –
The plate I eat from in the restaurant may have been used by an auto-man, a dhobi.
Who cares in this democratic world?
If I have ingested their molecules, I have also breathed in Shakespeare’s,
Kalidas’s, and Abraham Lincoln’s.
I have eaten Gandhiji’s salt recycled into the earth.
Where are your feudal servants now?
You are surprised – Thandavarayan’s son is an engineer.
Poongavanam’s daughter has a Master’s in Hindi Literature.
Their intellects work for them now, not their hands.
We all have to use our own hands – like “blue-collar” workers.
Your clinging, sticky hands refuse to help you now – although they can –
To stand on your own two strong feet again.
Your hands are not crippled, Ma, it’s your spirit.
Your nostalgia and self-pity are worthless coins now.
Where’s the spirit of never-say-die that you taught me and my little blue atom?
Let me go at least now!
I’m a woman, a mother too,
Leading her young daughter to the confident pathway
That can fulfill her dreams.
She’s my magnum opus – and yours too –
Perfect, with the right number of imperfections
In mind and body.
I’ll let her go like the little golden snitch
To fly where her heart takes her
Watch her proudly, benignly,
No clinging hands, no tentacles, no criticisms
Directed against that purloiner – no doubt, a most callow fellow –
Destined to grab her heart and ride away.
I’ll throw an old shoe after her for luck.
Then I’ll walk on, on, onward
Towards my Destiny (of which you and she are only parts, incidental parts)
And never ——EVER —– look back!
Because that’s all it is, Ma,
Our souls were never joined.
Never will be – even in a single life time – except by a tenuous cord that is severed
The very moment that we are born…

Lead, Kindly Light!

She was most certainly NOT a kindly light!

You could call her a kind of crude torch, like those carried by cavemen, apt to singe anyone who came too close! One kept a healthy, terrified distance from her.

The old battleaxe was my Maths-cum-Class Teacher through the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th standards. Year after year, I'd look forward to having a new teacher and, year after year, to my dismay, she would get "promoted" with me. I had my Pythagoras Theorem pat by the time I was 11 years old. Algebra offered another way of looking at the same puzzles. The Arithmetic assignment of 20 sums was like a Su-Do-Ku dessert after lunch.

Yet, who got the highest in Maths, pray? A large serious girl about 2 feet taller than I. I would get 98%, while she bagged the "centum", ostensibly because I did not draw two red lines at the top of each foolscap sheet. "Mrs. Ambujam  A-Jam*", thought I, "this is unmitigated partiality!" I hated her!  I H-A-T-E-D her! I absolutely D-E-T-E-S-T-E-D her! Caricatures appeared in my rough book of a monstrous lady with bullish nostrils, angry "V" eyebrows, mean little eyes, and lots of pockmarks. Mentally I'd chant

"Mrs A-Jam

Ate a pot of jam

And grew F-F-A-A-T-T!

Worse, she also took Moral Science for us. I – the shortest and youngest in class – was doomed to sit under those nostrils forever! Well, the Bishop sauntered into our Morals class one morning. The blessed text book spouted some nonsense about "protecting your sex". One girl asked, "Does it mean celibacy?" "No", said the Bishop. I could think laterally in English and Maths, but, otherwise, I was a late bloomer. "What's celibacy?" I piped up. - - - - - Stunned silence! "Stop acting as if you don't know!" growled A-Jam. "Don't act smart!" hissed my classmates. I sat down, perplexed, almost in tears.

Transfers came; systems of education changed drastically (SSLC to Senior Cambridge). Mercifully, in all the entrance test in all the schools, I cleared the Maths effortlessly. My mother thought that traces of my brothers' super intelligence had at last rubbed off on me. My new classmates ascribed my Maths ability to my humongous forehead! This raillery continued through College, where Statistics was my favourite subject.

Twenty years later, my child learnt Maths from four different teachers in as many years. Not one of them picked up where her predecessor left off. The lateral connections, insight learning did not take place. This same child had fought a desperate battle for life in her first three years. At that time, I remembered A-Jam's Moral Science inspirational story about her daughter surviving brain fever because of her own faith in God.

Now I wondered – Could it be because of A-Jam that Maths had always seemed so simple?

I heard of her a few years ago. Her daughter, then 25, had the mental age of a 5-year-old child. But her mother cared - - - - - long after her husband and son despaired.

The old pilgrim plods on over the thorny walks of life.

And I plod on in her wake!

[ I wrote this as Teacher's Day falls on September 5th, i.e., next week.

I have also been a teacher for almost 15 years, mostly in college.

And I can guarantee that teachers are a much-maligned, misunderstood lot!

*The name has been changed!]

Harishchandra's MVK

PVKs! Every organization has them! I mean Raja Harishchandra’s “Pakkathu Veetu Kaaris” (padosan or neighbor lady). You know about the 110% honest Raja Harishchandra, right? He would do anything to keep his word, while his nemesis, Nakshatrak, persecuted him with ever-increasing demands. Well …PVKs are one up on the Raja himself! They started the training school where the Raja was educated on the finer nuances of integrity. No wonder they preen themselves with their virtuous, holier-than-thou attitudes!
First, there was Mrs. Goody-Two-Shoes. She not only imparted education to the chemically challenged first-generation PCMBs, but also chauffeured the illustrious Principal in her car, for “college” work, without any whisper of petrol reimbursement! This meant driving him to Sapna’s, Gangaram’s, and the like. What a wonderful example of selfless service! We lesser mortals had a thing or two to learn! Loyalty of this sort cannot go unrewarded now, can it?
Take Mrs Selfless Service at the other place. You could not have met a nobler soul. She toiled for her flock; proofread their projects; and got the papers printed and bound at her own shop. The students had to pay her only the cost price – about 20% higher than the market price.
PVK III was a dainty, elegant lady – efficient, totally in charge! “If you’re interested,” she whispered sweetly, “my husband is directing a play. I can give you all tickets.” Oh! We were interested! But, of course! How sweet of her to invite us – the new recruits to her department – at just Rs 150 each, on a weekday, to this play at the other end of town! We badly needed this stress-buster alright, what with the deadline for entering the Mocks paper being 4:00 pm the next day.
Ms. Politically Correct was the biggest PVK of all. How did she manage to crowd so many supposed-tos and not-supposed-tos into her head? One was supposed to teach about “inflation” – not “hyper inflation”. One had to talk of “market failure” but not its “social costs”. This was sheer tight-rope walking. “Hmmm,” said I, suitably chastised, “I shall eulogize about Keynes and Macroeconomics today”.
“You’re not supposed to use such words! What is this word, “Eulogize”? Speak normal English!” was the riposte.
My mind played a staccato beat:

Right! Wrong! Right! Wrong! Right! Right! Wrong!
March to the beat of this rhythmic song.
Wake up early; don’t sleep late;
Eat regularly; don’t change Fate.
Perfect posture; do not slump.
You will grow up handsome. Mind that hump!
Left, right, left, right, left, right, left –
Life consists of warp and weft.

March only in those squares, no stamping lines, remember your hopscotch days?
Develop a conscious OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Those lines are “Lakshman Rekhas” Beware of crossing them!

The pecking order shall prevail, like a top-heavy totem pole. If little Chicken Licken should think out of his little box at the bottom, what happens? Why, the sky will crash on his head – PVKs, totem pole, and all!

I think I have got the hang of the PVK technique. Keynes was right. One needs a holistic, bird’s-eye view. Indeed I can observe from my new vantage point, to which I have moved. You see I am Harishchandra’s MVK (Ma

Jaimon's Mynah

We all sit in a dark corner on the third floor – the six of us from the Content Team. Jaimon sits at the foot of this squiggly table, with his back to the window, in the darkest corner. Jaimon is from Kerala. He has a cheeky grin that stretches from ear to ear. It is nice to see his cheerful face early in the morning. He has just returned after spending a beautiful Easter at Kerala. We demanded Easter eggs, or at the very least, banana chips. “My father sends you his best wishes”, he said. What about the chips? “My neighbours also send you their best wishes”, he said. We digested this in lieu of chips.

The deadlines were drawing near. It is the season of spring. Everything in nature multiplies – “kutti-pottufies”, as we succinctly express in Tamil (I’m sorry to say, at times, English is not half so pithy or expressive as our Indian languages and their special idioms. More’s the pity!) Anyway the whole world was kutty-pottufying. We, in our floor, were surrounded by new fathers and mothers, who seemed fresh even after new babies’ tendencies to bawl and fret all night. Hence, we had our spring blossoms (which looked fresh, dewy, and lovely in their respective parents’ mobile phones, and which all had pink, scrunched-up faces, like little rose blossoms!) and the attendant sweets. Anyway, in the true kutty-pottufying spirit of spring, our daily targets also kutty-pottufied. First, we were told that we should “complete 25 slides per day”. We were just trying to digest this humongous allocation of work, when Harish very kindly informed me that, as a senior ID, I am supposed to “deliver” (in short, kutty-pottufy) 40 slides a day. Over the weekend, the number of slides proliferated (you are right, kutty-pottufied) and became 76 slides to be delivered all clean, new, shiny, scrubbed, and packaged in their baby things. I know babies are cute, adorable, and so on. But so many? Overnight? But you know how it is in corporate circles – the lowly ones cannot argue; they must obey:

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die,

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

Tennyson must have been talking about us. The six of us! Of course, we were trying to ride into the valley of Entrepreneurship, not the valley of Death! Besides, from this dark, secluded corner on the third floor, we were disseminating the light of knowledge to unenlightened, earnest, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed, nascent entrepreneurs. I mean, it’s a noble thing to do, right?

Anyway, we weren’t reasoning why. We were trying to package the 76 kuttis into various listener-friendly e-packages. The job demands intense concentration. We were all frowning in concentration, when suddenly cacophony broke out! No, it wasn’t one of the kuttis howling at the idea of being cut, pasted, edited, styled, bulleted, and dressed up. Our poor little kuttis submitted to all these indignities, although Prantika and her team conducted DNA tests, to determine their paternity! This DNA test is called “Plagy Check”. This also requires intense concentration and focus.

Anyway, there was this blighter who went “trrr----keee, trrr----keee, trrr----keee”, continuously, maddeningly. Here we were battling with obdurate slides, and there this fellow trilled merrily without a care in the world! All of us tried to shut our ears; said, “Shut up! Allow us to concentrate!” But the minstrel of spring went on, even more loudly and insistently. He seemed to have perched himself on the window behind Jaimon.

Jaimon gingerly opened the blind. The fellow looked at him. He had a new, shiny, brown coat, with white detailing near the coat-tails! His eyes gleamed out of an orange pirate’s patch. “Trrr----keee’, he said to jaimon, very politely bowing as he did so. “Oh! A crow!” said someone. “No, it’s a mynah, and a very noisy one at that”, someone else said.

This mynah was fascinated by Jaimon. Jaimon was equally fascinated by him. “Yes? What do you want?” he asked the mynah. The mynah looked at him through the implacable glass barrier. He seemed to think that our dark corner held some soft materials with which he could line his nest. His wife must have kutty-pottufied and sent him to scrounge for soft materials. So there he was, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed importuning Jaimon to share of our plenty.

“Go away”, said Jaimon. “We’re working! Don’t disturb!” “Trrr----keee”, said the mynah in a puzzled manner. “What to do with him?” said Jaimon, “He is not going at all”. Now Jaimon is great at making chicken curry. He is a connoisseur of food – particularly, non-veg food. “Shall I make you into Tandoori Mynah?” Jaimon addressed the mynah. “Or, maybe, Mynah Biriyani?” he continued relentlessly. Tarun rudely interpolated, “Thoo Mynah Soup kyon nai banaatha, bey?” But the mynah was determined to think Jaimon was some kind of benign Santa Claus. Finding the window-glass an impediment, he presently flew off muttering imprecations against Jaimon. If Santa should deny a kutty a goodie, that’s how it will shout at Santa.

One day, Jaimon was not at his seat. “Trrr----keee”, said a familiar loud voice. We opened Jaimon’s window blind. There he was, shining like a bright, new, copper penny! “Trrr----keee”, he said, “where is Jaimon?” He looked through the glass with his pirate patch and bright beady eyes. No Jaimon. He peered to the right and peered to the left. No signs of the big, carnivorous, benign Jaimon materialising.

“Trrr----keee”, he said and flew off.

I saw him from the cafeteria. He was busy with his wife and kids on top of a sunshade below an overhead tank. . “Trrr----keee”, he chirped to them very happily, “spring is in the air! Never mind Jaimon. He is a big bully anyway”. His wife cocked her head coyly and repeated his call to him.

The kuttis joined in with their teeny-weeny chirps.

His little world was complete!

Easy-Bake Cake

Are you a September-born kid? Or do you have some September-born family member? Then here’s a cake you can bake for hardly Rs 100/kg; whereas, bought cakes cost you Rs 450/kg. Besides, you can avoid all that sinful butter icing and retain space in your tummies for some savouries. These also need not be calorie-loaded. Think Dhokla, Akki Roti, Poha, and Low-cheese Pizza. These will appear next in my blog.


Why did I embark on this health-food fad? I’m a diabetic, who childishly maintained my supreme right to eat the roses off the birthday cakes. Dr J would warn me, but that only made me more adamant! Then the one argument to end all arguments happened. I limped home in the slush, over the potholes, and my shoes pinched like hell. I tried open shoes, closed shoes, keds, slippers – I really hobbled like an old lady. People in buses started getting up to give me their seats. The conductor called me “Ajji”. I shouted back, “Ajjinnu illa, bajjinnu illa!” My hobbling had to go. I didn’t want gangrene, my toes amputated, and so on. After tossing and turning all night with my extremely tingly, numb toes, I reached a decision. No more Parle G biscuits from the cafeteria! I was consuming 5 in the morning and 5 in the evening. Each contains 18 calories. That was 180 needless calories all actively contributing to my tingling feet.


So here goes! This is a basic chocolate sponge, not for diabetics but for the demanding families of diabetics! Else, they’ll go to the nearest Sweet Chariot and bring the Black Forest.

Ingredients required:

6 ounces (180 gms) maida

6 ounces butter (I use fresh cream instead)

6 ounces sugar (you can use sugar-free granules also)

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence (Bush essence is the best, this is to take away the egg smell)

3 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons cocoa powder (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together in a big mixing bowl. Do not use a whisk. Do the whisking manually with a wooden spatula for 5 minutes.

Prepare a cake tin of diameter 8 inches by spreading a thin film of oil all over the bottom and the sides of the tin. Then take a tablespoon of dry maida and swish it around in the greasy tin. The maida forms a coating on the bottom and sides of the tin.

Now take the batter and spoon in 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder (NOT drinking chocolate!) and fold that into it. Beat that in till the batter is smooth. You can add some instant coffee powder if you want a coffee taste – maybe 3 teaspoonfuls of it.

Pour this batter into the prepared cake tin. Put it into the baking oven (Mine is a round Bajaj oven 20 years old, with no temperature settings!)

Bake it for 40 to 45 minutes.

How do you know that it is done?

The cat will come in mewing and sniffing, followed by the kids.

Poke a knitting needle through the holes on top of the oven. If the needle comes out with bits of underdone cake stuck on it, you know it needs more baking. If it comes out smooth and clean, your cake is done.

Remove the lid of the oven, but keep the whole apparatus well away from the cat, perhaps in the meat safe (or koondu).

When the cake has cooled down, slide a butter knife around the circumference and ease out the cake onto a plate. If the family and other animals ask for icing, just squeeze some Hershey’s chocolate syrup on it! If it’s just a bit bitter, that’s good, that’s how designer chocolate cakes and coffee cakes taste! But even the cat will not object to a bit of bitterness.

If you want to make this into an orange sponge, and not a chocolate sponge, do the following:

Forget the cocoa, the Hershey’s syrup, and the instant coffee powder.

Slice the cake horizontally into two thick round halves of a “sandwich”. Spread some orange marmalade on the cut surfaces. Close up that sandwich. Prick the top of the cake with a fork. Pour some orange juice over the top and serve.

The Colours of Humanity

“Oiii! Hari! What do you think you are doing? Come back here this minute!” I shouted at the little five-year-old boy with blue jeans, a red sweatshirt, and brownish curly hair. He did not listen – pretended not to! He tried clambering on to the boat that took tourists around on the artificial canal that ran around Chester Zoo. We had already had a round in the boat; fed bread to the lovely ducks swimming along with the boat; and admired the animals at the periphery of the zoo. The little one in the pram was not yet a year old. She dozed off and on, snug in her little pink anorak. And Dilip – he was busy photographing the birds and animals there. The gardens were beautiful, with flowers of all colours spilling over. We were entranced by the flaming colours of the flamingoes. The giraffes, hippopotamuses, penguins, and zebras – in short, all the animals – seemed quite happy, as they had large open spaces to ruminate in. What caught my attention was the brown striped animal – the Dobra – a cross between a zebra and a donkey. I loved his long ears and snoozy expression. He could have been a striped Eeyore (of Winnie-the-Pooh fame) come to life!


It was time to break for lunch. I had to take the baby to the baby-changing room as well. We don’t change the babies there. We change their bottom thingies. This Hari! As usual he was doing “pyjama”. This was a phrase we coined at home. We used it to describe his directionless, sometimes over-the-top hyperactivity. Its origin was a funny Hindi idiom – “Tum aadmi ho ya pajama?” – are you a man or a pair of pyjamas? Well he did flop around like a pair of pyjamas without a man in them! He was doing much “pyjama” to get his toe into that boat. Oh no! He’ll fall into that water! Horrendous Hari!

I marched up to him, preparing to drag him back unceremoniously. “He’s mine!” shouted a black lady. I looked at her angrily. What the hell was she talking about? She had a white ginger-haired partner and they were heading towards Hari. Hey! Hang on! “That’s mine!”

The boy turned around – wheatish brown skin like Hari, same height, same dancing curls, same missing teeth, same “pyjama” behaviour! He was not Hari. Hari had brown eyes; this one had blue. The curl in front of his forehead was tinged with ginger. Amazing – I could have sworn he was Hari, but he was a product of two different races and cultures, neither of which were mine!

I turned back with the pram and the baby, puzzled and worried.

And guess what – Hari and his Dad were standing a few feet away and laughing at me!