Mental Excursions

Unpacking life at a new destination   Last week I had talked of ‘people like us’ in transferable jobs who have to move to a different city every two to three years. I had recalled the activities included in the whole exercise of packing up before you leave a city. Some people had even identified with that. So the next step naturally is, what happens when you reach the new city? Even though you live out of suitcases, the few days in the transit accommodation/guest/rest house is the only time the lady of the house is at peace because the energy-draining household chores are not to be taken care of. Yet, a fresh to-do list is already growing in size somewhere at the back of your mind and very soon appears in a physical shape on paper or a doc file. The top priority on this generally is school/college admissions and looking for the house.   If you are lucky, which most of us are not, the house is in a fairly tolerable condition, so when the kit arrives, you can start the other painfu

  On the move, perpetually Ayesha’s message that her brother, an Air Force officer, has been transferred to Shillong, rekindled memories of my own life, not so long ago. For the next half hour I relived the nervousness and the excitement, the anticipation and the exasperation , the expectation and the reality as I imagined him getting his kit packed and moved and he and his family finding their feet in a new environment and an unfamiliar city. Transfers and moving to new and unfamiliar places or sometimes old and familiar ones, are a part of life for people like us who themselves, or their spouses are in the central government services or as people say- transferable jobs.   No, I am not experienced or qualified to talk about people who are in transferable jobs but whose sole aim in life is to stay in one city, mostly a metropolis or their hometown. For this, they may try all the formulas in the book-buttering and chasing the superiors, going on sick or study leave,

               It’s the time to chaat!                     Tangy, salty, sweet, hot, spicy, crunchy you can choose the degrees according to your taste and palate. This is about chaat , one of my favourite food items, no, maybe of most of the people, in the Indian sub-continent. What used to be purely street food being sold on khomchas ( conical stands made of lightweight cane), thelas (carts) on streets and tiny hole-like corners in marketplaces, has slowly found a prime spot in various chaat bhandaars (storehouses of chaat ) exclusively selling these items or mithai (Indian sweets) shops. Chaat has now been elevated to a level where you can find it on the tables of famous restaurants too. This is neither a sponsored piece (though I would gladly have done that) nor a food review, not even a research paper. It is about a unique food category that the Indian sub-continent offers and anyone can try even on a full stomach. Chaat comes from chaatna, the Hindi wor