The desi wordsmith

When I tell people that I spent four months of 2021 in a Himalayan village, their eyes widen with wonder.

What made you want to do this, they ask. Aisa idea kahaan se aaya?

As a storyteller with a fertile imagination, I would love to tell people that this idea came to me in a dream. That God appeared before me and told me to book the first flight out to the hills.

But that would not be remotely true. Because the truth is, some ideas take birth on their own. They arrive like the sun, uninvited, to shine a light on dark spots. After the lockdown blues last year, my mind was in one such dark space. So, when I woke up one morning in March with a couple of missed calls from the mountains, I decided I had to get in touch with them - maybe pay them a visit, even.

And that is how I set out for Jagatsukh - a dreamy hamlet on the outskirts of Manali - in pursuit of silence and stories. I carried a bagful of winter clothes, a laptop on which to scribble notes, and a confirmation email from Lagom Stay, whose owner I’d spoken with but otherwise I didn’t know much of.

First, there was a two-hour flight to Chandigarh. Easy-peasy. But then, there was an overnight bus ride from Chandigarh to Manali. Ten hours, not a wink of sleep, surrounded by thirty other passengers - all without masks. Unvaccinated and terrified, I wore two. When the bus stopped for dinner at a highway dhaba, I did not go in with the rest of them. Instead, I bought a packet of Uncle Chipps and spent the next hour sliding the chips one-by-one into my mouth from under the mask.

Yes, I must have looked like an idiot to the others. I did hear the driver snigger. In response, I plugged in my earphones, shivered a little in my seat, and returned my gaze to the window.

When I reached Manali the next morning - nearly frozen, in 2°C weather - and took in my first view of the snow-clad Dhauladhar peaks, I knew that something momentous was about to begin. I could feel the optimism in my bones. There was so much I wanted to do - write my first novella, finish some half-written short stories and resume studying Spanish. But most of all, I wanted to rise above the smallness of existential worries and for once, just *live big*.

I am happy to report that I was able to achieve what I wanted the most. The novella is yet half-baked, the short stories are yet to be submitted, and I still speak Spanish only in the present tense. But I have had considerable progress in the “live big” department - so much so that two weeks after my return, I can still feel the mountain vigour throbbing in my veins.

What does it take to replenish a parched soul? Not much, really. A sunlit room, with a desk facing the fields. Long walks every day, to the meadows and springs. Paranthas for breakfast, with butter every day. A little boy and a baby dog, with endless fun and games.

That’s all it really takes, for the fog to lift and sunshine to seep in.

I am back in Amdavad like a bad penny and my mountain jaunt already feels like a distant memory. No more unfiltered water from the tap. No more raw milk straight from the cow’s udder. No more fiddlehead ferns and curried zucchini for dinner. No more waterfall walks or moonlight treks or singing with strangers or gossiping with the villagers.

And yet, my stint in the hills will always occupy pride of place in my life. Among other things, it is embedded into my COVID vaccination certificate! I received my first shot at the Jagatsukh Primary Health Centre, along with a hundred other villagers. I mean, I rode to the centre on a rented Scooty. Flimsy bike, slope-y streets - I nearly slipped a couple of times en route. Who can forget that?

Facebook reminded me yesterday that it’s been seven years since my family and I embarked on a two-week sojourn to the Swiss Alps.

This trip was memorable for a hundred different reasons, most of which make me laugh hysterically even today.

For instance, we were 16 people who carried 44 kilos of food with us. Yes, a full 44 kilos of food - it was weighed and checked at the airport. I will never forget the bewilderment on the face of the Emirates Airlines employee who spotted a 5-litre pressure cooker amongst our belongings.

Why so much food, you ask? Is that even a question? We are Gujjus, and we cannot imagine being deprived of our staple diet for a full fourteen days. Besides, Switzerland is the most expensive country in the most expensive continent on the planet, and when we travelled there in 2014, the Euro stood at a staggering 87 INR. Which Gujjus worth their salt would eat out in such a scenario?

So, the day before we were to leave, my mother summoned our ever-faithful cook and asked him to whip up as many theplas, bhakhris and pooris as his arms would allow. The other three mothers in the group did the same thing. Then, my brother escorted the whole haul to his friend’s shop (a neighbourhood gruh udyog), where all the theplas, bhakhris and pooris were vacuum-packed - basically, dressed to survive 13 hours in cargo.

During the two weeks that we spent in that tiny Swiss village named Val d’Illiez, we cooked every desi meal possible - from pav-bhaji to poha to chhole-puri to besan cheelas. Heck, we even repurposed leftover bhakhris, using them as pizza base on the last day!

However, food was the only department that sailed smoothly on this trip. Everything else that could go wrong, most certainly did.

Like the time we stopped to have lunch at a metro station (yes, food again) and nearly missed the train. I say “nearly” because three of us managed to get inside, while the other thirteen - including our parents - were left hanging on the platform when the doors closed. Luckily for them, the driver was a sweet soul who reopened the door, and waited patiently while all the aunties and uncles boarded. Had he been the nasty kind, we’d have ended up paying a penalty equivalent to the amount of money we saved by lugging 44 kilos of food!

Then, there was my mother - who refused to let us carry our passports even though it was mandatory (in order to use the travel pass), because she feared that we would misplace them. Every day, my father would remind her about the passports, and every day she would refuse. “Koi TC-VC maangshe nahi!” was her standard answer.

Well, on the second-last day, the TC did ask for our passports. And when we told her we didn’t have them, the TC threatened to fine us 70 Euros each. I did some quick mental callisthenics. We stood to pay 6000 rupees per head!

I swung into action - politely begging her to let us go. “My mother doesn’t listen to us, otherwise we’d be carrying the passports” I told her in my finest French. She pardoned us eventually, but not without shooting me the angriest look I’ve ever received.

The funniest part of this trip was our return flight - when an Indigo staffer simply refused to let us board with a pressure cooker. “But Emirates allowed us!” yelled the angry mothers at the counter lady. “EMIRATES DID! How can you refuse then?!”

“Because I can,” said the lady very calmly, “You will not check that cooker in. I won’t allow it.”

We eventually left for Ahmedabad without our beloved 5-litre Prestige pressure cooker - our faithful companion that had saved us thousands in restaurant bills.

While this trip was replete with moments of comedic gold, it was also, for me, a coming-of-age affair. I was newly-single then, looking to resurrect my career, and slightly embarrassed to be the oldest “kid” in the group at 26. When we trekked up hills, boated across lakes and explored villages, I often broke away from the group, to ponder on some essential questions that would help me rebuild my life.

“What would I want to spend the rest of my life doing?” was one of those questions.

Eventually, during one of those quiet long walks, I received the answer. It happened spontaneously, like a brahmagyaan moment. The thought clicked in my mind, and I knew the universe had answered my question.

It was actually quite simple. Having lost a couple of precious years to an ill-fated marriage, I wanted to own the rest of my life. I wanted to be the boss of my time, so that I could spend it working with words in every manner possible - reading, writing, teaching and learning languages.

Words aside, I wanted the liberty to live without ultimatums from the clock. I wanted to be able to tread new terrain as and when I pleased, without being held back by the biological/maternal impulse to prioritize another human's needs over mine.

I hadn’t heard the word “child-free” until that point. “Anti-natalism” was yet to become mainstream. Nobody I knew had taken this route. But I knew that this was the path for me. And that if I ever sought out a partner for myself again, it would have to be someone who’d agree with me on this.

Seven years later, my gratitude for that moment of enlightenment has only grown stronger. Where I once had only one reason to make this choice, I now have a hundred more, especially after the pandemic. I love children and cherish the time I get to spend with my friends’ kids, but I know definitively that I will never have any of my own. Because I don’t want to.

I am a happily child-free woman. I understand that this is not for everyone, but it is just right for me. It lets me be. It is the wind beneath my wings - heck, it IS my wings.

As I sit here amidst the Himalayas now, reading stories and crafting some, I am grateful for that holiday in the Alps, seven years ago, that made me this person. This post today is a little tribute to the trip that changed my life.

The coronavirus lockdown has taught everyone different skills. Some have become culinary connoisseurs. Others, armchair philosophers. Quite a few people have bonded beautifully with family. Many others are dangerously close to murdering theirs. Essentially, most of us have morphed into cousins of who we were three months back.

Not me. I’m not one to go full Batman on a cosmically mandated vacation. In most matters, I remain as happily gauche as ever. For instance, I’m still a novice at chopping veggies. I think people who can peel karela* and shred cabbage deserve bravery awards, or at least a free Netflix subscription.

According to my mother, I am also an abject failure at the art of hanging laundry on the clothesline. I can never quite remember all her parameters – coloured ones in, whites out, heavy clothes in front, thin ones behind, trousers in corners, pockets hanging out, bedsheets in one balcony, office clothes in another – it is a science more complex than quantum physics, and I simply can’t seem to memorize its guiding principles.

What I am able to do perfectly though, is find opportunities for weight loss in the randomest of things. In that sense, my one big win during this lockdown has been discovering new ways to lose weight.

Most of these methods I wouldn’t normally have thought of, but then, twelve weeks of isolation do interesting things to the human brain. This post exists because I feel my wisdom is worth sharing with the world. We may have hit Unlock 1.0 here in India, but for all practical purposes, we are still under house arrest. In that sense, there is still plenty of scope for people to benefit from these life-altering realisations of mine.

Read on to learn how you can minimise your girth by maximising the lockdown.

1.      Nobody needs a fancy gym membership if they can summon a little creativity. For instance, while doing the dishes, keep the utensil basket an arm’s length away. This way, each time you rinse a vessel and reach out for the basket, you will be giving yourself an extensive arm workout. Bonus: if the menfolk refuse to help with chores, you could lure them saying the vessel-basket game will help them grow biceps (and if you’re a man reading this, don’t be an asshole – do your bit). 

2.      Want a perfectly trim tummy? Keep your laundry basket on the floor, bend down to pick each garment, and do a high jump when you land the garment on the clothesline. Bend, pick, aim, hop, repeat. Do this for twelve weeks and you will have Barbie’s waistline. Heck, you may even add an inch or two in height.

 3.      Pretend you are the Chairman of your housing society and that the idiot residents of the building will die without your scrutiny. Pace up and down the corridor of your floor for twenty minutes every day, while looking left and right, up and down in turns. Then repeat this exercise on the floor above, the floor below, and all the other floors of the building. In three months’ time, you will lose 20 kilos, your triple chin, and the motivation to donate your hard-earned money at the gym.

4.      Take charge of sweeping and mopping your house. If your family comprises as many women as mine, you are blessed. Your floor is likely to be covered with assorted hair strands – long, short, black, white, thick as wire, thin as my patience, and so on. If you try to sweep those pesky things off the floor, they will invariably get entangled with your broom, or worse, choke up your vacuum cleaner. Instead, bend down and scoop them up yourself, tying them up into neat little balls that you can gleefully toss out of the window into the bin. Then, throw your fancy new mop-with-a-handle away and pick up the traditional pochha** instead, going down on all fours à la Sakubai. Voila! In twelve weeks, you will grunt and groan your way to a Kardashian-style bum, minus any surgical intervention.

 5.      Most people turn to dumbbells and treadmills to lose weight, without realising that the most potent instrument of weight loss is, in fact, miniature humans. If you have children of your own, you already know this. But if not, I recommend this fool-proof exercise regime known as the Borrow-A-Kid method. If you don’t know whose kid to borrow, just put up a solicitation on Facebook. At least a dozen exasperated friends will rush to deposit the fruit of their loins at your doorstep. Once their children are yours to chase around, you will lose weight faster than Trump lost his conscience.

 6.      If you’re a teacher, motivational speaker, or just generally an Indian uncle, this must be a tough time for you. Considering that your life essentially revolves around giving advice, it must suck to have no one to enlighten. Well, this can be managed: just be your family’s official volunteer for grocery rounds. You will encounter quite a few people (the grocer, neighbours, security guards) en route, who might benefit from a sermon on how to safeguard against the virus. Not only will you get to disseminate gyaan like a guru, you will also burn your fair share of calories walking to the store and back. Two birds with one trip! Keep ‘em masks and gloves handy though, because the virus might be waiting to pounce on you.

 7.      If all else fails, pretend it’s Diwali. Replace the newspaper lining your cupboards. Clean the fans and tubelights. Air out the mattresses and rugs. Pull out your mum’s fancy crockery set – the one that belonged to her great-grand-mother and hasn’t been used in thirty years – and wipe each piece down with a muslin cloth. Toss your old soft toys into the washing machine. Round up all the sneakers that exist in the house, and clean one pair a day. If you’re a South Indian like me, you’re sure to have an ornate oil lamp made of brass. Those things get dull over time. Spend an hour looking at Buzzfeed videos on how to restore their glory, then pick up some ketchup / lemons / baking soda / whatever floats your boat, and get scrubbing. And if ALL of this doesn’t wear you out, ask the neighbours how you can be of help.

Come to think of it, the exodus of domestic help this lockdown, coupled with a total lack of things to do and the absence of Zomato, makes for the greatest Get-In-Shape moment in the history of modern civilisation. This is your chance – to prove yourself the ultimate domestic God(dess) while also growing the ultimate hot bod. Imagine the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ photo collage you’ll get to post on Instagram after all this is over. Heck, imagine the looks and hoots you’ll get when you walk out into the world 20 kilos leaner. Sounds delicious, eh?

Get going then. There is still enough time to join the revolution. *karela: An Indian vegetable, also referred to as bitter gourd

Last year, after a prolonged period of compulsive hand-washing, I walked into my dermatologist’s clinic with an itchy red rash all over my hands. Mercifully, the rash had limited itself to the back of my palms – it hadn’t spread beyond my wrists. It was painful nevertheless, and my incessant trips to the wash basin were making it even worse.

The dermatologist, who is familiar with my skin-abuse shenanigans, took one look at the abstract art of my making and asked me, “How many times do you wash your hands with soap every day?”

It took me a whole minute of kindergarten-style finger counting to reach a figure. “About 18 to 20 times a day,” I ventured nervously.

She sighed in Dolby digital and shot me the look of a disappointed parent. “You have been torturing your poor hands,” she admonished me. “Which sane person does this? I am a doctor who deals with infections all day and even I don’t wash my hands so often!”

I gulped. I had known all along that my hand-washing was on the excessive side, bordering on maniacal. But I hadn’t anticipated that it would lead to dermatitis i.e. an actual skin ailment that requires medication to heal, not to mention enormous reserves of self-control.

I stepped out of the clinic with the guilt of an alcoholic. As instructed by the doctor, I picked up a huge-ass bottle of Cetaphil hand wash on the way home. The gratuitous soaping and foaming had to stop. It was rehab time.

Alas, this was easier said than done.

Cetaphil is, for all practical purposes, a poor step-sister of soap. It may be well-intentioned and gentle as a mother’s touch but it simply refuses to lather. No matter how much of it I poured onto my hands, it always left me feeling unaccomplished. If washing hands was my orgasm, I was pulling out too soon. It always left much to be desired.

Six months of hard work later, I had almost made truce with my OCD demons. I still hated my soulless saviour but continued to use it nevertheless. Soap had been minimised, sanitizers banished. With a little help from an imported hand cream that costs two and a half kidneys and contains organic shea butter mixed with the soul of a 14th-century saint, I had succeeded in keeping the dermatitis from making a return visit.

But, but, but – guess what was fated to happen just as I was learning to make peace with my wash-time nemesis? The coronavirus outbreak.

That’s right. There is a potent virus in the air now, people are rushing to make their wills, supermarkets have run out of toilet paper, and it is suddenly okay to soap away to glory.

After spending six months trying to break my cray-cray habit of turning my hands into sandpaper, I am now told that I can happily revert to my masochistic ways. Wash your hands with soap, often and thoroughly, says the PSA pasted outside my dermatologist’s clinic – the same dermatologist who had warned me that my skin would peel away if I did not stop tormenting it with antibacterial concoctions.

Life has taken a U-turn.

For years now, I have suffered from an overwhelming urge to wash my hands at the smallest pretext. Dumped a day-old laundry in the machine? Wash hands. Touched an elevator grill? Wash hands. Picked up a pair of (clean) socks? Wash hands. Touched my scalp? A currency note? The laptop keypad? The screen of my phone? Wash hands.

I generally wash my hands before dinner, and after dinner, and then again after cleaning the kitchen slab, and then one last time after dumping the dishes in the sink. If a stroke of bad luck (such as our domestic help Sakubai’s quarterly home trip) requires me to do the dishes, add in another couple of rounds of hand washing. Add to this the monthly annoyance of my period or seasonal troubles such as the flu and you have a frenzied woman who’ll spend half her waking hours rigorously disinfecting her palms.

I have always been aware that though this affliction of mine sounds amusing to hear of, it has the potential to snowball into a chronic disorder and reduce me to dysfunction. I have read accounts of people grappling with extreme OCD who find it impossible to conduct even the most mundane tasks without sanitizing and re-sanitizing their environs. I have always feared that if my reflexes are not consciously rewired, I might end up just like them.

And this fear was exactly the reason why I worked diligently over six months to tackle my misophobia. Because, what if I eventually morphed into a female Sheldon Cooper? What if being a germaphobe led me to fixing a ‘spot’ on the couch, or eating spaghetti every Thursday for the rest of my life, or worse still, creating bowel movement schedules? Holy crap on a cracker, I did not want to become that person.

So here I am now, freshly reformed. But in a curious twist of fate, I am now being encouraged to walk right back into my addiction.

All around me, I see people feverishly rubbing their palms with scented alcohol. My neighbours are moving around in N95 masks. The soap dispenser in our bathroom is perpetually in need of a refill. Even the security guard downstairs, who used to make a trip to the toilet and back in three minutes flat, now takes a good quarter of an hour.

Where does this leave me? Had I been the old me, I might have ripped the skin off my bones by now. But in my born-again avatar, I am no longer paranoid like I used to be. I still wash my hands more often than the average person does, but I am no longer precariously close to sanitary insanity.

It is difficult to predict how the CoVID-19 situation is likely to evolve in India in the coming weeks. But if the rate at which cases are presently mounting is any indication, things are likely to hit their peak in a matter of days. John Keynes did mention that in the long run we are all dead, but did he define exactly how long the run was going to be? For all we know, the run has run its course and we are about to be clean-bowled.

Given how uncertain our future is, just how much sense would it make to resist soapy temptations at this juncture? Should I maintain my newfound resist-dermatitis-till-I-die stance when I may actually die of resisting dermatitis? Wouldn’t it be more prudent to surrender to the lure of foam and froth if that is more likely to keep me alive, itchy blisters notwithstanding?

I have been mulling over this predicament for a bit, and have finally come to the conclusion that if my life risks being truncated by a rogue virus, abstinence is pointless. What use are pretty hands on a dead woman? If I am to die soon, I would rather soak in the soapgasms while I can.

Throwing caution to the virus-infested wind, I enter the bathroom now. I see the soap dispenser winking at me, turning me on harder than a porn star would an incel. Cetaphil is sulking from a distance but I ignore its death stare. I walk up to the basin, reach out for the soap – 100% chemical-laced, with all the sulfates and parabens in the world – and press hard, rubbing my hands in unrestrained glee.

My palms are soon covered with a familiar foam that my senses have long been lusting for. A feeling of total satiation takes over my senses, combined with a heady sense of release relief. I haven’t felt this excited disinfected in months.

As the great Rumi once said:

I’ll submit happily to the dance of death, I don’t want a second chance.

Mr X is a smart, literate man.

He speaks four languages, reads the newspaper cover-to-cover every day, and has travelled halfway around the world.

As a pharmaceutical marketer, he knows about people and cultures. He also knows about healthcare and wellness. Basically, he is one of the most well-exposed people you will meet.

And yet, Mr X is a symbol of everything that is currently wrong with urban youths.

Because, Mr X lives in a bubble of misplaced confidence. He believes that since he owns a healthy body and suffers from no chronic diseases, he can outsmart the novel coronavirus.

Yesterday, Mr X spent a few hours in a semi-crowded restaurant. He was in the mood for some primavera pasta, and then he happened to spot Le Café Italien on the way. He couldn’t help but walk in.

The day before, he attended the engagement ceremony of his colleague’s sister. His wife tried hard to stop him from going, but he insisted. “My colleague will feel bad if I don’t go,” he said. “And the event will have less than a hundred people anyway. It is not an issue.”

Today, Mr X wants to visit his parents. They live in a town 50 miles away from where he lives. He knows that travel is becoming increasingly riskier, but he simply cannot understand what the fuss is all about. Plus, it is a weekend and he is feeling bored at home.

He eventually picks up his car keys and leaves for his hometown.

There are millions of people like Mr X in this world right now. People who are annoyed at the mention of terms like quarantine, self-isolation and social distancing. People who feel others are being cowards, and that instead of panicking like little school kids, they should face this new challenge like grown-ups. After all, it is just a flu. How bad can it really get?

Well, here is something Mr X needs to know. The flu can get bad. Really bad. And in several First World countries like France, Germany, Italy and the US, it already has.

Mr X is unaware that people around him could be asymptomatic carriers of the virus. Which means, they may be infected yet not know it, since they may not have any visible symptoms. Just because they’re not coughing their lungs off does not mean they’re not dangerous.

Mr X does not know that droplets of this virus can survive outside the human body for days. A cardboard box handled by a corona-positive person can be infectious even after 24 hours. A plastic bottle or metal tray can carry the virus for up to 3 days.

Mr X is happily ignorant of the fact that this virus does not infect only the elderly and immunocompromised. Those are more vulnerable, yes. But children are getting it too. So are 30-year olds. No age group is safe.

Mr X needs to know about the death toll and devastation this virus has caused worldwide. 627 people died in Italy yesterday. The United States added 8,000 new cases in the last 24 hours. In France, people have been put into a five-week long lockdown, because they have 12,000 cases already and counting.

Most importantly, someone needs to tell Mr X that more than 2700 health workers in Italy have tested positive for the virus and hundreds have already died, simply in doing their duty. They, unlike the rest of us, can neither take leave nor work from home. They have no choice but to face highly contagious patients, even if that kills them.

What is likely to happen to Mr X if he continues to ignore the advice of health practitioners?

He will infect his family members, who in turn, will infect health workers.

Imagine being in their position. Imagine being a doctor or a nurse who has to put their neck on the line for reckless souls like Mr X who choose to venture out even when they can very well stay home.

The world is closed. Business, travel and communication across the world have shut. Because, at this point of time, nothing matters more than to remain indoors and be safe.

This is not the time for recreation. Or career advancement. Or socializing. Or self-fulfilment. This is not the time for anything except survival. Everything else can happen later, once mankind is definitively out of the vicious grip of this disease.

Don’t be over-confident. The virus is smarter than you – it will find you. And if your stars are badly aligned, it will kill you.

Don’t be an enabler of death.