Thursday, June 8, 2017

Chai and more chai !

Mornings in every household are crazy and chaotic and maddening and especially if it’s a Punjabi household and its only made bearable with endless cups of chai. Trust me, this is how it works for me, and I maintain the semblance of normalcy (this is debatable) only by gulping by the large cups of English tea and then the staple masala tea. I wonder how people can go to the gym, do surya namaskar, do neti and then eat oats. I am heading towards an early grave with my chai and addiction to paranthas with achar. However, before that I fend off doorbell chimes, and meeting people but all I wonder is whether work force of mine is landing up.
Every day I wait for my maids and cook just like a darshan off the Gods, my old bones cant take it anymore and the non stop rivulets of sweat (may this replenish the receding water tables) just don’t make it possible for me to work. The Congress refuses to give us electricity and the sweats collected may help in planting the rice nursery. I could actually be sitting on a gold mine, I could start a party called passena dal and well could save Punjab’s water crisis.
Why did they never think of this? And, now I am regressing from the topic, just be kind it’s an old age woman thinking and mumbling.
My maid came and instead of a cheery sat sri akal she just told me point blank that she is here for work but would not be bending and cleaning the floors. Her back got sprained last night, putting up a kundi connection and I immediately gathered my old bag of bones to help her, fussing and telling her beta eat a biscuit and have chai.
My, panacea for all cures.  Well, so much for watching the news and wondering whether the conservatives won or the Labor party was sweeping my former masters or whether Trump was sinking into another controversy. All this was swept under the rug and I quickly gave her a painkiller to fix her back but she refused saying that an old lady, Pyaaro in one of the mohallas had the wonder-woman power.
She just pressed her toe on the back and voila! It got all right. No one was supposed to eat any medicine after that.
Why did I ever send to my son to medical school, I wonder? Is it the rapid Modi shift, or is it just that we are a nation that is steeped in our tradition and its culture that is still old, ancient and is superstitious!
The day kept on getting more and more interesting and some mothers came complaining of a ‘bhuubhuu’, a mysterious affliction that attacks the throat and they swell up. I told them, it must be tonsils, lets send them to a pediatrician and they would all get relief. They, as usual laughed it off saying that George’s father had the best answer and he used to put salt underneath the milk pot overnight and next morning one just had to mix it with water and drink it and nothing else was needed.
So much for, tonsils or mumps or adenoids, or any of my suggestions. It just didn’t end there, the last straw was when one of them told me, to beat the heat I just needed to eat a kulfi and simultaneously drink chai.
Now, I was laughing to no end and felt happy that at least all my cures for stress, life’s worries just flew away with them. The chai, I could have, care for a dande wali kulfi(that’s the only kind which works).

Pindi wali Bibi 
Ravneet Sangha




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