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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