Blogging on Sulekha.com

I've been blogging on Sulekha.com for a while now. It's been okay, I'm probably not a prolific blogger, given I have other writings to do. And Sulekha is really huge and it's darn tough to find an author who can be a good read. Well, I don't mean, good writers are too few there, just that the overwhelming number of bloggers make it a huge task finding them. All of us love to think we write well, yes I do, but the truth is, not everybody can engage. Some day I will engage, a vast audience!

Also, it scares me to see the amount of rightwing blogging going on in Sulekha. Some are guarded and covert, but quite a few ones (some among them "longtime" and "prominent" bloggers) are rabid, odious and dangerous.

So did I not find any satisfaction while blogging on Sulekha? No, that's not why I'm writing this post. Quite a good number of people have befriended me on Sulekha, so I am convinced this is a pretty well-connected blogging community. Of all the 10 blogs I've written so far, a few that are worth any remote literary value have been liked by readers.

Three of my poems (actually five in all because one title contains three poems) have been read, commented upon, recommended. Even temporarily featured on the respective blog home pages. Not bad, huh? Although, this doesn't bring my work closer to publishing again. I need to wait, be patient, sharpen my skill and breathe deeply.

So, those Sulekha pages where my work is featured, are:

http://nabina.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/07/a-few-things-of-remembrance-a-poem-i-have-yet-to.htm

and

http://nabina.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/07/whispers-in-the-attic-a-memoir-poem.htm

and (the three-poem set)

http://nabina.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/06/three-food-poems-a-taste-of-nations.htm

Now if you cannot see the pages, it's not my fault. Login to www.sulekha.com and you can probably see them.

My Red Hot Taiwanese Dinner

NOTE: don't bother to read this if you are a die-hard vegetarian or even an omnivore who's not experimental at all...

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” -- Winston Churchill
“Pigs are not that dirty. And they're smart, strange little creatures. They just need love.” -- Shelley Duvall
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/pigs.html))

My morning starts with a glass of orange juice. Usually I have a breakfast of a small bowl of cereals or a toast with cheese spread. Occasionally, on weekends, I may opt for an English breakfast of bacon and eggs and coffee or go for croissants.
On weekdays, later in the day, I usually drink two cups of tea with milk or coffee with creamer.

It’s surprising to most people that I tend not to eat a quick lunch, like others who eat fast food or just one sandwich or survive eating a salad. My lunch is normally a near-full meal, whether I am at work or in the university. Usually I carry lunch from home and avoid eating out. I eat breads or pita rolls or rice, vegetables or lentils or beans, chicken or fish or tofu and a seasonal fruit. There may be some salad included too in my meal. If I have to use up leftovers, I make a pita pocket to eat it.

With the midday meal, I normally drink only water. At times, I take a fruit juice or eat unsweetened yogurt.

I make it a point to drink a cup of tea or coffee in the evening, sometimes with scones or light snacks, what the French would call a goûter.

My dinner is usually light – a soup, breads or noodles and maybe some vegetables. For soup, I prefer having cream of broccoli, French onion, cream of mushroom or spinach soup. Again I only drink water with my meal. At times of course I break the monotony drinking Perrier or on rare occasions, some red wine.

I almost never eat dessert unless it's a special occasion. Like an anniversary or a birthday. Then, I have cheesecake or rice pudding.

My weekend meals are little more elaborate. Lunch has at least an additional course, as has dinner. Often I like to eat out on weekends. My favorites are Thai, Chinese and Middle Eastern cuisines. I adore Pad Thai, dumplings and couscous.

Well, having listed all of the above, I one day ventured to eat and drink something that I have never tried before and I believe not many people who appreciate diverse cuisine, would even have ever eaten it.

Invited to a dinner by my Taiwanese friends at their home some time ago, I had this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Knowing the Taiwanese have a very diverse cuisine, I had agreed to eat a surprise ingredient the Taiwanese commonly use in their “hotpot”. Well, it has a specific name for them that I do not clearly recall. I think it is “Zhu Xie Gao” but don’t recall for sure as my Taiwanese friends are not around now to tell me. Also, before eating it, I had no idea what it would look like or taste like. Our friends asserted it was arguably one of the best items one could sample in Chinese or Taiwanese cuisine.

On the day of our dinner, we gathered round a table on which sat a small stove burner. A large pot warmed on it, three-fourths filled with water. Kevin and Elisa, our friends, neatly placed around all food items that were to be offered in the hotpot once the water started to boil.

There were fresh shrimps, shiitake mushrooms, chopped sausages, tofu cubes, broccoli florets, shredded chicken and beef, baby carrots and corns, fish balls and the special item I was going to sample that evening. Soy sauce and vinegar were to be added at one’s discretion. One normally stirred the broth from time to time to check if the food in there was done and used a ladle to serve. One ate from dainty Chinese soup bowls (or probably they were rice bowls), added steaming jasmine rice to the broth and used a pair of chopsticks. I am bad at using chopsticks, so spoon and fork were just fine for me!

As various items were tossed in to the hotpot and we eagerly waited for the broth to be ready, I knew it was my big day to eat the “unknown” item. Kevin joked that it required thorough cooking and so waiting would be fine.

And then I was served the most delicious hotpot broth I have ever tasted in my entire life. I searched in my bowl amid shrimps and mushrooms and baby corns, and picked up 'the' piece – a dark red cube, like a red tofu. There it was, the much-awaited and curiosity-arousing item. Congealed pig blood. Cut neatly in cubes, a delicacy for several communities in the world. I put it in my mouth, in awe and trepidation.

I must make clear that before my hosts suggested I eat this surprise ingredient, they knew I was not only an omnivore, but also not squeamish about eating beef, pork, lamb etc., and pretty experimental about my diet. I wasn't cheated or anything.

So, I ate congealed pig’s blood, considered a delicacy in China, Taiwan, the Philippines and a few other East Asian countries. It is not a usual item that a non-East Asian would hope to eat, however avid an admirer of such cuisine he or she may be or however diverse meat eating experience one may have.

The reason I voluntarily tasted it was because I wanted to be familiar with the culture that my Taiwanese friends represented. Another flimsy reason was to break out of the mundane shrimp-and-tofu routine that most eaters of Chinese/Taiwanese food are used to. (Umm, I've decided to stick to that routine though!) Although pig or pork was a sort of taboo to my family, it wasn’t a taboo for me. So, I went ahead.

Most people I spoke to about my experience with eating congealed pig blood, reacted with astonishment and to some extent, utter abhorrence. Some asked me if culturally (and religiously) it was okay for me to eat pig’s blood. To that I said, for me any cultural experience was just fine, as long as it did not cause food poisoning etc.

Most Indians (my country of birth) reacted with visible shock and disgust. Most Americans reacted with disbelief (and some shock). Most East Asians took the news calmly.

Although I sound okay with that experience, for me challenges were many in the beginning. Overcoming unfamiliarity was a big one.

Also, it was difficult coming to terms with eating something I was never familiar with. So when Kevin explained what the secret item was, I had to steel myself.

Culturally, although eating pork is not encouraged in Indian society, I've been eating sausages and salamis right from my childhood. But pig blood? Huh, that was a different ballgame all together.

Let me confess, I WAS worried about the hygiene aspect of this item to begin with. Eating blood? Gracious!

The image of blood in my mind also did not make me particularly enthusiastic when I actually got down to eating it.

On the flip side, the fact that I did not actually see any blood in the hotpot kept my nerves calm. At my friends’ recommendation when I picked up the congealed blood cube, it looked quite innocuous, like a dark red tofu cube. It tasted salty, but it did not have any additional flavor which might be good idea to make it easily palatable to those that have never tasted it. So next time I eat it, I'd take the help of chili sauce or garlic to better the taste. Only if I eat it.

Having eaten congealed pig’s blood, it acted as a window to other East Asian cultures. “Pork blood jellos” or “chocolate pork” (as Filipinos call them) is a ‘normal’ food item in these cultures. For them, eating congealed pig’s blood (duck’s blood for those who do not approve of pig), was just like eating blood sausage or similar food eaten in Europe (hey, yes, Europeans have their own).

The one assumption that I begun with, when I brought the spoon to my mouth as Kevin and Elisa ran their commentary describing the red cube, was that pork blood cubes would taste simply horrible and spoil the taste of other items cooked along with it.

On the contrary, I found out that the blood cubes were not of any heightened flavor. They were certainly not worse than smelly bean curds or salty anchovies. They were in fact very much like salted tofu, a little harder in texture may be, but not unsavory. Cooked in that Taiwanese hotpot, they did not at all affect or alter the taste of the broth. I think though a little spice might do it some good.

Later, while reading on the subject, I found out blood may be a taboo item in many societies and faiths, especially in the West, but blood is perfectly accepted as food in parts of Asia or Africa. I must say, eating congealed pig’s blood and the ensuing entry to the uncharted culinary world of East Asian countries led me to research further on the subject of “unusual” food. To my pleasant surprise, I found out that not only blood, but also several other very unusual food are eaten in Europe and America. One can check them at:
http://www.weird-food.com/weird-food-mammal.html

Often we are too quick to criticize the food habit of the “others”. But think “squirrel brain” in American Deep South or “Calf’s brain” in France or blood sausages of Germany and blood pudding of UK. How do these things get acceptance? Conclusion: Culture must be seen in perspective and sensitivity can only grow out of familiarity and acceptance, at least tolerance. But let me end by saying I'm not recommending eating blood cubes here. It was my experiment, it remains so.

Food, Health, Climate: Can We Set Our Karma Right?

Last year, when India stood tall in the global hall of fame for R K Pachauri being named a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize along with former US Vice President Al Gore, speaking to news agencies on the eve of receiving this prestigious award, Pachauri emphasized that reliance on technology alone wasn’t sufficient to keep the world cleaner. He was, of course, referring to the ways countries could cut CO2 emissions, following the example set by Norway. Simply put, industrial technology will have to yield more space to a sustainable approach that would propel real development for countries. Pachauri must have used the word ‘alone’ knowing very well for India, a country that looks at technology as a quick-fix solution to almost every ailment, a broader and more balanced strategy needs to be adopted. In the spirit of his mission he said, “We all have to adjust our way of life to minimise the looming threat.” Translates as, we need to re-evaluate methods and arrest the silent turmoil that is ongoing regarding our environment, health and lifestyle.
But think of it, does it need a Pachauri to tell us things are a bit off-track? The US doesn’t need a Gore to tell them what’s been going on with their environment, their food, and consequently, their health (Code red on that last one – obesity is the new enemy)? Or maybe it does. While unluckily for me, six year’s of stay in the United States has been fraught with the constant struggle to avoid cheap, abundant and bad food, industrially mass produced, luckily, 2006-07 has been a transition to local and organic food, to understanding my role in contributing to a cleaner environment, basically to understanding how the ‘karmic’ cycle of bad environment, bad eating and bad health works.
Let me backtrack to illustrate the last point.

Fat chance for health!
Within a week of the Pachauri-Gore sound bytes still dominating our media, I spotted a BBC story about dead fish surfacing in the river Brahmaputra in Guwahati, the capital of Assam, apparently because over-zealous fishermen had been using pesticides in the water to kill more fish for larger profit. Thousands of dead fish reportedly had been washed ashore. The number of sick fish matched those killed. There’s an alleged controversy that perhaps the fishermen really did not kill the fish, but that the fish died owing to the rise of pollution level in the river. The Guwahati refinery, as everyone who has lived in Guwahati (as has this writer) or follows health and environment news knows, has been a defaulting polluter according to Assam Pollution Control Board (APCB) officials. But whether the refinery is the culprit or it’s the greedy fishermen, the bottom line is, there was a serious breach.
Fish happens to get contaminated very easily and once eaten, passes the contamination to our body. There is a global debate raging about PCB and mercury levels in the fish we eat. For those who do not eat fish, things are not rosy either. Pollution levels in rivers and seas only pollute further our environment, even so seriously, affecting vegetables and crops. In fact, the worsening climate change owing to pollution – industrial and otherwise – have been linked to obesity and other more serious diseases (as if obesity isn’t enough disease causing and organ destabilising). With climate change, diseases of weird nomenclature have been popping up now and then in India and abroad. Remember the recent occurrence of chikungunya in Italy, a disease supposedly of warmer tropical climates? Apparently immigrants didn’t bring it!
So, did I say obesity was somewhere linked to all this? Quite likely.
I’m reminded of a time when as a nonprofit group’s media officer I was on a field tour to Hyderabad promoting grassroots journalism in the mainstream media. A prominent newspaper editor told us a story about his visit to China. He, also a prominent Left supporter, said that all around him in Beijing and other big cities, he noticed that half the number of children seemed not just fat or plump, but patently obese. He also noticed the Chinese kids ate fast food and their parents took them to shopping malls. This was eight or more years ago. I don’t believe things have changed much the other way round.
Fast-forwarding from China to the India of today, it seems things are surely caught in a vicious cycle between a polluted environment, bad food and obesity. Visiting Kolkata in 2006, I was amazed to see how not fat, but obese kids and teenagers dotted the malls, Big Bazaars and other shopping center landscapes. This was India’s middle class – the news spenders who are also new vigorous polluters. A vendor roasting corns on charcoal outside my apartment complex bitterly complained: “The babus now order pizzas … and of course their favourite restaurant is Mekdoonal (McDonalds)!”
Traditional Indian food – the gourmet variety – has always been high in calories, but there is still the option to eat healthy. Typically, now most urban middle class Indians are consuming foods like French fries, soft drinks, cookies, burgers, deep-fried meats and other highly processed fatty, sugary and salty items.
Fat chance for health then!

A turbulent Rubicon
It may seem gibberish to say that global temperature is expected to increase by 5 degree Celsius in the 21st century (according to The Human Development Report 2007-08) thereby endangering all life. Still wish Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss took a cue from the HDR while planning to launch a pilot project for ‘Prevention and Control of Cardiovascular diseases, Diabetes and Stroke', reportedly budgeted at Rs. 5 crore for a year (The Hindustan Times, Jan. 3) in six districts, before it is extended to the whole nation. The six districts are Kamrup in Assam, Jalandhar in Punjab, Bhilwara in Rajasthan, Shimoga in Karnataka, Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu and Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. While Ramadoss’ vision that these districts will offer a national footprint maybe correct, such a project must factor into it the overall environmental pollution, the food chain, popular lifestyle, sustainable and eco-friendly farming and trading practices, etc. Only then can the national footprint be deemed holistic. Although seemingly a drop in the ocean, these types of efforts would no doubt contribute to improving the lot of the worst sufferers, about 40 per cent of the world’s poor people, which is 2.6 billion. Go ahead and calculate the number of India’s poor.
As for the moneyed Indian middle class with their increasing girth (I read somewhere that 55 percent of Delhi women are overweight and 76 percent have abdominal obesity), alarm bells are already ringing. This sordid statistics brought to my notice a recent effort launched on a war footing by the British government (BBC, Jan. 23) – a £372 million strategy aimed at cutting levels of obesity in England. Reportedly, several "healthy towns" would be created at a cost of £30 million with comprehensive cycle routes and pedestrian areas. The thrust of the effort is mainly on children with obesity. So, everywhere it seems, there’s now a growing concern for healthy living. Has to go hand in hand with promoting a clean environment.
On this cue, because I live in North America, I had to dig out the fact that ‘the average American meal travels 1,500 miles from field to fork, consuming untold gallons of chemical fertilizer, pesticides and fossil fuels along the way (New York Times, Dec. 14, 2007)’. Now do we see the connection between healthy living and eating and a clean and sustainable environment?
The Pachauri-Gore tips probably only point to the tip of a dangerous iceberg that’s melting fast. There are hundreds of activists and scientists working in various areas of the composite environment-health-food/lifestyle problem. Maybe our ministers and policymakers would like to know a few of the strategies they suggest in order to cross the turbulent Rubicon.

The food karma
Some advocates of healthy eating, a clean environment and fair trade practices propose the “100-mile diet” plan. This of course won’t ensure 100 per cent overnight improvement in our lifestyle, but will certainly instill a sense in us that we have more control over what we feed our body. For example, whenever I buy from my local farmers market, I ask about their farming methods, if they use pesticides, if the poultry is free-range, etc. I’m not fanatic about staying cocooned within the 100 miles. So coffee, tea, wine, rice, wheat, spices and a few others are definitely ‘outsourced’. But it feels good to eat local, organic and seasonal vegetables and fruits, as also locally raised free-range poultry or meat. Because even organic carrots shipped from California would mean a huge amount of fuel being burned, I’d soon shift to locally grown organic beets.
Certainly, it’s tough being a ‘locavore’, like learning to swim or drive as an adult! But it’s worth it. The other benefit is that you get to know more local people when you buy and eat local. Fosters good camaraderie. Something my aged parents still hold precious without knowing the jargon around it. When Jeevan the local grocer gets them items produced locally, Suleiman the local fisherman sells them fresh fish brought from his village, Bimala the local vendor lady gets them seasonal fruits, vegetables or herbs from her kitchen garden, they rely on each other economically and form a humanistic web. This is notwithstanding the proliferation of supermarkets and malls in the city that are systematically taking away jobs from small farmers and local growers and compromising with our overall health.
So high time we earned a bit of good karma! Buy local, buy seasonal, and buy organic at least for the famed “dirty dozens” – apples, cherries, grapes, nectarines, peaches, pears, raspberries, strawberries, bell peppers (Shimla mirch), celery, potatoes and spinach. Milk, red meat and poultry are the other preferred organic buys.
Often however, the complaint is, although locally grown produces are not usually expensive, certified organic fruits and vegetables sometimes cost fifty percent more than their regular counterparts. So does it mean by becoming willing to contribute to a green environment, we turn into paupers? Not really. Eating local and seasonal can be a great way avoiding paying too much. Exotic or non-seasonal produces can cost us a packet, as these would invariably travel long miles before reaching us. Going to a mandi or a weekly haat can open up the doors to fresh, local and sometimes organically grown food. Paradoxically, while trying to save up money by not buying organic, a large number of population in the US or the UK have recently been incurring high medical costs on account of obesity and other ailments.
One might ask, where’s the organic certification in India? That’s something advocates are working on. For thousands of organic farmers in India and elsewhere, organic certification currently is a political hot potato, hopefully to be resolved soon. So far, most certification guidelines have been coming from the affluent West, and what wonder! It is American and European companies that have jumped into the fray smelling good money in the organics business. The latter insist that farmers everywhere follow a prescribed database of seeds and buy only from them, which is being opposed by farmers of the global South.
We have good news. In India, various state governments now have incentives for farmers to go organic. At the ‘India Organic 2007’, a trade fair and seminar, there were business enquiries worth Rs. 150 crore, “a growth of 80 per cent over 2006”, according to Manoj K. Menon, executive director, International Competence Centre for Organic Agriculture (ICCOA). This, after reports that most of India's farms – 65 percent of the country's cropped area – are "organic by default”, according to a study by Rabo India, a subsidiary of Rabobank International. This means that small farmers, located mostly in the eastern and northeastern India, have no choice except to farm without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. On the other hand, it is also true that many of them choose to farm organically, as has been the tradition for thousands of years.
To go back to Pachauri’s warning about heavy reliance on industrial technology, several of our farmers have seen firsthand the effects of chemical farming – erosion of soil and soil nutrients, low-nutrition food, and human diseases resulting from chemical seepage in the water table as well as from emissions in the air. We as consumers can alone help prevent this. So the food-health-climate karma watch is ticking away, right as we read this. The best reason for investing in it will be a healthy planet, awarded to us in this life itself.

Black-eyed Peas over Tortilla Roll

He pours the mixture slowly
Over the smooth sandy belly of a tortilla --
A thick sauce, pungent to the uninitiated.

Black-eyed, or so they seem
From a brief brawl in his food stand pan
Where he calms them down with a spatula.

They eye me from the thick mix,
Upturning semi-pulverized onions caps
And specks of cumin seeds, spicy grains.

They tumble as he pours more,
Watch the tortilla squirm unseen to the eye
From heaped up stove-top heat, real fast.

Black brown light lick each other
To become black brown light over again,
From the touchy fair-weather tortilla roll

To the one-eyed pea-brats to
Golden onion flakes – as the flavor flows, drips off
From my anxious hands. I quickly devour the roll.

Feb. 12, 2007

Banana Fries

Stout
Plump
Sticky
Curvy
Thick-skinned delight.
Long-legged wonder
Hanging in bunches
Like exotic animals
Vacant and vagrant
Welcome to my home
Where a purposeful
Stay will be their fate.
Smooth-limbed fruits
Reeking in my fridge
Waiting to be sliced
As spicy banana fries.
One stains my fingers
Picked with my index
And experienced thumb
Unsoft, firm, not ripe yet
Hence taciturn to my
Battle-perfected knife.
Off goes that one first
Rolling out green orbs
Fat, thin, all in fast strikes
Sticky still, a bit messy
The reluctance drops
As quick as the banana
Pieces fly on the chopping
Board – one, two, three
Abracadabra turns them
Into sizzling golden coins
Once I pop them inside
The hot oil pan of mine
Searing delightfully to see
Bananas die one by one
The sweet smelling death
Absorbs my nostrils;
My serene tongue licks
The flavorsome spice
That will duly shroud
The fries and the chips
In a single prayer –
RIP.
Feb 20, 2007

APPLE PIE

He made it for me on one wintry day –
Flavorsome, fragrant and round.
Wiping mild sweat from his forehead
He called out, “It is ready!”

I rushed to discover an orb oozing warm juice
An apple pie – brown and balmy!

His thick oven glove was burnt in the corners
I could see his little finger sticking out
Yet the fresh pie smelt of honey and ginger,
His own secret spices.

The top was brown, as it should be.
The sides were curled and dark … over baked?
Bubbling juices froth like a baby’s mouth.
He watched me in glee.

As we dug into the slices
Fresh bodies of Empire apples lay limp,
Translucent, a little tart and inviting –
Warm to our tongues and mysterious.

He watched me eat and sighed with relief,
I know why, finally he knows how to make a pie!

As the brown slices fast disappeared,
He discarded his torn glove and sipped his tea.
Speaking to me in a conspiratorial tone
He said, “I never put cinnamon in there you see.”