Meditation – To open your eyes, close them

Posted on June 17, 2020 by memoriesandsuch

Wikipedia defines Meditation as a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state. Scholars have found meditation difficult to define, as practices vary both between traditions and within them.

Meditation has been practiced since 1500 BCE antiquity in numerous religious traditions, often as part of the path towards enlightenment and self realization. The earliest records of meditation or Dhanya as it is called in Sanskrit, come from the Hindu traditions of Vedantism. Since the 19th century, Asian meditative techniques have spread to other cultures where they have also found application in non-spiritual contexts, such as business and health.

Meditation may be used with the aim of reducing stress, anxiety, depression, and pain, and increasing peace, perception, self-concept, and well-being. Meditation is under research to define its possible health benefits which could be psychological, neurological, and cardiovascular as well as other effects.

Meditation has been associated with all the major religions of the world, be it Hindusim, Islam, Jainism,Buddhisim or Christianity. There have been many religious practices which has its roots in meditation, be it chanting the lord’s name with a rosary or sitting in one position and comtemplating the infinite.

I have written about meditation previously, but even though I have tried meditating in fits and bursts, after a few days, I usually find myself starting to slack. Earlier this year, I restarted meditating again. It started with someone asking if I was interested in being a part of a group for Deepak Chopra’s 21 day meditation course. Intrigued, I said yes and started the programme. During the programme, I also came across an app which was giving free access to all their meditation programmes for a year because of the current situation and I decided to take them up on their offer. Initially, I used to meditate at night before bed, but soon started falling back on old habits and trying to miss one day thinking it was no big deal. Then I switched it up. I started waking up about 30 minutes earlier daily to meditate and to my big surprise, this really worked for me. I found that I really liked being awake early enough when the house was in silence and the 15 minutes I spent on my practice started paying off. These days, I find myself waking up early even on weekends and public holidays, when I would normally sleep in, just because I want to meditate in silence and darkness (or with minimal light). I have now been consistent with my practice for more than two months and it has done wonders in my own behaviour. I feel that I have become less anxious and also feel more positive these days, with the cloud of negativity that usually hangs around me, lessened to a great degree. I am also trying to be more grateful to things around me, which is a positive thing.

Mediation is a practice and you only get better the longer you practice it. Every meditation practice is unique in its own way and even if you feel you did not have a good practice, incrementally you are getting better. Meditation is great for both physical, mental and spiritual well-being. It lowers your blood pressure, improves blood circulation, lowers heart rate, reduces anxiety, slows down your respitory rate, reduces anxiety, lowers blood cortisol levels, reduces stress, gives you feelings of well-being and improves and deepens your sense of relaxation.

Contemporary researchers are now exploring whether a consistent meditation practice yields long-term benefits, and noting positive effects on brain and immune function among meditators. Yet it’s worth repeating that the purpose of meditation is not to achieve benefits. To put it as an Eastern philosopher may say, the goal of meditation is no goal. It’s simply to be present.

Meditation is not as difficult as we think. All we need to do is sit in a quiet place with no distractions. Close your eyes and start focussing on the one thing we all have and do – our breathing. Just breathe naturally, there is no need to to changeyour breathing style and technique. If you mind wanders, and this is common and natural, just acknowledge it and go back to focussing on your breathing. You may also feel phantom itches and perhaps pain. When this happens, again acknowledge it and go back to your breath. When you start, you can start at 1-2 minutes and then once you become comfortable, slowly start increasing the time and you can go as long as 15-20 minutes. The longer you practice meditation, the more your focus becomes sharper and you can after some time, focus on your breathing without your mind wandering for the entire duration of the meditation.

During times like this, when we are anxious on so many levels and worry about our health, finances and scores of other things, a meditation practice will help you manage your anxieties and help you get a grip on things so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

World Blood Donor Day

Posted on June 15, 2020 by memoriesandsuch

Blood is what regulates the human body and without blood in our systems, we will not be able to live and breathe. It is thicker than water, and feels a bit sticky. The temperature of blood in the body is 38° C, which is about one degree higher than body temperature. Blood has three important functions:Blood plays an important role in regulating the body’s systems as well as supplying oxygen and nutrients to tissues, removing waste, transporting hormones and other signals throughout the body. Composed of plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, the main function of blood is to regulate the pH of the body and the core body temperature. The amount of blood a person has in his body depends mostly on his size and weight.

Blood is an important resource, both for planned treatments and urgent interventions. It can help patients suffering from life-threatening conditions live longer and with a higher quality of life, and supports complex medical and surgical procedures. Blood is also vital for treating the wounded during emergencies of all kinds (natural disasters, accidents, armed conflicts, etc.) and has an essential, life-saving role in maternal and perinatal care.

There’s no end to the benefits of donating blood for those who need it. Blood is needed to save lives in times of emergencies and to sustain the lives of those with medical conditions, like leukemia, thalassaemia and bleeding disorders, as well as patients who are undergoing major surgeries. For many patients, blood donors are their lifeline. One unit of blood can save three lives!

It turns out that donating blood doesn’t just benefit recipients. There are health benefits for donors, too, on top of the benefits that come from helping others. Donating blood has benefits for your emotional and physical health. According to a report by the Mental Health Foundation, helping others can reduce stress, improve your emotional well-being, benefit your physical health, help get rid of negative feelings as well as provide a sense of belonging and reduce isolation.

For those who have a rare blood group, it is all the more important they donate blood. I am one of those individuals. My blood group is B-ve and I am the only person in my family to have this blood group. In fact, I was so convinced that the result was wrong the first time I did the test to determine thhe blood type, that I did multiple tests to confirm the fact that my group was so different from the rest of my family. B negative is one of the rarest blood groups with around 3-4% of the population having this group. S and the children are O positive and because of this, I had to take multiple injections when I was pregnant so that my body does not reject the children’s positive blood group. I used to donate blood and also had a card from the local Red Cross which stated my blood group and to not do any transfusion if I needed it unless the check the blood which will be transferred into my body, but I lost it when my wallet got nicked some years back. These days, even though I want to, because of my diabetes, I am unable to donate blood. S on the other hand, is an enthusiastic donor and donates multiple times a year.

Yesterday was World Blood Donor Day. The event serves to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products and to thank blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood.

A blood service that gives patients access to safe blood and blood products in sufficient quantity is a key component of an effective health system. Ensuring safe and sufficient blood supplies requires the development of a nationally coordinated blood transfusion service based on voluntary non-remunerated blood donations. However, in many countries, blood services face the challenge of making sufficient blood available, while also ensuring its quality and safety.

The need for safe blood is universal. Safe blood is critical both for treatments and urgent interventions. It can help patients suffering from life-threatening conditions live longer and with a higher quality of life and supports complex medical and surgical procedures. Blood is also vital for treating the wounded during emergencies of all kinds (natural disasters, accidents, armed conflicts, etc.) and has an essential, life-saving role in maternal and neonatal care.

But access to safe blood is still a privilege of the few. Most low- and middle-income countries struggle to make safe blood available because donations are low and equipment to test blood is scarce. Globally, 42% of blood is collected in high-income countries, which are home to only 16% of the world’s population.

An adequate supply of safe blood can only be assured through regular donations by voluntary unpaid blood donors. This is why the World Health Assembly in 2005 designated a special day to thank blood donors and encourage more people to give blood freely. World Blood Donor Day takes place every year on 14 June. As well as thanking blood donors, it is a day to raise awareness about the global need for safe blood and how everyone can contribute.

The campaign theme for this year’s World Blood Donor Day is “Safe blood saves lives” with the slogan “Give blood and make the world a healthier place”. The idea is to focus on the contribution an individual giver can make to improve health for others in the community. Blood donations are needed all over the world to ensure individuals and communities have access to safe and quality-assured blood and blood products in both normal and emergency situations. Through the campaign, we call on more people all over the world to become life-savers by volunteering to donate blood regularly.

The objectives of this year’s campaign are to celebrate and thank individuals who donate blood and encourage more people to start donating; to raise wider awareness of the urgent need to increase the availability of safe blood for use wherever and whenever it is needed to save life; to demonstrate the need for universal access to safe blood transfusion and provide advocacy on its role in the provision of effective health care and in achieving universal health coverage; and to mobilise support at national, regional and global levels among governments and development partners to invest in, strengthen and sustain national blood programmes.

The day and the theme are also a call to action for governments, national health authorities and national blood transfusion services to provide adequate resources and put in place systems and infrastructures to increase the collection of blood from voluntary, non-remunerated blood donors; to provide quality donor care; to promote and implement appropriate clinical use of blood; and to set up systems for the oversight and surveillance on the whole chain of blood transfusion.

Are you a blood donor, if yes, here’s a huge shoutout to you and if no, please consider giving some blood to someone who needs it, if you are physically able to.

Synchronicity: Everyday Magic?

Posted on June 12, 2020 by memoriesandsuch

“Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see”
– Carl Jung

There are times in your life when suddenly you see something popping up repeatedly in your life. For me this is in the form of multiple numbers. In any given week, I see numbers being repeated. This will be in the form of time where I will see time like 11:11 or 1:11 or 4:44 or even 5:55. Or maybe when I am reading book, online or offline and when I glance at the page number, it will show a double number like 44, 55 or even 77 or 99! I got curious about these coincidences and this is what I learnt.

When you notice the same coincidence happening more than once and it begins to take on meaning, then it becomes a Synchronicity. This type of serendipity can seem startling and mysterious when it happens often enough. Everyone has experienced these ‘meaningful coincidences’ in their life, but many don’t always pay attention to the meaning of the synchronicity itself, or realize how it came about in the first place. It is believed by many that this continued coincidence is a nudge from the universe telling you to go in a certain direction or maybe reassuring you that you on the right track, perhaps you are grappling with a decision and such coincidences show you the path to take?

A growing number of people believe that synchronicity is like a powerful ‘wink’ from the Universe telling us that yes, we’re on the right track. Synchronicity is also believed to be a form of guidance from the Higher Self; a way of showing you where to go and what to do next in your life as you proceed through your spiritual awakening.

Synchrocity is different from Serendipity. Serendipity is defined as the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way, while synchrocity is a series of events which are symbolic in nature and which point out to something happening or going to happen in your life.

A concept first introduced by the analytical psychologist Carl Jung, synchronicity is defined as “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection”. He says such events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. According to Jung, synchronicity is an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle,” “meaningful coincidence”, “acausal parallelism” or “meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved”. He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.

Synchronicity is considered pseudoscience because it is neither testable nor falsifiable. Mainstream science explains synchronicities as mere coincidences or spurious correlations which can be described by laws of statistics and confirmation biases.

According to Jung’s 1960 book, “Résumé”, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, the occurrence of a meaningful coincidence in time can take three forms:
a) The coincidence of a certain psychic content with a corresponding objective process which is perceived to take place simultaneously.
b) The coincidence of a subjective psychic state with a phantasm (dream or vision) which later turns out to be a more or less faithful reflection of a “synchronistic,” objective event that took place more or less simultaneously, but at a distance.
c) The same, except that the event perceived takes place in the future and is represented in the present only by a phantasm that corresponds to it.

For subjects like synchronicity, there will be skepctics who say that it’s all coincidence, chalking it up to what’s called “confirmation bias,” which is our very real tendency to remember our ‘hits,’ and forget our ‘misses’. They also point out to the fact that all experiences you hear from people about synchronicity are anecdotal, which means it’s a personal experience, something that happened only to them and can’t be replicated. But if you think about it, most of our experiences in life, spiritual or material are personal and what you experience and undergo may not be the same as someone in the same situation.

It is not very difficult to develop the ability to have synchronicity in your life. You need to be aware and have an open and receptive mind which pays attention to the now and present. Also be humble and don’t impose your desires on your experiences. Trust in yourself and the fact the universe will show synchronicity in your life. Lastly, listen to what your instincts tell you. Sometimes, and this is something I struggle with all the time, we tend to dismiss what our instincts tell us and instead use our mind and practicalities to make a decision. When this happens, when I have a disconnect between my mind and my heart and I let my mind win, I always regret it because my instincts were spot on. Our unconscious mind is vast and very wise and when we listen to our instincts, doors open and things happen for the better.

So the next time such coincidences happen in your life, don’t dismiss them. Stop and think and if you have a battle between your practical mind and your instincts, give the instinct a chance, you will be pleasantly surprised!

Have you had instances of synchronicity happen to you? Do comment and share it with me, I’d love to hear all about it!

Train Travels

Posted on June 5, 2020 by memoriesandsuch

There’s something special about travelling by train. While I have travelled quite a bit in India, I have not travelled by train outside of India, so this blog post will be about train travel within India.

The Indian Railways is the world’s largest railway network by size, with a route length of 95,981 km as of March 2019 and is the word’s eighth largest employer employing about 1.4 million employees as of 2015. It runs more than 20,000 passenger trains daily, on both long-distance and suburban routes, from 7,321 stations across India.

The railways, a product of British colonisation has been in India since 16 April 1853 when the first passenger train ran between Bori Bunder and Thane between downtown and the suburban Mumbai of today. Today Bori Bunder is the majestic Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus or CSMT, which locals still fondly call VT Station or Victoria Terminus in honour of the Empress of India, Queen Victoria.

As of 31 March 2019, the Indian Railways has electrified 50% of the route kilometers and 46% of the total running track. The first line to be electrified was between what is today the CSMT station and Kurla station in Mumbai’s suburban rail network way back in 1925.

The longest train route on the Indian Railways is the Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari Vivek express which covers India lengthwise from Dibrugarh in the north-east in the state of Assam to India’s mainland tip of Kanyakumari in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The train covers a distance of about 4,282 kms in approximately 80 hours or roughly three and a half days, traversing eight Indian states. It crosses the states of Assam, Bihar, Nagaland, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu & Kerala. Another long distance train which also covers a distance of 4282 km is the Dibrugarh to Okha Weekly Border Service which travels across the breadth of India, from the East from Dibrugarh in Assam to India’s western borders, ending at Okha in the western state of Gujarat. Both these trains are currently tied for the 24th longest running trains in the world. The longest running train in the world today is the train that runs from Moscow in Russia to Pyongyang in North Korea. This train travels a distance of 10,267 km and if you travel from Moscow to Pyongyang, you will take approximately 206 hours or about 8.5 days!

Another interesting train on the Indian Railways route is the Navyug Express, a weekly train which runs from Mangalore Central in the south Indian state of Karnataka to the holy city of Katra which houses the very revered Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in the northern Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir. This train takes about 68 hrs to cover a distance of 3,685 km and in this process covers about 14 states and union territories of India, viz. Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab , Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Puducherry(Mahe), Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala & Karnataka.

What I find most fascinating is that parts of India I never thought possible to connect have been connected by train and this connection is an end-to-end connection. For example the train which plies the route from Sri Ganganagar in Rajasthan to Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu. Both are not big metro cities and the fact that there exists a demand for a fully airconditioned train, the Humsafar Express between these two cities is a measure of how popular and engraved the Indian Railways in the psyche of the Indian traveller.

*Source* *This is the closest I could find which corresponds to my memory of a coupe from the 70s*

I have numerous memories of travelling by train. In my childhood, most summer holidays would be spent in Bangalore with my paternal grandparents and at some point when my maternal grandparents moved to Chennai, we would first travel to Chennai, spend a couple of weeks there and then take an overnight train to Bangalore to spend the rest of the holidays with my other set of grandparents.

I don’t have much memory of my first train travel, but have some fuzzy flashes. This was way back in the seventies and I must have been around three years old. I was travelling with my parents and my sister who must have been a toddler at that point to New Delhi. I do remember travelling in a coupe compartment. A coupe is first class compartment at a time when there was probably no air conditioning in the train. Today’s coupes are first class airconditioned compartments. My memory is very fuzzy for this trip, but if I think hard, I have flashes of memory of being in a closed compartment with my parents and sister and can see the scenary flying by.

My biggest memories, however, are of the Udyan Express which is superfast train running between Mumbai’s CSMT and Bangalore’s City stations. The name is because Bangalore is called a Garden City and is famous for all the green spaces in the city, Udyan meaning ‘garden’ in pretty much all Indian languages. The train is probably 30 odd years old and I remember travelling from the time it started. Before this train started, there was no end-to-end service between Mumbai and Bangalore and you had to take trains on the Mumbai-Chennai route and get down in a station called Guntakal and then transfer to another train which took you all the way to Bangalore. I think this route between Guntakal and Bangalore used to be meter gauge while the Mumbai-Chennai route used to be broad gauge.

Once, when we were young adults, my sister and I travelled alone to Bangalore. We took what was a fairly new train then whose name escapes me now. That train used the Konkan Railway route and took a coastal route to get to Bangalore. I have searched quite a bit for the name of this train, but maybe this train has been either discontinued or merged with another train. I remember it being a very scenic route with lots of greenery and we passed many smaller towns and cities, unlike the Udyan Express which used to pass through mostly farmland and barren parts of Maharahtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. If anyone knows what is the name of this train, please put it in the comments below, I would love to know.

I loved travelling in the second class sleeper compartment where the windows would be bitterly fought with my sister. Both would want the window seat and if we were lucky to travel nice travelling companions, we would both get a window seat, otherwise, it would be up to my mother to play referee. The second class sleeper has six seats with three across each side and then across the aisle, two more seats. Most years, we would go ahead of my father who would join us later during the holidays. Also the sleeper class berths meant that the middle berth pulled out from the back rest of the lower berth and this also used to be a point of contention between us. After a few years, I started disliking the middle berth and used to want to sleep in the lower berth and my mum used to take the middle berth with my sister ensconcing herself in the top berth where she could sleep to her heart’s content.

I can’t sleep while travelling, so I was my family’s guard at night. Everytime the train stopped, my sleep would break and I would wake up. Because there was no airconditioning in the sleeper class, we would sleep with the windows open and a steel slatted cover over it. This, because there used to be heavy thefts in this class as the door used to not be locked and anyone can enter the compartment anytime of the day or night. The camadarie that you used to find in those days travelling by the sleeper class can’t be found today. We used to make friends during the 24 hours it would take to get to our destination and there are times when those fleeting friendships used to be continued. This is a time without any smart devices, not even mobile phones, remember and the only way to pass the time during the trip was to talk to people and share stories about your lives. We also didn’t have a lot of access to books and we would purchase a few magazines to read during the journey. Then you hope that your co-passengers would also have some reading material with them which you would then exchange to read. We would also play a lot of card games as well as games like anthakshari or similar games. And then when your destination arrives, you would smile at your new friends, promise to keep in touch and more often than not, slowly glide out of their lives.

My last train trip in India was this year during my India trip where we did back-to-back two trips, both overnight. The first was from Chennai to Thanjavur and the second from Mayiladuthurai to Bengaluru. Both trips were in AC 2 tier and this trip made me realise that I am growing old, I prefer my luxuries, slight as they are. The children were absolutlely fascinated by these short train trips and have been asking me when we can do this again. One train I absolutely want to travel in and in first class no less, is the Rajdhani Express which connects Mumbai to New Delhi. Rajdhani which means capital was meant to be a series of passenger trains which connect state capitals to India’s capital of New Delhi. This series of trains gets the highest priority in the Indian Railways network and is also considered as prestigious and premium, so when this train travels, it is not allowed to stop at any signals, other lesser important trains get shunted to the nearest station to wait and to make way for the Rajdhani to fly past. We were planning a trip this December, but with COVID-19, this is not possible and given how dire things are, I really don’t know when we can travel on the Rajdhani.

Something I love doing is watching train videos on YouTube. There are many people who patiently stand on the doorstep and share with the world their train journeys and each time I watch these videos, I am reminded of how much I love train travel. I also think if I was still living in India and younger, would I also be like one of these vloggers?

Travel is such a fascinating thing and you learn so much when you are out of your comfort zone. Train travel on the other hand, is a great equaliser, you meet such a diverse group of people in your travels that like it or not, there is some learning every single trip.

An Ode to Mangoes

Posted on June 3, 2020 by memoriesandsuch

When it is the month of May, it is mango season in Mumbai. And not just any ordinary mango, it’s the time for the king of mangoes – the Alphonso Mango, lovingly called Hapus in Maharashtra. The months of April to early June, just before the first rains hit the state, the aroma of these mangoes are everywhere in the city, you just can’t escape the fruit.

Scientifically known as Mangifera indica, mangoes have been grown in India for thousands of years and produces around 40% of the world’s production of the fruit. Over 1,000 varieties grow in India, each one celebrated and defended in its region, from the bright orange Kesar of Gujarat to the small green Langra of Uttar Pradesh. But the Alphonso mango is special and unlike any found in the country. The fruit is named after the Portuguese general and military expert, Afonso de Albuquerque who helped establish Portuguese colonies in India. Grating on mango trees to produce varieties like the Alphonso was also introduced by the Portuguese. The Alphonso mango is also one of the most expensive varieties of mango, and is grown mainly in western India, particulary in the Ratnagiri district of the Konkan region in Maharashtra. The fruit is highly prized for its aroma and fragrance, taste and the beautiful colour of sunset it takes on when fully ripe. It is heavily traded both domestically as well as internationally and many cartons of the fruit are packed to be sent to the Middle East, Europe, North America and South and Southeast Asia.

Of the thousands of cultivars of mango in India, there are several different varieties of Alphonso. The best and most expensive are grown on the small Natwarlal plantation in Ratnagiri, and are hand-harvested. It is this variety that’s most widely exported. The fruit was shipped to London for the Queen’s coronation in 1953 from Mumbai’s legendary Crawford Market, renowned for its Alphonso stalls in season. A few years back, the famous mangoes from the Konkan region in Maharashtra were given Geographical Indication or GI tags which means this tag specifies the geographical location, which could be a town, city, region or even a country, a product is created. This means that when you buy a mango which is GI tagged, you are sure you are buying an Alphonso mango or Hapus!

A seasonal fruit, the Alphonso mango is available from around mid-April through the end of June, though once it starts raining, the balance produce starts flooding the market and prices also drop. The fruit is best eaten when the weather is hot and dry, in the peak summer months. The Alphonso has a beautiful mango shape and each fruit a quite large, weighing between 150 to 300 grams per fruit. The skin of a fully ripe Alphonso mango turns a bright golden-yellow with a tinge of red which spreads across the top of the fruit. The flesh of the fruit is a beautiful dark saffron colour and is rich, creamy, smooth and buttery with a delicate non-fibrous and juicy pulp.

Mangoes are a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals containing over 20 different vitamins and minerals. 1 serving of mango which is roughly ¾ of a cup provides you with the following amounts of your daily requirements – 50% of vitamin C, 8% vitamin A, 8% of vitamin B6, 15% of folate, 15% of copper as well as 7% of your daily fibre requirements.

Growing up, at home in Mumbai, everybody with the exception of me was a huge mango fan. While I can eat one fruit per day or so, my parents, grandparents and sister can polish off a few fruits each. I was the exception to the rule pretty much everywhere because most people I knew were mango or rather hapus aficiandos. I preferred the raw mango which is this tart and sometimes sour fruit which is so yummy with a lashing of salt and red chilli powder. During my childhood, we used to get boxes of the fruit and other than eating the fruit itself, my mother would puree the pulp and this puree would be used to flavour milkshakes and also my father and sister would dunk their chapatis and puris in this puree. So during the summer months, each night before bed, my mother would make a few glasses of mango milkshake for those who desired it (not me!).

My paternal grandparents moved to Bangalore when I was quite young and each year, we would travel to Bangalore for our summer holidays. We would mostly travel in the last few days of April or the first few days of May, depending on when my school would officially end. In my school, students had to go back to school to collect their year-end reports and so we would only travel out of Mumbai after that day, which would usually be the day after the results. A week or so before the trip, which would be by train, my mother would get in touch with her regular mango-walla to order a big box of mangoes for my grandmother who loved Hapus and could not readily find it in Bangalore those days. This is more than 30-35 years back, so the Bangalore of those days is very, very different from the Bengaluru of today. The mango-walla uncle would pack the mangoes which would be around four to five dozens in a big wooden box and layer the mangoes in beds of straw. He would have chosen unripe mangoes in varying stages of ripeness so that all 50-60 mangoes ripen at different times and we don’t have a glut of ripe mangoes to finish off at the same time. We would then take this box, along with a mango pickle made of baby unripe mangoes which was my mother’s signature pickle and which my grandfather loved along with our luggage and travel the roughly 1,150 km to Bangalore. In Bangalore, some of the Alphonso mangoes would be distributed among friends and the rest eaten as it is or made into puree, milkshakes or even used in sweets. I remember one year, my sister and I planted an Alphonso mango seed in the hope that it will become a mango tree. But we planted it too close to the boundary wall between our home and that of our neighbour and so the next year when we went looking for the tree we were sure would have come up by then, we were told they had to pluck it out and throw it. I remember both of us being so disappointed at this news.

Another memory I have about mangoes is a trip to Chennai during the summers. We were at an aunt’s house and they had a fully grown mango tree. The tree was full of unripe mangoes and the women in the house had decided they get the mangoes plucked and make mango pickle out of it. But we children plus my uncle had a different idea. One afternoon, while the women were taking a nap and we were playing board games, the uncle managed to pluck quite a few of the mangoes and after sneaking into the kitchen to get plates, a knife, some salt and red chilli powder, we had a raw mango party! Of course the expected outcome happened – all of us, including my uncle got roundly scolded for eating mangoes that was destined for a pickle, but we didn’t regret it one bit.

Mangoes are considered heaty and the rule in my house used to be a cup of milk after every mango eating session. I hate drinking milk, so sometimes, I do wonder if my indifference to mangoes was because of this rule. The next generation, aka GG & BB also love mangoes, BB more than GG I think because his go-to drink at an Indian restaurant is the Mango Lassi. So all said and done, I still love the Alphonso mango and during this season, even in Singapore, I try to purchase a carton of this precious fruit so that the children (and S and me) can take part in a ritual that goes back to my childhood.

Memories and Such

Memories of a very ordinary life

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