The Jackfruit Tree - Sharing is Caring!!

Nature gives abundantly and its gifts flow to everyone irrespective of status, race, religion even species. Such is the case of a jackfruit tree that stands loftily in the compound adjacent to where my mother lives.

In spring, the tree blossoms and in a few months by July, its fruits are ripe and ready to be devoured. Whoever has eaten jackfruit know that it offers a raw deal. Above the mushy fruits is a thick shell that is rough and sticky and hard to break. Nature has its own devices too, in terms of inherent intelligence of beings as well as the tools they have to conquer what they need to survive.

The monkeys here are behind the ravens in evolutionary sense. They jump around the tree trying to get to relish the fruit but to no avail. Meanwhile, the crows come and pierce them and take the first offering. The monkeys follow by eating from the holes pierced by the crows. Some of them fall on the ground when overripe and the monkeys keep waiting for it and come and gobble them. The story doesn’t end here.

One sunny afternoon, my mother was watching the theatrical performance of the crows and the monkeys from her window, when the air was permeated by the shrill call of a vendor who goes from home to home sharpening knives.  He was treading the path under the tree and was in clear view of my mother. However, he was himself completely unaware of her presence.

He had probably not got a chance to eat lunch that day for whatever reason. Maybe he was too busy with business or maybe he was trying to break the buck to buy something to eat. Whatever the case, his eyes fell on the jackfruits that were on the ground. He looked around to see if anybody was watching. On feeling comfortable that he was the lonesome human there with just the crows and monkeys around, he quickly picked up pieces of the fruits and gulped them.

After fulfilling his appetite thus, he rang out his usual shrill call to sharpen knives and carried on with his pursuit of business.

The Weaves of Time!!

When I was a little child, my mother had a few nice mekhela sadors that she would alternate wearing to weddings. One was a shade of purple and another was the most beautiful resplendent peacock blue, she had got during my eldest Mama's wedding. Sometimes I would wear them while playing with dolls, pretending to be grown-up. Later, she added few more to her collection, purchased from one of her friends Medhi aunty, who used to bring them from Sualkuchi and cater to everyone in Shillong. I believe it was common for middle class India at that time to not have too much of anything and still be very happy.

I didn't have too many myself, when I moved to the US, apart from the few from my wedding. I never felt the need to get more, since I didn't wear them much. But once we got here, we got sucked into a social whirlpool and it spun out a rainbow of shades of mekhela sadors, adorned by the beautiful ladies, I now call friends. Since then my closet has grown by a few mekhela sadors, every year. 

The two things that inspire me the most about the attire, is that the beautiful Assamese ladies embrace and adorn it full throttle. Whenever I visit Guwahati, I am thoroughly impressed by women just going about their daily business, fluttering beautiful weaves. There is no giving up on mekhela sador for any other attire!!! The second and even more important one is that the weavers and designers keep coming up with innovations in color, design, fabric and style, always keeping it interesting.

Here are two recent trends. In the first picture, I am wearing a pastel lavender mekhela sador with rose gold copper guna, in contrast to yellow gold guna used traditionally and in the second picture I am wearing a pistachio mekhela sador in tone-on-tone metallic guna and oh how I love them!!!❤️

Anupamaa

My blog has suffered much worse from the lack of content during the pandemic, than mainstream media. So I have decided to revive it by posting more frequently. 

In the height of the dearth of content, one by one we got hooked to an Indian soap named Anupamaa on Hotstar, starting with me. Anupamaa,the protagonist in the series, is a housewife taking care of the entire family, while neglecting herself. Despite her efforts, she is mistreated by almost everyone she takes care of, from her mother-in-law to her husband and even her own kids.

The story is about her battle and struggle to find herself and her happiness. The first of these being starting a dance school, a passion she had long given up. 

New episodes were loaded at 9pm ET and we kept checking for it and religiously watched it all together as family for one and a half years, when there was nothing of much else to do, until this summer, when we canceled the Hulu-Hotstar subscription. The series was also going a little too far in the story line like all long-running soaps. But while we watch it pushed forth several female centric areas, such as remarriage of older divorced women in India. Rupali Ganguly of Sarabhai vs Sarabhai fame, played a great role enacting the protagonist. Here is my enactment of her most famous dialog in the series. :-)