By Tara Narayan

THESE are all déjà vu moments for me on how we don’t know how to move on when things go wrong, so wrong with you! One thing I have learned this week has been like a breakthrough, I have learned that when we starve (willingly or willingly) we suffer! Don’t laugh. That’s because most of us don’t live for ourselves first, we live for ourselves second, third, fourth or never… I’ve been trying to differentiate between exhaustion and depression lately and coming to some conclusions although conclusion are never forever you understand.
I feel as if I’m suffering at the tail end of life before what is called Hinduism’s fourth chaturashrama of sannyasa (on the scale of a 100 years with the first 25 years devoted to brahmacharya – learning state, second 25 years to grihastha – get married, procreate, run a household; then vanaprastha (forest walker/dweller stage and finally sannyasa or renunciation state. All of the earlier rules I flouted and then when it was too late to make amends it was already payback time. All this based on the dharma concept in which many Hindus do believe in if they’ve lived the straight and narrow path of a life and living and feel fulfilled at the end of it!
A lot has changed of course and nowadays I sometimes feel many live but take all the advantages which come their way and then they proceed to live only for themselves till the end and nobody mourns them when they’re gone presumably! Who mourns for whom? Only the sensitive and compassionate and those who’ve lived their life honourably are remembered and mourned by those who survive them and they’re lost in the mists of time.
Funny or not funny. I was not fasting for the month of Shravan ka mahina and this year it’s adhik Shravan with nine Mondays I think. Then I thought why can’t I fast, I could do it in my youthful teens and 20s, then why not now in my dotage! Fact is I was too busy finishing up all the leftovers in the fridge day in and day out…and getting exhausted thinking of what to make for breakfast, lunch, tea-time, dinner…wasting money going out and buying food, hoarding leftovers in the fridge and finishing it up, heating it up, eating it…never thinking I could have just chucked it all out. It’s usually a housewife’s dilemma ever since the fridge came into life…to cook or buy at convenience and store in the fridge. Heat up and eat at mealtimes. What mealtimes! Not when hunger pangs strike us but when it is 8am, 1pm, 4.40pm, 8 pm.
SOME eat to live very meticulously, some live to eat most emotionally and whimsically. The first are luckier, the second are not so lucky and I belong to the second category when eating and overeating is a very definitely a disorder old or new…overeating is not exclusively a woman’s problem although it very often is over long years of turmoil. I reached a stage when I would eat up everything I could lay my hands on, good, bad or ugly (or so to speak, I like to think I’m not so bad), but I couldn’t bring myself to throw food out, even leftover food. I would cook, cook, cook and most of it was left uneaten: I ate it, leftovers.
Well, it has taken me three-quarters of a lifetime but I’ve started throwing out all leftovers. And taken to eating just one meal a day to teach myself a lesson I should have learned long ago…guess what, not joking, within three days my knees hurt me less, I felt better, happier after a long time. I’m not eating wilfully like I used to do and I don’t know how long it will last, but yes, I’m trying to do this one meal a day for the rest of Shravan-ka-mahina and forever if I can till doomsday. Don’t ask me why but I’m happy, for the time being at least, don’t anyone upset my apple cart now or so to speak.
I’m minimally religious but I had an Ahmedabad aunt who would fast religiously on one meal a day throughout the four Chaturmaas monsoon months for all kinds of reasons which make perfect sense to me nowadays…but then she was an old-fashioned woman whose husband died early, leaving her to deal with three children, got cheated a bit by a brother-in-law somewhere along the way. A common story when it comes to being a woman in India or anywhere else I suppose.
Anyway, the long and short of all this with a lot unstated and understated I have come to the conclusion that nobody can make us happy except we, ourselves. Nobody is responsible for one’s happiness except one’s own self and in this regard one must be very circumspect…if you’re naturally a happy person don’t let anyone de-rail you! And if you have too much food in the house, give it away or chuck it. Better to waste food than to eat it piously and grow more and more obese and unhappy as the bugs of ill-health catch up to make life worse and worse (sometimes we cannot help it but oftentimes we can). A lot of the evil we do unto ourselves is in the realm of emotional justifications and we have no time to engage in some useful psychoanalysis.
Go to a psycho if you wish and get yourself analysed except that most of us understand ourselves best …we know the tragedies and comedies of life are enshrined in our own past, present and in anticipation of a future less than death…something like that, pop psychology if you like. That’s all the food for thought this week. I had a landlady who always had a song on her phone whenever I called, “I never promised you a rose garden…” She was a young widow and her husband upon his death left her with a host of vile problems to untangle before she could get on with her life, in not so many words she had once told me that it used to be her husband’s favourite song and it became hers after he was gone courtesy a massive heart attack and she had to start to learn to live all over again for her childrens’ sake….

SEEKING `NAVRANG’ ONLY!

SO where was I? With my love for food I’m constantly looking for places where I actually like something occasionally! It is becoming more and more difficult and I’m giving up bit by bit…if I don’t make it myself for reasons from A to Z I will recommend a few places here. Pining to check out some of the vegetarian Shravan month meal deal thali offers in Panaji, one wandering mid-day, I ignored seductive FB promos and in a Guju hungry melancholy mood, found myself returning to old faithful down-to-earth Gujarati eatery run by Vijaybhai: Navrang Pure Gujarati Thali (just where the BJP offices/Mongini’s are located at Atmaram Borkar Road, the six silver oak trees planted around about here desperately in need of some loving care, they are doing very badly currently).
Very old days I used to come here to look at the one silver oak tree which I’d discovered in front of Navrang and chat with Vijaybhai, while appreciating the hot ghee-laced “rotli” (the Guju phulka is wafer thin) and other regular item numbers of Guju-styled dal, sabzi, kathor (whole khata moong dal perhaps), rice if you like, mini katori curd, pinch pickle, crisp roasted papad, very nice dalia sheero maybe, if they forget to give you buttermilk ask for it….spiced up helping of kanda-caju sabzi which is owner and chef Vijaybhai’s special, if he’s in a good mood he will himself come and give you a helping!
Navrang is the closest thing to Guju flavors for me and the thali meal deal has gone up over the years to the current Rs250. Very humble place with ups and downs, but back now better than ever. I think I’ll drop by more often just for the food and some talk with Vijaybhai in Gujarati! For me Navrang as better than any other thali meal deal.
This is to say the last of the grand Shravan-ka-mahina thali meal deals are being served up at a couple of places including the evergreen Sapna Sardessai’s Kokum Curry (first floor, next to Hindu Pharmacy) on Saturday/Sunday/Monday.
There’s also the Bhojan section at Fidalgo enclave of eateries but the old days are gone with the wind and I found only a heavy duty non-descript veg thali…where are the light as feather piping hot puri of old? Yes, I left almost everything more or less intact on the thali except a couple of leathery phulka to chew up with the “chunda” mango pickle, drank the buttermilk…only the dalvada of south Indian origin were very good and the so so sandwich dhokla! All else paled in comparison to the good old days, thumbs down, sorry Chef Pawan Kumar (he’s executive chef and has seen many years come and go here). Damn it, at least the phulka should be of pure wheat atta, laced with desi ghee….it was an utter waste of my hard-earned good money!
Check out the Guju thali meal deal at Gujarat Lodge down 18 June Road if you wish. Anywhere else? No where else in Panaji! Gujarati eating out is quite dismal in capital city Panaji although it has quite a big Gujarati community.