My mother loved Pongal/Shankaranthi. With approaching warmer days, this festival commemorates the first harvest. Abundance is celebrated with grains, milk, butter, fruits, sugar cane, jaggery, sesame seeds, and nuts. The life-preserving Sun is saluted and thanked for the abundance it provides. The giving earth is profusely thanked.

The sweet Pongal pot with all the harvest ingredients, is left to boil over, signifying the abundance of happiness and prosperity. She always sang, “Maithrim Bajatha,” a prayer for the prosperity of the world, and the benefit for each creature inhabiting it.
“Shreyo Bhuyat, Sakala Janana!”

The link below contains a beautiful rendition with lyrics of the song by  the seer Chandrasekhara Saraswati.

The day after Pongal is called Kanu. It’s a festival where you think of the well-being of siblings and pray for their health, long life, and happiness. You also show the respect for the creatures inhabiting the earth with a ritualistic offer of food.

I remember waking up to the morning sun, helping lug upstairs the festival food reserved for Kanu, along with a couple of rice dishes made out of turmeric and vermilion, to the open terrace. There, my mother would have prepared little decorative patterns of rice flour, and on each pattern, a small banana leaf would be placed. Still groggy, we would be given balls of several kinds of food offering.

With the thought of well being for siblings and for the world at large, we would apportion the offerings in smaller balls. We would also chant a small verse that this offering is for the celebration of the birds and creatures of the earth. This verse sounded like children’s play songs, and even intergenerational grown-ups chanted it. It felt like a children’s tea party game. The verse when translated roughly, insinuates that this whole exercise of food offering is for the wedding and birth of different birds.

Looking back now, it was our first initiation into the idea that the living creatures of the earth are all interconnected and interdependent. The idea that humans are at the top of the food chain somehow seems naïve, when I know we are all in it together. We humans just possess the potential to do the most damage. By implying the idea of new birth, preservation of our earth and all its creatures is ingrained into the children and perpetuated by the adults.

As part of a large family,  I would always observe everyone’s leaves. Now looking back, I was in my little girl’s way, understanding the personalities. There was the organized one, the neat one, the messy one, the hurried one, the patient one, and so on….

Then a hymn to honor the sun would be chanted briefly, along with burning of camphor. We would then leave the premises, and the next morning return to clean up. We just had to pick up and compost the banana leaves; the food would be long gone, and even the rice flour floor design would be cleaned up by the industrious ants! Everything went to the cycle of life, including the biodegradable platter.

In our own home here, it’s raining outside. So the husband, the daughter, and yours truly keep our own in one leaf on the kitchen island where the sun filters in through skylights. We think kind thoughts for the entire universe, and we leave it outside for the thousands of creatures sharing this gentle earth with us.

The art of make-up is subtle and evolved, and one Darwin shows me how.

I have a Sephora gift card. My needs are simple in this order of interest. A moisturizer that quenches my thirsty face, a smooth, glide-on kohl pencil, and an emollient lipstick are things I cannot do without. I don’t have favorites, anything that feels good and non allergenic is my thing of choice.

So I take my daughter along to help me use up my card. Have you been to Sephora during Christmas in a popular mall? Everyone’s dipping into pots, pans, and using brushes, sponges, and tissues, plumping lips, primping face, and making up dramatic visages in front of brightly-lit mirrors. Initially, I’m impressed with the array of the same old in different packaging. Do you want the minimal look with maximum makeup? There’s Bobby Brown for you. Like drama?  Urban Decay, Tarte, are some brands with all their fancy products and names.Outside, a few steps away, there’s Mac. The products look like paint and pigments for an artist. There are even brushes of various kinds. If you want to contour your face in strange lights and shadows, demonstrations and trials are available for transforming you à la Kardashian. The choices are way too many, the crowd is making me claustrophobic, and amidst the plethora, I find myself crippled to make a decision.

“Mom, they don’t carry Stila lip balm and that’s something right for you,” the daughter pronounces, releasing me from the onus of making a decision. I can’t believe that amidst all this abundance, there is a product unavailable. So I silently thank the cosmetic company for not stocking it, and we leave. However, the daughter is on a quest to help the mother out. She’s loyal to a few things she likes. I don’t have the heart to tell her that using the gift card is the reason I am here.

Several mall stores later, we’re still desperately seeking Stila for me. “Ulta, they will surely stock it,” she exclaims. So we drive to the next big cosmetic store a few miles away.

Fortunately, we find the place well lit and less crowded. The sales folk are extremely helpful, diverse, and chatty. Here too, the recommended lip balm is sold out. So, the sales person encourages me to step out of my comfort zone. He convinces us to try something different.

His name is Darwin, and he’s highly evolved in the art of make-up. Darwin is a committed sales person. His expressive eyes are like the dramatic plumes of a peacock with shades of teal, cyan, blues, and greens. A muted mauve actually adds a reverse shock value to his animated canvas, and I find myself looking at him as an artist. His hair loosely flows in curls, and his nails are varnished in a complementary shade to the eyes eliminating the competition for attention. I abandon my quest for the elusive lip balm, and find myself wanting to know more about Darwin. He’s helpful and totally willing to share his craft with us.

He uses a minimal face make up. BB cream is his preferred foundation for its light and sheer coverage. He chooses to do the dramatic eye and the no make up look, a reticent lip coverage make his eyes pop. It takes him half an hour to do his eyes with the colors, shades, and effects. A true artist, he uses no felt-tipped eyeliner, but a brush. He paints a darker shade of cat-eye edge with scrapbook tape. “The eye area is delicate, and scrapbook tape has no harsh chemicals, is easy to peel off.” I make a silent note not to substitute this with masking tape.

He shares with us his love for the brushes from spooled, foundation, blending, fanned, and angled. In kindergarten, he muses, he wanted his teacher to give him a stippling brush for his art project. Although he cannot remember the project, he still remembers the teacher asking ,“What is a stippling brush?”

Darwin’s knowledge of cosmetics is amazing. He knows the companies that stand-alone, the ones that are aligned to a larger group, the products, their contents, the staying power, and the uniqueness of each item in the store.

We discuss the social media influence. Pinterest, Twitter, and Youtube with influential make up tutorial. Some of the tutorials are extremely creative. Darwin agrees, and he honestly tells us not to get carried away. Popular influencers get incentives to push make-up that may not work for all. For example, he tells us, a young girl wanted to use a special brow product line, which included pomades, powder, and pencil just like in the tutorial. She was ready to buy the whole line, and he steered her away from making a mistake. She had strong brows and definitely was not not a candidate for those products. Instead, he helped her decide how to spend her money on products that made her look better than any social media tutorial could have. “It’s like clogging your complexion with foundation and concealer when you have a flawless skin,” he concludes. Virtual shopping is here to stay, but interacting with live people and having a real-world shopping  experience can never be replaced.

I like oils and must admit I’m drawn to the Maracuja oil made from passion fruit/flower. Darwin is like the walking encyclopedia of the products in the store. He swears by this oil for himself, and finds it to be a soothing sleep-inducer. As a moisturizer, he feels it’s highly penetrating. “Reducing inflammation, moisturizing, blood-pressure regulation, are some other benefits of using this oil,” he avows. There’s resurgence in using natural oils these days like argan, extra virgin coconut, sweet almond, and sesame.

http://www.rain-tree.com/maracuja.htm#.Vm8_euMrK8U

Darwin ends up helping us try out picking up something new. It’s hard to believe he’s been here only two weeks. Apparently he’s worked as an artist, an interior decorator, a florist, and an art conservator, restoring old photographs and memories. His happiness with the new job shows. It seems he has come full circle, harkening back to the days of the stippling brush. He happily lets me photograph him and allows me to use this on a blog. I must admit I’m impressed he knew all along he wanted to be an artist. Only this time, he’s an artist who carries an animated self-portrait with aplomb every single day.

Even today they sell similar handkerchieves in a three- pack on the street. I see them when I go to the market, and smoke gets in my eyes.

I must have been around six years old. All dressed in a freshly pressed frock, hair brushed and pony-tailed, I accompanied my mother in an auto rickshaw. Swishing my hair, it felt very fine to be so well groomed. The scallop-edged hankie she pinned on my dress made me feel very important. It had a mild fragrance of Ponds powder and Eau de Cologne. She had folded it in a triangle, and the floral wisp felt more like a pretty accessory than a utilitarian thing.

Going out with Mother was always fun. She conversed with me on several issues that seemed important. We used to play word games along the way, or I would hear her sing. She would recount humane stories, some personal and some from literature. Her soft hands, with the unique shape, their lines, the texture, felt warm and secure. I wished to hold them forever, and at that point in time, in that very moment, she was mine alone.

She had to be some place that dusty, windy day. We played identifying ragas, one of my favorite games as the auto climbed the hilly terrain making guttural sounds. I fiddled with the triangle in front, and smelt the cleanness of it. The flowers and lace made me happy, and I pretended to pat my face with it. Surely I must have unlocked the safety pin, and somewhere along the way, unbeknownst to me, a breeze swiftly blew the little fabric away. With my routine checks, it could not have been too long. I looked down to pat my nose, and to my chagrin, I saw no handkerchief. I looked around the vehicle, but it was of no avail. It must have blown off outside. Mother’s eyeballs reflected a sad girl back. Incoherent words tumbled out of my mouth about the loss. She listened patiently. Mother quickly figured out the chain of events and reassured me we would look for it. I did not believe it could be retrieved. The hunt began.

The auto driver was quickly briefed about the tragic loss. He initially looked surprised; he did tell her it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. She wanted to take that chance, and he was only too happy to oblige with his running meter.

So he went back the way he came, and there was no sign of the flimsy thing. I saw her looking for it outside while I looked too, and we went quite a way. I was ready to give up, but in one of the streets, within the swirl of the dust cloud, it was flying with other pieces of paper. I remember crowing lustily with delight, and we stopped right there and let the rickshaw driver retrieve it. At that time, getting the now dusty handkerchief seemed like a prize. I loved her then, and I admire her most today.

All along, she never said that it could not be done, and that she needed to be elsewhere. She was there with me then. In one auto ride, I learned what it is to chase hope without giving up.

There was no need to ask her the what-if question. With her action alone, she demonstrated the worth of trying to find something. This concept clicked only much later in my mind. At that moment, I was happy to have found the material treasure.

The auto fare probably cost more than the price tag of the handkerchief. However, she displayed that rare adult consideration for a mere fabric scrap by looking at it through the eyes of a child. How could anyone put a value on that?

Growing up, we were fortunate to have all the necessities, a host of comforts, and the rare luxuries. The latter was a conscious parenting decision for which I still remain grateful.

My parents, generous in spirit and kind, practiced and imbibed in us the Living-well –but- Zero-waste concept. While brushing teeth, Mother would gently reprimand us for letting the water run. Father, the more vocal one, and would show his irritation if we left the light burning in an uninhabited room. It’s true we groaned and grimaced several times; of course we did not see this as a way of conserving scarce resources at that time. But wisdom always prevails, and as a parent, I’ve done the exactly the same.  Our family has always recycled paper, plastic, and metal. I go a step further to buy products with less packaging. It’s super easy for me to eschew plastic bottled water as much as possible. Sometimes the déjà-vu grumblings happen in my family unit as well. All that sorting they did at a younger age,they sometimes seem to have forgotten. However, the seeds are already sown, and therefore, there’s hope. It makes me happy to see my daughter use her sports water bottle over and over, preferring it over single-use containers.

My son at three would wait for the Friday when the trash trucks came by. He would hear the sounds, part the curtains and watch the robotic arms lift the color-coded bins. The whole process fascinated him thoroughly, and his life ambition at three was to be a garbage truck driver. When he groans about the woes of recycling, I remind him of this.

Once my daughter’s ick-meter ran high upon seeing me use dental floss to tie the unruly Altissimo climber to the fence. Of course, one person’s trash is another’s treasure. As a result of the binding, the climbing shrub came up with a profusion of take-no-prisoners red, red roses.

I view my parents as generous conservationists. They gave freely, but never entertained wastage. Even today my father V.S.Rajagopalan  continues to surprise me. He’s no packrat, but he will preserve things that end up helping people. He has several hobbies, but the most significant ones are fixing things and collecting technology. He has fixed clocks, watches, appliances for several friends and family.

To Refuse or to Reuse?

Recently, I saw the once-familiar empty plastic baby wipes box in his garage. He has stored odd screws and hardware in it. It gave me an anachronistic jolt to see something after 24 years!! An old tic-tac-toe game box with contents long gone, houses a feeler gauge. A grandchild’s empty geometry box and my much-dented metal school box serve as toolboxes.

Mr.V.S.R. can fix anything, and I recall we never had a use and throw mentality towards electrical gadgets. Does that spill over to how you treat people too, I wonder. At ninety, he has all the technology ranging from smart new devices to the wise old technology. He holds a massive collection of varied memories, voices, videos, music, celebration, recounting, and much, much more. From the 78 RPM records to the reel-to-reel spool tape recorder, cassettes, CD, VCR, DVD players, he has them all in tip-top condition. While the smart phone with Bluetooth speakers serve as his constant music companion, he will play with the other equipment as well, transferring data, which are true memories from the old to the new. He’s a treasure trove of information, rare music, and special memories. He transfers all these to share freely with his friends of all ages.

Memory Trove

The India I grew up in has changed drastically. Globalization and convenience have brought in immense packaging and decreased biodegradable products. Take-out snack packaging used to be degradable;  dosas and idlis came wrapped in banana leaf and newspaper. Today’s to-go snacks are neatly packed in plastic or cardboard boxes. Plastic of late, has taken over the world, and it has not spared the ocean either. Nowhere else is it more apparent than in a town as dense as Bengaluru.

Once known as the Pensioner’s Paradise, this city is not designed for the alarmingly high population growth it’s currently witnessing. The salubrious climate is a huge draw, but everyone seems to have a “not in my yard” attitude. Each morning, driveways and front yards of homes are swept and washed clean. There’s a nice rangoli design spread in front of the gate. Just outside, on the street, you see the deplorable litter no one cares to take responsibility for.

Outside the Gates

During my daily walk to the park, I photograph the empty dairy sachets along the way. Until the early Eighties, we would wake up to the clink of milk bottles delivered to the doorstep. I still remember how Mother would empty the milk into the milk pot, and she would wash the bottles to exchange them out. Almost everyone did that, unless you knew someone with a cow or a buffalo. Some would even bring the literal cash cow to the doorstep to milk it for you. When we lived as children in my grandparents’ joint family, this was a regular feature. My grandmother preferred the thick, creamy buffalo milk for coffee. She grew and roasted her own beans, used a hand cranked coffee grinder. This was an extra exercise she went through even though there were modern conveniences. She would station all her posse including yours truly to supervise the cow milker with gimlet eyes. This way she could discourage any surreptitious dilution by water. My mother-in-law, till the Nineties, often included the buffalo-milking shindig at the doorstep just for the flavor-rich experience.

Anji

In certain situations, poverty also makes one value scarce resources. This is  true in Anji’s case. Inside the park, I see him and his wife Manjula sweeping up the place. His salary is quite low for the amount of work he does.

Anji has a fantastic broom. He fashions it out of found materials. The prolific areca palm trees shed fibers regularly. He sweeps the fallen leaves, other debris every alternate morn, and then he separates the palm fibers out for later use. For a very reasonable cost, he put together a similar outdoor broom for me and it works like a charm. This act may not make him a conservationist out of choice, but he gets full marks for creativity in using found, mostly organic materials.

I meet Vasumathi Srinivasan, a top-class mountaineer and my sister-in-law. We discuss the changing scenario. On the way we buy brooms made from the spines of the palmate leaves of the coconut tree. Even today, people use blades to scrape off the dry leaves, save them for lighting fires, and gather the spines to make brooms. Vasumathi remembers her mother encouraging the children to make these brooms while growing up. My grandmother was one other person who believed in saving those spines for broom use. Nothing went for waste in her generous home that housed, employed, and fed several people. Nada, zip, zilch! Waste was vulgar a few decades ago, and somehow there’s an insensitivity about it today.

I walk briskly in the neat park, never knowing who I will bump into. Today I meet an older lady, Mrs. Parvathi.

Mrs.Parvathi

She walks slowly along the path. Her footwear looks very familiar. I recognize these! These are mostly the one-time sandals provided with the ticket at Niagara Falls for the Cave of the Winds climb. Happily she shares fond memories with me. Her son had taken her there a few years ago. She finds these sandals quite hardy and comfortable. They have to be if you have to climb series of steps to reach a wet waterfall. So she holds on to a memento and uses the same. Sportingly, she poses for my camera, when I tell her what I plan to write about. Heartily, she encourages me to do so.

Outside the park, the fruit and vegetable vendors wait. The now ubiquitous plastic swirls everywhere; the ground, the curb, the ditches. One vendor expresses relief when I withhold the plastic and ask him to fill my cloth bag. “Everyone wants plastic, because we do not charge for these like the stores do,” he informs me. A monetary price is actually a good deterrent.

A few steps away, while downing the young coconut water; I decline the straw after seeing the colored plastic tubes littered all over. If there’s an alternate way of choosing to do things without disturbing the environment, then every bit helps.

Plastic is not the ugly word here.  I totally agree with Mrs. Srinivasan when she mentions it has several useful purposes. “However, it’s the misuse and overuse of plastic that’s of serious concern, ” she succinctly concludes.

Conservationists may seem like nitpickers. The general population often subscribe to the viewpoint such people wear microscopic lens while they could easily be on to bigger and better things. There’s no excuse at what’s happening at the macro level, Bengaluru is hurting.

There are no places left to fill the garbage. Residents of Mandur went up in arms to protest the stench, the diseases, and environmental pollution. There was a promise of resolution, however, the wastage was simply rerouted to several locales. One of the locations includes a pristine area close to protected forestland. A landfill has come up in  the middle of this residential neighborhood. A court case is pending now. Sooner or later more trash is going to hit the fan.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Post-Mandur-waste-heaps-up-at-Terra-Firma-landfill/articleshow/48027712.cms

It’s true that a significant amount of recycling still goes on here. However, a disposable mindset has crept in and taken control in alarming proportions.  We can always learn from the past to save our future. In this light, a Native American proverb comes to mind. “We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children”