It's me!
There’s a lot of talk about self-care going around in the anthropocene. I first heard the term about 2 years ago and my initial thoughts were “what a silly idea”, “self-care as in showering?” and “how?”. I soon understood the importance in my own upside down way: There are systems in place, running as smooth as we’re not, that profit from us not having the time to take care of our well-being. Of course, I am the over-analyser so I might be completely missing the point. But am I really?…
There’s a routine at my house in Goa that was very typical of Sunday when I was growing up. I may have written about it quite a few times and I do this only because it has stuck in my head over time and distance. Hear me out again anyway: My father would go to the market in the morning and what felt like hours later, he would come back home on his bike with bags of things at his feet. He would honk for us or my mother to come help him carry everything and the two of them would go on to cleaning fish or chicken or other meat, cooking some of the vegetables and getting food ready for lunch. It seemed like they knew exactly what they were doing. There wasn’t any meal-planning. It was improvised. My mother can confirm or deny this. We were shooed out of the kitchen by my father and over time, I myself learnt only a few of the things they did to cook the meal I miss the most when Sunday comes along….
Happy International Women’s Day (belated, I was tired yesterday. ). Lots to read about gender equality all over the world right here.
The place I work at is a food blogger’s dream. Their merchandising department is so good at their job that almost any ingredient you see in a top-hit type recipe has a place on our shelves. Even so, there is always something that we won’t sell simply because it’s not trendy enough. Kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves) and chaat masala is nowhere to be seem but the haldi (turmeric) and jeera (cumin) jars always seem to empty quicker than they are filled. Whatever I can’t buy after work on Sunday forces me a little out of my comfort zone. During the store’s annual end-of-year spice cupboard restock sale (a name I just made up) last year, I took home some sumac, smoked paprika, ground ancho and chipotle pepper, red pepper flakes and powdered harissa blend, which little did I know, is like buying powdered recheado masala. It’s not the same….
If you want to know what I miss most about living in Goa let me tell you right now that cabbage is not on top of the list. I don’t know what it is about cabbage but I went through a phase where I decided I did not like it at all and that was that. I would force myself to eat it, swallowing it with water not because I had to finish what was on my plate but because I had declared myself the household’s biggest lover of vegetables. Hence my not liking cabbage was downright embarrassing to that title. So I ate it all or asked for help from Grandma, who came from a family of many where wasting food was simply not an option (Gayle had a daily problem with this and would whine off everything she wouldn’t eat to grampsi. Funny how she’s now the chef)….
We had company over last week in the form of two lovely in-laws (mine) and even though there was no blog post while they were here, there was a lot of cooking for them. I enjoyed every moment of the free time and I know you might be laughing at me calling cooking “free time”, but this is what I enjoy doing. When I write that I’m lazy and would prefer just sitting on the couch and watching TV, that is also true. The common thread running through both of my favourite pastimes is that I love having a purpose. I embrace both with vigour and a bag of cheese puffs. …
Last Saturday was Gayle’s birthday. At the end of this month it’s my mother’s birthday. Next Tuesday is a feast of a saint turned love holiday and on the Tuesday after that Gayle will be going to Spain for an internship at a Basque restaurant that requires you to have a chef’s tweezer on the sleeve of your coat. I got another one. It the type of restaurant that looks like Tony Stark’s house or a gifted/mutant child warrior training centre with a vegetable garden at the back for those meaningful conversations that are a build up to the climactic fight scene(s). All I know is that they make fancy food and if it was me instead of her, I would be happy to wash dishes and wipe down every stainless steel surface three times a day if it meant I could eat every element on the plate in one bite because that’s all I think about while watching Chef’s Table and/or Jiro Dreams of Sushi. …
Before you go on to thinking that I’m on some political bandwagon meant to despise President Trump, I assure you I have had the same disdain for how Muslims and Sikhs have been racially profiled when Obama was President. You have never heard of people being detained at airport for having a certain suspicious-sounding name because your media has little interest in covering such stories. I get it. It’s irrelevant to you if a citizen of India is held in a room for hours with no explanation and no legal representation. It has happened to many Indians and while we’ve heard of the famous ones including actors and the former President of India (no joke), there are many, many people who will never get to complain about it to a reporter since it’s just not newsworthy. India treats citizens of Pakistan the same way at airports and vice-versa. It is a political stunt and these methods violate every human right….
I attended the Womxn’s March in Seattle on January 21, the first day of my last period (not “last” as in it will never happen again but a woman can dream). I felt like it was necessary to mention this detail because every time I go to the doctor and they ask me when my last period was, I always lie. I went to the doctor today for my routine annual physical and before they pap smeared and blood sucked they asked me that question and I knew exactly what to say. I often take it for granted that I can go to a doctor and not worry about the bills that will get sent to me a few days later. Matt has health insurance through his job and though I’ve opted to be on his insurance, my workplace grants me similar benefits. But still, I’m young, healthy and I take it for granted. My access to healthcare is a privilege. It sounds completely backward to gamble on something like this and yet, it is still up for debate….
