"At the end of thy hundredth winter, the sun is more unseen and more spotted; the year, month, and day are shorter; and the earth is more barren; and the crop will not yield the seed. And men become more deceitful and more given to vile practices. They will have no gratitude. Honourable wealth will proceed to those of perverted faith. And a dark cloud makes the whole sky night, and it will rain more noxious creatures than water."

-From the Bahman Yasht.

Words cannot express.

Home and Away

I'm going back to Muscat in November. It's a family holiday that we have planned for two whole years. We'll be returning to our childhood home for the first time since we left in 1999. We're all so unbelievably excited, we can hardly sit still. It's almost only a month away!

We'll be there for three weeks. I hope it's a happy three weeks. We've received unwelcome pieces of news recently: one of our favourite beaches is now accessible only to the guests of the resort it lies next to, and blocking the entrance to the beach is a tall Starbucks building; the wadi we used to go to every other weekend is now almost dried up, probably because of global warming and the rising heat. And these little pieces of news remind us that our former home will not, obviously, be the same as it used to be 13 years ago.

Nevertheless, our excitement is almost unbearable. Muscat was all I knew until we uprooted ourselves and went through quite the culture shock in Kerala. We now have a new home in Bangalore, and right here and right now, I would rather be nowhere but here. But Muscat still calls.

What are the associations you make when you think of the Middle East? You may think of conservative Muslims, covered from head to toe in burkhas. You may think of Dubai, with all of its excess and decadence. Now, Oman? This kingdom walks the rare middle path. Yes, it is Muslim and Middle Eastern, but not conservatively so. That has a lot to do with the large expatriate community there, which includes nationalities from all over the world.
And in terms of how it fares as a holiday/tourist destination, Oman is not for the people who gravitate towards Dubai. Oman is usually thought of as a sleepy place. We don't have shopping festivals like Dubai, nothing overly commercial. But what we have is natural beauty. The beaches. Oh, the beaches. Pristine blue waters and gorgeous sands.

Oman has a lot of historical beauty as well. I remember many weekends spent exploring old forts and souqs, built with care and precision enough to last hundreds of years without needing any renovation. I remember getting up to the highest lookout tower of one fort and standing by the ancient cannon it housed, unable to tear my eyes away from the tree tops of hundreds and hundreds of greenish-brown date palms.

Absence and the yearning to return have probably romanticized my memories of the place and the time we spent there. But now, as an adult, I have even more love for the city. It welcomed me with open arms and granted me a wonderful childhood.

I cannot wait to go back there and explore once again. :)

Let me tell you a little bit about what it's like sometimes to share a family tree with a few of my extended relatives.

I am Malayalee. I am also Muslim, by birth and by inheritance, but not by choice. By conscious choice, I am pagan. But that's unimportant.

A relative visited today. I won't even try to explain how we're related; it's beyond me. I do know, though, that he cannot be more than 45 years old and that he has two young children. The older, a girl, is six.

Today, I am 26 years, one month and one day old. I am also unmarried. Now, this is unacceptable. Not only do I have the gall to remain unmarried and thus childless, but I also dare to work and earn my own living. Financial independence, the most dangerous thing you can give to a "young girl my age."

At lunch, said Concerned Relative asked about my future, rather worried about me continuing to live my life freely and without confinement, like free range cattle. This obviously stemmed from looking at me come back home in the morning after staying over at a friend's place the previous night. "Are you searching for a potential husband, now that your older one is married and taken care of? No? She wants to wait for a few more years? That's fine and everything, but if you wait too long, it will be too late to have children."

The entire conversation was taking place right in front of me, as if I was simply furniture in the background. This self-righteous, presumptuous preacher of an uncle insisted that I not only get married, but that I do it soon because if not, it will be too late to have children. "She is 26 already!"

And he hopes that one of the receptions for my wedding (because there will have to be at least two, of course) will be held in Kerala so that his family, and many of our other relatives, will be able to attend.

It was crystal clear that he had absolutely no concern for what I wanted from my life. It's of no concern to him that I have always refused to agree to an arranged marriage. That I don't care about getting married "late in life" because I don't want to have kids anyway. And most importantly, that I fully intend to stay on this track for as long as I feel this way. No, he simply went on about "today's generation" and how they must learn quickly... or else.

I was obviously quite irritated, and only a little amused. But my mother's presence reminded me of my alleged obligation to treat him with at least respect, if nothing else.

For a few minutes, I seethed as I listened to him chew Ma's ear off. He wasn't talking to me, of course. I didn't need to be spoken to, since this decision about my own future wasn't mine to be made. In the minutes I took to put away the dishes and clear the table, I calmed down. I decided I would blog about this to document the experience. And then, once this post was done, I would move on to other things more worthy of my time during a precious weekend.

Which is exactly what I did. First, a long, luxurious bath. Then a little music, followed by sleep. See, unfortunately, as is typical of my dangerously independent ways, I had had a lot of fun last night with a big gang of friends. It involved quite a bit of alcohol and and not enough sleep. So I slept. And didn't think about anything else, too busy living a happy life to be concerned about others' concerns.

My family always celebrates Onam. We make it a point to all be together, to the extent that we may delay celebrations so that no one will be left out. Which is what happened this year; we postponed the feast from a Wednesday to a Sunday so that my brother-in-law could join us after he returned from a work-related trip.

Every Onam (or any feast, for that matter), my mother painstakingly creates each dish from scratch. She doesn’t use any pre-mixed product of any kind. She cooks all of the ten or twelve dishes by hand, usually taking the entire morning. As her children who have lived and watched her work throughout our lives, we have learnt that she will accept only a limited amount of help. Beyond that line, she will consider your presence in her kitchen as unwelcome. She won’t be mean-spirited about it at all, she will simply suggest that you help in other ways since she’s “got her methods for the cooking.”

And so today, I cut the vegetables. A lot of raw bananas were involved (as I always say, never try to separate a Malayalee from bananas or coconuts -- no pun intended). And a lot of yam was involved, too. I had forgotten how they itch and cause rashes on your hands. I spent about thirty to forty minutes trying to calm my irritated skin.

My brother bought the ten banana leaves: one for each person and then two more, just in case. He set all of the leaves neatly around the dining room floor. Not at the table, since traditional Kerala feasts are eaten sitting on the ground.

Family arrived one at a time, everyone contributing in their own way. Sister brought dessert (paayasam), Brother-in-Law brought his appetite for all of the fish available in the house today. Sister and I served all of the dishes in small quantities to every leaf. Cousin brought his camera to document all of the madness.

The food was perfect. A completely traditional Kerala Sadhya can have as far as thirty-six dishes, but ours was ten in all, not counting the rice and paapad. This was the first year that I managed to finish everything on my leaf. But even with just a spoon of each dish, I nearly didn’t eat all of it. A few people managed to have second helpings of rice. Don’t ask me how they did, I have no idea. I can only tell you that I looked on in bewilderment.

But the best part of it all, over and above everything else, was the fact that this was a family meal. Yes, it was a feast, but it was also just a simple meal. Our family is close-knit, and being together always leads to fun and silliness. There were fights over who could get the last piece of fish, over if we really had to give away the last of the Tamarind-Ginger achaar to my sister, over her stealing the banana chips off my leaf. There was teasing as Brother-in-Law finished his first helping of rice before everyone else did theirs, as Mamma herself sneaked in an extra piece of fish for herself. There were today, as there always are, laughs all around.

As I type this out, not quite out of my food daze yet, I look forward to next Sunday when the family congregates again. No matter what the occasion, even if there is no occasion, I know we’re going to have a wonderful time together.