Learning to Live Anew

There is very little that Editor, Farzana Contractor, did not attempt and achieve through her lockdown days in Panchgani. From cooking to gardening, mosaic work to decoupage, music and a lot of YouTube streaming and learning   

The issue of the first quarter of UpperCrust all done, I took off for a whiff of the Himalayan air. Only to return to my beloved city, Bombay, where the COVID anxiety seemed to be building up, not unlike other parts of the world. So on a whim, since there weren’t any deadlines looming, I gave everyone in office two weeks off, until the end of March, saying “Lets, see what happens by April 1, which is when we shall all come back to office.” And with that, the next morning, I left for Panchgani, looking forward to a peaceful two-weeks stay in the hills, at my lovely home with its lovely garden.
Did I know the two weeks would extend to eight months! No, of course not! The nationwide lockdown that was declared by the Prime Minister, with just four hours notice, took me by as much surprise and shock as it did all of India.
But I am not complaining. How can I? This was like a dream come true. In my most imaginative and wishful-thinking moments, too, I never would have thought I could spend even a few weeks at a stretch in Panchgani. With my hectic life, constantly controlled by deadlines, it would have been merely a preposterous thought. But here I am, still in Panchgani, happily keying this in.
So how did I spend all this time? For starters, in splendid isolation. I was on my own, absolutely. No friends, no family. I had arrived here with just my maid and Inshy and Tasha, my two canine babies.
I have to admit unabashedly that I do enjoy my own company, and have always been imminently comfortable being with I, me and myself, so the first few weeks went in savouring my ‘aloneness’.
It was different from earlier visits quite simply because I wasn’t keeping a tab on time, days or even weeks. Dates lost meaning. I ate when hungry and not at pre-fixed times. I didn’t drink any wine because decades ago my husband Behram had said one should never drink alone and it was an unspoken pact made which I have stuck to.
Not much of a TV person and since I had already given up watching news since the last elections, I hadn’t bothered renewing the cable connection. But six months into the lockdown, something fantastic happened. Panchgani got modern. Local friends informed me I could now get a fibre optic cable installed through which I could get a 100 mbps wifi connection. I was thrilled! That done I went on a movie watching binge. I also watched Money Heist, the Spanish serial and am now watching Ertugrul Ghazi (The Resurrection), the Turkish serial which has me totally hooked!
I indulged in a fair amount of reading, too. Read Vinod Mehta’s Editor Unplugged, Rakesh Maria’s I Can Say It Now, (and did he!) Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. In addition, I went through dozens of Busybee books, old Osho magazines as well as UpperCrust back issues. I was quite taken aback by the body of work we have done so far. I was also taken aback at how much I have travelled in the world, the thousands of pictures I have shot. Were it not for the luxury of free time, I would never have gone down that nostalgic road.
The Bose Soundlink Revolve was my constant companion. I would hang it on a branch above my hammock and stream the kind of music I hadn’t heard in years. Doobie Brothers, Bread, Bob Marley, Freddie Mercury, also Connie Francis, Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard. But the real discovery was YouTube, such fun. All kinds of things one can learn. Recipes galore, but also all kinds of daily hacks. Right from how to shine pewter and get rust off old ironware to making your own mask and gaining insights into COVID controversies.
But my biggest achievement was to eventually be able to memorise the Ayat al-Kursi, after listening to it hundreds of times. The Verse of the Throne, considered among the most powerful of verses in the Quran, states quite simply that nobody and nothing is comparable to Allah, it’s a prayer of protection which calms you, drives away your fears. It’s also the gold locket I always wear around my neck.  
In the eight months of living in the hills, there is much that happened in my life. I created beautiful mosaic art on pathway stones, as well decoupaged old lampshades and whatever else I could lay my hands on, that was frayed or about to be discarded. Recycled loads of things converting them into objet d’art! Cyclones came and cyclones went and I watched seasons come and go, too; summer with its beautiful blooming flowers all lying in waste in the first strong rains that came drenching the hillside, then it was the turn of the fleeting October heat and now the coolness of early winter. There was Ramzan and the month of fasting which went by in such ease and comfort, namaaz and good thoughts, followed by Eid when I, of course, got down to making sheer khurma. After Ramzan we celebrated Ganesh Chaturti, carefully taking out our baby Ganesha from the hollow of the Jacaranda tree where he lives all year round. He got his annual dip in the brass urli, too.
I worked a lot in the garden and it never looked better in all these decades that I have lived here. A garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever. My experiments with soil and water and seeds and saplings paid me dividends. My herb garden thrived; rosemary, mint, coriander, basil, thyme, parsley grew abundantly. As did the lemon grass, ajwain, tulsi, kadi patta. My neighbour, Maurice Inez, ex-principal of St. Peter’s School, very generously sent me avocados from his trees, the creamiest ones in the whole world, the seeds of which I could never throw away. I grafted them in water glasses, looked after them meticulously until they sprouted delicate roots and then transplanted them in pots. They are now 22” tall. Next monsoon they will go into the earth.
Other gifts that came my way from nature and my very own garden offered joy that is indescribable. A bunch of bananas, 46 to be exact, hundreds of love apples which I shared with at least six homes around me and dozens of lemons which I gave no one! Mangoes which I had cut and pickled in May I was now eating while looking out of the window to see if the amla tree was flowering. The sour fruit should be fully grown by December.
For the larger part of my time, I was outdoors, in the sunshine, sunbathing because they said this idiotic virus does not like the heat. I never left my garden gate, nor ever wore a mask. In itself a blessing for which I thank the Almighty a million times.
A small three-wheeler vegetable van came right to the gate every three days and I never once faced the lack of any fresh produce. Good Samaritans, young boys from well-to-do houses became saviours, for those who needed supplies from the grocers. So I had grains and milk and bread and butter and eggs coming right to my doorstep, right through the lockdown; bless those errand boys who even got me wafers that I was yearning to eat and also managed to get me dog food from Poona, that I was running out of. Remember, I have three very hungry beings at all times, Inshy, Tasha and Gopu. The only angst I truly suffered was when I couldn’t locate a vet to come and clip their nails. I bathed and groomed them, but clipping nails was not my forte. The situation was certainly worrying for soon the nails would start to curl and grow inward. Thank God, I managed to find one in the nick of time, but I chewed on my own nails watching the way he executed the task!
As for the outside world, I was keeping tabs on what was going on in the hill town. For the first four or five months there wasn’t a single case of COVID. The municipal authorities were doing a good job. Right from cleanliness and sanitation, with the fire brigade even washing up the streets. Officials came on daily, and then weekly, checks to see if you were keeping well. Schools, now closed and devoid of students, were kept ready in case they had to be converted into isolation wards. While nothing ever went out of hand, locals, those working in Poona and Bombay who returned home after travel rules were relaxed, did create panic when they rushed to public places to taste their freedom, after months of restrain. The bazaar was full of people, the liquor shop almost ransacked! What can you say? The world was going through a crisis after all and the frail human nature was giving way. All very valid. But a local lockdown was clamped in place.
In July I had a visitor. My friend, Selma came to spend a few weeks and to celebrate her forthcoming birthday in ‘freedom’. So not only did we manage to buy an extra colourful cake, we even managed to find a super bottle of champagne. Thank God for this habit of mine of stocking up. Which even threw up an unopened bottle of truffle oil! With Selma around, my cooking spree began in full earnest. It is not surprising that one feels like cooking when one has someone to cook for. I was experimenting and making new dishes all throughout, but the ones who I was passing on all that I cooked to – my gardener, his wife and children, were hardly the ones to give me any meaningful feedback. All they would give was beaming smiles! So what they thought about my French onion soup, I will never know, but they did appreciate the sheer khurma, chane ka halwa, aam papad, the kurdai, the mango pickle and mango jam, and egg biryani and egg masala, and all the rest of it…
But well, Selma was here and now I was trying my hand at baking, not something I did earlier. So I got down to making cauliflower au gratin, dauphinoise, lasagne, even pizza, which until now I had never any reason to make! The most difficult was the sourdough bread. Not the bread part, but getting the starter going. Takes over a week, did you know? I didn’t, I learnt that through YouTube! And I have named my starter Ertoo after Ertugrul!
Oh, and before I forget, the lockdown days also made me an Amazoner. That’s right, I got dry yeast on Amazon, as well as basundi, mustard from Calcutta. And lasagne pasta sheets, but no cheese! For that I had to wait until my friend, Parul Shah came, like an early Santa Claus, bearing with her Burrata and virgin olive oil, artisanal breads and fancy Meditarranean dips, and like a true Gujju, loads of farsan. Blessings pouring into my life, humbling me.
While on Amazon, let me tell you about some of the kitchen stuff I ordered and am so happy with. A bronze kadai from Kerala is amazing. Mannar Craft, the company is called. A coconut cutter, crude looking but helpful. A yogurt maker, which has eight small bottles and works like a dream. Curd just doesn’t seem to set easily in Panchgani, it’s rather cold here.
And it is getting colder and colder as we inch towards December and the last month of the year that I am happy to say goodbye to. Be gone 2020, in spite of the fact that for me personally, they were good months. A time I spent well, fruitfully, in introspection and prayer, in learning new things, in remembering those beloved ones who have departed from this world, in slowing down and appreciating all that I have been blessed with, in making a list of things to do that I think will change me for the better, in pondering upon our our beautiful planet, indeed the entire universe which was now trying to tell us something. A message which, if we do not pick up, will be a tragedy for all of mankind.
But for now, I have to address more mundane issues. The nails are beginning to curl in again. I have to get back to Bombay and to Janhavi, Inshy-Tasha’s darling groomer. That done, and this issue sent to bed, I am getting right back here, where I now belong, for Christmas and some Gluhwein and plum cake, and lying in my hammock and dreaming of better things to come.