December 17, 2014 -- YouTube clip, "Roti Maker"

We were out shopping the other evening and Hansi paused to film the roti maker outside a "fast food" place along our way. The film clip doesn't really seem convey the speed at which they're cranking out the rotis - believe me, faster than a speeding bullet!

http://youtu.be/qTl97v23SGE

Rob

December 15, 2014--Our Outing with Harpreet

Saturday,  Harpreet picked us up at 8:30 a.m. for a trip to a gurudwara,  an archaeological dig of ancient civilization very near here, and to a museum. 

Harpreet and her husband

Harpreet

The museum, called Virasat –E- Khalsa, maybe half an hour the other side of Ropar, is a huge, magnificent building which was only finished a few years ago and traces Sikhism back to its beginnings.

Khalsa

Khalsa

This next bit I quote from Wikipedia

"The Khalsa is the collective body of all initiated Sikhs represented by the five beloved-ones and can be called the Guru Panth, the embodiment of the Guru.

"The Khalsa is also the pinnacle of Sikhism. Once an individual becomes a member of the Khalsa they overcome the inside-evils and the shred weakness of the body, mind, and heart, and become brave as tigers.[9] The Khalsa is expected to perform no ritual and to believe no superstition of any kind but believe in only one God who is the Master and the Protector of all the only Creator and Destroyer.

"A Sikh male at being initiated into the Khalsa is titled Singh meaning “Lion” and a female is entitled Kaur meaning “Princess.” From then on they are commonly referred to as Amritdhari (having taken Amrit)."

Litter for the Holy Book

Back to me

Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside the building.  We walked in a spiral up a long, long ramp – and surrounding us on the walls was depicted the geography of the region, the history and culture of the Punjabis in a wonderful continuous mural  maybe thirty meters high.  As you walk up the ramp, day changes to night, monsoons come, Diwali firecrackers explode, seasons change – all with clever use of lights and sound.  Very very NEAT, and so many details in the mural that you just can’t take it all in.  I hoped for some very good postcards of it at the gift shop, but that was not to be.  

Once at the top, there was the history of Sikhism , depicted in many rooms using a combination of audio-visual  effects, and we were given headsets for an audio tour (in English, fortunately). Turned out to be very interesting, but I could never keep straight the names of the various Gurus which have come and gone since the first one – Guru NanakDev Ji – (15 April 1469 – 22 September 1539), the founder of Sikhism and the first of the Sikh Gurus.

From there, we went to a nearby, very large gurudwara – Anandpur Sahib Complex – which Rob and I have previously been to.   I believe we have sent many pictures of it, so I won’t go on about it. However, Harpreet  suggested we have langar there (we were all HUNGRY by this time).  I have mentioned that the Golden Temple feeds 80,000 people a day for free, but I always assumed that it was the needy or homeless who took advantage of this. Not so. I guess it is sort of sacred to eat there, and to volunteer there as well, serving food, washing dishes, etc. I might add that you can donate money for the food (which we did).

So, we all sat cross-legged, like all the other devotees, on carpet runners laid out for that purpose.  Just like the meal we were served by students in the Fall, a metal divided plate was placed in front of us and promptly filled with mixed veg., dal ( lentils), chapattis (also called roti) and kir (rice pudding).  These were replenished as many times as we wanted.  Picture attached. Cross-legged is a highly overrated position for 68 year-olds, by the way.  But, one is NOT supposed to put one’s legs out in front of them, so what the heck else can you do with them!

Our Last stop was in the town of Ropar to the Archaeological Museum.   Again I quote from Wikipedia, since our brochure was entirely in Hindi:

"Ropar is one of the major Indus Valley civilization sites. It is situated on a high ancient mound overlaying the Shiwalik (also spelt Sivalik) deposition[1] on the left bank of the river Satluj where it emerges into the plains. It has yielded a sequence of six cultural periods or phases with some breaks from Harappan times to the present day. The excavations were carried out by Dr. Y.D. Sharma of the Archaeological Survey of India.

"Lying on the left bank of the Sutlej, the excavations yielded a sequence of six Periods: I (Harappa, c. 2100 to 14OOB.C,); II (PGW, c. 1000 to 600 B.C.); III (NBPW or early historical, c. 600 to 200B.C.); IV (middle to late historical, c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 700); V (late historical, c. 700-1200); and VI (medieval, c.l200-1700). Some of these Periods are divided into-Sub Periods. There are three mounds at Ropar, n., S., and w. The s. mound is occupied by the present-day town. Excavations were confined to the n. and w. mounds, the latter concealing a Harappa cemetery. Ropar has the distinction of being the site where the remains of the Harappa civilization were excavated for the first time in post-partition India."

From archaelogical museum in Ropar

The drive home was fraught with teeming rain, and  bad gridlock (rush hour and weather) but we were dropped at home to get cosy, and to make dinner, around 7 pm.  A VERY enjoyable day!

December 15, 2014 -- Land of the Mongoose & Monsoon

Here I am in the land of Mongoose.  Anyone whose Father ever read them Rikki Tikki Tavi (Kipling) would be expecting to see cobras and mongeese at every turn in the Indian road.  So far, we’ve seen no cobras, and until this trip, no mongeese either. 

I can report that in September, we did spot a mongoose rushing across the road and into the tall grass so fast that we could hardly get a look at him. But, this week, we hit paydirt, Mongoose-wise. As we were getting into our vehicle for the ride home from work, a mongoose crossed our road, and sauntered across the lawn in no particular hurry – finally going into the bushes. Aha!  And as that were not enough, it now seems to be Mongoose week, as we spot one or two at the railway crossing area (that we get stuck at every morning and evening for three or four trains). Double aha!  I would have hated to leave here without seeing a mongoose. 

The weather –

The monsoon here in the summer was a bust, according to the locals.  We had so little rain, that areas which should be swamps are dry, reservoirs are low and farmers have suffered.

However, Friday things clouded over, the wind came up, we had showers and a forecast of nothing but rain all weekend.  That is how it was. In fact, we have had heavy rain with thunder and lightning most of Saturday, Saturday night and all day today (Sunday) until mid-afternoon.  The deluge has been accompanied by huge cracks of thunder from time to time and we lost power briefly several times before it went off for good – probably for 7 hours straight today. (It’s off again, BTW)  There is a UPS (uninterrupted power supply unit) here at the house, which works a few lights and plugs, but not the fridge, nor the microwave. Furthermore, it has limited capacity, so it behooves one to conserve the UPS charge as much as possible, because once that thing runs out of juice, one is totally in the dark until power to the house is returned. So, we skulked around in the dark until the sun came up, and then had to think of things we could eat for breakfast that only required heating on a griddle. We do have gas burners (obviously not affected by power outages) and thank goodness for them! 

Perhaps our little pond (almost dry as of Friday) by the railroad tracks will be full of water tomorrow morning and sporting several migrating storks or cranes. Well, it COULD happen.

Along with the wet is the COLD.  It has been getting cooler here – especially at night.  Low of 8 degrees Celsius and high of around 20C during the day. With no sun peeking out yesterday or today, I have to say that it felt bloody COLD, to the point that my crop pants just were not cutting it on our outing yesterday with Harpreet. (More about that later).  So, we stopped at a market so that I could get some woolen tights like Harpreet’s.  Wanted black, which would go with everything, but they were out of black, so I settled for dark brown and appointed them my new pajamas. They are cosy. I hope to get black ones sometime this week.  

Once the rain stopped late this afternoon, Rob and I set out to do some shopping as we seemed to be out of important stuff like  cereal, oatmeal, eggs and Kleenex. While out, I bought a pair of sports socks, bag of rice and a pair of shoe laces to make Milo two SNOCKS, to keep her warm day or night. Carolynn has made herself one – basically a sock filled with rice and tied up, which can be heated up in the microwave and used as a heating pad. I have the commercial equivalent from Shopper’s Drugmart at home which I could not live without in winter. Anyhow, Milo was delighted – and left here a while ago with both of them stuffed under her sweatshirt. 

Snock

Hansi  

December 8, 2014 -- Marketing in Dhuri

Friday we were scheduled to market our programs.  By we, I mean Rob and I, but 3 other teachers were going along this time as well to talk about their courses, and NO marketing men were going. Hurray.  So, we had a carful.

The trip was 2 hours each way (from our school ) to a little town called Dhuri with a very good school - of which Mandeep (along for the journey) was an alumnus – Guru Tej Bahadur – 4500 students from Kindergarten to Grade 12.

We were to have our little seminar with the Grade 11 and 12 kids at 11:30 for an hour, but our car pulled into the driveway JUST BEHIND a marching band followed by the entire student body which was welcoming their Principal – JUST back from picking up their International Academic Award from London, England.  Talk about Pomp and Ceremony.  You just KNOW that we were going to take a back seat .

When we stepped into the auditorium, the room (absolutely chock-a-block with kids sitting cross-legged on the main floor and also filling the balcony) erupted in huge APPLAUSE (for us) as we were led to front row chairs, and THEN  the festivities started on stage.  And just as before at Founder’s  Day, we front- row types were plied with mango juice throughout, followed by a piece of cake after the celebratory cutting  ceremony.

I already knew that these schools have MANY students, but we don’t usually get to see all of them at once.  To see a student body of this size is jaw-dropping.  I snapped a few pictures of the throng, but doubt they will convey the group’s magnitude.

Sweet little faces

A LONG TIME later, the dancing, speeches, more dancing, long skit (all in Punjabi), more dancing was over.  Most students filed out but the Grade 11 and 12s were kept back to listen to our seminar.  Are you thinking? “Poor THEM!”  Well, so was I.  I won’t bore you with the details, but will say the kids were a good audience,  spoke English very well, laAdd captionughed in all the right places at Rob’s talk – and then off we went (two hours) back to school.

Program on stage

What with the one hour each way to school, then the two hours each way to Dhuri, Car Sick McGee here was looking at 6 hours of not-so-quality car time in the very back seat on really rough roads.  Long Day!

Hansi

P.S. As I have mentioned, right now, peanuts are HUGE in the marketplace and along with the actual roasted nuts are any number of peanut chikkis or brittles, as we call them. The ones we have bought (more than once) are 6 patties to a  package and the patties are about the size of a beverage coaster.  Reason for addiction - ratio of peanuts to brittle is 4:1.  I have been corrected.  This kind of chikki is called Gachhuk.

Gachuk

November 30, 2014 -- Excursion to the Forest Preserve

We have been trying to organize a birding day in the Forest Preserve which is situated behind Sukhna Lake towards the mountains.

The Forest Preserve Authority office is in Chandigarh – open only on weekdays between 9 and 4 with closure at lunchtime.  You can see that two people working every day an hour outside Chandigarh would have difficulty getting to that office to pick up the necessary permission papers needed to get into the Preserve.

Turns out that one needs to submit a filled-out form including desired visiting date, GATE by which you want to enter, name, age of persons visiting, license number of vehicle, and foreigners also have to submit a photocopy of passport, visa as well as a passport-sized extra picture.  This form then gets “processed”  for several days prior to your requested date of entry, and with any luck you are given permission to enter – and supposedly someone at that GATE has been given the word that you are bonifide.  Not the case, by the way.

So, through Harpreet’s friend, the necessary papers were picked up, we completed them – attached documents, got the driver’s info. – gave them back to the friend who officially submitted them. In due course, we came to know that we were “on the list” for Sunday, Nov. 30^th – along with Harpreet, who decided to go along.

It was a good thing that Harpreet was along, because at the locked gate, the gatekeeper spoke no English, read no Hindi (on the permission form) and was  prepared to deny us entry despite our preparations.  Harpreet was finally able to persuade her to open that gate, but I doubt we could have budged her. 

The grounds were lovely, and the weather perfect – a little breezy and sunny.  We hiked around three dams, and were able to see three new birds there.  I believe Rob has pictures I will attach. We watched the Fantail - rapidly flitting about -without really being able to get a bead on him, and, because he was almost all black, we did not have much to go on UNTIL he several times fanned out his tail to such a degree that there could be no doubt it was an identifying characteristic.

Red-wattled Lapwing

Harpreet is only just getting enthusiastic about birding – due to our long drives to work where she has to listen to us rattle on about all the birds we are seeing. So, about a week ago, we gave her a belated Diwali present – the same wonderful (now well-thumbed) Indian bird guide that Jan gave us ten years ago.  Now Harpreet  is HOOKED.

Luckily she thought ahead – and brought four delicious paranthas for us to munch on at noon.  I had NO FOOD along, which is inexplicable, if you know anything about my family. 

Hansi, Harpreet, and Rob in selfie with paranthas

Mid-afternoon, we moved to Lake Sukhna, to check for any migrating waterfowl.  There were MANY Bar-headed Geese on the lake, with lots of Ruddy Shelducks but none of the storks or spoonbills that we hope to see later in December.

Bar-headed Geese

Tufted Duck

At day’s end, Harpreet suggested we go to Sector 34 for a different kind of chaat – Chaat Papri (one of her favourites) so we did. You can see from the picture below that all the various items that get crumbled up on that plate are then covered with yogurt and chutney.  And no, I DON’T know what all those items are. I’m going to have to google it. And that wrapped up our day.  Slurp!  [Here's a recipe and ingredients from the net. Ed]

Hansi and Rob eating Chaat Papri and somehow managing to keep it on their  plates despite the steep incline they are standing on. Just kidding. One can often tell the age of the camera person by the way the shot is framed--young people love the crazy fall-off-the-earth tilts so popular in Coke ads.  Speaking of same, check out the tiny coke delivery truck below.

I have to say that we have had more luck spotting birds at the lake (which requires no advance planning nor permission) than the Forest Preserve, but the possibility excites to see other wildlife in the protected area (like the Sambar we spotted).  Decisions, decisions . . . 

Sambar Deer

Here are a few additional pix taken on our outing:

ATM Security

Wedding cart for a groom

Temple with bull faces

November 27, 2014 -- Amritsar

Wednesday afternoon, we left from school about about noon to drive to Amritsar for a marketing junket. When I say we, I mean Rob, Seguinder (the marketing head) and I.

It is a 5 hour drive to Amritsar ( home of the Golden Temple –  a very Holy place in the Sikh religion, and of political importance too in history).  The distance required an overnight stay, as the actual visit to present at the high school was not scheduled until 10 a.m. Thursday. Therefore, once we arrived in Amritsar, we were free to visit the Golden Temple and do our own thing for the evening.

Golden Temple

Rob has already been to Amritsar marketing twice this trip (2014) and doubtless sent pictures around. But I will attach a few, for it really is a magnificent sight.

Harpreet had been planning to go along – for the fun of the trip, for the purposes of helping to market our programs (she is the Principal of CIIS) and because she is Sikh and loves Amritsar. Anyway, at the last minute she had to stay back, so charged Seguinder with the task of making sure we got a guide at the Golden Temple, AND taking us to a famous dhaba for Amritsar kulcha. Two MOST important things.

Somehow, a guide was not available, and waiting for an hour for one to materialize still produced NO GUIDE, so the old guy in the Information office sat us down and, with the help of a little guide book, explained the whole history of the Temple and the significance of everything therein. Only then could we go inside.

Everyone has to take off and check their shoes, and then walk through a cleansing trough of water before entering.  Men and women both are required to cover their heads. If you have head-covering with you, fine. Otherwise, they sell little kerchiefs for the purpose, and even have a box of cast-off kerchiefs one can take for free. 

The water surrounding the Temple is Holy Water.  Many people dip into it for a blessing or strip down and actually get right into the pool. We were told that 80,000 people per day are fed free at the kitchen located in one corner and there are free accomodations for anyone who wants to stay for up to three days. If you want more info. you should Google.

After leaving the Temple, we wandered down the narrow, cobbled, winding streets and shopped in a Dried Fruit and Nut establishment while Seguinder stopped at a Tikki vendor for a snack. Amritsar is known for its dried fruit, so many such stores abound. Every city has its own feel. Certainly true of Amritsar – a VERY old city dating back 500 years and purposely NOT being modernized to preserve its history.  Of course, the streets were teeming with vehicles, people, vendors. We saw many vendors with braziers selling roasted shuker kandi (sweet potatoes) as well as roasted chestnuts (singhara). If you chose one of the sweet potatoes, the wala would peel and cut it up into a little dish – squeeze on lemon juice, then green chutney, tamarind chutney then sprinkle it with masala – and VOILA. Or you can skip the chutneys.  These braziers looked so inviting in the dark with their glow from the coals.

Glowing coals of roasted sweet potatoes (Shuker kandi)

Roasted Chestnuts (Singhara)

Shuker kandi by night

Another shuker kandi vendor with Rob giving the delectables the once over;
note the little round lemons decorating the display

We headed to the dhaba for dinner. This dhaba is actually two dhabas, side by side. One is called Brothers Dhaba, and the other is called the same thing, only in Punjabi.  In the past, there was only one dhaba, run by both brothers. But I guess they had a falling out, so one of them opened his own dhaba RIGHT NEXT to the original. Funny. We all ordered the famous Amritsar kulcha which was as delicious as promised, though Seguinder, with a belly full of tikki, though the kulchas were heavy. They WERE filling, for sure. I saved one of mine for the drive home.

Amritsar Kulcha

I found out this morning that we have three marketing trips net week. Don/t know where we are going next!

Hansi

November 25, 2014 -- The Things you see

Yesterday I saw the BEST thing.

Just as we were nearing the school in our vehicle, we passed a man pulling his brahma bull along by a rope.  Over the bull was a beautiful blanket to keep it warm, but the blanket had been actually TAILORED to exactly fit the hump - just like you might have a cover for you toaster, or your food processor.  So there was the "hump cosy " - cut and sewn decoratively to perfectly fit the hump - from which the rest of the blanket fell gracefully over the animal.   I did not have time to snap a picture, and am just KICKING myself about that.  How kind was that man to make such a warm, lovely garment for his beast of burden.  It went beyond functional to "styled" and actually decorated - and I can imagine that man telling the tailor how he wanted that blanket to look.

So many things to admire about this country.

Hansi