The art and practice of Loving

Dear reader,

Hello! I hope you have eased into the new year and the year has been treating you well. Some of you may have seen that I have uninstalled Instagram on my phone. I haven’t left the platform, I download it every time I want to make a post. I make sure I don’t have it when I go out. There are times I feel the urge to say something but I’m letting it pass. I look at my DMs everyday and sometimes chat with people but not having the app has meant I have a lot of time. I have been cooking and trying to finish my book and be with myself.

And as part of that process, I wanted to go back to journaling using A Heartfelt Yes which looks into the art and the practice of loving. I have used this book in the past with 3 other women I didn’t know, we would meet online and journal to the prompts. Though we were not to speak to each other, we eventually did because we were all discovering new things about ourselves. We did it for a few months and then it fizzled out.

The book is free and you should look it up. I think I need to unlearn that romantic love and familial love or the love for friends is some kind of top their loves and the others don’t matter. And that love doesn’t mean that people follow my cues.

I want to share something that happened a few days ago.

Sister and I got off at Wadala station and took a cab to Dadar flower market or what I thought was Dadar Phool Market. We would later find out that it is actually Parel Phool Market. As we got into the cab, I could smell fish and asked the cabbie if he had transported folks carrying fish. He said no and that he had just washed his cab and we were his first customers and that a tempo carrying fish must have passed his cab.

That's how our conversation started. He just needed a lil push and he was happy to share about his life. We were happy to hear him speak.

He was from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh. He said he spoke Bhojpuri but now that he lives in Mumbai, he speaks the language that is spoken here. That was clear when he started to tell us about what he had cooked the previous night. He used Batata (what potato is called in Maharashtra) instead of Aloo (what it is called in Hindi speaking parts of India). Despite that he couldn't keep the flavour of Bhojpuri from his tongue that would sneak up every now and then.

I don't know how he started to talk about what he had cooked the previous night but then he didn't need much prodding. It was palak (spinach), baingan (brinjal), batata and onions with some mustard oil, cooked in steam. He said it tasted great. Sister asked if he had used Panch Phoron (which basically means 5 spices and is a masala used in Bhojpuri cooking). He said he had not used it. I can't say if he had added chilly and turmeric but when he told us about it, I protested that the brinjal must have made it mushy.

He said, one of his brothers who works as a watchman was doing the night duty too and had not come home but the other one who was home was surprised at how good the sabzi was.

You could sense his love for mustard oil. He told us about the medicinal properties of mustard oil: “if you have a cold, have some mustard oil, you will be cured.” He rued: "Mustard oil is sold here in plastic bottles," and told us how it is made in his village.

He coughed. I asked him, "you didn’t have a bit of mustard oil in the morning?" He said he leaves home in Nallasopara at 5 am so he can he can miss the crowded trains, it is chilly and had caught a cold. Then he went on to tell us how on some days when it is just him at home, he has roti (he eats 5 of them) with milk and how some days ago he just fried some onions with masala and how good it was. My sister said she can imagine how good that must be.

I asked him if he cooks for his family, when he goes to Jaunpur. He said he offers many times but his wife ( he referred to her as gharwali) always says, "you cook there too and do so much work, let me cook." He said, "Aata toh saan hi dete hai." Then he said his gharwali is really nice. She doesn't fight. He seemed to really like her, I could feel his love for her.

He said, “If I give money to his parents, she doesn't create a fuss. So many women do, they have ahankar but she is really sweet.” He added, "humko dusaro ka dukh nahin dekha jaata, agar paise hote hai toh hum de dete hai."

We reached the Parel flower market and I paid him a little more than the fare. He happily smiled at me and folded his hands. I said, I hope it isn't as crowded when you get back home today and said bye to him.

When I came back home, I decided to try his recipe. I put in all that was left over in the fridge, bell peppers, batata, roughly cut onions, a bit of a tomato, palak and his favourite mustard oil and let the steam do the magic. I skipped the baingan.I put in some chilly flakes and some pepper. He was right, it was superb.

Who says love like this that we feel for a fellow traveller who shared a bit of their life with you is not real?

At Parel flower market, I found these lovely button roses and someone told us we could walk to the Dadar flower market. So we started to walk.

On our way, we saw park which looked very green and pretty (imagine Parel is full of those glass monstrosities now), so we walked in and saw these cuties.

On our way out we found out that it is called Pramod Mahajan Garden. It is beautiful and is open till 8 pm and it is here where I am going to do one of my Art With Indu sessions. I am going to start that in February, I may also do online sessions. Comment, write to me if you are interested in the online ones.

Anyway, we walked to Dadar flower market and now I can say that go to Parel market if you want flowers for religious purposes, go to Dadar flower market if you want flowers for your vases. I got these giant sunflowers for Rs 100.

And that’s it for this time, I want to let you know that I will start my new people powered project, Maps of Desire, in February on Instagram.

I want to leave you with something I discovered thanks to a Flexible Body Flexible Mind Challenge I do on Yoga with Kassandra’s YT channel. Today our theme was Discover and she posted a link to https://radio.garden/visit where you can discover radios from around the world. I have been listening to a radio stations in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq called Qallam FM. Who says this is not travelling?

Be well.

<3
Indu