Old yet gold

Last week I spent a couple of days in the town I grew up in, with few old friends.Discussing a new project over some really stale samosas and coffee, we also frequently went back to classmates we remembered and places that have over the years faded into the concrete of overcrowded new buildings. it made me nostalgic for the people and the town I once knew.

Old age creeps up around you when you aren't looking in the mirror. I went to visit an ailing aunt of my husbands and was taken aback to find the once feisty, quick-witted battleaxe was now a gentler version. Confined to a wheelchair for most of the day her wits were as sharp as ever and she looked as lovely as she did always. I took my children on this visit for it matters to me that youth must face up and touch old age ever so often.My children were enamoured by her quick wit and friendly banter...it isn't often that old people have a way with kids but this Ajjamma did. My kids were happy to come and spend an hour away without feeling the lack of gadgets and gizmos.
How often do we spend time with older people,ours or others I wonder? Do we really want to go sit while they mutter endlessly of the past.
when I was growing up my mother visited quite a few grandmas and Mostly I went with her. Looking back I find I wouldn't swap it for anything else because those days were magical.
There was in one of the Guest Homes, an elderly  widow,who had moved in the year her husband ,pastor and friend had passed away. She had a suite of rooms set apart from the main house where she stayed with a younger spinster sister who was partially deaf . Visits to her meant a cozy cushion by the fire on rainy days and a stack of womens weeklies to read with various cakes and biscuits while the older women talked about whatever .Aunt  Evie  was a pretty lady with hair plaited over the crown of her head and held by a cloth bow.I spent many a time writing her when I was away at school and she replied in lovely handwriting.
We often went to visit another darling old lady who was Armenian.She was well into her seventies and cooked like a dream. She was Aunt Rose.Aunt Rose and her daughter Violet,a spinster in her forties lived in a liitle cottage covered by briar roses. I often felt I was in a fairy story.
We were often called to tea,that was more like a dinner with the table covered with baked dishes made by them in a basic mud oven. Ah what food! My younger brother would not miss out this particular visit as the food was too tempting. Aunt Rose would sit in her chair knitting, not missing a stitch as she chatted her face creased with the lines of a hard but well spent life. Smiles always blotting out the harsher memories of losing her children in the war. Aunt Violet was the talker....oh my she could talk without taking a breath. she had a good heart and gave me some really wonderful clip on earrings  that I carefully wrapped in tissue and still have today.
when I look back I find all this has really enriched my life.... I continue to try and visit older people and spend some quality time with them and I hope my children do too...we need to realize that these same old people were once young like us and had their own demons to deal with.


I cannot blog off without my update on coffee. When summer drifts into the rainy season we coffee growers are more than ready and we have to be. This is the time we plant. My job began much before the summer while the cold was still a nip in the air . The years planting begins with gathering seed for making seedlings and this year I took up the challenge of trying to supply all the seedlings we needed. This means having a tent that caters to at least 30,000 seedlings. It means getting good soil, sieving and filling polybags and readying seedbeds .Once the beans sprout we wait until they have two leaves before we transplant them into the bags so they can grow and root well before  being transferred to the field. We also raised shade tree seedlings of Silver oak, that will also be used  for planting.
you may wonder why I am telling you all this...well , lets say its just not decaf and sugar that goes into a cup of coffee. its so much more . It takes lots of hard work to bring up sturdy plants that will produce your next seasons coffee bean. so when you pour that next cuppa think of a little green plant  grown though the vagaries of weather,that produces a berry to fill it.
I hope you enjoy your cup of coffee as much as I do.

Fireflies

Yesterday I saw the first fireflies of the year, as the monsoon rain moves inland and the warm summer becomes cooler .
This year the summer was really short and the heat unrelenting. For us hillies the fan which never usually sees the light of day was used over the day and night.
Fireflies usually come out during the middle of the monsoon, with the cicadas and the rhinoceros beetles, the former with its high and low notes and the latter beating against the windowpane. We have less cicadas than those who live on the western ghats.Our noisiest creature would be the headache bird or the Barbet whose "kutroo-kutroo"gets from one octave to the next and oft times is the harbinger of rain.

Somhow the years of living either in towns or cities have not stripped of my countryside love and time and again as I grew up and my life after marriage has brought me back to those roots.
I must be thankful to my Dad for that love for it was Him and his love for nature that gave me my lessons.
Fireflies, as I remember reading in many a Enid Blyton would be caught with a net into a glass jar by little boys chasing them as night fell. I don't recall my brothers doing that, too much energy would be required. I do remember the nights my father would catch a stray one and lay it on my palm. It would lie there unglowing  and then take off sending its little beacon as it searched for a way out.
Once we moved to the city and college beckoned  I forgot about most things country and loved every part of the colour and fast paced life that challenges one everyday .

The year my son was born however changed us. I had moved to the hills and I want3f him to know the thrills of seeing nature in all her glory (of course it now makes little impact the fact he didn't sleep all night ) and hubby and I would put him in the car and take him rambling through the dirt roads, mostly bereft of any vehicular traffic unlike today. We would stop on a road, witheither side darkened with coffee bushes and majestic silver oaks, cut the engine and wait.
Within a few minutes there would be tiny twinkling lights moving in from below the coffee bushes to above and  oh, they sometimes filled atree akin to a Christmas tree all decorated and we would hold our breathe and take it in..
I wonder somtimes how much we who live where we are take all this for granted. I wonder if the city could give you that much pleasure and if children yearn for a simple life. I am blessed that me children have like me a chance to savour both..


Today is father's day and there isn't a day I don't remember my father and many balmy nights when I look up at the stars I see him there and his spirit continues to guide me and I know no matter where I go and what I do hes there and the firefly is his way of telling me life goes on.

So whenever you can get to the country and the fireflies are there, be amazed and remember that even on a dark night the little beacon of hope will lift your heart as nothing else will and share the wonder with your chikdren.

I never was much of a coffee drinker, not in my youth anyway.
We drank tea.Loads of tea from a light green tea pot that sat on our dining table and was replenished by my mother. Most days they would be more than just the four of us and mum, , friends had a way of joining in on most meals at our house.Tea time was mostly spent regaling mum and friends with the days events at school.

Coffee was a luxury then, , while we drank tea from as early as 5 am (toget us to study) and then through the day, my mum had a cup of coffee after breakfast "Bru Instant"the only available coffee powder. We never drank the coffee that we grew on our little farm because there was no free trade...or so I think.
Robusta has a rather strong earthy taste and isnt to my liking though I didn't know it then.

I drank tea all through school and college and the little green tea pot lived a great many years listening to our tales .

It all changed the year l got married, cause I married a coffee guy and I haven't looked back since.
I could brew a lovely pot of Nonsuch leaf tea but I couldn't make that decoction my mother in law made.
This was no put a teaspoon of instant in a cup add sugar and hot water and milk.This was the real deal...at least thats what she said.
I watched and waited and wasnt really happy when she decided to go out of town and the manservant took the day off and I was left to make the coffee.
Well ! I didn't make a bad job of it. I had watched well and now years later I still make my coffee the old way.The coffee machine sits on the ledge ..I use it only in a rush
On a good day a great brew of home grown arabica is welcomed by all.
So what you do is this:


In a saucepan boil water.
Put 5 tablespoons of pure arabica powder in a large pot (make 5 to 6 cups decoction).
Pour hot water stirring well, wait and remove scum on surface . Cover and keep 10 minutes.
Pour decoction required amount and add hot milk. Drink and enjoy.
Use only the decoction. The powder settled at the bottom can be used as manure for plants.