Edible Shoots

     Happy memories can heal.Strangely, sometimes of a thing that can cause a bleeding wound.A word before I tell you what I wanted to. This photo was shot this evening as it caught my eyes in a traditional market, popularly known as Tuesday Market in Abha. It opens all days but for their big day is Thursday.The Arabic word for this decorative object is  Jambiya .The one in the frame is a wooden model displayed in front of a honey vendor.This stall sells honeycomb too, interestingly.       It did bring all the memories back again.You are less likely to forget that. Don’t worry though. I can take you for a walk.A lovely piece of accessory you gifted me the day before I left for Saudi Arabia. It was a beautiful keychain holding a small replica of a silver-colored-knife, the kind that traditional Arab tribesmen wear on their waist belt. I hadn't thought of it in years, nor could I even remember where I had left it when I was in a h...

It was Nasarka, a family friend of ours for years, who recommended the dish for the first time. He put it in such a way that I had the urge to try it out then and there ... which I did. My taste buds judged the result to have come out perfectly, which was very unusual for my personality type, as I typically take time to befriend and love someone new I meet. But this was definitely love at first sight. The dish thrilled the neuroreceptors in all of the six tongues in our little family. It has been a firm favorite in our household ever since; a delicacy of Anatolian descent, but a guest no more.     If you still wonder what hummus really is, I can’t put it any better than the American Heritage Dictionary, which describes it as "a smooth, thick mixture of mashed chickpeas, tahini, oil, lemon juice, and garlic, used especially as a dip for pita". Let me add that the preferred oil is olive oil, since the original and authentic recipe calls for it. If you guessed tha...

      This is a show to which your entry passes have already been issued in unknown but specific numbers, whether you believe in predestination or not. You have no choice but to enter. However, you are free to use an eye mask or a pair of earplugs. It is totally up to you. Some do use them, consciously or otherwise.       Ever since I grew old enough to wonder about the phenomenon  of dawn and dusk, it has set my imagination on fire. In winter, mostly  on Sunday mornings, I would prefer to stay in bed: warm, huddled up,  wrapped in blankets, wide awake. I was all ears - though we can’t move  our ear pinnae – attentive to the crowing of roosters in the chicken  coop, the cawing of crows flying by, other birds’ chirping, the mooing of  the cow in the shed with its calf tethered, the bicycle bells of the  newspaper boy, the stirrings of my younger siblings, and my mom’s  never-ending quarrel with damp f...

Almost all of my friends I went to school with are now far away from me. Some are gone forever. Others (who were never in my immediate circle) stay in touch, as do the ones I went fishing, swimming, biking, cashew-nut-gathering and foraging-for-wild-berries with. A chance meeting would make the latter group reconnect inseparably almost instantaneously - an instant anti-aging medication. Nothing seems to bond people as strongly as good times shared with one another. We went around wading through run-off rain water during the monsoon, and diagonally crossing the tilled paddy fields, trampling solid dry-as-dust lumps of soils into a single-file walking trail. Roads were dusty in the summer, and muddy during the monsoon. That was a time when our village was not fully free from open defecation. It reminds me of a line from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “The excrement dried in the sun, turned to dust, and was inhaled by everyone along with the joys of Christma...

Before I tell you what I am really setting out to write about, let me remind you: I don’t endorse the use of bottles and disposable cups for storing, transporting, or even for drinking from. It is one of the losing battles I waged against myself after resolving to abstain from using non-biodegradable disposables.It is one of my only failures. All I have managed to do so far is to minimize their usage. It is certainly better than nothing, and a step in the right direction. Photo Credit: Dr. Ajmal Around 71% of Earth’s surface is covered in water. That doesn’t mean you will never go thirsty regardless of where you go. Forget about the 97% which is saline; the remaining 3% fresh water is mostly not in potable form as 68% of it is stored in icecaps and glaciers. I wonder how Samuel Coleridge Taylor knew all these statistics as early as the Romantic period when he lamented in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink”.  It i...

Hi dears...hope you are enjoying the rest of the cake 🎂. The other day, I took Pearl S. Buck seriously and wanted to surprise my mom by milking the cow before she gets up. As I showed up in the dark, our cow was a bit surprised to see me in a different role. She looked very cool and unusually willing to get along anyway. But the udder felt shrunken and nothing came out to my disappointment. I soon realized that my mom had forgotten to tether the calf a bit away from its mother in the evening. And it so happens once in a blue moon.   To keep a short story short, obviously, it was a  great Christmas for the calf however. And he deserves it for letting us have a nice coffee the year round. In a short while before it is too late, a few of my neighbors turned up with little pots wondering why the supply was late. Mom pointed at the calf and I feigned knowing nothing. The cow and calf looked  indescribably happier as the day warmed up with sun rays. That Christmas ...

“After Harvest” My friend Lourens Erasmus remembers one of the catch phrases of his childhood in a farm back in South Africa. For every reasonable demand he would occasionally make, his parents used to have just one answer “after the harvest”. If the crop was bumper, they would usually be able to fulfill his requests. If not, he knew somehow, though he was just a boy, it is time to remain silent as things are not going well – financially or otherwise. This shot captures an “after the harvest” evening of Al Majamma village in Aseer province of Saudi Arabia. If you move closer, you will be able to spot traditional houses, a watch tower called “kasaba” and green houses for growing tomato, mint, coriander, cucumber, squash, zucchini etc. A dried and narrow water canal runs between stone- walled open fields and a flock of sheep grazing in a dried, little dam valley. The open fields lie in waiting for the next batch of corn, wheat, sesame and barley. There are palatial modern houses and...

Proudly owned a pair of sneakers thinking that it would comfortably fit 'jogging' into my daily routine. It is the first of its kind I have ever bought.  I use my old formal shoes that are no longer presentable for office instead. I justified it to myself as it would be better to keep my carbon footprint a little less. Being a believer in recycling and reusing, among other things, I often use the reverse side of papers to take notes and prepare to-do-lists. Those papers would otherwise have gone straight to trash bin. This might have been my first purchase of, but not my first time to actually use, sneakers. I used them for the first time 12 years ago, when I was doing my master's degree on the Calicut University campus. Mohammed Rafeequ, fondly called as Rafi, from Laksha Deep, was kind enough to put me up in his room until got one of my own. I appropriated his sneakers, with his permission and blessing, of course. As a matter of coincidence, I had some downtime ...

      I  often slip into thinking that our son Ansu serves as a kind of metaphor for my own mind. Before I tell you how, let me say a few words about something that has puzzled me for a really long time. I haven’t really solved the puzzle yet. Here it is: I just don’t know if I should thank God or ask him to pity me for giving me a mind with unbridled curiosity. I guess this is a more dangerous, and at the same time more desirable, time for a curious mind than any other period in human history. It may thrive if it can dwell in one place and on one thing at a time, but perish (or just survive) if it keeps pursuing everything that irresistibly tempts it to wander. There is a constant array of fascinating things that jumpstarts the mind, making it hurtle along like a hound in hot pursuit of an unexpected prey.   Curiosity, as a matter of fact, does favor those who can keep it focused until something concrete or useful can be brought about from it. But what i...

      Of all the love letters I have ever seen, the most poignant and enchanting ones are from two  literary works.You may call it novellas. The first one is   Letter from Peking  by Pearl S. Buck and the other one is Premalekhanam by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer.I strongly recommend both of them.Especially for those who cant stand a thick volumes of prose fictions.   My dear wife, First Before I say what must be said, let me tell you that I love only you....( The novel begins with this letter which is something we cant forget for life) Here is the original work in Malayalam from Premalekanam.     "My dearest Saraamma, When life is at its most intense state of youth, and one's heart has reached its most beautiful state of love, how does my dearest friend while away her time during this rare and short-lived beautiful period of life? As for me, I am living each moment of my life with my mind stirring hopelessly in love w...

  The word “capricious” is often found naturally paired up with the word “desert”. It took a few years of living in a desert country for me to really understand the spirit of this union. Mood swings could be a genetically inherited disease for desert-dwellers. And the desert seems very proud of its capriciousness, so it never misses a chance to wear it on its sleeves. We may observe the same among our friends and acquaintances. But none of them appear to be exhibitionistic about it, whereas the desert is.  The desert changes its moods more often than its inhabitants. Just think of the wide range of colors, and the ever-shifting weather, which forces the desert-dwelling animals, birds, reptiles, and insects into their own survival modes like aestivation or hibernation. These animals know their habitat best and are highly adaptable. Hence they make their homes – their own microenvironments – in the oases, depressions, holes, and rocky inclines. Surprisingly, they are...

     Every time I take a tea break during my teaching hours, I ponder how it came to be that “tea” forms the first three letters of  the word “ teacher” or “teaching”. And ironically enough, no teacher education program ever mentions even a single word about this. The English faculty at King Khalid University in Saudi Arabia, where I work, consists of teachers from 15 nationalities. One of the most obvious common traits I get to notice among them is taking tea. It provides me with the social proof that at least one thing I do as a teacher is commensurate with international teaching standards.Hats off to all tea-taking teachers from four continents.      Recently, I was selected as an invigilator for IELTS examinations. IELTS, as you may know, is  co-owned and administered by Cambridge English Language Assessment, the British Council, and IDP Education. In their special instructions to invigilators, I found a word of caution against having tea ...