Working in the Deccan Herald.

 

The certificate from the UN in New York, that set me off on Sustainability and Climate Change

As soon as the boys were in their final years of school I decided to go work full time in the Deccan Herald. For years I had just had my articles published freelance, but now I wanted to feel the experience of working in a newspaper, full time.

So I applied and in a few days got the welcome from Shanth Kumar, the youngest of the three brothers who owned the newspaper. “ Welcome into the Deccan Herald,” said Shanth, “and I am sure we will gain from your expertise.”

Barely had I joined as Chief Sub, when the Editorial decided to start what they had been planning for a while -- a City daily supplement called Metro Life. Stories all about the city was the idea behind it and that was right up my alley. While I worked there for two years I covered heaps of fashion shows, restaurants, local events and even big time musicians who came in from abroad to perform. Sting and Mark Knopfler, Elton John and heaps of others and I flew around the country covering them in different states with different venues. It was exciting and I hob nobbed with the hoi-poloi of the city on first name basis. I remember Anushka Sharma, Deepika Padukone and Diganth Manchale so well when they were just ramp models for Prasad Bidappa, the man who made so many film stars and Miss India’s.

Then I was tiring as I am not a party popper and even my boys were fed up of accompanying me to eat at all the restaurants which I had to review. That’s when a fellow journalist sent me a link and told me to apply for the Erasmus Mundus Masters in Journalism.  Ok, I already had a Masters in History from Bangalore University, but my dream was always to go abroad and study, but neither my parents nor I could afford it.

At a UNEP event in Nairobi or Bonn

I left the DH and promised to return after the course. I am a loyalist and so while I was in each of the three countries I was studying in, I would write Art and travel articles for the DH supplements almost weekly. By the time I returned Tilak Kumar the older brother had taken over as Editor of the paper. He was so pleased at my loyalty that he raised me to Assistant Editor immediately on seeing the results of my Erasmus Mundus Masters.

In Nairobi

However I was a woman and that immediately( with my colleagues in high places), went against me. I was relegated to being a figurehead by the men in charge, but I took it in my stride and learned a lot from the experience. Since I had won a fellowship to cover the UN Climate Change Conference in New York while doing the Mundus, my interests changed and I began to apply for fellowships to go to cover Climate Change events. This irked the bosses and they felt I was using my position to go on junkets which was untrue, but one cannot change mindsets.

In the DH Aarti, Rashmi and me

I resigned after two years and carried on covering Climate Change for many UN arms on the strength of my writing -- like UNEP, UNFCCC, UCTAD, UN Water and the IUCN. In fact my PhD thesis was supported by the IUCN. So whoever says I left the DH under a cloud, is just plain suffering from the green-eyed monster. In fact till just recently my articles have been published in the Op Ed pages of the DH. But then I don't have to explain myself to anyone, least of all anyone who is ignorant. 

As Assistant Ed in the DH

I still write for Reuters, Terra Green, The Hindu and several other online outlets, but my focus now has changed to writing novels which I enjoy more than being bound down to a deadline.

In Poznan Poland

I enjoyed every minute of my years in the DH. It was a wonderful learning curve for me and to be thrown in the maelstrom of cutting edge journalism, was an experience I will never forget. It was with the DH that my byline was recognised and I was grabbed by the Hindu, once I quit DH, to write columns on the flora and fauna of the city. And Tilak, Shanth and I are still friends and my husbands classmates.

Then of course the rest is history -- with my Masters in Journalism I started the Media Section in St. Joseph’s College under the guidance of Fr Ambrose. I have taught hundreds of young journalists, who will never forget getting catapulted into the world of journalism, with the foundation of the classes I gave them.     

  

Cooking can be fun!

 I seriously did not know how to cook as I had no interest in learning as a young woman. My sister Christine kept the home fires burning along with a cook woman or Mum. Over time it did not change as I had a cook woman who would handle the kitchen after we were married and Mum would keep sending me pickles and jams and squashes. Once it was Christmas I still never had to bother as she made a share of every sweet for me.

I began by looking through the fabulous “ Cooking Without Tears” a book with over 100 recipes by Daisy Rozario. Daisy was the Sri Lankan grandmother of my cousins in Mumbai and one of my cousins sent me her book. Her recipes were sure fire and I was on my way soon enough with her support.

Over time I collected Tarla Dalal cookery books and used them when cooking up for parties and baking for the boys birthdays. The boys birthdays were the highlight of my life as we had the most wonderful birthday parties as kids. Dad bought me a fabulous cake book from Australia on a trip and many a cake was produced to the joy of the boys from this book. It has now been given to my DIL in the UK, who was thrilled with it and who loves to bake her own like me.

THEN overnight I turned into a Grandma and went visiting my sons and their families. As soon as they saw me they expected me to turn out the most delicious Indian delicacies in both the US and UK. Both wives could not cook like me at their age. It was crazy, but I never say die. I took on the challenge especially when I saw a Indian cook in action in my son's home, in the UK pouring in great big quantities of oil and ghee into their food. Wow! The kids were headed for heart attacks and that would not do.

My sister's MIL was a great cook with delicious Anglo Indian fusion recipes. I have perfected her Meat Loaf and Peanut brittle in the boys home when I visit. Always had a large chunk of meat loaf in the fridge for the hungry boys sandwiches. Both recipes look so professional and suit the milder palates of the grandkids. The whole house is redolent with the smell of the meat loaf when I make it, especially since the beef and pork mince one gets in the UK is top quality.

Ofcourse I carry my own rajma and channa, atta and rice, masalas and sometimes onions too, as the onions in the West and garlic too, are nowhere like ours. They are big and fat and tasteless, unless they are grown in Tennessee in my friends garden there. I sometimes carry her garlic back home!

Now I have begun to make pickles like my Mum did. I save all the glass bottles and use them for my pickles. Avoid plastic as it reacts with the acidity of the pickle and one does not know what cancer causing chemicals we ingest. Glass is safe and I am glad we are realising the dangers of plastic in our lives.

Today I have made both Brinjal ( egg plant) and Amla pickle. The Brinjal I am an old hand at it now and have a fool proof recipe and Anglo Indian friend gave me. I make huge bottles of the stuff for both Daughters-in-law who love it and save it to savour over the months.

Recently after buying my groceries online from Naamdharis, I began making Amla  ( Indian gooseberry) pickle as well. It’s absolutely delicious and good for the system too in these Covid times. It’s fun making these pickles especially after tasting my ground floor tenants gift of Ginger pickle. That’s next on my to do list, and hopefully can come close to Ravi’s Cordon Bleu standard of cooking.    

   

It's our heritage

 

As children when we were taken for holidays to Goa with my parents, and that's when we made some of the fondest memories of Pilerne, Goa. Dad loved the place and was able to drive a similar love into me. Inspite of piggy toilets and horrid primus stoves ( my poor Mum!).

“It’s our home -- generations of Furtados grew here. My Dad went away to Africa to make his fortune, but he came back. He never turned his back on his heritage. He came back and built the posher part of the house and the chapel on the other side of the road to match it. He came home rich and built us the grand homes in Bangalore, BUT he never forgot his roots,” was Dads reason for spending all his spare cash on the house.

Throughout his life Dad spent long days going to Goa when he could, even after we all got married and flew the coop. He had a bag kept near Mum’s dressing table called his “ Goa bag” into which all his Goa papers were kept. He also liked to keep everything nice, which he took to the house. Infact we still use his non stick pan and the cutlery set he hid from Mum, which my sister Christine brought from Australia. We just got rid of his rusted gas burner and petromax, leaving it in the gas shop, when we went to fill the gas for our 10 day trip. 

Most of all, my two older boys spent long months in the village, with their grandpa who fed them and a pack of wild friends. In Fact there is a line of beer bottles out the back which Steven says Grandpa and grandsons bought ice cold and drank from the famous bar --” Talk of the Town”!

Over the years I have bought sheets and curtains, and plastic table cloths to cover the table, and fridge, pictures on the walls and we still sleep on mattresses with plastic covers, because we are there just for 10 days and they need to be saved from the rats for the rest of the year! All the stuff is taken out of the cupboard and then placed back carefully in plastic to weather the punishing humidity. This time we had to oil up the wall clock one of our sons gave for the house.

When we were kids our meals were ordered from Jack, round the corner from us. Regular home cooked meals with boiled rice and fish curry, tenli vegetable smothered in coconut and either a fried cutlet or a piece of fried fish. Today Jack is dead and I prefer to cook or we go out to eat --- OR we collect paninis from the Candolim Tinto, stuffed with delicious beef steak, fried crisp and smothered in a secret sauce and a salad.

Today the onus of keeping the house going, is on me and my husband. Only my sister and brother in Australia pay towards it upkeep with me and on this shoestring budget of 25 k (each) a year we firefight keeping the roof up and trying to work with saving the rest of the property. 

The village knows me as the traditional ‘son’ who loves the house and the village like Dad. The panchayat smiles when we come to pay the taxes.  As soon as we arrive in the village, the travelling statue of Our Lady comes to the house and all the village people troop in to pray and bless us. It’s a good feeling being told you have the blessings of your ancestors, by the village folk. We get advice from all sides, as we help in return. A property which we could not enclose, is enclosed now with a gate and the marauding cousin has stepped back, as the village is on my side. We also enclosed properties that he has tried to steal, making our ownership clear to the village, with concrete stakes. We also used a certified surveyor before staking our claim. Takes time and patience, lots of run around in the heat, but we do it.

This time we could not do much as the rains were upon us. We cleared the head high grass to avoid snakes coming into the house. We got the roof rafters pummeled and shaken off all the mounds of mud by the white ants. We cleared the front and side of overgrown trees and weeds as well. And the men enjoyed painting the gates and the window grills of the homestead. I fed all the plants fish waste, especially the new Alphonso mango trees planted.

And I cooked on a single burner which was hard, but once I fixed my routine it was easy. This time I gathered up courage to use the fabulous skillet my sister bought and kept in the cupboard. I got to sit out on the porch on Dad’s favourite bench, which is my fav bench now and sip hot chai and eat a heavily buttered poi. 

Next trip we have to wait for the dry season, to open up the roof and repair it. We have been lathering the beams with cashew oil, which holds off the wite ant horde for a bit, before they make a meal of them. We are ageing and refuse to live in the house now through the dirt of repairs. So we wait for our new and tiny studio apartment, which we have invested in, in the Pilerne on the other side of Marra and the panchayat. Then we will open the whole roof and maybe change all the beams if we can collectively afford it.

We love Goa and for us all, my brother Mark and sister Christine, Goa is Pilerne. My sons love it too, BUT they have ‘foreigner kids’ now who will definitely not. I agree, it's hard sharing the bathroom with millipedes, a poisonous frog and a lizard as large as a small dinosaur. Mice rattle in the tiles above, as we slip in new tiles and remove the broken ones. A snake zips past my open foot, as I take the trash out to be collected. A spider falls from the electric meter as the man comes to read it. And I worry what may bite me, as I put my hand in to shut down the incoming water, near the wet water meter. But that’s Goa for me.

The next generation has to decide what must be done, meanwhile we keep Dad's promise of looking after his beloved ancestral home, which is our duty and responsibility now. The ancestors now include Mum and Dad too on the walls, besides GrandFather and young cousin Fausta, which Dad's sisters swear I am a carbon copy of. Cool if I am.

Your humble origins are never to be forgotten and as the villagers tell me and I swell with pride -- your family was one of the first in the village and one of the most respected. Furtavaddo was once full of Furtado’s, not any more, but it’s a good feeling to belong.  

    

A PhD in the Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai

 

Yes! It’s more than six years ago already when I got a call from the HOD of the Communications Department of the Madurai Kamamraj University to come and do a PhD in their University. It was a surprise call from Professor Nagarathinam, who had been following my career graph closely he said, ever since  we met over 20 years ago at a conference on AIDS held by Reuters in Goa. Thirty of us had been selected from across Asia to attend. I don't even remember meeting him, but he remembered the stories I had done after the media workshop for the Deccan Herald on AIDS.

“ Mariein,” said the voice, “ You must do a PhD and start working with young journalists to give back all you have learned at the Erasmus Mundus Masters in Journalism in Europe. How hard I tried to get the scholarship and I have never been successful.”

“ No thanks!” I replied. “ I could have done a PhD in any of the countries I studied in for the Mundus like my younger colleagues -- Denmark, Amsterdam and Wales, UK, but I have responsibilities as a mother and wife and came home, giving up the opportunities. Why should I do a PhD with you now?”

“ I am willing to make it part time for you.We want only the top scholars here and I have asked five others besides you to come. For you, if you visit us once a month is enough, while you work with me online, for the writing of the dissertation.”

“ Once in three months,” I negotiated. 

“ Done!” he said. 

I reluctantly agreed, packed my backpack and laptop, included a mosquito net,coffee mug, immersion water heater sheets, pillow case, towel and torch and left by the overnight SRS bus. The next morning I was met by a young MPhil student - Dinesh, who became my greatest support and help through my five years of coming and going.

“ Good Morning Madam!” said Dinesh with a big smile in the milling, grimy bus stand in the half dawn of 5am. 

“ Come I will get you a cup of coffee and then put you on the bus to the University.”

It was good to have a half empty bus so early in the morning and we rattled and rolled all the way to the University 10 Kilometres away. My bus ticket was “path ruba” ( 10 rupees!) I felt comfortable speaking Tamil as well and so many willing hands helped me get off the bus, when the conductor called -- “ University!” Dinesh followed on his zippy motorbike and took me into the sprawling campus to the Faculty guest house to my room. It was a new feeling to be looked after by students throughout my stay.

The next day, five of us met in the Professor’s office and were from all parts of the country. We had a test to prove our capacities and so like students, we all sat quietly and wrote out a timed questionnaire. Naturally we all sailed through and then had to go to the admin offices to get registered.

A feast which I threw once my Doctorate was conferred.

“ Here is our book with all the accredited Universities,” said the officer in charge. Check if your Masters is recognised by our University!  Wow! We all were shocked to leaf through the pages. Lucky for me my Masters in Europe was recognised ( Swansea University) BUT my Masters from Bangalore University was NOT!! I breathed a sigh of relief to have TWO Master's degrees!

A Manu Menon was sent back with his Masters degree from a Kerala University not recognised. He tried arguing but the college would not budge. He packed and left for home, very annoyed.Others from New Delhi, Calcutta and Bristol, University were recognised and we registered. “Madurai Kamaraj University is one of India's best known and respected Universities,” intoned the officer. “ Don’t imagine you guys are special coming from the Northern States.”

A feast which I threw once my Doctorate was conferred.

“ Go to the bank and pay your Research fees and meet me in the office for lunch,” advised Professor Nagarathinam. We walked to the bank premises which were just outside the main gate and sat under the trees to fill in our challans and pay our very reasonable fees.

While we had lunch we were all given our beautiful laminated ID cards which proclaimed we were all PhD students in MKU! The five years were a lot of coming and going to the Neem tree lined campus and a lot of hard work -- writing and re-writing my thesis.

That was the start of five years of wonderful research and work in the beautiful Neem lined, peacock infested campus, and I so miss those days. I worked with some of the sharpest brains in the country, makes me laugh to think we in Bangalore believe we are the best and are not even recognised in Madurai.

My external examiner was a Professor Azmath Rasul from the University of Florida, USA. Finally only two of us finished and were granted our PhD’s!

I was asked to lecture to the students when I came and i made many firm friends among the MPhil aspirants, to this day. Infact the printing and binding of my thesis copies were done with the help of one of them in the middle of a bustling Madurai.

 

  

The Neem trees lining the roads in the 500 acre campus.

Cooking fish in Pilerne, Goa.

We decided on the spur of the moment to drive down to Goa. A friend had told me Goa and the  villages were safer through COVID than staying in Bangalore and with COVID in the building, we decided to skedaddle. So backpacks were out and a food basket and hot coffee was packed, like my Mum did, and off we went. 5 am is a great time to drive, as we shook off the crazy traffic of Bangalore city.

Bhujang the caretaker was at the house waiting for us when we arrived. Doors and windows must be o pen and all fans and lights must be on for him. Water was running , toilets were sparkling and this time he had to wait longer than normal ,as we took the circuitous Chorla Ghat route to avoid the derelict Karwar road.

 

In the morning we were awoken by the raucous and familiar calls of the Golden Oriole, along with the Oriental Magpie Robins calling out in the massive teak trees, surrounding the homestead. While I sat out with my buttered poi and cup of chai on Dads favorite bench in the verandah, A peace which I never know or enjoy in Bangalore descended on my mind and I forgot about all things nasty back home.Steve was persuaded to come along with us. 

So the next morning he was off with Bonny, my husband to  buy some fish from the massive government fish market we frequented in Verem, --the reason why we can never eat frozen fish.Never tastes the same.

But my mouth nearly touched the floor when I saw the men come home with a massive seer fish, a kg of King Prawns and three good looking pomfret. Their gills were bright red so we knew they were fresh, but that was all I knew. I had never cleaned a whole fish before. My MIL had taught me to clean prawns and my grandma, to neatly cut up and skin a chicken. But seer fish and pomfret never!

“ Oh! What's the problem Mum?” said the YouTube generation Steve. “ Wait, lets watch a video and copy it.” In minutes we had slit the pomfret and easily cleaned out it’s innards. Scraping off a few scales, I washed it well, salted and haldied it and spread a generous layer of rechardo masala out of  a packet on them with a squish of fresh sour lime.

Then placing six large slices of the fish on some bubbling oil in Dad's non-stick pan, I seared it on high heat on both sides, to keep the meat firm. Then I took out my sister's lovely skillet from Australia and made a sauce in it with onions, tomatoes and ginger garlic paste. Then I placed the slices into the sauce and let it simmer on slow for a while before turning the slices.

The rest of the huge fish went into the fridge for us to use over the next few days. We devoured a whole pomfret each, again simmered in the pan, till they were done on both sides. Nothing like enjoying fresh fish and also fish that is less boneless and easy to clean.

I always take the prawns out into the verandah to clean, so Steve learned from me how to clean the king prawns , both shelling, and de-heading and finally de-veining them. Took us a good one hour, but I am particular that  they are done well.The heads you boil and make a stock, said my chef friends, so for the first time I did!

We ate fish like there was no tomorrow for the ten days we were in Pilerne. It’s hard living in the old homestead as it's closed for most of the year, but we got Bhujang to bang the rafters on the first day and sweep out large mounds of mud,courtesy the white ant infiltrators. Beastly things who ensure we have work every single time we visit.

Because of the rain which did not worry us as it only rained at night, we got men in to clean the head tall grass which had leapt up at the back. We have learned to get daily wage labour instead of contractors from Dad and so the job works out cheaper  and better as we supervise it. The grass will grow back once you leave, warned Bhujang, but we could not live in the house with the fear of snakes in that grass.

The men could not be quiet,as Covid kept them village bound. So tins of black and blue paint were bought and the two gates were painted black and the grilles of the lower part of the house painted blue. This time we found Dad's fridge door getting ‘’eaten “ by the rust and considering that it probably is 15 years old, that's a good innings. Before we leave we clean it up, wipe it down and switch it off leaving the door open to dry out.

Ten days was too little. The silence and peace of the village was a balm to my soul. I could feel the ancestors around me in the old and ancient homestead calming my agitation which the creepy spouses of siblings bring. They have no idea about a property we grew up in and I am grateful they don't have their grabbing fingers here as well.

Three of us pay towards the upkeep of the house as per Dad and Mum's wills which is hard, but it’s a promise to keep.