PG vivas for St Joseph's

 

PG Viva with Fr Richard Rego

I have stopped working on a regular basis at St Joseph’s College as I am snowed under by work with Mount Carmel’s and Jyothi Nivas Colleges and Sophia School and St. Joseph’s School. But when it comes to being the external examiner for their PG Exams they always connect with me and I cannot say no. After all it’s Fr Ambrose’s memory and my Uncle Simon who was a Jesuit, which takes me back over and over again.

So, on the 24th of May we started on the vivas for St. Joseph’s PG section from 9am in the morning. Two weeks before that I was sent the dissertations by email and dunzoed the hard copy and I wallowed in reading them through and through.

Why?? Well this is a student's blood, sweat and tears and having just gone through my PhD with writing and rewriting it before submission, I read and make notes and the kids know -- they wont get their Masters certificates if they are not up to scratch. I will make them rewrite and I will check for plagiarism. That is a HUGE no, no in my book. Outright fail if they plagiarize.

Student, guide, chair and me

This year the dissertations were on more modern subjects and for a change I did not have to kill myself reading boring old topics. Instead there was one on fake news which was attributed to becoming famous by the most infamous US President of them all -- Donald Trump.  

“Using Multimodality to Counteract Fake News during COVID-19 Pandemic in India: A Social Semiotic study of Instagram News Explainer Videos” -- well argued but I was disappointed as she found ITV News the safest platform to believe and they are funded and are part of the Times of India Group. But then I am a journalist and she is still a student with rosy spectacles!!

Another interesting dissertation called us older people “ digital immigrants” and younger than 35 “ digital Natives” Made me laugh at the terminology and as the student said, she wrote on the topic because of the older family members who believed everything and anything on whatsapp or social media. The name of her 44 page thesis -- “Using Multimodality to Counteract Fake News during COVID-19 Pandemic in India: A Social Semiotic study of Instagram News Explainer Videos.  How multimodal videos were helping to explain concepts clearly and truthfully, rather than falling for fake news. She seemed disappointed that many of her older family members believed all whatsapp messages.

One dissertation was about Kannada film producer Prashanth Neel’s films and it was intriguing ly called -- “The High-Octane Man and an Enticing Female Body: Emphasizing Gender Stereotypes and the Representation of Women in the Films of Prashanth Neel”. Very sad even though she tried hard, but the whole thesis was just a textual personal analysis of the films with no rigorous scholarship or research. But thats her guides fault, not guiding her correctly.

And then my Heidi Thomas who has taken four years to submit her thesis!! She did a regular, old fashioned ---Gender influence in the context of journalism practice in Bangalore. Good old fashioned ranting about gender in the media room. After all the years and the mentoring she got from all over, she produces a thesis with SIX in her sampling for interviews.Heidi is street smart and will do very well in our media arena. Academics are not her forte and so as we laughed together the HOD and me -- she will fall on her feet and bring laurels to the college anyway-- weak thesis or not!

The other thesis ‘s were on anime’s and Tamil movies and oh yes! Vlogging about food. Called “ Representation of Culture through Food: A Textual Analysis of YouTube Food Vlogs “ she had analysed three of the worlds top vloggers and ofcourse I ticked her off for not adding my favourite vlogger -- Anthony Bourdain. How could she talk about food vlogging without the amazing Bourdain, who even though he is dead is beloved by all of us his fans.. 

 

  

Sunbelt Bakery IRONMAN 70.3 Chattanooga

 Andrew, my second son who is a cardiologist, has never given up his athletic prowess from the time he was a young guy. So two years ago he asked for me to be present when he took part in the Sunbelt Bakery IRONMAN 70.3 Chattanooga. Chattanooga is just a two hour drive away from Knoxville where he lives with his family and so we drove down the night before and stayed in a lovely old wooden house which had been rented by his other teammates. The two women who were his team mates did the cycling and running leg while he handled the swim in the river. It was so exciting, all of us standing and watching and screaming for him from the sides.

The bridge over the river the athletes swim in!

My ticket was booked and I was set to leave for his race again a few days ago when the International lock down happened. He and I were terribly disappointed that I could not go, especially since this year he was attempting the whole race on his own. But his lovely wife, knowing how much it means to me sent me videos and  pictures so I did not feel truly sad.

Beginning at 06:45 AM he was racing an Olympic length race which is - 1.5k Swim | 40k Bike | 10k run. I don’t know how he does it and stand at the side watching him race, my heart thudding and in my mouth. But as he says, “Watch how many older people participate mum, you should give it a try. Look at their calves, their age is emblazoned there.”  65, 75, there were even 85 year old athletes, thats when I realised my 2k everyday is rubbish!  

The handsome champ -- so much like my Dad with his drive and athletic prowess/

Chattanooga, in Tennessee is a gorgeous city with dramatic scenery, idyllic weather and low-key southern charm. Thousands of athletes participate and stay on after the race like us, exploring and enjoying the great outdoors. 

The run leg!

“This Sunbelt Bakery IRONMAN 70.3 Chattanooga, offers the perfect training opportunity, for those seeking a half-distance race opportunity,” says Andy while we sat around the huge dining table enjoying meatballs and spaghetti cooked by one of his team mates. We had taken a huge punnet of strawberries from COSTCO and a Tiramisu dessert, which everyone tucked into, except for me.

Just out of the river and removing his wet suit.

The Mallika mango in Hoskote

 

The young trees need bamboo support with heavy fruit

So I needed to plant fruit trees 15 years ago on my farm. I had bought two acres of absolute waste land from my son's French teacher and then had no money to rejuvenate the mess. It was left for 15 years just as it was as all my money was going to running the house, paying the boys fees and encouraging them to be sportsmen.

Then one day when the neighbours told me that there were men coming at night and stealing tractor loads of the red soil -- I woke up and decided to just enclose the place. If the soil was going -- a whole swimming pool sized tract had been dug out -- I had better enclose it.

Such a beauty

So along with a helpful friend, I began to do the impossible, as in the village, no one had enclosed land. The villagers agreed provided I gave them a 10 feet road along the side. I decided to enclose the land with kucchas or poles of granite and from a convent that was upgrading its walls, I bought the chapdi kal or the slabs of stone used to wall in the front and the back. Then an electrician told me another convent was upgrading its gate and so I bought the old, solid iron gate and fixed it with pillars. Then a culvert had to be built so we could drive into the land, without the pain of slush if it rained. So iron rods were bought and a culvert was built.

When the time came to choose the fruit trees I went to Lalbagh which Dad and Grandpa swore by and asked them which mangoes to plant. We have a new variety grown in a lab I was told.The 'Mallika' mango is the result of the hybridization of the Indian mango varieties Neelum and Dasheri. The variety was introduced by Dr. Ramnath Singh and my salaams go to him. When grafted, the tree will remain a manageable size and is appropriate even in small gardens as it does not turn massive. So far we have found, the fruit is normally ready to harvest from June to July.

Thank God people think they are the cheap totapuri and leave them alone!

For the first round of planting trees, I put down Raspuris as those were the variety of mangoes that I knew. Raspuris are an oval shaped mango, with a delightful flavour and are juicy and stringless in texture. They are considered the Queen of Mangoes in India. They are known as Peddarasalu or Rasapuri in Karnataka. I can eat a dozen in one sitting quite easily!

Then when I wanted to put down another dozen trees, I was advised by the Lalbagh specialists to plant the Mallika. A new hybrid that had been their successful experiment. The Mallika produces high quality, fiberless orange fleshy fruit. The fruit has prominent citrus, melon and honey notes and is exceptionally sweet. I was told that the cultivar met with a positive reception, at the Fairchild Botanic Gardens, International Mango Festival. 

Bonny and Steve thrilled with the first crop

The Mallika tree is also more disease resistant and easy to grow. The Mallika mango is considered among the best dessert quality mangoes from India. I found them wonderful to pulp for jam and juice and freeze in large containers for even upto a year. The fruit must be picked mature green and be packed in a cardboard box and kept at room temperature for them to ripen.

Do not hurt the fruit in any way. Just snap off the fruit, away from your eyes, as a lot of deek squirts out and then put them gently into the soil and mulch around the tree to drain out before carrying inside.The excitement we felt to see the young trees covered with mangoes after five years was the moment all farmers wait for. Steve, Bonny and I had such a wonderful morning removing only some of the fruit which were almost a kg each in weight.

Taken off two dozen and will take off the rest in stages. Need to sell the crop.

Good for the country, be responsible & sustainable

 

Lots of love going into the refurbishment

It seems like a no brainer today. We live in a beautiful country, so why ruin it by erecting structures that can only be described as monstrosities? Unfortunately, an aesthetic sense, a respect for the land and its heritage, has often been glaringly absent in the architecture of Goa.

Thankfully, however, a growing number of architects and builders are committed to reversing this trend. Dean D’Cruz is a forerunner of the movement of Goan architects who design with green materials, producing architecture that goes with the Goan flow, rather than grating against it. Dean spent a lot of time building homes for the wealthy, but then changed tack over time.

Swales being dug

In my village of Pilerne, a power couple bought an old run down villa in Moicavaddo and have decided to make it into an art gallery cum home. They employed the said Dean D’Cruz-  who is one of Goa’s ‘greenest’ architects and  what an amazing place it is going to be.

“ It is going to be a showcase for sustainable living. We need to retrace our steps and go back a few decades when we were more caring of mother nature,” says Leenika Jacob, the power behind the project.

For me it sounds exactly what I want to hear. No pulling down old, heritage structures, instead refurbish and rejig them, making them modern and still holding on to our cultural roots. Like my son has done in the UK, according to their laws.

Just look at how much water will get saved

Talking to the architect he says,“As architects we enjoyed working on rich people’s houses with limitless budgets, using imported sanitary ware, German hardware and Italian marble. But after doing a fair number of these, we felt our learning had stopped. We also began to question ourselves on where this was leading us.”

He recalls battles with clients on the size of staff quarters, which got tinier and tinier while their own living areas were shockingly enormous.

“Over the years I have realized the Raj really never left India, we just got new rulers… the nouveau riche,” Dean says. “The challenge of architecture no longer existed and we needed to get back to it. We stopped doing high-end villas a few years ago, as we find them extremely unsustainable.”

Outsiders like this are welcome

He called many of today’s projects “a drain on resources,and a place to park black money.”

Top architects are increasingly working with sustainable materials and alternative energies, and are committed to collaborating with communities. It’s such a good feeling to see Leenikas home come up, right infront of my eyes, with sustainable permaculture breathed into every step being taken.

The shell of centuries old laterite stones is being maintained but a lot of sustainable ideas are being implemented. Right in front of the property huge trench-like swales are being dug by local labour to rain -water- harvest, every drop of water that falls in the property.

The house when she first bought it

Moicavaddo is in the grip of the greedy tanker mafia as water is a problem. Leenikas capture of all rain in the property will raise the water table which seems to have been drained. She is also redoing the well in her property, into which  again the rain water which falls will get funnelled.

All the swales are being dug checking the topography of the land curving along the rises and bends of the soil.She will also plant wetland grasses and reeds to help with the natural filtration of the water.   

 

 

A bumper crop of mangoes from Hoskote

 

Jam from the saved pulp

I can see that it's going to be a bumper crop of mangoes from Hoskote. Heaps of young mangoes growing at a wonderful speed that gladdens my mango loving heart. We have two varieties -- Mallika and Raspuris. I refuse to grow anything else as these are the best and they are grafts to boot.

The Mallikas are a species made in Karnataka in a lab and so ofcourse man in his infinite desire to tweak nature for his benefit, has made the seed turn completely flat and thin. As a result instead of fights to have the seed with the extra pulp, like we did as kids, the seed had hardly any flesh. Plus the flesh is a wonderful orangey yellow so there is no need to add colour inspite of cooking it down to half.

We have 30 Raspuri and Mallika trees.

The graft of the Mallika remains compact and small unlike the Raspuri, but I bought at least six of the saplings from Labagh and put them down in Hoskote. The rest are Raspuri and delicious too. Having grown up on Malgobas  and a Duseri in the garden, both being string free I detest mangoes with strings in them. We are spoiled for choice here as in the US the Jamaican variety my son buys I cannot eat. They taste awful!

So, last year I pulped the best mangoes as I normally do for the kids. They come either in July or in December and wait to enjoy a load of mango smoothies or juice. Because Covid hit they could not come and then I realised -- there are huge dekchis of delicious pulp in the freezer which needs to be cleared out. Where will I put the next round of pulp once the mangoes grow and ripen this year??

Look at the beauty of a young Raspuri

So, on Mum’s death anniversary yesterday May 5th, I remembered her great jam making sessions. Ofcourse she made jam from the ripe mangoes that fell, rather than waste. My jam was with the best mangoes of the crop. That's what I save for the boys and families and my sister and her family. So the big plastic tubs in which we had ordered Biriyani, came to good use and I pulled out one.  

Leaving it to thaw in the main fridge overnight, I take out most of it and put it into a dekchi, to cook down,  and thicken, along with a little sugar and cinnamon sticks. It starts to steam and make flopping sounds! I leave it on slow stirring occasionally to avoid any overflow.

Another beauty

After a while the concoction begins to make popping sounds and looks like a volcanic eruption with bursting bubbles. I put on a rubber glove when stirring, because I don't want my hands burned. Mum always suffered burns, as she never had any gloves to save her. After some continuous stirring, because you don't want burned tasting jam, I switch it off and leave it to cool. The pulp must boil down to about half.

After leaving it to cool and going back to reviewing the 28 dissertations, from St. Joseph’s  I realised that home made is really the best. We use only the best ingredients and clean utensils and cleaner glass bottles to save the jam and with chappaties, again homemade, the men are in heaven for breakfast.