how do you say ghyeun tak in French?

There is so much you can learn from people. Especially if the people who you meet come from different backgrounds than yours. There is a great cultural exchange and it leaves everybody much richer. I blogged about this some days back – when we got friendly with our French neighbor - Andy. She was this massive lady who was in India on a secondment and was with us for 6 months. We only got to know her in the last two months and got pretty friendly. She was sweet and she was open. Open to sharing and open to learning. When both collide it makes for a great conversation.

We had good fun moments along the way as well. I realized by talking to her how racist we can get. She spoke about how being a racist is frowned upon and in meetings it is a complete no no. I realized that one has to try and stop being a racist everywhere to be truly neutral. In one office meeting one guy very insensitively spoke about the M word. A lot of us if office are actually racist and see Muslims as different from ‘us’ all. They give into the hype and they are completely taken in by it. When I was much younger I have seen the Mumbai riots and I fell to the fallacy of us versus them. It took me many years to come out and tell myself and the world – screw you. Stop being a racist. I keep arguing that it’s not a religious issue but for many it’s a social issue. The marginalized take to crime and brotherhood as they probably have no other option. If they are given stability and opportunity, crime will automatically fall. In every city there is a pocket of crime and marginalization. The more we propagate the cliché the more it will stick. It becomes self-fulfilling prophesy. In meetings I see people talk loosely about it. In one meeting a senior person spoke disparagingly about Muslims. It was just after my many conversations with Andy where she spoke about ticking a colleague off for being racist. Inspired I ticked him off – I told him you are being a racist. The conversation ended. I think it’s a start. This will take time but people will have to realize not be so. There are different people in this world. Their culture may differ from yours. It is up to us to be sensitive to all of them. To embrace this difference and enjoy them. It’s tough at many times, but to accept and to enjoy the difference is the first step to growing up and learning.

I keep looking out for titles to watch with Jispa. I want her to expand her scope of films to enjoy. So I think about movies I watched as a kid and try to get her to enjoy them. One such movie was Escape through Victory. Almost everyone my age and above would remember this movie. It was a Doordarshan favorite. English movies would be played typically on Friday evening at around 10. This movie was about a POW camp in WW2. Here the POWs have a match with the German national team to prove to the Germans themselves about the Aryan supremacy. With Stallone as a goalie and Pele playing a role as well, the movie quickly achieved cult status when I was a kid. I remember Pele doing a bicycle kick to score. So when I saw it at the library I brought it home. We called Andy to watch it along with us. Andy hails from Lyon in France and it seems Lyon was the base for the underground resistance during the German occupation in WW2. Andy’s family was also involved and at some level a few were even captured and executed. So her perspective was very real and very vivid as compared to anything I might have heard or read before. About how after her grand mom’s death, they found a cupboard stacked full of sugar. She knew that in war Sugar will be heavily rationed, the spectre of the cold war always loomed. In the movie at the end, thanks to the brutal German play and the one sided referring, the crowd goes behind the POW team and they start singing. Thanks to Andy after all these years I understood the significance of the act. Andy started singing along with them. They started singing the French national Anthem.

Then Andy explained the anthem (La Marseillaise) to us. And wow what a rousing violent anthem it is. Here is one part:

Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields

No wonder you can sing it at a football pitch and expect the team to kill and maim. In contrast the Indian anthem plays on as an ode to peace brotherhood and harmony. Not that I have anything against it but it’s not what I want to play and listen and imbibe before a sports event. You would need a different song.

And immediately I was in charge of doing an anthem for the Puneri Paltan kabaddi team. My brief to the lyrists and composer was simple – the French national anthem. I want the people to feel the passion, the beat the lyrics must inspire to kill , to attack and to maim… no brother hood here.

An excerpt:

Kasske pakkad,
jamm ke jhappat,
Todun, modun, gheyun taak!

The song came out amazing and then I spoke to Andy about it and told her how she inspired me to do this song!

Once the video comes out, I will put it up.

But its fun to have learnt so much and already begun to apply it everywhere… that’s the fun of cultures crossing and meeting. And our elders, idiots that they are still insist on opposing cross cultural love marriages…

…

Full French anthem and the Puneri Paltan anthem as follows.

La Marseillaise

Let's go children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny's
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

Refrain

Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings,
What do they want?
For whom these vile shackles,
These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Frenchmen, for us, oh! what an insult!
What emotions that must excite!
It is us that they dare to consider
Returning to ancient slavery!

What! These foreign troops
Would make laws in our home!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would bring down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brows would bend beneath the yoke!
Vile despots would become
The masters of our fate!

Tremble, tyrants! and you, traitors,
The disgrace of all groups,
Tremble! Your parricidal plans
Will finally pay the price! (repeat)
Everyone is a soldier to fight you,
If they fall, our young heros,
France will make more,
Ready to battle you!

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare these sad victims,
Regretfully arming against us. (repeat)
But not these bloodthirsty despots,
But not these accomplices of Bouillé,
All of these animals who, without pity,
Tear their mother's breast to pieces!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sacred love of France,
Lead, support our avenging arms!
Liberty, beloved Liberty,
Fight with your defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, let victory
Hasten to your manly tones!
May your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

Refrain

We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their casket,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!

Refrain

--

Puneri Paltan theme song

Eh kass ke pakkad,
jamm ke jhappat,
todun, phodun, gheyun taak!

Kabbadi kabbadi Kabbadi kabbadi (2)

Kab kab kab Kabbadi kabbadi
Kab kab kab Kabbadi kabbadi
Kab kab kab Kabbadi kabbadi

Eh Puneri Paltan aaliiiii (tutaari)

Arre chodenge na…
arre modenge ha…

Hey chodenge na…
arre modenge ha..
inn lakeeron se aagein hai apna jahaan (2)

Rokein humein,
aisa kissmein hai dum,
na bacchega koi,
mitti ki kassam…

Chyaa maaila gheyun tak!
eh sodu nakko!
ek phodun tak!

(Chorus)
Kasske pakkad,
jamm ke jhappat,
Todun, modun, gheyun taak! (3)

Aasma kar dekhle,
kiss mein kitna zor hain,
Chingaariyaan nahi,
hum bhaddakti aag hai!

Ragon mein daudti, (hey)
zidd jeet ki, (hey)
bas khel hi nahi
yeh mahayudh hai (2)

Chyaa maaila gheyun tak!
Kasske pakkad,
jamm ke jhappat,
Todun, modun, gheyun taak! (3)

Puneri Puneri Puneri Puneri (2)
eh majhi Puneri Paltan aali aali re (4)

Todun, modun, gheyun taak!

its fun to have a little bit of issue in your life

A couple of weeks back when I entered the building, the lights had gone out. But the generator was working and hence the lifts were working. I got in and I saw that a foreigner was also in the life with me. On my floor, of the four flats, two were self-occupied and the other two were on rent. Jasmine and I are hardly there at home most of the time to even socialize with too many people in building. But we had noticed that one of the flats had a foreigner staying. We greeted each other in the lift and she asked if the lights were out. I said ya, but I guess they will be back. She was wondering if this was a regular affair and if these cuts last long. I explained that these are rare and are normally resolved fast. We kept on talking and then on our floor, I spoke to Jasmine and Jasmine lent her a candle and a match box to keep handy. We then called her over for dinner and …. We were friends.

We have been hanging out whenever she and us are free. We have been exchanging notes, cultures and various points of information. I have been explaining our history and she has been explaining hers. We chat and exchange recipes. That’s what Jasmine and I believe in completely. The more you meet people from other cultures, you share information and you share values, you only get richer. You must have an endless curiosity and if you are lucky you get response from that end as well. Andy is perfect in that sense. She is patient and loves to answer and ask questions. We learnt so much about her life in France and London. Jispa gets exposed to so much more than only Indian culture. Yesterday thanks to her I relived my marriage, my college and a lot of my childhood. Thanks to that Jispa relived it as well. There is so much inside of us that sometimes is lost or left inside just for the want of the right question.

I have never understood why we opposed marriages and unions across caste and language lines. We always were believed that the same will lead to a dilution of our own values and beliefs that we hold so close to our heart. I just don’t understand that. Jasmine is a kutchi. That is as close to a gujju like as can be while being different. Still I love the fact that she is different. Her traditions and customs are different and I try to understand her traditional food and how it is different from ours. My sense is that since they come from a harsher climate than mine they tend be different in a sparse sense as compared to the gujju food.

Of course while you are looking at the food, it is important to make the distinction between food that is traditional and food that is thanks to living in the city. One thing I have always maintained is that we are losing texture in the food we eat. Everything is down to the lowest possibly squichy food. We make everything soft and easy to swallow. Possibly a  fast urban lifestyle does not give us enough time to chew, possibly because when we are eating e are generally talking to other people and that gives us limited time to chew or possibly we just gotten lazy. But food is losing all granularity and texture. Look at the most popular foods we have – idli, dosa, pasta, margehita pizza, pav bhaji, burger, panner and roomali roti. Nothing is worth chewing it must be soft and smashed. Yesterday Andy made us dinner. She was wondering what to give us as I have a unique constraint – I am vegan. The vegetarian is the easy bit but not having cheese or butter is the crazy bit. I have been doing a fair amount of thinking on this. Lactose intolerant is a human trait and so how is it that we survived with this gene if we ate so much lactose. My theory is that lactose in our diets came about only recently. If you look at the recipes that grand mom made; the regular everyday recipes, not the special day recipes; they would largely be lactose free. So when Andy was thinking I told her to think of stuff that her grand mom made for her on an everyday basis. She did realize that cheese, which is an integral part of French cuisine today was not so much in her grandmom’s cuisine. And she made the most basic of deserts for us. The desert was la tarte aux pommes. – apple tart. No need of cheese, milk or butter. That was the boring everyday tart that they grew up on.

She made us some spaghetti with pesto sauce. Her sauce was crunchy, which was a far cry from the creamy one we eat at the restaurants in Mumbai. And then I asked her about the spaghetti – it was less soft than the ones we had. We would simply boil it till they are soft like a jelly. She says she learnt it form her mom and Italian friends. In fact it would be harder. There – the fast food nation had adopted and way to add cheese/ butter and make the food soft.

This lactose intolerance is a boon in some ways. I now look at food in a way I have never ever seen it. I have to watch everything I eat and that has led me to new thinking. I was never that interested in food or its origins or its history. Now I am trying to consume (no pun intended) as much as I can about it. Food interesting tells us as much about human behavior as anything else.

Just some excerpts from stuff I saw online – don’t believe anything completely but – here is something I found that kind of works with my claim that dairy is a modern day intervention that is not necessarily good for you.

“When it comes to dairy and the Paleo diet, some debates pop-up and dairy definitely is in a grey zone.In the strict Paleo sense, dairy of any form was not consumed in the paleolithic era, other than human milk in infancy of course. It just wasn’t very practical to milk wild game. The mere fact that something wasn’t  consumed during the paleolithic era doesn’t make it bad, but experience as shown us that it’s unfortunatly often the case. Dairy is no exception.”

http://paleoleap.com/place-of-dairy-on-paleo-diet/

but also do bear in mind –

The Paleolithic diet is a modern nutritional plan based on the presumed diet of Paleolithic humans. It is based on several controversial premises, the most important of which are: first, that human genetics have scarcely changed since the dawn of agriculture, which marked the end of the Paleolithic era, around 15,000 years ago; second, that modern humans are adapted to the diet or diets of the Paleolithic period; and third, that it is possible for modern science to discern what such diets consisted of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet

and I have maintained that we now have more of buffalo and cow milk but I do remember stories of Goat milk being had by families. That’s why even vegetarians had goats in their houses. Read this –

There are other alternatives: take goat's milk, for example. Patients with diarrhea, asthma, bloating and irritability may be suffering from the most common food allergy: cow's milk. Goat's milk is a natural alternative to cow milk and can comfortably be consumed by many patients who suffer from cow milk allergies or sensitivity.

Although goat milk, like cow's milk and human milk, contains lactose, many people with lactose intolerance can drink goat milk. Why? It has been hypothesized that the reason lies in goat milk's superior digestibility. Goat milk is more completely and easily absorbed than cow's milk, leaving less undigested residue behind in the colon to quite literally ferment and cause the uncomfortable symptoms of lactose intolerance.

It may also be that the patient is not lactose intolerant at all, but instead is one of the 1-in-10 people who are allergic to the major protein of cow's milk ... alpha S1 casein protein. The symptoms are almost identical to those of lactose intolerance. Both goat milk and human milk lack this offending protein.

The digestibility of goat milk can be attributed to its casein curd, which is both softer and smaller than that produced by bovine milk. The smaller and softer the curd, the more easily accepted by the human digestive system.

http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=38646

Of course – there is no absolute truth in anything. There are only theories and counter theories. But it’s nice to know a little more about something I previously never did bother too much about. Fun its is. So yes – problems in life are also fun. It’s what you make out of it :)

And yes – some more fun on cheese… this is from the book – Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.  The following is an extract from a book summary I read online.

Our story begins in the 1930’s when the United States government first began subsidizing the country’s dairy industry (loc. 3049). This it did because the government felt that the dairy industry was “vital to the nation’s health” (loc. 3049). The specifics of this subsidization program were that the government would set price supports on dairy products, and also buy up any excess dairy products that the producers were unable to sell on the market (loc. 3051). As Moss explains, “the dairies didn’t have to bother with the normal commercial concerns in selling food. They didn’t have to mess… with any of the marketing tactics deployed by food manufacturers to boost consumption. The government simply bought as much as the dairies could make” (loc. 3053).

Now, in the 1950’s, milk was beginning to be seen as a fatty product (loc. 3032). And with this realization, milk sales began to suffer (loc. 3036). What’s more, those who did continue to buy milk were increasingly switching to the low fat varieties (2%, 1%, and even skim) (loc. 3033). The stripping of milk-fat from whole milk was leaving the milk producers with a whole lot of excess milkfat. This wasn’t such a big problem for the milk producers, though, because they were able to use the excess milkfat to make cheese, which was also protected under the government subsidy (loc. 3053-59).

This was a problem for the government, though, because they suddenly found themselves buying up more cheese than they knew what to do with. As Moss explains, “these government purchases hummed along rather quietly until 1981… By that point, there were so many operators sending so much excess milk and milkfat to cheese makers that the government was buying more cheese than it could ever give away. This cheese, along with surplus butter and dried milk, accumulated into a stack that weighed 1.9 billion pounds, and it cost taxpayers $4 billion a year… The storage fees alone were running upwards of $1 million a day. It grew so large, in fact, that the government began secreting it away in caverns and a vast, abandoned limestone mine near Kansas City” (loc. 3064).

The End of the Dairy Subsidies, and the Beginning of the Dairy Marketing Campaign

The mountain of milkfat continued to grow until the early 1980’s, which is when Ronald Regan came to power. Regan, of course, was not such a fan of government subsidies, and so the program was axed (loc. 3077). Nevertheless, the Regan administration was concerned about how this move would affect the dairy producers. So, in lieu of continuing subsidies, the government set up a program to help sell all the excess cheese. Specifically, the government required all dairy producers to chip in a certain amount to a new fund that would be used to market and advertise cheese to Americans (loc. 3086). As Moss explains, “under [the] plan, the government allowed a special assessment to be levied on every milk producer in the country, with the money to be spent on marketing schemes that were aimed at making milk and cheese more alluring” (loc. 3085).

And guess what? It worked! Not only did Americans start buying more cheese, they also warmed to products that featured cheese among their ingredients (loc. 3139-66). And as they did, their consumption of cheese went up and up. As the author notes, “where Americans, on average, were eating 11 pounds of cheese a year in 1970, they were up to 18 pounds in 1980, 25 pounds by 1990, 30 pounds in 2000, and 33 pounds by 2007, when the rates dipped in the recession before resuming their surge” (loc. 3186).