OBOC - Belarus

I now understand why Vasil Bykov has the reputation that he has. I was fortunate to have stumbled upon "Sign of Misfortune" as part of my OBOC project. This book is going to stay with me for a long time.

A view of WWII told from the point of view of two pesants whose life was nothing to boast about before the German invasion, and one that only gets more miserable with every passing day, is one gripping narrative. Poverty is nothing new to Stepanida and Petroc, as they lived through Stalin's collectivization policies (the reality of which is exposed through flashbacks throughout the novel), but now they were witnessing a new kind of tyranny something that they are not able to comprehend with their "simple" peasant minds.

As the Nazis roll into town, take over their farm, they see their own countrymen acquiring brutal qualities as they become the new Polizei. How do human beings who have experienced the dignity of being humans at some point stand up to these "brutes". With no news about their son and daughter, they see their only possessions - a cow named Bobovka (and yes, I remember the name as Bykov makes you feel for the cow too!), a piglet and a dozen chickens - also succumbing to this incomprehensible tyranny.

Stepandia - the "activist" is a doer - she is not used to taking things lying down, and she keeps up her spirit until the end. Petroc on the other hand is just a simple, quite man who would rather step aside than pick any quarrels. In their life time they lived through a harsh world, first as laborers for Kulaks, then they saw the individual farmer rooted out through collectivization, then they lived in anticipation of a future when everything would be organized and they'd be in clover. In reality they only lived a life of shortages and anxieties. And then the war came along.

In one chapter Bykov says about Stepanida, "She had not read their (Germans) books and knew nothing of their high-level politics. She was used to judging great things through small, the world by her own village." That is exactly what Bykov does in the Sign of Misfortune - he describes the world under Stalin and Hitler through the eyes of these 2 peasants.

Is human good powerless in the face of evil? Wasn't man made to repay good for good? Whoever is in the right has no need of weapons. Are these just simple, saintly reflections of two peasants? It certainly got me thinking.

While there was so much "action" in the book, it also devotes significant number of pages to describing day-to-day routines of two unsophisticated farmers, and even those narrations were so gripping and moving.

I dont know how many people in the West have heard of Vasil Bykau but he certainly is considered a literary treasure in his native Belarus. As someone who has lived through war, his writings and his stance are so relevant in today's world and I am glad I got to read him through this effort.

OBOC - Azerbaijan

I spent a lot of time trying to find an author from Azerbaijan whose book I can get hold of here and had almost given up when I chanced upon Afaq Masud's short stories which are freely available on the web! I should concede that i've never been a huge fan of short stories, but Afaq Masud's 4 short stories completely took me by surprise.

I especially liked "Dormitory" which I believe was written in 1983 under Soviet occupation. Living in extremely close quarters with 150 other families, where even walls have ears, Mastaan and his family don't get a single private moment. When they indeed get their 10 days off to be all by themselves, all hell breaks loose. 15-16 years of suppressed emotions all burst forth in an uncontrollable manner revealing newer darker sides of Mastaan, his wife and their son. At the end of 10 days they can't wait to get back to the 400 people commune and find comfort in that environment. Is this an allegory for living under the Soviet regime?

In any case I found her stories very witty, very well written and offering a glimpse into the lives of Azerbaijainis especially the women. I wish I can get hold of her novels.

Off to the B's now! Oh wait, still have Argentina to finish, but have already started Belarus, and will get to Argentina in a bit.

OBOC - Austria

This was one of the most difficult reads for me. I picked Peter Handke as opposed to the obvious choice of Elfriede Jelinek, one of the few women Noble Prize winners, and i went with "The Goalie's anxiety....". So why did a 133 page book took me forever to finish?

A well-known goalie, who has lost his construction job, wanders around aimlessly,picks up a movie cashier and murders her for absolutely no reason at all, and all this happens in the first 20 odd pages.. How his life disintegrates from that point on fills the remaining 100+ pages.

Bloch who is the protagonist is not a man of words, so the author employs language to describe the most mundane everyday happenings. In some pages there were nothing but ramblings.

I didn't enjoy the book as much as I had hoped to. I think i made a couple of mistakes when reading the book - 1) i expected a story, maybe even a mystery 2) i was reading too much between the lines trying to figure out what the author could possibly mean. I should've viewed the book as an experimental piece of fiction based on existentialism.

Apparently the book was made into a movie in the early 70s. Now i am curious to see the movie.

Anyways, done with Austria but i dont think i got any insight into Austria or Austrians :( Trying to wrap up Argentina now.

OBOC - Armenia

Unfortunately the only thing I knew about Armenia is the controversy with Turkey regarding acknowledging the “Armenian Genocide” in 1915 during WW1. So while looking for a book from Armenia I realized that most of my searches centered around this phase in history. I ended up reading “Knock at the door” by Margaret Ajemian Ahnert which was the story of a daughter narrating her mom Ester’s story of survival and escape from the incidents of 1915.

While on one hand it is a story of the genocide as seen from the eyes of a teenaged Armenian girl whose life is completely torn apart, it is also the story of the bond between mother and daughter as Margaret copes with her 99 year old mom’s illness and her impending death.

The first few chapters when Ester narrates her life in Amasia give a good glimpse into the Armenian culture especially the food! Following that Ester narrates how her life takes a turn for the worse as Armenians are forced out of their cities and are systematically murdered. She loses most of her family, her home, her blissful life and her innocence in this process but she is miraculously saved from one catastrophe after the other, leading her to believe that God must have a purpose for her. She survives hunger, rape, brutality in marriage with simple faith and the constant refrain “This too shall pass” and escapes to America where she slowly learns to put these thoughts out of her mind. It is in America she meets her husband and raises a successful family. So it is essentially a story of a survivor triumphing against all odds.

All along one question is constantly raised – why is Turkey still denying these incidents ever happened? This I believe is the overwhelming feeling among Armenian diaspora in the US. I remember during the Presidential campaign both Obama and McCain had to answer questions regarding acknowledging the Armenian genocide. This is the case even with Margaret, who was born in the US and had visited Armenia just once in her life. More than Ester's story, Margaret's sense of insecurity despite living in the US intrigued me. She identifies so much with her mother's experiences and feelings and seemed to be very wary of engaging in any conversation with people from Turkey and that made me wonder how these 2 countries can sit down and start negotiating without bringing some closure for the victims of 1915.

The book was interesting and quite an easy read. I found the initial chapters describing Ester's childhood were not as well written as the other chapters. The narration seemed disjointed in those chapters.

Now that i've read this book, I am hoping I will have more context when i pick a book from Azerbaijan... I get through Argentina and Austria of course!

OBOC - Australia

Even before I started searching for books I knew it had to be about the outback and the native people of the country. Of late I’ve been reading quite a few Native American books and recently watched “Bury my heart at wounded knee”, so I was already primed to know more about the Aborigines of Australia. I also saw the movie "Rabbit proof fence" but couldn't find the book it was based on. So I am glad I made an exception when I picked up Harvey Arden’s “Dreamkeepers”. Arden is not an Australian author but his book was about Australia and I decided to read this one for OBOC.

This book was very different in its style and in its grace and more importantly in its respectful tone. The author decided to step away from the limelight and not interpret or summarize anything he learned from the Aborigines. Instead he lets them do the talking which i found to be very very refreshing. Every other book that deals with Native people anywhere always has a lens – be it anthropological, historical, mystical or spiritual.

This book is of, by, for the aborigines. Harvey Arden has been very respectful of local traditions and has let natives do all the talking and just acted as a scribe for whatever was permitted. As Daisy Utemorrah said to him “Just stop by and say hello to us, that's all we ask” – he did just that and let them drive the conversation and captured it as accurately as possible.

In his quest for dreamtime stories, he realizes that those are not his stories for him to take, publish and make money from. Just because you ask someone the time, it doesn't mean you have a right to their watch is the analogy that was used.

The book offered some amazing insights into the minds of the aborginal people and their culture, customs and aspirations ...how they've reconciled christianity with their Wandjina spirits, the white man's law to their own law , dreamtime to today's real time. I was also intrigued by how each tribe had its own dreamtime and how even today depiction of dreamtime in art is symbolic to not give away anything and how business was classified as "man's business" and "woman's business".

Arden also shared his book "wisdom keepers" about Native Americans with the Aborginals he met, and it was fascinating to see how they quickly identified themselves with Native Americans. When Arden couldn't resist his "touristy desire" to see the Aboriginal Jack Rogers all painted up, he is told that painting up is only for ceremony. That takes him back to the conversation he had with a Lakota leader when he asked him to wear his "war bonnet"

White man always gets everything wrong. He calls us savages, but he's the savage. See, he calls this headdress a war bonnet. Sure, we used it in war, but most of the time it was for ceremony. Every feather stands for a good deed, and I have thirty-six in mine. It's not about war; it's about who we are. When we sing songs he calls them war songs. But they're not war songs , they're prayers to god. We have drums, so White Man calls them war drums; but they're not for war, they're for talking to God. there's no such thing as a war drum. He sees how our warriors paint their faces, so he calls it war paint. But it's not for war, it's to make it so God can see our faces clearly if we have to die.

The narrative also gave a glimpse of stark realities facing the aborginals as they have been relegated to outbacks, living off pensions and succumbing to grog. At the same time the conversation with Reg Birch, the Aborginal commissioner was very uplifting as he outlined his vision for the nations of Aborginals. I especially liked his long term vision of having a separate seat in the UN for native people.

Being uprooted from the land of their ancestors in the name of development - this is an issue that indigenous people all over the world have faced and are still facing, and reading this book took me back often to the Adivasis of India and their struggle against the Sardar Sarovar Dam in India.

Many a time Arden was consumed with "gadia guilt" for taking away something which was not his from the aborginals, but as his guide Mike pointed out, "What you're doin' is important. You're seeing through all the crap to these people's dignity. That's well worth doin' to my mind."

This book is a great testimony to the lives and struggles of a community coming out of repression into a life of dignity

OBOC - Angola

For Angola I stumbled upon Jose Agualusa's "The Book of Chameleons" and it was a fascinating book. Set in the early 1990s in Angola, just after the end of a long-drawn civil war, it is the time in Angola when new wealth was being discovered. So there is the contention between new money and the elite-portugese speaking old money. The leveller being, now everyone with money wants and can finally afford a glorious past.


That's where Felix Ventura comes in with his promise to "Guarantee your children a better past". He specializes in inventing to the minutest detail a glorious past for anyone in need of one. An albino who lives by himself, well almost... he has a gecko as his companion, he has the uncanny ability to spin a tale about the past that he doesnt have to get into forging documents to guarantee it.

The gecko is more than just a house pet, it is the reincarnation of Borges (for whom the author has huge admiration), and besides being the narrator of the incidents in the house he also constantly recalls his past lives as a human. He interacts with Felix through the common dreams they both share. Besides the dreams, they also share an aversion to light, and ironically the two people who change their lives forever are both photographers with a passion for light. Who are these two strangers? Are they connected? What part of their memories are real?

The book in the end is about memories both real and fictional. At one point the Gecko says that "Memory is a landscape watched from the window of a moving train". There is a great chapter where Felix recounts his childhood to the Gecko and that chapter is so poetic with vivid descriptions of the Angolan landscape complete with Locusts, Red Ants, White Ants, Butterflies and the first rain and a heaven full of chickens. I loved the writing in that chapter, and despite being well acquainted with Felix by then i still fell for it and needed the Gecko to remind me not to trust him :) " I envy him his childhood. Maybe it is not real. But I envy it all the same" says the Gecko. That was an interesting aspect of the book - discerning which parts are real and which are not.

I guess we all have selective memories and remember things the way we want them, maybe not really lying but definitely exaggerating, embellishing and downplaying as we see it fit. Felix is more professional than many of us.

Overall a great book, i think the translator must've done a fabulous job. The appendix has an interview with the author which helped give some perspective. I was unfamiliar with Broges until i read this interview. A quick read about him in Wikipedia helped me understand the perspective of the Gecko a bit.

There is an interesting piece of advice which the Gecko received from its mother in its human life... "You can find everything that exists in the world in books - sometimes in truer colors and without the real pain of everything that really does exist. Given a choice between life and books my son you must choose books". Made me wonder if i was trying to do just that with the OBOC project ? :)

OBOC - Sweden

Apologies, for not sticking to the A's. This one by Reidar Jonsson was on my reading list for a long time and I had to finish it. A Swedish friend recommended the book as one that has managed to capture the soul of Sweden. How can I turn down the book after such a recommendation! Also i am still waiting for Argentina and Armenia to arrive :)

I've seen the movie long before I read the book, but like with so many adaptations, while I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, the book tops it hands down. The big difference is the first person narration - the same reason I preferred "To Kill a Mockingbird" the book 10X times to the movie. While the movie wrapped up everything as a beautiful package with a bow, the book on the other hand left you hanging and therefore was more tragical.

From the sympathy he feels towards the dog in space, to his morbid metaphors ("Going home w/o glasses is like volunteering for San Quentin's gas chamber"), his musings on life ("you become what you are if you are where you are", "isn't it funny - the best thing i've got in life is a loan" and my favorite "People's fate are often determined by timetables") and his amusing encounters with the people of Smaland - eccentrics and individuals in their own right, the book makes your heart reach out to Ingemar. How he deals with the tragedy of his mother's death, being passed around from one person to the other and coping with being split up from his siblings and his pet dog Sickan all topped with a generous layer of guilt ("I had done it again. I had killed her a little again") is the crux of the book.

Although the story is very much set in a small town in Sweden and is replete with imageries and events from Sweden in the late '50s the story is in some sense universal. How do you feel when everyone around you wants to move on, but you are still not ready? Ingemar does the only two things he knows, pretending - which he is very good at, and running away - which he is not so good at.

As I said the book triumphs because of its first-person voice, Ingemar's voice tugs at your heart strings and many times I just wanted to shout out what he wanted to hear - "It is not your fault". How can you not feel for a 13 year old struggling to manage his life despite everything ?

A beautiful coming of age story, powerful in its brutal honesty. This one is going to stay with me for a long time!

OBOC - Albania

Albania – again a country that I didn’t know much about other than that it was part of the Communist Block at some point in history. Once again I picked my book by Googling and came upon Ismail Kadare’s “The General of the Dead Army”.



I don’t know if I am doing some kind of sub-conscious self-selecting here, but once again I stumbled upon a book that is very relevant for today. The story is set in the ‘60s when an Italian General is sent to Albania to recover the remains of the dead Italian army from WWII. He is accompanied by a Priest and he also chances upon a German General tasked to do the same.

The novel is written completely from the point of view of the General. He makes no attempt to understand the local culture, and mostly dismisses off Albanians as barbaric, crude, violence seeking group and tries to keep his distance from them until the very end of his bleak task. Kadare makes no attempt to correct any prejudices through any of the characters and goes along portraying the bleak nature of the task, the weather and the environment.

The glory of war when commanding a real army Vs the morbidity of “commanding a dead army” is beautifully portrayed. Even after 20 years the pain of losing a dear one in a foreign land remains deep within families who view the General as the last hope. In the process of digging up the remains he opens up unhealed wounds on either side and this leads him to question the value and meaning of his thankless task.

Spoiler alert:
I especially liked the last wedding scene in the book where the General goes uninvited to a wedding feast, where he is not the least welcome, but is tolerated by the Albanians, and when he overstays his welcome he leaves in disgrace – I thought it was a clever allegory to how the Italian forces under Mussolini would’ve felt when they invaded Albania during the WW and by extension applies to similar war time invasions.

OBOC - Afghanistan and Algeria

So finally here is my attempt at becoming more organized with my OBOC project - starting with the A's; Afghanistan and Algeria



For Afghanistan, I used "Kite runner" as the book. A lot has been said and written about the book, so there is nothing left for me to say except that I loved it. Also I am a little bit more aware of Afghanistan thanks to close friends from there and the current geo-political situation.


Algeria on the other hand, I had no clue about. I am ashamed to admit that i would've hard a teeny bit of difficulty locating it in Africa. So I relied on Google to find me an author from Algeria. I chanced upon Assia Djebar's "Children of the New World". I had high expectations for the book - view of the Algerian war from the women of Algiers, had all the right ingredients - colonial history, a feminist going behind the veil literally and figuratively. Unfortunately except for a few interesting insights and a few well etched characters, this book didn't hold my attention. I forced myself to finish it. Having said that after completing the book I realized that the book is very relevant for today's time. The impact of war on ordinary people's lives, the brutal nature of torture as a MO for war, different kinds of violence - from the highly overt forms to the hidden emotional violence that women face.

I hope I will come back to Assia's other books at a later date, but right now off I go to Albania!

OBOC - South Africa

South Africa offered many choices w.r.t books, but i wanted something that described the post-apartheid situation. Somehow the biggest story that remained in my mind of post-apartheid South Africa was the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" headed by Archibishop Tutu. I had also heard of the very high incidence of rape (even the reported cases) in South Africa. So I picked "Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee which I believe is a Booker Prize winner.




The book left me quite disturbed. The landscape painted was very bleak and full of misery. Hasn't the changed political situation done anything good to alleviate misery? That was the question that the book left me with.

The book deals with one painful subject after the other, sexual harrasment, rape, anarchy, racial tension, animal rights, land rights. Coetzee's brilliance is how he weaved all this together and still made you turn the page without feeling like you couldn't go along any further. There is the line in the book ""One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be as hard as hard can be grows harder yet". I almost felt like I had to keep going to see how much harder it is going to get!


The book almost seemed to say that the only way to survive and move forward was to give up everything, submit to the environment around you however brutal and demeaning it can be and when you have nothing more to lose you redeem some of your dignity by simply existing and putting your next step forward.

I guess that is how the entire nation must have felt during the apartheid years and at the end of apartheid maybe that is how many feel as they are attempting to rebuild their lives.

An awesome but very disturbing book!

OBOC - Nigeria

Before I embarked on this project, the only things I knew of Nigeria were from Fela Kuti’s music. So all I knew was civil war, corrupt Governments and Oil and to me that looked like almost all of Africa (the danger of a single story). I had heard of Chinua Achebe but never got around to reading any of his work. So as part of OBOC I picked up “Arrow of God” and I absolutely loved it!! It is very different from the Nigeria I hear in Fela Kuti’s music as it dates to the early 1900s when the Colonizers were just starting their colonization process in Nigeria. So it gave me a whole new insight into the Igbo people and their culture.
As I read this book I could not help but imagine many of the rituals that were described, a testimony to Achebe’s narrative skills. The importance of yam, the kola nut, the various masks, musical instruments, their market festivals were all finely detailed. I was also pleasantly surprised to see a very balanced book on colonial conflicts - tribal life was not idealized, colonizers were not demonized - so in that sense i found the book very refreshing.
The book appealed to me on many levels and raised more questions that it would’ve been wonderful to be part of a book club or a class and read the book together and have a discussion around it. Is it a story of conflict? If so conflict between whom? God (Ulu) and Priest (Ezeulu), one God over the other (Christianity Vs Ulu), Colonizers Vs Colonized, Father Vs Son, Power groups within the tribe, Men Vs Women, Tradition Vs Change? Was Ezeulu just being an arrow of God or was it his ego/anger at his own people that led to the downfall of their tribal group? Also, the status of women in the tribe was much more subservient of women than I would’ve imagined of tribal cultures. Is this an impact of colonization, other changes? Something that happened in the 19th century?
As I said a thoroughly fascinating read, and if I didn’t have another 190 odd countries to go through I would’ve stayed with Nigeria and Achebe for a long time!

After the long silence...."One Book One Country"

Let's face it, i really don't have much to say, not even rambles! Writing is hard work, and writing about nothing at all is much harder. So I took a break from writing and realized that it is much more difficult to get back on the horse. And then i stumbled upon this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

An excellent talk by Chimamanda Adichie, which resonated with me so much. Some of her experiences growing up on British books just brought back so many memories to me. For e.g my fascination with scones! That was one of the first things i tried when i set foot in the UK... why? i've read so much about having scones with Tea!

But of late i've been grappling with what kind of books i should expose my pre-schooler too. I've been looking for a variety that exposes her to a number of cultures. Nope i didnt want a book which just had a few people of color thrown in as your "token diversity" representations. I wanted books that expose her to different cultures, including her own.

So I made a list of children's books that I thought will be a good sample and here is my list

1) Lights for Gita
2) I love my hair
3) Jalapeno Bagels
4) Old Turtle
5) Seventh Spot
6) Dona Flor
7) The first strawberries
8) Peach Heaven

Lights for Gita especially proved to be handy as we celebrated our first Diwali with her.

This led me to a project for myself which I am calling "One Book One Country". My aim is to read one book from an author from each country of the world, something that will give me some perspective about the country outside of what I see in the news (if they indeed make the news) or in wikipedia. Of course since i can read only English I have to make do with translations in some cases.

And this gives me a great way to keep blogging and keep writing about my experiences as i get exposed to maybe one other story about each country and its culture.

First I started doing this in an adhoc manner - done with South Africa, Nigeria, and right now reading Sweden. Since then have made it more orderly - will start from the A's and work my way down to the Z's. So its been a month of Afghanistan, Albania and Algeria for me.

So from now on the blog will focus on my reviews and rambles on the books i read from each country.

That's a wrap!

Where are the women's magazines/issues?

I don’t believe there is any such thing as a true women’s magazine. I know I know, there are at least a 100 magazines out there targeting women, but that doesn’t make them a women’s magazine. Let me explain. I did a google search to find the top 10 women’s magazines and here is the list that turned up
(http://www.allyoucanread.com/top-10-womens-magazines/)


1)Allure: Cover indicates how I can get a sexy summer look, a humidity-proof hair and a better night’s sleep!
2)Better Homes and Garden: 7 recipes with strawberries (BTW if I did eat what is show on this cover, there is no way I’m going to look like the girl on the cover of Allure!)
3)Cooking light: "Cook better, look better and feel better”
4)Cosmo (of course): A cover from cosmo should mention “Sex” at least once
5)Elle: Fashion, beauty and entertainment
6)Everyday: guide to "smart entertaining"
7)O: do I need to say more?
8)Prevention: Lose weight because it is healthy
9)Vogue: Fashion, hair & skin care
10)W:Fashion magazine for the “deserving women”

As per this definition women are a species that loves to shop, dress, stay abreast of fashion trends, obsess about hair, nails and weight, cook, entertain, follow celebrities, and aim to be size zeros with a fantabulous sex life. Now doesn't that sound like a script straight out of the sitcom “Friends”? (Since when did out-of work waitresses dress like that and have it all!)Where are the "real women's" issues here? and when i say "real", I'm not using it as an euphemism for women who weigh more than a 100 pounds!

I now realize that I am not asking the right question. What are women's issues anyway? Most traditional "women's issues" have been hijacked by men. Case in point - the abortion debate. When Dr.Tiller was murdered recently, most of the debates in the media were between rich, white men (with the obligatory rich, white woman in the panel) telling us women how we should feel/react to the abortion debate


So it is high time that women claimed more issues if we are losing our "traditional" issues to men. Health care reform, domestic workers rights, financial markets regulation, industrialization of food, climate change, immigration debate, growing digital divide, the north-south divide, wars - who said these are all not women's issues? The further you analyze these issues you realize women have the most to lose if these are mishandled ("manhandled")

If I am looking for coverage on these issues by women's magazines - i dont think I am going to find any. The best sources for these appear to be Democracy Now, Grist TV, or even the BBC Woman's Hour (by far the best exclusive women's issues show on the radio that i've come across - despite some of their pieces about getting fabulous arms like Mrs.Obama. A great model for some of the above mentioned popular magazines to follow - combine tips for frizz free hair with a primer on single payor healthcare)

I hope traditional women's magazines start covering these issues instead of giving us a tour of Michael Jackson's home - despite all the market research they have, women do care about other things besides nails, hair and celebrity cribs! What do you think?

That's a wrap!

The case of the Blue Potato

We were at the Farmer's Market the other day, and we stumbled upon these. Yes these are locally grown Blue potatoes, and yes my daughter who is fascinated with Blue and Purple colors immediately decided she wanted those.


I didn't know these were for real. I have a phobia when it comes to food especially ones that occur in colors that i've never seen before! (I learned that this is actually a good instinct to possess as humans - neophobia, w.r.t food i mean) . The only time I have seen those were in packaged foods like Terra Blue chips and me being the suspicious me, felt those must be some GM chips or ones that used artificial colors. (In case I get sued for libel - let me clarify that they do say "From Natural Blue potatoes")


So I was happy to see these real Blue potatoes. Once you peel the skin the inside is almost purple and the taste was awesome!

This made me wonder about the varieties of potatoes. How many varieties do you think there are in total?

Answer ......


The most recent World Catalog of Potato Varieties documents 4500 varieties of cultivated and 1900 wild potato varieties and species around the world. So how come you rarely see anything beyond the Russett, Yukon Gold, White and Rose colored ones at the store or even at the Farmer's Market?

Answer ......


Monoculture! 70% of the cultivated land for potatoes is devoted to just 4 varieties, and the Blue one is not even one of the "endangered" ones.

So if you thought we had too many choices at the supermarket, think again!

A "farmer groupie"?

Upon declaring myself a "born-again foodie", I was asked to join the church of CSA by a friend, and am i glad i did it! So in keeping with the zeal of a convert I wanted to write about CSA so that folks who chance to (forced to) read my blog may also undergo their initiation rites!

So a CSA is Community Supported Agriculture. Google the term and you will find everything you wanted to know. In short, it is an easy way to buy and consume local, seasonal, fresh produce directly from the farmer. The farmer offers "shares" to the public in the form of a box of produce weekly and consumers purchase "shares" (subscriptions) to receive this box during the farming season.

I've been part of a local organic CSA farm for two quarters now, and so far the experience has been fabulous! (Disclaimer: I don't get all my produce from the CSA only. I do supplement it with produce from the farmers market - again local). Here are some reasons to consider joining one.

1) If you like surprise packages, you will love the CSA box! Every week it is a mystery box as you don't know what you are getting. So opening the box and saying "ta,da" is a weekly ritual at our home.

2)Say Bye Bye to Club cards (do remember you are paying a privacy tax, every time you use one of those)and post-it notes, shopping lists and long lines at checkout counters! And hey, since when did Supermarkets convince us, that we doing all the work (including checking out) epitomizes customer service!!!

3)If you didn't do well in Botany in high school, don't despair, this is the less-humiliating way to make up for it. Every week there is at least one item in the box which makes me look up wikipedia (Thank Heavens, my CSA posts the list of box contents every week on the web, so i at least know what to look up!)

4)Creative juices flow...they better... once you see 4 heads of lettuce in the box you need to innovate ...how does lettuce sambar and chutney sound? Let me tell you, it tastes better than it sounds! And who ever thought that chard and bread and garlic can make a fun snack!

5)How many times have you heard "all that glitters is not gold"? The CSA makes you realize that "all that shines (on a veggie) is just polish". You really want to eat that?

6)Your taste-buds will thank you (not to mention your kids!)! Until I joined the CSA, buying fruit from the super market was more or less a lottery for me! I have seen folks examining the cantaloupe from all sides, picking some, discarding the other and i've mimicked those actions without knowing what to look for! Now, I am saved from these pretensions. Sweet juicy fruits just appear in my box and I bite into those without thinking twice

7) Then there all the other reasons that do good to your self-esteem and get you an entry into the granola-eating green clique(except this is now morphing into a greens-eating green group) - local produce lowers carbon footprint, organic - good for you and the environment, fair trade with farmers, and the list goes on...

8)There is the tour of the farm, which we did for the first time this weekend. Wholesome family fun, getting to know our farmer, an insight into his work, family, the land and what it takes to grow our food .... it doesn't get better than that!

9) Makes you want to take up farming...nope that's a stretch... let's call it horticulture...throw seeds into a pot of soil, water it and watch it grow outside your kitchen window, and the sense of accomplishment when you reap your first "harvest"

10)I realized that my 4year old might turn into a "farmer groupie". She thinks she is a farmer because of point #9 and when she met our Farmer Joe seemed to believe they were two of a kind and wouldn't leave his side! But at this point I think we are equipped to handle a "farmer groupie", much more than a "Dora or ScoobyDoo groupie". At least my farmer doesn't sell accessories and other merchandise, just wholesome, fresh food!

That's a wrap!

Food on my mind

Food is on my mind these days (Nope not because I am trying to get back into my jeans from 2004 …although that would be a bonus). Next to spending time with my family, culinary activities occupy most of time at home. These days even the books I’ve been reading all tie in to food somehow. Blame it on self selection, but even as I am listening to Joe Campbell’s lectures on mythology, I find myself fascinated by the plant mythologies and the rituals associated with food! Looking back on growing up in India, all that I remember of the festivals is the food my mom prepared which were specific to the celebration... back to JC’s point about how the mere act of eating is actually participating in a timeless ritual!

Of course all of this new found appreciation for food began with trying to feed wholesome, nutritious yet tasty meals to our pre-schooler. I am one of those dying breeds that still home cooks 2 fresh meals everyday. I believe that the freezer in a refrigerator is just a waste of space! Open the freezer at our home and what you will see is an eclectic mix of things – Indian spices and mixes, maybe a few “emergency” foods (all organic of course), a couple of pressure cooker gaskets (don’t ask why!) and the odd science experiment cups from my daughter which holds frozen water, milk, soup….!!!

To some members of my extended family eating is nothing more than a metabolic activity that one has to do to sustain life and to others it is a sensory pleasure. (You could almost tell to which category one belonged just by the size of ther waistline!) I am now convinced it is far greater than that. The what, when, why and hows of food has cultural, political, ethical, moral and spiritual implications which are all interconnected and these days I am trying to unravel a few of these complicated relationships with a few experiments of my own.

Many thanks to all my friends who introduced me to the joys of shopping at a farmer’s market, participating in a CSA and trying my hand at container gardening. I hope to write about these “experiments” and their progress here.

Until next time, enjoy your meal and "Blueberries" by Robert Frost

That's a wrap! (pun intended :))

Blueberries

"You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb
Real sky-blue, and heavy and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come
And all ripe together not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"