Skip to main content

Shahi Paneer and some memories


Maggie took all the trouble to cook Shahi Paneer because I mentioned some time ago that I missed the dish which used to be a weekly delicacy at the school where we taught in Delhi. Since it was a residential school, the teachers also had their meals with the students. More than 400 people would be seated in the cavernous dining hall, called Mess, and served by waiters attired in clean white livery. The food was delicious most of the time and Shahi Paneer was arguably the queen on the menu.

As I relished chapattis with Shahi Paneer yesterday after a gap of a few years, I realised that it was not the culinary delicacy that I really missed but certain memories which they evoked. Sawan Pubic School in Delhi was the first place where I tasted Shahi Paneer and the dish would always remind me of that school, the institution where I enjoyed working more than anywhere else. The school was killed by a religious cult and the details are given in my latest book, Autumn Shadows.  

Certain memories refuse to die. I mentioned my book above because it carries quite many memories even from my nondescript adolescence.  There is more than one place in the book where certain movie songs appear like phantoms from a buried past. Let me quote one passage: “Whenever I heard this song again, rarely though it was, I have paused to listen.  Recently I downloaded it for listening to while driving.  It has merged into a few other love songs which I have gathered in a single folder.  I am trying to mellow the pain of that lost love by merging it with other loves or love songs.  But I have not understood why songs about lost loves bewitch me insanely.  I never loved a woman until I married at the age of 35, twenty years after the death of Vayalar Ramavarma.”

As Haruki Murakami said, “Memories warm you up from inside. But they also tear you apart.” I like the warmth part of memories. You can’t get the warmth alone, however; the tearing up is a necessary accompaniment. Time makes you immune to the pains of the tearing up, however.   


Comments

  1. Rakhi JayashankarMay 13, 2019 at 8:40 AM

    That's so true. Memories can affect you unexpectedly.
    Btw didn't know that your new boom is out

    ReplyDelete
  2. ekta khetanMay 13, 2019 at 1:49 PM

    Same happens with me.
    but its not paneer.

    www.hautekutir.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
30 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

William and the autumn of life

William and I were together only for one year, but our friendship has grown stronger year after year. The duration of that friendship is going to hit half a century. In the meanwhile both he and I changed many places. William was in Kerala when I was in Shillong. He was in Ireland when I was in Delhi. Now I am in Kerala where William is planning to migrate back. We were both novices of a religious congregation for one year at Kotagiri in Tamil Nadu. He was older than me by a few years and far more mature too. But we shared a cordial rapport which kept us in touch though we went in unexpected directions later. William’s conversations had the same pattern back then and now too. I’d call it Socratic. He questions a lot of things that you say with the intention of getting to the depth of the matter. The last conversation I had with him was when I decided to stop teaching. I mention this as an example of my conversations with William. “You are a good teacher. Why do you want to stop
15 comments
Read more

X the variable

X is the most versatile and hence a very precious entity in mathematics. Whenever there is an unknown quantity whose value has to be discovered, the mathematician begins with: Let the unknown quantity be x . This A2Z series presented a few personalities who played certain prominent roles in my life. They are not the only ones who touched my life, however. There are so many others, especially relatives, who left indelible marks on my psyche in many ways. I chose not to bring relatives into this series. Dealing with relatives is one of the most difficult jobs for me. I have failed in that task time and again. Miserably sometimes. When I think of relatives, O V Vijayan’s parable leaps to my mind. Father and little son are on a walk. “Be careful lest you fall,” father warns the boy. “What will happen if I fall?” The boy asks. The father’s answer is: “Relatives will laugh.” One of the harsh truths I have noticed as a teacher is that it is nearly impossible to teach your relatives – nephews
15 comments
Read more

Victor the angel

When Victor visited us in Delhi Victor and I were undergraduate classmates at St Albert’s College, Kochi. I was a student for priesthood then and Victor was just another of the many ordinary lay students. We were majoring in mathematics with physics and statistics as our optionals. Today Victor is a theologian with a doctorate in biblical studies and is a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the Vatican. And I have given up religion for all practical purposes. Victor and I travelled in opposing directions after our graduation. But we have remained friends notwithstanding our religious differences. Victor had very friendly relationships with some of the teachers in college and it became very helpful for me towards the end of my three-year study there when I had quit the pursuit of priesthood. The final exams approached and I needed a convenient accommodation near college. An inexpensive and quiet place was what I wanted during the period of the university exams. “What a
10 comments
Read more