Locomotoring

Shukto is a non-alcoholic aperitif made with a medley of seasonal vegetables that is eaten as the first course. The list of ingredients would do Tim Spector proud. Traditional meal starters in Bengali households in a bitter but fortunately, not a shot of campari! The bitter ingredient in shukto might have been bitter leaves such as neem or bitter gourd leaves in the past, but modern cuisine uses the bitter gourd. The complexity of cooking a mixed vegetable dish comes from the different cooking times of the individual vegetable. In a prior version of the dish that I had learned to cook from mom, I didn’t parboil the vegetables. But this time, I chose to do so. It takes the worry out of cooking them to perfection and Bengalis are a bit pernickety when it comes to cooking the ingredients perfectly.

For 2-3 servings, you are looking at approximately 4-6 cups of vegetables in appropriate balance, 2-3 Tbs mustard oil, 1-2 bay leaf, 2-3 red chilis, 1/2 tsp of mustard seeds, 1/2 tsp of radhuni (wild celery), 1/4-1/3 cup milk. Sometimes, turmeric is not used in order to preserve the milky white color. But turmeric is good for you and the color of gold is equally appealing.

The place is Ushuaia, the locals like to claim it is fin del mundo (end of the world). It is a little town in southernmost tip of Argentina where we stayed a night at Arakur resort before embarking on the epic journey to the real end of the world, the Antarctica. It is wondrous how Negrito, the stubborn horse. fits into my tale.

In a nutshell, it was the year of saying yes. And having never ridden a horse before, we said yes. I said yes to Negrito and the better half said yes to Cerrito (darkness). In hind sight, we should have said no. But when you are staring at the end of the world – the placard as well as the prospect – it is easy to feel reckless. So what if helmets were nowhere to be found at Arakur’s horse riding ranch. And so what if I didn’t understand the tour guide’s instructions and they didn’t understand me.

It turned out that Negrito was a stubborn one. Frankly, I wouldn’t have known a stubborn horse from an agreeable one if it weren’t for Cerrito. Cerrito appeared happy-go-lucky following tour guide’s instructions. Negrito on the other hand, was singularly focused on finding grass to munch on. Perhaps it was the difference in their ages. Negrito was a much younger stallion and as far as I could gather, it hadn’t been fed or it had a healthier appetite. It kept going off course in search of greener pastures. And it didn’t pay much heed to the tour guide’s tsk-tsks. I could barely rein him in. And every time I did, he let me know he wasn’t happy one bit. It would neigh or huff with displeasure. When the tour ended, he decided to drive me through a thorn bush just to let me know that while I was temporarily riding him, he was the boss at all times. Thankfully, it was cold and I was bundled up, and the thorn bush didn’t leave a permanent damage, just a temporary dent our new found enthusiasm for saying yes.

Here are some of the beautiful views of the area surrounding Arakur.

This is the last chapter of a story, a duet, that started more than half a century ago. The first chapter started with introduction of a healer into a young woman’s life. In the intervening chapters, the woman becomes his wife, and subsequently, the mother of their children. I, the observer, often see Goddess Durga in women like her. There is but one difference, Durga was born a warrior, her singular purpose was to slay evils with her many hands. During the last fifty years, this woman has been using her hands to multi-task – an educator, a planner, a book keeper, a cleaner, a fixer, a gardener, a cook, a caregiver, a poetess, a singer, a playwright.

In the final chapter, she has devoted all her hands to one singular purpose, keeping the healer nourished while he undertakes his sannyasam. The healer has fallen in a deep slumber while he undertakes this sannyasam. This story will end when he completes his sannyasam. What follows is a glimpse into the everyday, the Goddess creating nourishing elixir so the healer can successfully conclude this duet.

The other day, I noticed what to me seemed like an odd behavior – a snail had climbed up on a blade of grass. This was Bair Island and an unusually warm May evening here in SF Bay. Then I noticed more of them. The likeliest scenario is the liver fluke or as an eye catchy headline says “Brain-altering parasite turns ants into zombies at dawn and dusk (link)”. I am choosing to think that they are the teenage snails who are out for a thrill, swaying crazily as the grass blades sway hither and thither with the Bay breeze. We know that the Orcas ramming boats are bored teenagers too!

A friend recently said, one should go mushroom hunting with older experts. Older the better because they are living proof of their expertise. Our guide, a friend, is not old, and I sometimes like to think of her as a benevolent sorceress running an herbal apothecary. She sees mushrooms as tasty healers of human body. And, who will deny that forest bathing heals the soul. When foraging, you rarely walk more than a mile an hour with greatest mileage covered in between your patches. Your eyes constantly scan the forest floor. You notice and you see many a banana slugs. You fill your lungs with forest aromas. And if you are lucky, you come back home with mushrooms. Or should I say, you bring the forest to your home. You have to be OK with dirt, with bugs and the aroma of forest floor filling up your kitchen. And when the mushroom is matsutake, it is like bringing pine trees to your home.

This is our second year of regular hiking. The winter months are a good time to watch the Pacific flyway migratory birds. They are either catching the sun or digging into mud for bait or flying low on the water hoping to catch a fish. This year, we also went to the raptor fest organized by the POST. Here are some lovely photos from the first batch of photography.

“Kumropotash” from Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol. The photo is from a wonderful Durga Puja story Nabin Palli Durga Puja Committee in Hatibagan, North Kolkata by Maitreyee B Chowdhury (link)

This is my second year carving a pumpkin for the Halloween. This year, my brother wanted me to carve “Kumropotash“, a character from Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol, the collection of magically whimsical verses from 1922, here is a link to 2020 dual-language print on Amazon. While Ray is a common last name from the sub-continent, Sukumar Ray is the father of filmmaker Satyajit Ray. All Bengali children grow up to the tales of Kumropotash and the idea is simply put, perfect. There can’t be a better way of bringing my heritage into my current life.

It’s all perfectly clear now. Or maybe this clarity will only last the rest of the day. Fact is, my glass is full again. Fact is, I am just back from exploring the inner passage of south east Alaska. I continue to be filled with a sense of awe, I am feeling humbled, and privileged to be alive on this incredibly beautiful planet. Fact is, natural beauty heals me, fills my glass with clear cool sweet tasting water. Fact is, as time goes on, my glass will start to empty again, a little by little each day. Is there a way I can top up the glass, maybe enough to slow down the pace at which it empties? The clarity today makes me think that maybe I can.

Do you know Gordon, the audio ecologist who went searching for one square inch of silence in the Hoh forest? For the last several months, I have been meeting with him and a few other like minded individuals. All of us in our own ways, are searching for a one square inch of silence closer to where we live, in vertical and horizontal human sprawls. At the last meeting, which had happened before the Alaska trip, one of our team members, Tim, suggested that we take a moment of silence and visualize our quiet place. The meeting had happened at the end of a long day, I was tired from the general chaos of life, and I was hangry. But I knew that a minute wasn’t too much of an ask, and so, I decided to give it my best, and conjured up my quiet place. I remember noticing the transformation then. After that minute, I had felt a lot less tired, a little healed.

Between 1990 and 2013, the South Sawyer glacier has retreated at 120m/year, and between 2013 and 2022, the retreat rate has been 50m/year. As the glacier calves, it creates numerous bergy bits and icebergs that the harbor seals seem to love. I watched the James Balog documentary, Chasing Ice, right before our zodiac trip and I didn’t want this glacier to calve anymore.

… is that of an osprey.

Mosquito Cove trail is a charming mile long trail that goes to the cove and back. It is one of those trails that makes you want to be a child again. From the parking lot, the trail goes down to the cove and comes back up again, through the hemlocks, spruce and cedars and crosses from Tongass forest to Alaska State forest. I wasn’t sure if they named it Mosquito Cove because the cove was tiny. Later I found out that back in the days when Russians were running charcoal operations, there would be temporary swarms of mosquitoes here.

After the stairs on Herring Cove trail, my knees loved this flat trail. Parts of the trail where it went over bogs and marshes, the trail was a low wooden boardwalk, parts covered by a thin layer of tar. Most of it seemed wheelchair accessible. This part of the Tongass forest is dominated by muskeg and coastal grass land. It was a clear and cool day.