Friends, Food and Fun

Now, interesting things keep happening, almost on a daily basis. Yesterday, we invited a bunch of friends and people we wanted to get to know better to our home for a gardening cum bread-soup-salad dinner. Anita, who lives nearby, arrived first with 2 bagfuls of compost from her home - it was in a half-decomposed state and seemed to have enough heat in it to show that the composting process was very much on. We thought this would be able to act as a starter for composting on our beds. So we immediately spread it on two of our newly made beds which were to still receive any soil. Kalpana, another person whom we had met a while back, brought a lot of enthusiasm. It was she who suggested that we turn the new beds, in order to mix the dry and wet items well, in order to prevent rotting and maggots (which were beginning to happen). There were 2 sacks of hard clay lying around too, which we had brought the previous week from a road building site near the river. Gurvindar and Ajit set about breaking the big lumps into powdery soil and this went into the beds too.

Meanwhile, the sun had set. But that did not lessen our enthusiasm as by then more people had arrived eager to contribute. Shammi brought a handful of sticks to build supports for the tomato plants. Ranjani and Sunayana were curious about why we had done some things in a certain way. Archana got into the activity, inspite of being dressed in the best of clothes. 4 of the new beds were turned nicely - on 2 of them the turning was done along with the paddy husks we had used as mulch, while on 2 others Shammi decided to turn the mulch into the rest of the garbage too. Here again are things we can now observe to see if this makes any difference.

However, there are so many factors involved in the growth of any plant, that unless performed under controlled conditions, it is very difficult to figure out what exactly has caused the difference between 2 beds or 2 plants. Anyways, we are just experimenting and having fun at this stage and not really trying to perfect a particular technique or document everything exactly.

By now it was getting dark and difficult to see much. So we quickly watered all the beds and then headed downstairs to prepare for dinner. In the house, again a flurry of activities began and composed themselves with different people taking charge of different things. Guru and Vanaja began folding the bread doughs (which had already risen once) for their second rising, while Kalpana and Ajit got involved with questions and exclamations. Shammi, initially wished to stay away from the food preparation, which was understandable, considering that is what he does all the time in the FTII mess as well as in our workshops. However, a little later he was seen with a couple of others around him enthusiastically cutting vegetables, suggesting garnishings, preparing the salads and in general interacting with people on, what else, but food (his favourite topic :-)). While chopping the celery and the raddish, he also suggested we plant a portion of the base and see if a plant grows from this. We now have 2 more items to observe and look forward to in our garden.

Ajit happily took on the task of chopping carrots for the soup, fuelled, of course, by fresh watermelon, iced herbal tea and some roasted munchies supplied promptly by Shirish. Anita and Vanaja, had in the meanwhile started blanching the tomatoes for the soup and the carrots went into a colander and got steamed on top of the vessel with the tomatoes. This 2-level cooking was a great fuel and time saver. Soon, the veggies for the soup were blended and the soup tasting and adjusting process began. In went some celery and mint leaves, some jaggery, salt and pepper. More tasting followed. It was nice but, something more was needed. Shammi, the expert, was called in and he suggested coconut milk. Lo and behold, the soup was transformed to a different level. In the meantime, Guru had taken care of the bread-baking and 3 very different shaped and sized breads were ready.

We all then sat down to relish what we had cooked and everything just vanished in minutes. Our neighbour, Bakul and her mom generously supplied us with some fresh home-made awla juice. Archana too had brought some solar-cooked kheer. In all, it had become a community cooking, eating and interacting session. Though we do have some misgivings that we could not really have deeper conversations with many of the people who came, it was a good first get-together at our home, which we had been meaning to do for quite some time. We hope to now strengthen some of these friendships through more one-on-one meetings.