Bhaubeej Special

 If any one particular festival were to represent all of  Aai's unique qualities, it had to be Bhaubeej. The morning would begin with the lovely and auspicious shehnai renditions by Bismilla Khan. She would play that L.P. record every Diwali day, and she was rather proud of the fact that Lane Number 12, Mukund Nagar would wake up with that shehanai, played softly but surely.

Next, she would draw superb rangolis. Her designs used to be unique. Once, for example, she had drawn Vithoba, and the depiction was perfect. Why, she could draw rangoli patterns on water! 

Breakfast of all her Diwali specials (superb used to be her kadboli's, chaklya and Shankarpali's, all the extremely  tough to prepare kind of items, but she was a very good cook, anyways), she would begin the Bhaubeej special dishes. It used to be the perfect preparation, with all the salads, lemon slice, pickles, papad, kurdaya, bhajji, special potato veggie, masale bhat, unique amti, all perfectly served the right way in the dish. Hyper tasty the preparations used to be, given her special masala. As the Chaturmas would not yet be over, she would use neither onion nor garlic, and yet manage to create wonders.

Superb would be the main dish. As it used to be the last day of Diwali, all the difficult dishes would fall to her lot. She did not mind preparing pakatale chirote, puran poli and gulab jamun, jilabi-mattha type of tough dishes for thirty odd people. It was for her labour of love. Aai-Papa loved to serve with heart felt agrah. There would be a special pangat for children, and the second one for the elders, both full of laughter and mirth. It would be almost three-ish by the time her pangat with one or two Mami's would begin.

All along, Papa and Mama's would play 'bridge', while children would be up to all sorts of games in the front and the back yard. Her special lemon grass and ginger tea along with the Diwali special faral over, girls would begin getting ready. 

Our bedroom would turn in to a make up, vanity room. Our Jimmy, crackers terrorised, would be hiding under the bed. His huge, curvy tail would get trampled on, but he would not yelp, forget his usual growl. After an hour or so, all the cousins would emerge real decked up, like the beauties in a pageant.

Aai and Mami's would get a few minutes to get ready. Aai loved wearing her trademark nath, her favourite item of jewellery. The ceremony would continue for hours with tremendous revellery. 

The crackers bursting later with Arun Mama special distribution, the day would thus get over at about ten, but the memories would linger on. Like they do now, and forever. Let me end with "Ah, to face Bhaubeej again, but without her/Now that Diwali is here", a take on Browning's Celebration of the unique British summer that would always return, but never Aai!

Pratima@ Bhaubeej is Aai, Aai is Bhaubeej!