Funny old cars

While the world chases the next new and big car, they have lost something in this rat race. The charm and fun memories that an old car provides. Thanks to my husband and his passion for old cars, I have a treasure trove of car memories. Here are a few!

Story 1: Loony toons

We drove our diesel cars on waste vegetable oil for many years. This required collecting used vegetable oil from restaurants. We had a deal with the local fried chicken restaurant that we would collect their oil for free every week. This worked well for them since they would otherwise have to pay to get their oil hauled away.

Every week, Johan or I would go to pump out the waste vegetable oil from their oil tubs. It was dirty work, but ok, that’s what we did back then.

One fine evening Johan’s employee, a guy who found everything funny, and I went to collect the oil. I was driving and he was in the passenger seat. On our way home after collecting the waste oil, I was driving the main road back home. Just when I was about to make my right turn to the house, the power steering of the old Mercedes that we were driving failed! So, of course, I couldn’t make the turn. Startled, I yelled at the guy that I couldn’t turn. He went into peels of laughter saying that the power steering had died.

Giving him an incredulous look, I shouted, “stop laughing and pull!” We both pulled on the steering wheel together to make the next right turn, in a move that would remind one of an old fashioned cartoon show where the characters pull on the steering wheel together while their faces are clouded with terror at the impending disaster. Only, in this case, my car mate’s face was alight with amusement.

Anyway, the car did grunt and respond to our endeavors and turned at the next right turn. With a few more similar turns around the block, we made it home, with aching arms and a story to remember!

Story 2: Rattling through the West Coast

This happened when Johan and I were dating (point to note, I still married him. Get ready to applaud!). We took a trip through the West Coast in a ford E350. It was oh, so romantic. We were shaken, literally. That’s less because of the romance, and more because the front axle of our car rattled wildly when we drove at certain speeds. I think a bearing was worn out. Johan did try to fix it many times, but she still rattled. When the rattling would start, we would try to change our speed until the poor car calmed down. This meant often driving at slow speeds.

This rattling car gave us many moments of laughter. For instance, Johan had dropped me off at a copy center to make some photocopies while he went to consult a mechanic in Paige, Arizona. Once I was done, I went and sat by a tree. Soon two native American men (one youngish, and another old) sat on either side of me and were talking to me about marrying into their tribe. Sensing trouble, I nodded and smiled at them until I saw Johan at which I ran saying, “That’s my boyfriend. Bye!” to the annoyed duo.

The most sensational moment came when we had to reach Lake Powell to catch a ferry to get across by Friday at 5 pm. The ferry didn’t run over the weekends. Of course, the car rattled, and we slowed down. Finally we made it just in time to see that the last boat had just left the dock. We stood at the dock, stomping and shaking our heads in dismay, when, lo and behold! The ferry turned around. We couldn’t believe our eyes. As we stared, the ferry came closer and closer until it was back. The kindly captain said that he had noticed us and decided to come back to get us. How amazing.

Story 3: Car lost and found

This was in 2019. We took a family trip through the West Coast and were on our way out from Death Valley. We were traveling in a city bus which had been converted into a camper, and towing an old jeep Cherokee. Dog needed to pee, so we stopped for a brief second. Dog ran around the bus and we followed. Then we stopped dead in our tracks. For, the jeep was gone. The tow rod was dragging on the ground minus the jeep!

After recovering from the minor heart attack following this discovery, we turned around, not sure how long ago we had lost the jeep. Death valley is a treacherous landscape, with valleys everywhere. The car could easily have rolled off one of these cliffs. Hoping for the best, we drove, looking for the car. As always, luck was with us. The jeep was found half a mile off road, miraculously intact, sitting straight, not far away from a cliff. It had hit various boulders and had come to a standstill with not much damage. It looked really funny, its back facing the road, like it was angry at being left behind and sulking!

Johan was able to get it driving, and we drove to the nearest town with him driving the bus and me the lucky jeep. Such a beautiful memory. The section of Death Valley that I drove is my favorite section now. I can still visualize that mindboggling landscape.

To finish this story off, we went to Lone Pine, which is the first town near Death Valley. There, as luck would have it, Johan met a guy at a garage who was an excellent welder. He and Johan made a whole new tow rod gear with double the reinforcements so that the jeep could no longer take off for its personal adventures!

More funny old car stories when inspiration strikes.

September in India and Elfland

September brought it’s share of excitement for me. Once the kids were in school, I took a two week trip to India. I had figured that it was a good time to take off while weather in State College was still ok.

Leaving State College without the girls turned out to be not the easiest thing. The idea of going so far away bore down on me as I drove in the middle of night to Washington DC to catch my flight. Putting my worries aside, I boarded the flight for an 18 hour trip to India via Doha (Qatar airways). Qatar airways was adequate with super short layovers, although this caused some stress on my way back since the flight from Hyderabad to Doha was delayed.

Sis, mom and dad picked me up at the Hyderabad airport. We went to mom’s place. Ganesh puja festival was going on in India. There were statues of Lord Ganesh everywhere. My parents’ apartment complex had one, with cultural events every evening.

My hope was to get some stuff organized for parents so that they would be more comfortable there. I must say I was happy with all the things I was able to do towards that goal in the two weeks. It was a packed schedule with shopping for clothes for mom (and some for the girls to take back with me), buying appliances, managing their paperwork and even getting them to buy tickets to visit us in April next year. I was very pleased with how things went.

Once home, I was thrilled to see all the progress made at home. Leena’s room was finished and painted, which is quite an achievement, since you could see insulation when I had left home. Johan finished insulating, and he and Wayne did drywalling and painting. Amazing. Johan and the girls had also worked hard at cleaning up stuff in various parts of the house and the end result was great! Tanya has an arm band now in kickboxing which means she is ahead of me in class! She seems quite pleased about that!

I have been moving along since back home, trying to get the house organized and my first children’s book going. It should see the light of day next year. Excited about my progress!

Kylo Ren the dog: Hmph! Despite the fact that I am very smart, no one ever asks for my opinion. Did mom ask if I was okay with her leaving and travelling off to some far off place? No! Luckily for Leena I didn’t starve. But let me tell you, my care was less than premium, and I could definitely feel the lowered standards. Once mom was back, I let her know exactly what I thought of her disappearance. A few bites did the trick. With mom, it’s easy. All I have to do is to place my cold and wet nose anywhere on her bare skin. She shrieks and I immediately get the pleasure of exacting my revenge.

Lately I have been getting in trouble for no reason whatsoever. My family says I am too pushy with my snout. But all I do is show love, when it is absolutely necessary. Like the times when Tanya leaves me for two whole minutes. When she comes back, I feel that it is my duty to tell her how much I missed her. But when I try, she gets all mad. Not fair. I bet other dogs aren’t left alone for such long periods of time. Ohh, here comes the Queen bee, Grandma Rosie!

Rosie the dog: What?!! Grandma?! Don’t you forget that you are my husband. That would make you grandpa. Hehe. Actually that makes sense. I am still sassier than you even at the ripe age of 15. Grandpa!

While I have been a happy go lucky 15 year old, lately my family has developed a strange and annoying habit. They like to pick me up in the air. They pick up my entire body and hold me. This is because I have lost a lot of weight, so now they treat me like a stuffed toy or something. But after being suspended in air for a couple of minutes, I remind them that I am no stuffed bunny. I bare my teeth most menacingly and snap and bark viciously. They get alarmed and put me down. I like being down. In fact my favorite position these days is to be as far down as possible, sleeping 22 hours a day outside in the sun. The last two hours are spent eating and barking at random people to incite Kylo into barking.

Oreo the chicken: Hello Rosie. May I have the keyboard? Oh! She is asleep. My turn! Hello, dear readers. I am here to make my debut into the world of blogging. The older hens have been bragging about the wonderful blogs they have written, and the wonderful places that they have visited. Paisley and I turn green with envy, but thankfully, since a lot of our feathers are black in color, the envious green stays hidden. It won’t do to show envy. Our pecking order stats can take a hit!

Let me tell you the story of Paisley and I. We were born and raised in the Bald Eagle area. We are one year old. Although we lived out in the boonies and can be considered to have had an idyllic childhood, reality is far from imagination. We lived with a few other chickens and a couple of nasty roosters. Every day was war. As a result, we have some trust issues. Our owner got some new peeps. One day we heard her talking with her husband that they want to downsize our brood. The hubby looked appetized and we smelt danger! One fine day our owner caught Paisley and me and put us in a dog crate. “This is it”, I thought. We are soup! But life had other plans for us. Soon people came by and took us in plastic containers to a new backyard that had three other chickens. These people named us Paisley and Oreo and wisely kept us separated from those scary older birds. They would try to socialize us by getting us together in the yard. The older hens made several planned attacks on us. However, they were foiled by the humans who sprayed them with a water gun! I am happy to say that I am now well assimilated into the group and am also getting warm and comfortable with the humans. Paisley is a whole different story!

Paisley the chicken: I yell! Yes, that’s my specialty. I let out such a shriek that humans get temporarily disoriented and confused. While they are figuring out what just happened, I use all my evasive and maneuvering skills to get away from the humans.

That said, I do get close to the humans. I am curious about them, but like to play it safe. I am slim and beautiful. I have been told that I have beautiful eyes (ahem). However, my slender build has placed me lowest in the pecking order. Sigh! If not for Oreo, I don’t know if I would ever get any food. Oreo is big. She almost looks like a turkey. Oh I am so glad she is my friend and protector!

For Tanya, with love

Tanya, our 17 year old, is graduating from high school. She has some interesting plans up her sleeve. She plans to take a gap year before joining Penn State’s college of science to study genetics. A part of her gap year will be spent on pursuing a course in solar tech from CPI, a local technical school. Seeing her hopeful excitement for the future totally thrills me. I love her chosen interesting fields of study.

The past few weeks were a roller coaster for her, and by extension, for me too. Transitioning from high school into a semi-adult life is hard. As a parent, it feels like the safety net of school is pulled off us, and she is freewheeling. Of course, this is not true, but school is such a big part of childhood that it’s ending is unnerving. Added to that, I had this feeling that in today’s society, Tanya’s achievements were overlooked. Of course, that upset me. But then I had a few realizations. The first being, hey, I haven’t celebrated her achievements myself. To address that, I have dedicated this post to her. Long post alert!

Tanya came to this world at 2 lbs. She was born at 29 weeks as a micro preemie on Aug 19, 2006. Then began one of the most trying fifty days of my life. Tanya was in an incubator at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for fifty days. And the hospital was two hours away from here! After fours days, I was discharged. As we drove off the hospital back home, I remember the feeling of dread. What?! Tanya is left behind(?!). I had just had a Caesarean and was recovering from very high blood pressure. So driving was out of the question. After a couple of days home, where I roamed around like an aimless ghost, my friend Amalie came to visit. She asked me, “so aren’t you missing Tanya?!”. I burst into tears. She was moved. After that my friends organized car rides for me to go to the hospital. I will be forever grateful to her, Caryl, Katie and Hannah for taking me there everyday for the next week. In less than two weeks after my Caesarean, I was driving to Geisinger every other day. We came up with a system. Johan left our red van with a bed in it in the parking lot of the hospital. I would drive there one day, see Tanya, sleep in the van, wake up the next day, see her again, and come home. In retrospect, I am not even sure why I came home at all. My parents had arrived from India, maybe that was a reason. Anyway, with that arrangement, I was able to see Tanya everyday and hold her against my skin. After fifty days, we got her home!

For the first four months my parents took care of Tanya. I was busy with my PhD thesis writing. They finally left a couple of days before my defense! Their visa had ended. I remember putting together my presentation with Tanya breastfeeding! It was quite an experience.

After my PhD, we had a setback. Johan’s father passed away. We went for his funeral in the Netherlands when Tanya was about seven months old. When Tanya turned one, I took up a job at a local Mechanical Engineering firm. However, I hated the breast pumping and general separation. I quit after fifteen days.

Tanya was always an easy child. I didn’t realize it then, but looking back I remember. We went for many road trips. Tanya just fit in, and it felt like three people on a trip rather than two adults and a baby. She easily adapted to all our idiosyncrasies. I worked only for one year outside of home (two hours away at Bucknell University). Once again, I hated it and didn’t take up another job until she was six.

We got our dog when Tanya turned three. Things hummed along, Leena came when Tanya was five and a half. Our family felt complete. We went through health challenges with both our premature girls, but thankfully nothing that was insurmountable.

Tanya was a quiet child and we ended up sending her (and later Leena) to a small charter school rather than the huge regular elementary school. The charter school had weekly field trips and wise ways of handling situations. We loved the small environment and felt that it would do her good. I have never regretted that decision.

Tanya was an excellent walker from the time that she was little. This may have been because we got Rosie dog when she was three. The long hikes on field trips were right up her alley. Even though her school was small with limited choices in friends, Tanya made a few strong friendships that have lasted her until now.

We always went on road trips, and took trips to the Netherlands and India. We were forever pulling our kids out of school. The alternative school was supportive, and even excited for us. But in 2019 we took the plunge and went for a five month long trip living in a bus and boondocking out west. Amazingly her school supported us and sent us study materials and read her blogs out during school lunches.

After this trip, Tanya moved on to Delta middle and subsequently Delta high school. This is another small, alternative school in our school district. She took classes both at the regular high school and at Delta.

As an immigrant who grew up in very high academic school standards, her school system baffled and frustrated me to the point that I wanted to pull Tanya out of school and homeschool her. Tanya may have realized that I would make good on my threat. Maybe to appease me or maybe out of her own motivation, Tanya started taking challenging courses at high school. We would sit down and carefully decide on her coursework each year. I battled with her school and have yelled at the administrators and her principal. You can say that I am not popular at her school(!). Oh well!

As she went on to high school, I noted that she would want to finish her work in advance. She did not wait until the last day. This was great to watch, since I have always been a procrastinator. It was lovely for me to see her working with diligence even on subjects that she didn’t care about.

Another thing about our immigrant, engineering household: like most immigrants and also most parents, we wanted our girls to appreciate and take up our field of study, which is engineering. I remember lecturing them many times and also getting upset when our girls did not show interest in mechanical engineering. But as years went by, I felt compelled to support them in fields of their choice. I now strongly feel that people in general, but women in particular, must carefully find a field they love and pursue only that, away from parental pressure. I say women in particular, because when they have kids and there will be motivation to quit work for the sake of children and family, a woman who loves her field has a better chance of feeling motivated to stick to her career.

Luckily, after many years of not knowing what she wanted to do with her life, Tanya suddenly changed. She took a keen interest in genetics after her biology class. Wisely she also took an elective in genetics this year to see if she still liked it. It turns out that she still likes it. So she plans to keep biology as her major and research in genetics.

In terms of academic achievements, Tanya excelled in her subjects ending up with a GPA of 3.87 unweighted and 4.19 weighted. In terms of extra curricular, she has done community volunteering at the arts fest that we have every year and community gardens over the summer. But one of her crowning achievements has been taking care of her dog Kylo. He is a rescue and a difficult German Shepherd. He can be aggressive to strangers. Since fourteen, Tanya has taken care of Kylo, including majority of his walks and behavior training with him. This is no mean achievement at all.

Tanya has a super temperate personality. She laughs and brushes annoying things off of her. Nothing seems to ruffle her. She always has a smile. She is very level headed. She is a stunning artist. In fact, she has excelled in every art form that she has tried, starting from hand sewing stuffies since she was eight, to painting in various mediums, clay modeling, resin art and animation. She recently made a lovely 3d printed candy dispenser after modeling it in Solidworks (an engineering design software).

Another realization that I had recently was how she was loved by her closest friends. A poem written by her friend, and a yearbook entry by her closest friend since elementary school made me realize that accolades come in many forms. While those grandly bestowed upon you by an institute are prized and sought after, they pale in comparison with a few beautiful words spoken by a good friend. A friend’s words bring out your true value as a person who has touched people around them. Her friends’ words truly touched me.

From being an impatient and immature mother, I have grown with Tanya to become a more calm and controlled person. My kids have been my teachers. Now Tanya is my friend and one that I share a lot of laughs with.

I am excited to see what the future holds for her. But what’s even more important is the current moment. She is happy, and that makes me happy. Life’s good.

February in Elf land

February started off with a mad hair extension craze. Leena went color crazy putting all sorts of extensions in her hair. In her usual zealous way, she took all the hair off her barbie and started re-hairing her. Regrettably, that project is currently on hold. I fear that it is going to need my input before the poor Barbie gets her mane back. While on the topic of incomplete projects, I would like to happily report that my Ganesha art work finally is complete after I stuck the cutout on a black background. This project stood in limbo for two years before I finally got it done. I guess there’s hope for Barbie after all! We did put up a bunch of art work made by the girls. Slowly but surely, we have been moving ahead.

Johan and Tanya made a dog cart for Rosie. Her back paws are now completely unfunctional. Picking her back up for a walk is a heavy task. It is also dangerous for her, since her paws flip while dangling. If the walker is not watching, her paws can end up scratched and bloody. Rosie loved her cart. It has been useful in giving her front end some much needed exercise. She even gave Kylo Ren a chase! It was back to the good ol’ times.

Other than that, it was another month, another car for Elf land. Johan bought a BYD electric car from Lehigh University. Johan, Rosie and I decided to go to pick it up leaving the (elated) kids behind with Kylo Ren. We left one evening and made a little trip out of it. We ate, slept, drove, slept some more and moved until we reached Bethlehem, PA. They had our favorite Waffle shop, so we got to enjoy some grits!

After breakfast, we checked out an electric BYD city bus that Johan was also bidding on. It was nice enough, although a lot of work to make into a camper. We then went to see the car. My friend Sushil lives there, so our plan was to meet up and for me to visit his office and lab while Johan did the paperwork. It went without a hitch. I had a fun time checking out Sushil’s lab. He is a professor at Lehigh Valley.

Once back, we left town as quickly as we could. The drive was uneventful. We came back around 4 pm. The BYD electric car is a nice addition with quite a long range by our standards.

Other than buying vehicles at regular intervals, Tanya has been spending some time behind the wheel learning how to drive. She is learning stick shift on our super cool Mercedes jeep and automatic on our (other super cool) electric car Solectria. In short, life has been chugging along.

Rosie the dog: Well my friends. I am okay with life chugging along, but why, oh why, would one take a 100 year old grandma dog on a road trip? I really don’t need that kind of chugging. But that’s precisely what happened the other day. Just because I looked somewhat eager to get into the van, my mommy and Papa decided to take me along for an overnight trip. I must say, I was pretty rattled, physically and emotionally. I literally trembled for many miles before a familiar smell calmed me down. When my people stepped out of the car, and came in with foody smells, my brain fog cleared and a smell made it’s way into the depths of my memory. That was the smell of sausage. Instantly, I could remember all the times we hit the road, and how my people would come back with meaty treats. Life was not so bad after that. I had a merry old time in the back of the van, howling to my heart’s content and getting all the meaty treats without having to share them with Kylo Ren. I still trembled, but it was more out of excitement than nervousness. Despite all the positives, I was happy when we got home. Home works well for a dog my age. Let’s hope my humans don’t plan anymore such adventures.

Kylo Ren the dog: I don’t have much to report about this month. But my life was not devoid of excitement. Tanya took me inside a store! We walked through the dog aisle and my eyes popped out! Here were rows of treats at my snout’s reach! Oh, if only I didn’t have the awful muzzle on, I could have eaten my bellyful. Unfortunately, it was not to be (sigh). One good thing was that I did get a pig ear on my way out by the generous store people. The bad thing is, I don’t like pig ears. I am a civilized dog and don’t appreciate such barbaric treats. I did eat it though. It wasn’t too bad (yum).

Molly, Johan’s French love

It came out over breakfast this morning. The story of Johan’s French love who he actually brought over to the US. I should be devastated. But I am a sucker for good stories, so here it is!

When Johan was 21 or 22, before he went into his electronic school in The Netherlands, he went to France with his buddy Hans for a camping trip in his Citroen GS break, a station wagon. They went to campground Chanteraine in the South Eastern part of France. It is close to Nice, France. They both worked for their living expenses while camping. Hans was cleaning the toilets and Johan was doing electrical and mechanical repairs at the campground.

A side story before we get to the main one: While at the campground, Johan repaired a crashed campground Unimog. The campground owner was impressed and spoke about him with the mayor of a nearby small town named Les-Salles-Sur-Verdon. The mayor owned an Alpha Romeo with a broken alternator. He asked Johan to repair it, which Johan did. The mayor was impressed. Since Les-Salles-Sur-Verdon was about 60 km from Draguignan, the nearest big town where they could find technical help (1.5 hrs via a mountainous road), the mayor offered Johan a shop and all the town’s technical work. He would be able to fix their electronics and machines and live in the nice, warm climate. Since Johan was about to start his electronics school, he turned that offer down.

Moving on, Hans and Johan were visiting the nearby beach at Verdonplage. In those days, people drove their cars to the beach. When they arrived, he saw a pretty woman with there with a Citroen DS 20, the car that he had been looking for. That was too good a combination to resist, so he walked over to the woman and asked her about the car (in his best French). While they were speaking, a little boy came out of the water. Oh! Thought Johan. But then he kept the conversation up, still hopeful. But then the husband followed. Johan wisely shifted his attention to the man and expressed his interest in the car. The man said that he was planning on selling it since their family with the kid didn’t fit well in the car. He was looking for a station wagon! Johan said, “hey I have a Station Wagon!”. They were all thrilled. The man asked him to meet him in some town the next day.

It was a mountain town (name’s forgotten). There the man asked him to follow his car. They drove to a large Chateau. Johan worried whether this was mafia(!). But the woman and kid came out of the Chateau. The man had a large tennis court and asked to play. Johan refused. They went swimming instead in their large pool. They bargained over the price over rounds of swimming. The man offered 700 francs. Johan swam a round, and asked for 2500 francs (maybe). Then the man took a round and counter offered. They finally settled on 2000 francs. The wife brought out finger food. They had a nice time. They decided to meet the next day and transfer the title at Draguignan.

The next day all the paperwork was done. As the man was driving off in his station wagon, he said something in French. Johan understood it as, “she needs love”. “No worries”, thought Johan. The station wagon that he had just sold had problems too.

Back at the campground, Johan was in the bathroom when he saw a mole next to him. He caught the mole in a bottle and brought his prize to the car. He set it down on the hood. The mole started scampering on the hood and fell promptly into a hold down to the chassis of the car. Johan got a shock and started looking for it everywhere. But he couldn’t locate the mole. He was traumatized that he had sent a creature to an untimely death. In honor of the mole, he called his car “Molly”. “Molly”, the Citroen DS, was later put into a shipping container and brought over to the US. She now lives in our barn!

After their vacation, Johan and Hans started driving direction Normandy. However, the transmission stopped working. They weren’t able to change gears. The Citroen DS has a complicated transmission, so they took it to a mechanic. He said that it had no hydraulic oil. Uh oh. The hydraulic oil was insanely expensive. The young and poor guys didn’t want to spend money on this. They went further and found a junkyard close to Normandy. They asked the junkyard guy to give them hydraulic oil. He went around with a hammer and punctured all the tanks, while they collected the oil to drive their car home.

The ride home was not without adventure. In those days, there were border patrol at all the European countries. To make his way back to The Netherlands, they had to go through Belgium first. At each border, they had to pay export and import duties. To avoid that, the boys decided to skip the border agents and take a side road into Belgium. They thought that evening would be the best time to escape unnoticed. However, once it got late, they realized that their headlights could be seen for miles! So they drove in twilight with their lights off through tiny dirt roads. Farmers from nearby farms knew what they were doing, and laughed and gave them thumbs up signs. However, they miscalculated the roads in the dark, and ended up only 300 ft behind the border security area. They freaked out and gunned the car! They drove in a frenzy to the nearest town and parked the car behind a church and jumped out expecting cops behind them. Luckily for them, the car chase was a figment of their guilty imagination and no cops followed.

The Dutch border waved them in without a second glance. To finally get the car legal, Johan drove with his dad to the German border. At first the agent didn’t want to give the import papers since the car was already in the country. Johan told him the story truthfully. The agent loved the story and asked him to drive to the next agent, spin his car around and come right back. They gave him his import papers when he drove in! There ends the story of Molly, the Citroen DS.

Molly the mole: Now hang on a minute. Molly’s story hasn’t ended without a word from me. Let me tell you what happened to me, the central character of this (mis) adventure. Here I was one minute, out for my morning sniff in the toilet, and in a bottle in the next minute! Just because I am cute and blind, humans think it’s easy to grab me. So I was grabbed, bottled and placed on a hood. But what the man didn’t know was that I was handier with a bottle than Remi (the rat hero in the movie Ratatouille). I dropped the bottle, scurried all over the hood and jumped into an escape hole before the offending man could say “mole”! This sweet but misinformed youth proceeded to look through the whole car to find me and make sure that I didn’t die from finding in the chassis. Honestly, he spent so much time on looking for me. What he was unaware of was that the chassis had a hidden hole that I had long escaped through. How did I know about this hole, you may ask. Well my friends, having grown up on a campground, I was more intimately familiar with chassis than any auto mechanic you have out there! Years later the guy did find that hole, sans my skeleton!

I watched this youth looking frantically for me all afternoon. I had a nice view of him, sitting in my arm chair on the bathroom ledge with a snack in my hand, and goggles over my eyes (Ok, the last part is a lie. I can’t see, remember?). He lovingly named his car Molly after me. I spent the rest of my days in that blessed campground, happy in the knowledge that somewhere in the world exists a car named after me.

… And now I am mad

This is an epilogue to my previous blog post called “A cuppa history”. Something was missing. When I thought about it, I realized that my tea story with its happy ending had misplaced optimism. I had forgotten an essential element. What became of the poor living conditions of the tea plantation worker? Dreading what I would find, and expecting the worst, I looked it up.

Just as expected, the living conditions of the workers continue to be terrible. They live in broken houses with no toilets and defecate amongst the tea bushes. There are reports of minors working full time, and women, as usual, get the lowest wages while pulling the maximum weight.

Of course this comes as no surprise. Once terrible living conditions have been established and accepted, the group in question rarely gets a better deal. The post-independence, Indian (Swadeshi) label added a jingoistic ring to the tea but no longer did our esteemed and formerly concerned revolutionaries and politicians cared about the living conditions and exploitation of the tea workers. On the contrary, once the tea craze caught on, production ramped up, thereby adding to the workforce while having a similar or even lowered living conditions than the past. No surprises, right?

Surprise! Fast forward to 2015. There’s an article in business-humanrights.org that talks about BBC’s investigation of the inhumane living conditions in tea plantations in Assam! Wow, just wow! So the British started off with inhumane living conditions right since 1850s. And now they launch a new investigation and publish their holier-than-thou findings in 2015!

As expected, pandemonium follows this “research”. British tea brands such as PG Tips, Tetleys and Twinings say they will work to improve the living conditions, following the special insight that they have gained from this report. Harrods stopped selling some tea products, and Rainforest Alliance, which is an ethical certification organization, says their audit process may have some flaws. Popcorn anyone?

Assam company, which owns these plantations, calls the allegations “baseless and false”. The great Tata, who Indians will swear by, said that its membership of Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) demonstrates its commitment to improving living conditions in the tea industry. So Tata says, hey! I pay membership to this fraud organization ETP and so we’re in the clear!

Lastly, Taylors of Harrogate, which owns the Yorkshire tea brand, told the BBC that they were “extremely concerned” by BBC’s findings and are “exploring “investigating as a matter of urgency”. I guess it’s so urgent that its being explored urgently since about 175 years. I have no words.

I write this while drinking my cup of tea and am filled with sadness and a guilt that was never mine until yesterday when I explored this topic. So what’s the solution? Giving up tea? Drink water? That is possible. Any other fruit or milk drinks will have similar horror stories. Of this I have no doubt. What a sad state of affairs.

Reference:

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/bbc-investigates-inhumane-working-conditions-in-tea-plantations-in-assam-india-brands-respond/

A cuppa history

While in India, my parents and I had discussions on a variety of topics over cups of tea. One of the topics turned out to be about the history of tea.

My parents mentioned that tea was not historically a part of Indian drinks. It appeared nowhere in the list of drinks that Indians had. Traditionally it was lassi, milk or fruit juices. Tea was popularized by the British. They set up tea stalls at every nook and corner of Indian streets. They would serve chai for free in stylish cups and saucers. My mom herself recalled drinking such a free cup of tea in a fair as a kid! They also mentioned that places in Haryana still serve milk. This fact was somewhat corroborated by friends from the region who said that they serve lassi and milk to their guests.

India is a tea crazy country. This is a fact beyond all facts! The idea that tea was popularized in the last century by the British and post independence India was intriguing to me. So I read up on it, and as it (often) turns out, my parents are right on. The history of tea in India is interesting. So here’s my Indian tea history 101!

Historically tea is a Chinese drink. As mentioned above, Indians traditionally drank milk, yogurt based lassi and fruit juices. The British got their tea addiction from the Dutch and the Chinese. Alas, the Dutch sneak in here as well. They seem to make frequent appearances in most of my stories!

Moving on, the Chinese exported tea to the British. In return, the British were exporting opium to China. The Chinese emperor understandably did not approve of this trade that created addicts in China. And so China abruptly ended tea trade with the British in 1800s. It confiscated the opium and destroyed it. The British sent warships to China, but ultimately felt that they had to own the tea. A botanist name Robert Fortune stole tea seeds from China.

The British had explored India and found wild tea growing in Rangpur, Assam around 1830s. The British proceeded to establish tea gardens in Assam with the seeds from China (and maybe local Indian tea as well). They were met with a stiff resistance from the local Assamese people. The Assamese fought against clearing their jungles for tea gardens. Furthermore, they would not work in the tea gardens. As is typical British, they brought in migrant workers from various parts of India to work on the tea plantations as indentured laborers. These migrants faced inhuman working conditions, disease, malnutrition, debt and high mortality rates of up to 50%. The British tried to keep these working conditions a secret, but it did come out. Although some rich Indian babus working for the British had taken to tea drinking, the condition of the migrant workers forced Indians to give up tea.

Around the 20th century, the British tea markets started to stagnate. That’s when the British turned to the India to expand their tea market (in 1903). The Indians were slow to take to tea. Tea advertisements in 1911 still showed white people being served tea by the brown people.

Tea hubs opened in 1920s and 30s as political and cultural hubs. Later they even became meeting places for pro-independence Indians and intellectuals. In the 1930s and 40s (during the depression), tea was aggressively promoted in railway stations across India. Free tea was offered, or one paisa take-home single-use tea packets were sold.

However, tea was not fully accepted in 1940s and 1950s. This is because Gandhi and other nationalists argued that tea was an imperialist, anti-Indian drink. The poor working conditions of the migrant workers were highlighted and tea drinking was discouraged by the freedom fighting revolutionaries. The advertisers replaced colonial messages with promoting tea as a Swadeshi drink, with revolutionaries featured in the advertisements! This is mind boggling to me. The British advertisers actually used freedom fighters that would ultimately kick the British out to increase sales on a British product. Wow! So very short sighted. Anything for a quick buck!

Darjeeling and Assam tea were expensive. But slowly production was improved and cheaper grades of dust and fannings of tea were marketed. This brought tea to the middle class. It was only post independence after tea estates and tea wholesale came to the Indian hands did tea take hold in India. The marketing also shifted to show rich Indian ladies patronizing tea drinking. Tea was deemed Swadeshi (Indian) in 1953. The shift from the full leaf black tea to the crushed, torn, curled tea allowed the customers to come up with a stronger infusions than the traditional (read “boring” from the Indian point of view) British recipe. The Darjeeling leaf tea did not lend itself well to the spicy milky tea that catered to the Indian taste. But the heavy, Assam tea captured the Indian interest. Indians then proceeded to add their spices, milk and sugar to make strong “kadak” brews that have now gained worldwide popularity.

Now one can find the “chai” tea in many cafes in the US. Chai tea has now come to be synonymous with the spicy Indian brew that we have all grown to love. But it will be remiss of me to end this blog without adding this note. Dude, chai means tea (as the Indian Spider man would undoubtedly tell you). So can we all agree to call it just chai (and not chai tea)?!

References for the image are included at the end of the blog. Many of the images are from the Priya Paul collection.

References:

https://www.npr.org/2010/03/28/125237353/the-tea-thieves-how-a-drink-shaped-an-empire

https://www.historyofceylontea.com/ceylon-publications/ceylon-tea-articles/the-british-ad-propaganda-the-journey-from-tea-to-chai.html

https://www.seriouseats.com/indian-tea-history-5221096

https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/how-british-used-indian-railways-free-cups-women-to-make-indians-tea-drinkers/711106/

India trip: Part 4. Musings

This trip to India has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me. Due to various reasons, Corona Virus being the biggest, I was in India after a long gap of four years. I found that a lot of my parents’ way of living was unchanged. It was like I had never left. But there were also big, noticeable differences in how Indians live their lives which were interesting but also very unsettling.

Due to various reasons, my lifestyle back in the USA is overly simple. For one, we have never used a TV. When I was a kid, my parents refused to have a cable connection so that we would concentrate on our studies and not get distracted. I hated having no TV as a kid, but liked the idea as a grown up. TV is distracting, but it’s the advertisements that are a bigger bane. One thing that I have noticed is that due to lack of our exposure to ads and Television series, our family is living in a bubble while the world has moved to a different place. This, combined with our general disinterest in shopping, made this trip a funny, eye opening experience. I must also mention, countries such as India and the UAE have been prioritizing glamor a lot more than the USA. This is an opposite world from 25 years ago.

During our flight to Dubai we were bombarded with glamorous ads of Dubai. The Dubai airport is also an over the top show of goods and glamour. There were shops after shops full of perfumes, liquor, chocolate and expensive jewelry. We had our first cultural shock right there. The all pervasive smell of perfume was overwhelming to our underutilized noses and we quickly retrieved to a resting space. They space had lounge chairs arranged in various formations with people resting on them! It hilariously reminded me of a scene from a typical science fiction movie, or a Robin Cook book! However, the chairs looked comfortable and were just what we needed to stretch our tired selves and so we proceeded to join the scifi cast!

Getting to India, on a first glance, things look the same. Ladies in sarees, the strays, and an occasional cow on the street. But I soon realized that the wad of cash that I was given to spend by my dad wasn’t going to help me much. Unless I was happy to leave obscene amounts of change with every purchase.

India has become cashless, and most people pay by scanning a QR code that all stores display. Urban India is also into extreme shopping, which seemed to be a disturbing trend. Amazon is everywhere, and they also have a company named “Swiggy”, which delivers anything people want in 10 minutes to an hour. People will sometimes use Swiggy three to four times a day to order anything as per their immediate whim and fancy. Swiggy is akin to Aladdin’s genie. It produces whatever you desire in very little time, with a few clicks and without moving from your house. This creates an endless opportunity for instant gratification, which, of course, ultimately creates dissatisfaction and prevents people from being grounded. Not even to speak about the pollution from all the drivers moving about, the plastic packaging waste and money wastage. So this was undoubtedly the worst trend that I saw.

On the upside, the elderly and disabled can benefit immensely from this system, since you can get things on your doorstep. This is particularly useful since the traffic is a nightmare. But if you think further, the nightmare traffic is created partially by the goods movement by Amazon and Swiggy. We patronize them, thereby supporting the bad traffic. As a result of this traffic, now we sit at home and patronize them further. We still lose out by not getting an opportunity to step outside, thereby using our bodies lesser, and pushing our minds into a rut. This results in more disability, which gives even more business to these companies. What a vicious cycle.

My rants may suggest that I didn’t like being in Hyderabad, but it actually had the opposite effect. I wished from all my heart that I lived there and would be a part of the craziness that is India. It would have been gratifying to be a part of the solution in a country that gets an impressive number of things done, when compared with the meagre amount of resources that they have access to. Despite the Western world squeezing every last bit of resource out of India, pushing regulations that make India poorer, pushing waste that make India dirtier, pushing their GMO seeds to compromise India’s agricultural capacity, and making regulations that they have no recourse against, India functions remarkably. But there’s a lot wrong with the mentality of the population there (as in any other place). A change is desperately needed.

Getting to my parents, their world seems almost unchanged for the most part. There is a nice rhythm to their daily routine. We had a nice, easygoing time there, with us spending a lot of time with cups of tea, sitting around and chit chatting. The kids got a chance to connect with them. Tanya is amazingly in tune with them and their ways. Leena is too, but she is mostly busy either reading a book, or crocheting, or doing some other activity. Tanya would join in the family discussions. Leena, on the other hand, only talked about this animal or that bird! The other topic that Leena would endlessly talk about was general trivia. She is full of trivia and keeps doling them out. Sometimes we stared jaw dropped, or sometimes we laughed, but it would get a little much after a while. Regardless, we all had a great time chit chatting our days away. It was the biggest highlight of our trip.

We came back refreshed and with a lot of material for me to work on this year as I move further into writing. Hoping for, and wishing you, a great year ahead.

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