Summer haze on hiatus!

My fellow blogger just wrote a post today that I felt inspired by read it here, she raised the topic of family care in the US. She had a couple of people commenting how cruel we are in the west not taking care of elders and having no family values. This is actually a common stereotype many Indians have about people living in the West, and no they make no distinction of culture and country, the WEST is one big mean entity filled with evil and sexy corrupted girls running in their underwear stealing money from their too soon divorced husband and young people locking their elderly parents away…if that was so simple!

What those Indians going strong on the nasty family values and too individualistic nature of the Western world often fail to understand is that just because it’s culturally different from what you grew up used to doesn’t make it evil, because then boy oh boy I could go on and on about things around here too and fall into the stereotype and bashing game they often submit my fellow westerner.

So let’s talk Western culture for a moment shall we? We’ve been blamed of being individualistic in nature like it was a disease rather than a positive thing, mostly because we live in nuclear families and enjoy the hard earned fruit of our labour instead of supporting elders. First, just because we don’t support elders the way it is done in India doesn’t mean there is no support at all. In Switzerland every working citizen give a chunk of their income into a national pension plan called “AVS”, it’s withdrawn at the source by the employer and paid to the national fund. The money taken to working people serves to pay the pension of those who are retired right now, when the working citizen retire the national pension fund will calculate how many years that person worked and paid the “premium” and pay him that money back, money that will be given by the next generation of working people. The system has one flaw because right now my generation still pays for senior citizens that never contributed to the fund because it’s got introduced a few decades ago. People have less kids nowadays and the unemployment rate is higher, meaning that when my generation retires there will be less people in their youth working to fund us. not that it is the whole point here, the point being that even if we don’t look like we are supporting the elderly we actually do, just because people in India don’t know the depht of the system abroad doesn’t mean we are insensitive cruel individualistic people.
Because if you want to talk nasty individualism, I’ve seen some in India, where people take the law into their own hand to serve them personally and nobody else, decide that for some reason they are entitled to bigger windows in a high rise building they can just alter the outer structure of the building to suits them 9if you don’t believe me go see what the phase 2 of the NRI complex in Navi Mumbai looks like, it’s dreadful), and that because they perceive themselves of higher social status or caste or possibly both they can just push through a crowd, litter and inconvenience everybody else. That my dear is evil individualism, and yes it occurs in India, so much for being better than the West you point your finger at huh? In fact I am willing to bet that those who travelled abroad saw much more civism, and cleanliness and respect for the common good there than here, but we are diverting from the topic of family ties and I don’t want to engage in a West vs India match in matter of individualism.

I remember being in a discussion with my sister in law in Delhi once, about college education and how in Switzerland and yes in US even more than in my home land kids WORK to pay their tuition fees. She commented it was unfair and that parents must bear the full cost. Sure in India this is how it is done, there are child pans, savings and parents having different priorities. That doesn’t make the West cruel. The culture is different, and it starts with the whole school system. India has a school system more focused on learning fact as such by heart and repeating them in the exam, it’s a very result oriented system. The system in many a European country is more focused on HOW the kid reached the result, they want to see how the child thought and figured out the answer, and encourage kids to think outside the box to get to it. No one system is better than the other, in fact if you want a something superior you should blend the western system with the Indian one equally. But that doesn’t change the fact that kids are given independence to think on their own and manage by themselves, and that includes parents making their offspring financially responsible early too. Allowances are usually given at an early age, and what falls under the personal management of the child with said allowance along with it. Generally it starts with a few Swiss francs a week to buy you own trinkets and candies, when you run out of money, parents don’t foot the bill for more candies, so you learn to set your priorities “Do I really need to buy so many candies when they prevent me from buying my favourite comic book?” As kids grow so does the allowance, and so does the responsibilities, that’s when you start realising that no mom and dad will not buy you that 50CHF doll, but that if you manage your money the right way you might be able to get it in 2-3 months, or less if you offer to help do the chores around the house and get an incentive. Now don’t go telling me that it is evil to tell your kids that everything has a price and that one must work for it? It is also perceived that we are all rich in the West, what those uttering these words do not realise is that the cost of life is higher, and we are obligated to pay loads of social insurances straight out of our gross income before it hits our bank account. In the State of Geneva when I was working that was 10% taken at the source, and then there is still 20-30% that goes into income tax (I don’t remember the exact figure, I was a minimal wager so exempted from income tax), you also are compelled to have a private medical insurance, and a civil insurance (covering any accidental damage you might cause to others). Each member in your household has to have their own medical insurance with a separate premium. Once you paid all the bills, there isn’t much left for frivolities. Beside most parents and grandparents open a saving account for their kiddos that cannot be touched until they turn 18, so some of the money is there to pay for college, but it’s never enough, and one need to work…that’s how it works in the West, it’s different, not cruel and insensitive.

Then there is the still hot topic of senior citizens, as already stated, we support them even if is not obvious. And some people in India call us mean monsters for putting our parents in retirement homes. First thing first NOT all senior citizens are in homes, many still live in their own home and function well. And all the senior citizens I know who went to a retirement home did so out of free will. They want to go because they feel they can’t function alone and want to be in the company of peers and not have to worry about cooking meals and have medical personnel on site, have activities planned for them the whole day long and enjoy their golden years to the fullest possible. And they know it would not be fair to ask their kids to work all day to support them and then cook and entertain them in the evening, beside many elders are fully aware that even if you close your eyes really hard you will not make the generation gap go away, in a retirement homes they get to be with people born in the same era, who know what the great depression was like, how WW2 affected them personally, and nobody can blame them or their kids for allowing them to be among like minded peers, just try fitting in a place where you don’t get any sense of belonging, even if you have your kids with you.

When DH was on assignment in  Switzerland in 2008 he told me many time how amazing it looked to him to see senior citizens out in the world, going swimming, socialising, going to cafes, joining book clubs, going on bus excursions with people their age, not letting a thing such as a walking cane confine them home.
he was particularly amazed by my maternal Grand mother who is turning 82 this year, who suffered a massive pancreas inflammation in 2005 along with the removal of a cancerous tumour on the kidney, and has mild heart problem and Parkinson, a widow still living on her own, still cooking, doing grocery shopping, meeting her friends at the cafe daily, going for a long walk everyday, going on mini trips with a cousin several times a year, playing cards, scrabble and reading. She never let her age dictate what she could do or not do, and certainly not health issues tell her she was too old. Same with the mother of one of my friend he saw still going for a swim in her pool ever morning and tending to her garden the whole day at 85, this lady lives in her own house next door to her daughter…so much for Westerner not living near their parents huh?
He hasn’t met my other Grand Ma who is also turning 82 this year, and was still skiing in her 60’s until she broke her leg, but she still goes to the municipal pool in the Summer to swim a mile a day, goes on excursions with her friends, tend to her vegetable garden, play cards, go to cafe, do all of her cooking and household chores alone. She has one son in Portugal, one living in the next town and my dad who is right now in New Zealand enjoying his own retirement touring the world on his sailboat, he has been at it since 2007 and it has been his life long dream to do so, he saved his whole life for this one trip, not letting age dictate anything either, granted he got an earl retirement for being in the police corps for 30 years.
To DH it sounded amazing, because in his own family and the India he knew, people start complaining they are old at 60 and use it as an excuse to stay home and do nothing, or limit their trips or to start planning living with a son in another city even if they hate the idea of leaving their city, simply because they are over 60. Never mind they are over 60 and in the pink of health and not a single aliment in sight. In the India he grew up in he was left to think you are old at 60 and need support at all cost, and that you can’t go travelling the world anymore. To him it was an eye opener as to how it is perceived we treat our elders in the west and how it really is.  He will tell you that thinking one is old at 60 is now idiotic enough.

So just because we do things in the West, doesn’t mean we are cruel, heartless value less people, each society function differently, and one must adapt to it, so let’s put this stereotype about westerners not caring for their family shall we?

Tiffin! One of these words that couldn’t scream India any louder. To all the non initiated this is the name commonly given to a packed meal nowadays, and a little digging had me found out this was actually a British word derived from an old slang word to describe the light meal eaten at tea time. The British left India but the word remained behind, and is said to describe any light meal, though frankly in 8.5 years in India I never heard the name in that context at all, see the tiffin describe a packed meal of any size that one take to work or school or on a trip, and more commonly refers to the box in which the meal is carried, which wasn’t what the original British slang was about but how the word has evolved nonetheless. In fact I am willing the original use of the word has died in UK as well and has therefore become an Indian term.
As a Swiss the notion of having a lunch packed to go to work is pretty foreign to me, of course I heard it from friends in the US where it is done, but in Switzerland until recently, people went home to have their lunch, courtesy of the housewife making sure kiddos and husband had a sit down meal in the comfort of their home before heading back to work. The French term for the lunch box is “Gamelle” or “Cantine” and is a typical blue collar term, no one eats out of that thing if they can afford it, and the only time a housewife will actually break out the Tupperware boxes will be to go to a Summer family picnic, or at least it was so in my childhood, because economy oblige, very few are those who can have a family on just one income in my homeland, and with two parents working, nobody really want to cook a meal during their lunch break, so kiddos eat in the lunch meal program in some school, and older kids or get lunch money to buy the plate of the day in the cafeteria or bring their own lunch in a plastic box, which due to the lack of cultural tradition hasn’t been nicknamed to anything cute, no one will use the two blue collar word to refer to their packed meal though, because they are looked as degrading and pejorative. And truth be told, we pack a lunch only in the hot days where a salad or a sandwich is substantial enough, in Winter, we break the bank to get something warm tossed on a plate in the canteen or a local cafe if we can’t go home for lunch.

In India, the distances are often too big to allow one to get home for lunch, not to mention the lunch break significantly shorter, so much so that packing a lunch is no big deal. Your most common tiffin box is likely to look like this:

3-4 stainless steel containers that are stackable and held by a clamp together, the cheapest consist of just the steel container, the most sophisticated one have an insulated outer box to slide the containers in as it is the case with one of ours, this way it keeps the meal warm-ish between the morning packing time and the lunch time, ours has a small plastic container to put on top to keep the chapatti in. DH used this one for years, but recently started complaining it was leaking, smelling and half of the time the food tasted funny by the time he opened it so we upgraded for this one:

Tupperware had to have tiffin solutions in this country, and DH keeps raving about it, it’s leak proof, smell proof, and because they are plastic containers I don’t need to heat the food to put it in, he can microwave it in office, which we suspect contribute to keep the food fresh longer. Gone the complaints of funny smelling food and dal spillage, beside DH says the little carry bag looks really smart too…his words!

And if you have kids chances are you have some of these around:

The kid’s tiffin is smaller, and rarely contain a full meal as kids have lunch after coming back from school, so these typically contain a snack, which by western standard would be called a lunch, but as I came to know over the years Indians don’t think a Sandwich or a salad is substantial enough to qualify as a lunch.
Ishita being Dora crazy, I got her that one first, to ease her transition into playschool, never mind that she is in school for just 2 hours a day, they do enforce snack time to teach kids table manners, and a tiffin must be sent along with the kiddo daily. On most day I put cut fruits and sandwiches in hers, they tried enforcing a set menu, but for some reason they stopped. The Dora box is great for dry snacks and sandwiches, but leaks if anything remotely wet is put in, so we bought another smaller pink one for that when the set menu was asking us to put idli and sambar in the box.
Now with the Summer break having started for some schools, stores across the country have started selling the back to school stuff to spoil the fun, and by June every shops and supermarkets will have a huge selection of kid’s tiffin for sale, generic ones for those not brand conscious which isn’t the majority, and Dora, Ben 10, Spiderman, Lightning Mc Queen, Hannah Montana and the Disney princesses for those who are, along with the matching water bottle (called sipper).
As a parent the easiest task being to find a box your kid will like, but the toughest remain: what to put in said box that will still look appetizing at snack time, that your kid will like and that will not be considered offensive to the school as many enforce a strictly veg rule, meaning no meat sandwich and nothing containing eggs, in order to make sure no kiddos belonging to a strict diet family accidentally take a bite of something religiously offensive such as a home made muffin made with egg in the batter.

Life is blissfully uneventful, the Summer haze has got to me and probably made my muse drowsy as well. yet I refuse to just let the blog without regular update, and since I have no hot topic to write about, no crazy events to report, I decided to take inspiration from a friend of mine who posted picture of her pantry cabinets and just show you what lies in a pantry of an expat married to an Indian living in India, I would have done my fridge as well, but it’s not as photogenic as my cabinets just now…one day maybe.
So here we go:

The lower shelf contains all things dal and a few essential, we have all kind of lentils, yet DH swears only by toor dal, my maid keeps asking if he isn’t bored of it though, in summer I find Indian food way too heavy for my tummy so I don’t eat much of it, but in winter I do ask her to cook other types of dal, DH be damned because I agree with her, toor dal is boring, she makes a mean black eyed pea dish. Of course I know how to cook myself, but it makes no sense to cook dal for just one person when there is already a box filled with another kind.
The spray lite cooking spray is my latest find, it makes cooking French toasts, omelettes and sunny side ups with far less fat content. And since discovering red organic poha flakes last year, that’s the only one I go for, no more white starchy poha flakes for me thank you very much, I still prefer my own poha recipe over my maid’s one, so I cook that one myself, I love mine with TONS of curry leaves, and cashew nuts instead of peanuts, and once the dish is ready I top it with a generous amount of coriander leaves so that mine looks fresh and green.

Now for a better view of my top shelf:

A few more jars of pulses, vermicelli and some maida, I also keep the ghee up there because I don’t want the maid to be tempted and add it to everything, Maggi noodles because no Indian household is complete without a pack around, Italian pasta, Asian rice vermicelli, lasagna sheets, two packs of instant soups for these light dinners, complan because DH grew up on it, Nutella because that’s a taste from my childhood, peanut butter because having the same stuff on your bread all the time is boring. A can of tuna fish because it goes well in a sandwich or in a salad in these hot Summer days, and Kinder Joy because my daughter picked it up, my stash of dried Shiitake mushroom is shrinking, and I guess I’ll have to wait next winter to get more because it seems to be a seasonal thing in our local supermarket.
Interesting fact about the Nescafe jar, DH bought it in South Africa when he was staying there for 3 weeks, and brought it back, that was in 2009 and we still have some left, I don’t drink coffee, Dh does occasionally and swears it still tastes fine. I say under no circumstance does Nescafe ever taste remotely good…oh well.

Let’s move to my countertop spice rack, fashioned out of Styrofoam blocks I might add:

has all the basics for Indian cooking and continental cooking, Including my olive oil and two type of vinegars for my salads, I keep saying I should get something better to arrange all my spices and herbs, this is a work in progress.
A lot of spices are in pantry cabinet number 2 :

More spices and herbs on the bottom shelves, and cashew nuts and almonds which is a particular favourite in our household. The ready to fry namkeen stuff never get’s fried in our home, we microwave a handful at a time for 1 minutes and we have a oil less air pooped snack ready.

The top shelf in that cabinet is quite boring and messy:

Oats which we eat often, medicines (including the brandy bottle) my stash of yeast from Switzerland, and a jar full of cornflakes I now think I should throw away because we never eat these unless DH has a cornflakes phase, which hasn’t happened since last June.

I have other bigger pantry cabinets full of my bigger stock of non perishable, but I always transfer small amount of said food to the cabinets mentioned above, so their content is irrelevant, two giant steel canister contain my rice and atta in one of these below counter shelves.

As I said an uninspired blog entry, now you know what is in my pantry, if you were curious about it anyway.