It was in the end of September,
The kashmir trip i still remember,
The thought of going to the heaven on earth made me feel so excited,
I was happy and delighted,
Our eyes filled with enthusiasm and hope,
And to kashmir we wanted to lope,
Just the twelve of us,
There wouldn't be any ruckus or fuss,
We were accompanied by ma'am Handa and Mr. Pandey,
We enjoyed everything from gondola rides to our house boat stay,
We went to places like Sonamarg and Pahalgam,
We'd get tired reach the hotel and apply Jhandu balm,
We enjoyed all our horse rides,
We were accompanied by well-versed guides,
We always managed to take out time for shopping,
From shop to shop we went hopping,
Kashmiri kawah and authentic Kashmiri food for almost every meal,
Would make the tiredness for long distance walking heal,
A Kashmiri wedding is also what we attended,
For back and forth rides on shikara we depended,
Oh! But to sum up I have to say,
In kashmir we loved it each and everyday.

Dal Lake

I float on Dal Lake
Suspended
between the thick soupy crisp air of soldiers
water lilies, Kashmiri bread
and the Muslim prayers
that penetrate the hardness of war
chanting Allah Bismallah
Floating Islam
Holy words drenching the air
Drenching the green cloth of Hindu soldiers
Sliding down the cool metal of a rifle
9 years of war
1,000 houseboats lie empty
in the Himalayan fog
Intricately carved furniture
Thick with dust
and the powder of blood and bullets

Himalayan silhouette etched black
against the song of lotus gatherers
Foggy voices like cloud of moon
Lotus lake
Gray of war and desperation
Children beg
1 rupee
1 rupee
1 rupee
Endless monologue
Parched like lotus shaped paddle
They throw flowers to me
endlessly
I throw them back
endlessly

Time passes slowly
like smoke on a lizard’s tail
trailing in the thick, rancid air
of burning meat and maple leaves
Like a shikara
moving over the glass of Kashmir

The sound of a dozen Bangees
floating over the water
Hollow, solemn and mournful
Echoing against the hardness
of the surrounding mountains
The circle of Himalayas
Like a womb
around the prayers of Pachin

In the middle of the lake
I hear the call to prayer
Azan Nemarz Suba
Azan Nemarz Pashin
Azan Nemarz Degar
Azan Nemarz Sham
Azan Nemarz Koftan
From dawn till dusk

Azan
4 mosques
4 singers
4 directions
staggered by a breath
like an imperfect echo

Azan slips into the pockets of island soldiers
Waters the impatience of soldiers on the shore
Steals into the vacant eyes of soldiers in the Mosque
They want to go home to their wives and children
They want to leave the place of prayer, which is not theirs
The place of prayer, which has seen death
The place where God was pushed out
In order to not see the killing
To **** what they don’t see
The place, which was no longer a refuge

Outside

Dal Lake turns to the color of red lentils
cooking in a dented metal ***
In the Shikara boat we eat dal and rice
and throw scraps into the silver water
where it washes up
onto the ***** boots of a soldier
I hear the dull gray click, click of his rifle
as it touches the ground

The prayers have ended

To speak all these languages:
Assamese, Bengali, Bodo,
Chhattisgarhi, Dogri , Garo -

Oh, to be able to tongue, "Love"
in Gajarati, Hini, Kannada, Kashmiri,
Khasi,  Kokborok, Konkani -

Or lip, "Desire" in
Maithili,  Malayalam,  Manipuri,  Marathi,  Mizo,  Nepali -

Or whisper, "Good night, Dear"
in Oriya, Punjabi,  Sanskrit,
Santali,  Sindhi, Telugu, Tamil, or Urdu.

I was good at numbers
I was called to count dead
I was good at loom
I was asked to weave shrouds
I was good at tilling land
I was drafted to dig graves

not drunk enough to listen to classical music,
i dwell in stinking bogs of cheese and pop,
gorgon zoella and tartan elbow patches
on my suede dinner jacket persona.

london, the great stink of 1858,
even the mayor of the city of london opposed
bazalgette's proposal for sewers,
saying he knew more about perfumery
than the parisian prostitutes,
said: '**** stinks for applause!'
well, we didn't get applause from the public,
but a mexican wave of some aztec king
playing the puppets of arousal:
monetaryzoomah the 2nd...
well there's that my sudden compromise:
i always loved organic chemistry,
i was really good at it,
but organic chemistry seemed futile in theory
with too much emphasis on tic-tac-toe
of those migrating diagrams,
trying to enforce the atomic visible
represented by C (carbon) attached to H (hydrogen)
with a tail of a carboxylic categorisation
O= (doubly bonded oxygen) and OH (the alcohol
bit), ****** futile... i just loved cooking
anaemic potions of clear like water,
sometimes scented, sometimes like sulphuric chick farts,
it was basically cooking, i didn't like physical
or inorganic chemistry, actually, university
almost felt like a museum, we weren't students
we were tourists, we were showed the basics,
the impracticalities of later application,
i was never asked to make a bottle of shampoo,
or a toothpaste, or a perfume, i was asked to
recreate theories and cul de sacs of application,
yet actual chemistry is your hoarding of chemical
products in the bathroom: starting with bleach...
never learned how to make bleach...
shame really... the workforce of chemists isn't
given a fair start, no mechanic implication:
ok ok, i'm not into having an existential crisis
in my early twenties, can you just make me robotic
so i can provide the instruments of dentistry
and hairdressing? no? well, here comes an existential
crisis aged 21...
but organic chemistry is still the bomb...
like that onion i smashed after it was dipped
in liquid nitrogen... felt like moses with the two
tablets thrown onto the ground... or a pirate's X...
here...
            it will begin and end *here.
so every time i cook i think of an organic chemistry
experiment, although i've learned that cooking
is a more colourful chemistry, and poly-scented too,
today i made shanghai style braised pork belly
(CHONG SHAO ROU),
sugar, light and dark soya sauce, kashmiri chilli powder,
ginger-garlic paste (plenty of it), spring onions,
oil, balsamic vinegar (good if you don't have shaoxing
rice wine, same ****, different cover)...
cup or two of water... and then watching the water
evaporate and all the active ingredients starting to
cling to the pork belly slices, making it look
as if coated in glistening flour... nunchuks finger licking
smooth... yeah, i eat chinese cuisine using
nunchuks rather than chop sticks...
even comrade mao tse-tung would approve,
after al chong shao rou was his favourite dish.
in addition: **** remembering poems and scaring
children... remember recipes; job done.

In the seventies
we brought back silks and saris
hot with colours
that shocked the nights
Punjabi embroidery
on cheesecloth kaftans
mirror glittered skirts
that were spun with light
Kashmiri shawls
and Afghani dancing dresses
arms full of bracelets
silver and brass
enameled and etched
and singing with ***
rings of Ivory, sapphire and jet
necklaces of jade and threaded apple seeds
rain forest timber bowls
white marble boxes from Agra
with precious inlay stones
our little Taj Mahals
we wandered the globe
like a magical village
of lovers and
and came back
with backpacks of dreaming
and hope.


© M.L.Emmett

I like your eyes, nose and teeth
Glowing face with kashmiri cheeks
Blossom skin from head to feet
Thirty four, twenty nine, very sleek
Divine aroma, beautiful feast
Making me drowsy, heavenly sneak
Let us play, hide and seek
Beauty is lustrous, making me freak
I like your eyes, nose and teeth
Glowing face with kashmiri cheeks

beyond the whiskey
and the beer drank along the familiar
path, with memory stressed
as to no accomplished ego coupling,
drunk indeed,
but rehearsing the familiar path
that thought de-activates
and there's less of identifiers required.*

in terms of gambling,
in familial setting,
betted:

watford (21-20) home to newcastle
(5-2), QPR (6-5) against wolves (9-5 to win),
barnsley v. rochdale (draw at 11-5),
chesterfield v. millwall (to win, 11-8),
oldham v. bury (draw at 21-10),
port vale v. bratford (home-side 8-5),
coventry (13-10) away winning against southend (13-8),
plymouth (11-5) against bristol rovers (evs),
accrington (13-10) against exeter (13-8) too,
manfield (6-5) winning against luton (9-5),
portsmouth drawing with oxford united (21-10),
wycombe with leyton orient (11-5) too,
yeovil beating crawley (13-10),
dundee utd. losing to kilmarnock (11-5) -
scots wish me luck,
motherwell drawing with ross county (19-10),
brochin losing to aidrie (11-10),
montrose winning over clyde (9-5),
hamilton losing to edinburgh's hearts (6-5),
finally...
burnley overcoming derby (13-10).

if i got all nineteen right, i betted 2 quid
and won a million,
split it down the middle with my father,
bet for two quid, quid each, half a million each.
my father is a cautious gambler,
bets spare change to get pennies for a million
exchange, i only desire serious alcoholism,
i am a true scot between the two pulling
two pence apart to create copper wiring,
scots are the jews of the north, after all:
i don't gamble, i play chance,
the chances of me being prophetic about five
football scores will be a, a ref. to the guinness book
of records.

i aimed high today, feminism still hasn't the foggiest
of house husbands, lazy lions,
it's still thursday pay-cheque day for the women,
i can cook a killer korma (added late
grind cashews), and a serial killer kashmiri masala curry,
organic chemistry experiments 12h a week will do that to you,
you'll enjoy cookbooks more than chemistry textbooks,
too many esters i say, spices v. perfumes, your choice
the pakistani in my off-license looked amazed i was wearing
hindu perfumes after having cooked a meal he could
recognise that wasn't a concentrate of strawberries:
find a needle in a haystack, yes... find a berry in a haystack...
no.

i love hindi cuisine, much aroma that deviates from
what europeans claim to be aromatic:
pig sweat and oxen salivate a taste for synthetic
odours when an analysis of cardamon justifies aplenty
likewise: what opens necessary porous areas
of the skin as necessarily sweet
does not necessarily invoke a sweetness for the tongue
to match: fat cows better than anorexia voodoo
of *******-champagne girls i'd tell you.

Did you know the East Indian Bottle Masala includes as many as 27 spices, or that an oil-free pickle served at their weddings is actually known as Wedding Pickle?

These and many such authentic East Indian masalas and pickles are available at East Indian Cozinha (Portuguese for kitchen), a food store started by Christina Kinny at Kolovery Village in Kalina, Santacruz. "I started East Indian Cozinha with an attempt to preserve and highlight our cuisine and culture," says the 24-year old, who has studied Masters in Social Work and currently, works with an enterprise that helps tribal farmers.

What’s in store?

Going back 500 years, the East Indian cuisine enjoys influences from Portuguese, British and Maharashtrian fare. The staples include rice, coconut, tamarind, fish and meats, with spices forming an integral part of the cuisine. For instance, Prawn Atola is a dry dish comprising prawns coated only with Vindaloo Masala featuring Kashmiri chilli, cumin and turmeric. "Most people from our community were farmers and would be out on field all day. So, the masalas and lemon would help preserve their food for a longer time," reasons Kinny.

At present, the store stocks six varieties of masala in 100g bottles (R150 onwards). These include Khuddi or Bottle Masala, Chinchoni (fish) Masala, Vindaloo Masala, Roast Rub, Kujit Masala and Tem Che Rose. She also offers Wedding Pickle, an oil-free variety prepared with raw papaya, carrots and dry dates. "All the recipes have been passed on from generations and are homemade," she informs.

However, making the masalas is no cakewalk. "It takes three days to dry spices under the sun. Then, we hand pound them and pack them tightly in bottles with wider openings," says Kinny. She recalls that in her grandmother’s time, the masalas were tightly stuffed in beer bottles. The bottles were darker, and hence, helped preserve the masala for at least a year, at room temperature.

Lugra love

East Indian Cozinha also stocks traditional 10-yard saris known as lugras. These are hand embroidered by Kinny’s mother, Carol. Previously made only from cotton with authentic gold borders, now, lugras are embroidered with sequins and threads. "She has been in the garment industry for the last 30 years. She also makes traditional accessories like kapotas (earrings), karis (hair pins), anklets, etc," informs Kinny.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses

Difficult to say it is a crisis of faith

Deadlock stubbornly cracked

Divide intensified with fact so backed

****** is truth, lost memory's wraith

"Who's to blame?" as so often "they" saith


Forget this daft idyllic hope, loyalty

To nothing has my life compared

And as most humans, no heartache spared

No limits to its reverence and constancy

As God shapeshifted, any form but royalty


Kings of Kings, my Makers, Lords on High

Omnipotent theories to query

Over verses I've traveled, all but Kashmiri

Reasonably these to view before bye-bye

Off I am to Pir Panjal, where I shall quake and die

As I got up on a chilly morning,
Scraping my eyes – hankering to sleep more,
I looked through the window-pane,
To find rain drops fall again !!

Some drops went tumbling on the ground,
And making puddles all around !!
The rain was falling down in sheets,
Spellbound and hypnotized, my heart skipped beats !!

Wind was misted up with cold air,
And a hot cup of sheer chai (kashmiri tea) was waiting near !!
Before I could take in a little sip,
And touch the cup to my bottom lip…
Shucks ~ The honking vehicle shattered it all,
To find that there was no rainfall !!

(And I woke up to the reality – sunny day outside, finding myself sweating in Mysore NOT treating myself to my favorite Kashmiri Tea !!!)

Life is like a recipe
Each one lives it
With a different taste
Some might be too hot
Like green chillies
Some might be too sweet
Like gulab jamoons
Some might be too red
Like Kashmiri chilli
Some might be too sour
Like tamarind
Some might be hot n sweet
Like hot tomato ketchup
Some might be sweet n sour
Like mixed chat
Whatever flavours added
It is in our tongue
To enjoy the Recipe !!