Since political correctness is a malady for our times, let me say in defense of what I'm about to say next that I'm being ironic and not negative.
Doing more with less is a nice catchphrase the developed world uses; for those of us who grew up outside, that was in our DNA.
If you've lived in the US for some time, wander into your pantry or storage closet. Very likely, you will come across a 3-ring pack of Heinz ketchup or maybe a 4 can set of shower scrub or a 5 pack Gillette shaving gel. And you have a situation there not unlike the Chicago university motto: Where fun comes to die.
That pantry and closet situation is you stocking up for a rainy day [if you live in San Antonio] or a snowless winter month [if you’re in Chicago]. Sorry, not trying to be sarcastic. Actually, trying to be very sarcastic. To come to the point, that situation is a sure way to more acquisition because imagine staring at and using the same type of shampoo or scrub year after year. You're bound to lose it and when you do, just a single bottle of the new brand will not do. Because if you happen to like it, you’d rather save by buying mega and have it in stock too, correct?
Cut from a Costco lifestyle to the more austere one many of us have grown up in. If you were brought up in middle-class India, odds are your uncle used an idukki/ kitchen tong to eke the last dredge of life out of a toothpaste tube! If not your own family, the domestic help (‘baai’) who worked in multiple apartments {network of baiis were like the news feed of the real world before Facebook, weren’t they?} may have gossiped to you about which family beat the crap out of the poor tube. It’s not that we could not afford to stock up; it’s just how we chose to live.
Drinking filter coffee each morning began with the ritual of stepping outside to buy the milk. If you instead cared for a wake-up call in the morning, you signed up with the doodhwallah and the 5AM harsh ringing of the doorbell would be milk announcing itself [It could also be someone milked dry, as in my brother the Chartered Accountant returning home after pulling 24 hrs at his Tax firm].
More out of less. The mind easily wanders to some time spent in Gujarat – a three wheeler /rickshaw, rickety and almost tottering, yet carrying 8 passengers when the safe capacity is 4. And that’s not a melah act or performance I’m talking about but just the daily evening ritual of transporting employees from remote textile units back to the train station and on to civilization.
Doing more with moru. 'Moru' in Tamil means buttermilk and no one embodied the doing more philosophy in the kitchen than my diminutive, darling granny. Making dahi or yoghurt at home would certainly ring a bell for many of us. What may not be as common is that after the first setting of the yoghurt, it was possible to magically transform that, in smaller batches, into different tastes and textures. And that’s exactly the kind of kitchen voodoo that paathi [granny] specialized in. I liked my thayru [yoghurt] a bit bitter and others at home could care less, slightly sweet was perfectly fine with them. In the hands of the moru magician, the different taste needs were no problem at all. She was slightly OCPD too, a neat freak and in her kitchen, food [especially dahi] could never go waste. It would be progressively whittled down into smaller and smaller containers in the fridge. If the ‘cling wrap’ had been invented then, I’m sure she would have used that to organize yoghurt in different spoons. In the hands of my granny, the master cook, that would indeed be the 'perfect bite'. As I picture her now, scurrying around in the kitchen at my uncle's home in Chennai, the sadness of outliving her beloved daughter weighing heavily on those little shoulders, I wish I could hug her every morning for all that she did for mom and our family.
But we easily made exceptions to doing more with less, didn’t we? If you're a South Indian, you know your mom or aunt could easily get through 4 or 5 cups of filter coffee every morning. Each cup was from freshly made decoction concentrate. To call that excess, now that would be sacrilege. And then the sweets and savories during Diwali, talk about going overboard. Tins, no, drums of laddus and ‘mixtures’, enough not just for the family for Diwali but enough to supply even near-and-dear ones for a month.
In conclusion, my point sadly is, I don’t have a point. And it’s into the weekend and I'm slacking, and so I’m not going to be forced into taking a position. But between the developing and developed world, between needing and wanting, between teasing out toothpaste and Costco-like excess, at least lucky for a life both simple and rich.
Doing more with less is a nice catchphrase the developed world uses; for those of us who grew up outside, that was in our DNA.
If you've lived in the US for some time, wander into your pantry or storage closet. Very likely, you will come across a 3-ring pack of Heinz ketchup or maybe a 4 can set of shower scrub or a 5 pack Gillette shaving gel. And you have a situation there not unlike the Chicago university motto: Where fun comes to die.
That pantry and closet situation is you stocking up for a rainy day [if you live in San Antonio] or a snowless winter month [if you’re in Chicago]. Sorry, not trying to be sarcastic. Actually, trying to be very sarcastic. To come to the point, that situation is a sure way to more acquisition because imagine staring at and using the same type of shampoo or scrub year after year. You're bound to lose it and when you do, just a single bottle of the new brand will not do. Because if you happen to like it, you’d rather save by buying mega and have it in stock too, correct?
Cut from a Costco lifestyle to the more austere one many of us have grown up in. If you were brought up in middle-class India, odds are your uncle used an idukki/ kitchen tong to eke the last dredge of life out of a toothpaste tube! If not your own family, the domestic help (‘baai’) who worked in multiple apartments {network of baiis were like the news feed of the real world before Facebook, weren’t they?} may have gossiped to you about which family beat the crap out of the poor tube. It’s not that we could not afford to stock up; it’s just how we chose to live.
Drinking filter coffee each morning began with the ritual of stepping outside to buy the milk. If you instead cared for a wake-up call in the morning, you signed up with the doodhwallah and the 5AM harsh ringing of the doorbell would be milk announcing itself [It could also be someone milked dry, as in my brother the Chartered Accountant returning home after pulling 24 hrs at his Tax firm].
More out of less. The mind easily wanders to some time spent in Gujarat – a three wheeler /rickshaw, rickety and almost tottering, yet carrying 8 passengers when the safe capacity is 4. And that’s not a melah act or performance I’m talking about but just the daily evening ritual of transporting employees from remote textile units back to the train station and on to civilization.
Doing more with moru. 'Moru' in Tamil means buttermilk and no one embodied the doing more philosophy in the kitchen than my diminutive, darling granny. Making dahi or yoghurt at home would certainly ring a bell for many of us. What may not be as common is that after the first setting of the yoghurt, it was possible to magically transform that, in smaller batches, into different tastes and textures. And that’s exactly the kind of kitchen voodoo that paathi [granny] specialized in. I liked my thayru [yoghurt] a bit bitter and others at home could care less, slightly sweet was perfectly fine with them. In the hands of the moru magician, the different taste needs were no problem at all. She was slightly OCPD too, a neat freak and in her kitchen, food [especially dahi] could never go waste. It would be progressively whittled down into smaller and smaller containers in the fridge. If the ‘cling wrap’ had been invented then, I’m sure she would have used that to organize yoghurt in different spoons. In the hands of my granny, the master cook, that would indeed be the 'perfect bite'. As I picture her now, scurrying around in the kitchen at my uncle's home in Chennai, the sadness of outliving her beloved daughter weighing heavily on those little shoulders, I wish I could hug her every morning for all that she did for mom and our family.
But we easily made exceptions to doing more with less, didn’t we? If you're a South Indian, you know your mom or aunt could easily get through 4 or 5 cups of filter coffee every morning. Each cup was from freshly made decoction concentrate. To call that excess, now that would be sacrilege. And then the sweets and savories during Diwali, talk about going overboard. Tins, no, drums of laddus and ‘mixtures’, enough not just for the family for Diwali but enough to supply even near-and-dear ones for a month.
In conclusion, my point sadly is, I don’t have a point. And it’s into the weekend and I'm slacking, and so I’m not going to be forced into taking a position. But between the developing and developed world, between needing and wanting, between teasing out toothpaste and Costco-like excess, at least lucky for a life both simple and rich.
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