This Thing Called Rakhi

(Published in First City magazine, September 2013). 

As the tinsel clamour of Dilli’s markets reaches astoundingly stampede-ready proportions in preparation for Rakshabandhan, I’m compelled to wonder: Rakhi must mean a lot to many women. Like money. Clothes. Jewellery. Money. Bhaiyya ka pyaar. Money.

For the longest time, it meant none of the above for me. While growing up, it always meant one of the two days in a year when my relatives would descend on my family’s happy little asocial rabbit hole. It meant having pesky little cousins in my hair; it meant being overwhelmed with the desire to zap them into maggots as I helplessly watched them perform third degree torture on my stuffed toys and run amok while knocking my Dilli Haat curios over with mighty abandon. It meant a preparatory week of holding my head in my hands as parents brainstormed over the Rakhi Lunch Menu in a pitched up version of their usual rugby-field-cheering-decibel-level argument. It meant trying not to look dead bored when the result was the yearly staple Matar Paneer.

What Rakhi really meant to me then, was that annual routine of home improvement and forced socialisation: dusting-plateswabbing-playacting-foodheating-PRtalking (the sequence varies mindbogglingly). And of course that horrible, horrible job next day, of climbing on the dining table to keep the cleaned and swabbed glass plates and cups and bowls back in the wall-mounted 'showcase' – that singular proof of our Dilli middle-class belonging (And invariably hitting my butt against the sharp edge of the dining chair's back while getting off the table. Butt-clutched hopping dances were also annual, hence.) Bhaiyya ka pyaar? Like, who cares.

I belong to a family that could tantalise all of Haryana with its army of daughters; family gatherings begin to resemble the Delhi Metro Ladies Coach very quickly. Each of us strong-willed, can-do-anything, ‘men?-what-men?’ ladies, can get together and make such incredible volcanic volumes of conversation, that it’s the menfolk who often need saving (especially when a Mars vs Venus type debate is underway). And so I never quite got the point of Rakhi (especially during my years of militant teenage feminism); I didn’t much get why my two male cousins were so prized this one day in the year. No, I didn’t quite get how the little devils could be of any use really, especially since the 'raksha' part of Rakshabandhan was more for me to execute, especially in case they caught hold of my phone and began announcing all the male names in contacts, or ruined my hair-do for the day (because men don’t ever get over the pull-hairband-and-run prank).

But then, one fine day Dilli changed it all for me. Because for the first time, I actually stepped out of the house on Rakhi, in full-full married avatar, trekking across the breadth of the city to reach our family’s Rakhi rendezvous home. And that day, I saw what Rakhi really meant to my Dilli. It was frightfully early in the morning, and men with big fat shiny tikaas and wrists loaded with spongy golden 3D rakhis, were revving the gears on their scooters - worshipped and robbed already. Riding pillion on each of the scooters and bikes I hate so much on Delhi roads (flitting in and out of my line of vision like flies, making me want to swat them), was a tip-top lady, holding a kid, or a bag stuffed with a gift, or both. The Ladies Coach of the Delhi Metro was like watching the colourful glass bits in a kaleidoscope: with each shift of bodies, the ladies made new mica-edged rainbow patterns.

And they were all shiny-sari-clad. If clothes were a song, theirs would be called Badan Pe Sitare Lapetey Huay. Rani-colour magenta, gerua peach, paalak green, kaccha peela, newbride-red: all colours of saris star-spangled with sequins and zari and mirrors and shiny threadwork. Accessorised with a golden paraandi, or a fake-stone-studded juda phool, or a earring that hangs like a heavily laden ornamental clothesline from ear to plait. I saw these shiny decked-up women everywhere. Dangling a foot from the back of a scooter hurtling at breakneck speed. Nursing a baby on a pavement next to her auto that broke down. Crossing the road like an experiment in solar refraction.

And I loved them. I imagined the planning that must have gone into their looks - incredible bargaining talent, trips to local tailors, wistful staring at plastic-wrapped outfits, mirror-frowning as they decided how much sindoor to load on their hair partings. In their slight leaning-balancing stances, their heavily liplined smiles, in their tight clutching of kids and bags, I imagined a quiet satisfaction - of having looked the way they wanted, of feeling pampered enough to last a year. Of feeling like a new self, other than their daily existence: something akin to glamorous, special. Woman-ly.

Strange are the ways in which Dilli softens the bits even I didn’t know were starchy stiff. Looking at these ladies softened my jaded heart towards this inane festival I've loved to hate all my life. To know that this day makes so many women feel like a million bucks; and gives them a chance to impossibly combine a homeward daytrip to their families with out-of-ordinary solaah shringar (and return with enough gifted moolah to finance some more dream looks). To know that there are big blocks of boredom being fashioned into fun on this day. To know that the protection this day really gives us ladies, is from forgetting we’re too good to be true. I almost forgave the world for the yearly drudgery of plate-swabbing. I almost began loving my stupid cousins for being my brothers.

Well. Almost.

WHAT’S KEEPING THE DILLIWALI SANE

Testing the limits of her arachibutyrophobia, that’s what. In plain, non show-offy speak, ‘the fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth’. Lately, the Dilliwali’s been vowing to quit pretending that Nutella and banana chips a good lunch maketh. Turns out not many things with happy weight-loss-inducing, wrinkle-reducing, bone-thickening, cancer-fighting ingredients are delicious. But one thing surely is: Pri’s All Organic HomeMade Peanut Butter. Made by Mumbai-wali Priya Pereira, this smooth, not-too-sweet, not-at-all oily peanut butter is almost like Snickers-in-a-Tub, minus the tyres around the belly. Comes to you home delivered via mail, in two varieties: chunky and smooth. Choose your sweetner options too with sugar/ sugarless or fancy-schmancy organic honey/ agave nectar variations!

Dilliwali ordered herself a 150 gm sugar & smooth pack and has been slapping dollops onto anything she can imagine: slathered on crisp toast, mixed into coconut chutney, sandwiched between crackers. It smells like yummy peanut burfi made by the nani-s of yore, and tastes almost as good as Nutella!

Priya makes the peanuty goodness (she calls in POPB) in various sizes (100 to 700 gms, Rs. 150 to 850), and ships it across in a well-sealed plastic box via courier (charges extra). You can buy it off her superbly accessible Facebook page, like the Dilliwali did: https://www.facebook.com/PrisOrganicPeanutButter.

(Swaati Chattopadhyay is a writer, dancer, compulsive analogy-weaver, who has a happily complicated relationship with her frog-in-a-Delhi-well life. There’s nothing she’d love more than a piece of your mind in her inbox, at delusionaldilliwali@gmail.com).