Dolly Koghar muses on those early days when pockets were small, but hearts were big!

We Punjabis, besides being loud, chatty and a hospitable lot, are also thick- blooded (i.e. cholesterol prone) foodies. All three characteristics well satiable over a cup or two, or more, of garma-garam masala chai, which is welcome any time of the day to any Indian; with every home boasting a unique brew, with their own signature blend of masalas. It’s also a given, to avoid acidity, that chai mustn’t be consumed without accompaniments – a little mithai or halwa, but with caution to diabetes, we skip the sugar in the tea. However, a savoury is a must, and what better than the chickpea-batter fritters, pakoras; whose taste varies from home to home and community to community? Pakoras are especially necessary if the gup-shup with whoever dropped in announced or unannounced is getting juicier, and we’re bashing and thrashing everything including the Maker of our destinies, after which like Pontius Pilate, we nonchalantly shake off the crumbs of the biskut and our guilt, by saying, sanoo kee, “not that I care nor does it concerns us,” closing our animated discussion with a 15-minute-long goodbye at the doorway.

But tea wasn’t just about a cuppa for the early Punjabi migrants who lived in Phahurat to be near the Guruduwara. Their small, simple, two-storey homes adjoining each other, lined the pratoo lek-lek (small iron gate), which has stayed as is, except the gate’s now been replaced with a vegetable vendor.

Whereas many other families, including the joint family into which I was born into, lived in similar homes next door, in pratoo lek-yai, the big iron gate, the entrance of which is the present ATM.

Our elders relished their early morning and evening chai on a thara, a rectangular wooden dais, placed immediately outside every home in both those lanes which served as a much-needed respite from the oppressively small homes and the many people living in it. That was where one sat and watched the passers-by and the drama unfold, and also where any neighbour who needed a shoulder to cry on or to do bak-bak with was welcome. It was on those very thara that we diapered-kakos; and the preferred and implored for, bare-bummed kakas, the boy babies; first sipped chai, from the edge of the saucers into which the adults had poured the piping-hot chai to cool it. This was way before we grew into the snobbish, ‘educated’ generation who’d turn up their noses and denounce it as a countryside and uneducated bumpkin, dihaatee, unpurr and gawaar mannerism!

But when I came across the poem “Drinking From The Saucer” by John Paul Moore, which is well worth a read, the simple ritual revealed the profound and humanitarian spirit that was the hallmark of our simple and uneducated elders. The few lines below well summarise this point:

As I go along my journey

I’m reaping better than I’ve sowed I’m drinking from the saucer

‘Cause my cup has overflowed…

…May we never be too busy

To help bear another’s load

Then we’ll all be drinking from the saucer

When our cups have overflowed

So, their spirit of sharing and caring wasn’t because of the size of their homes, which were tiny and shared by two or three generations; nor was it the size of their pockets; they were migrants and earned little, and very honestly, with the sweat of their brows. It was their expanded compassion and encompassing brotherhood which helped our community thrive and survive till where it is today. The tears and laughter of those migrants amalgamated as one, they joined their heads to crease out community discords, and they willingly opened their pockets and hearts to raise a dowry to help get the community daughter married off. No shortage or hurdle was too large to overcome; no one was alone, or forsaken or forlorn. Their cups were not large, neither were they overflowing, but they knew how to share; how to pour out a little from whatever little, however meagre it was, to help their neighbours tide over their moment of difficulty, something everybody faces some time or another.