#SoCS June 6/2020

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “fan.” Use it by itself or find a word that starts or ends with it. Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!

I am sitting in our verandah, under the fan which is rotating at a good speed. I like the sound of the movement of the fan. Our verandah is enclosed one, with grills on three sides. It is windy and my husband asks me why do I need a fan when there is such good wind from outside? I smile. Till last week the weather was very hot and the fan did not help all that much but somehow we have never liked an AC.

And fan reminds me of the time when our grandson was three or four months. The moving blades of the fan made him smile. He would keep smiling to see it revolve. And when we were talking to our daughter and grandchildren by WhatsApp video call our granddaughter would become excited to see the ceiling fan. They live in Germany and there are no ceiling fans in their house.

I am reminded of roasting plantains in the embers in the kitchen in our village. We have to fan the embers now and then for the plantains to cook properly. These plantains are called ‘ Nendra balehannu’ in Kannada. They are very tasty when cooked on embers. Cashew nuts are also roasted on embers. In January we were in Amritsar and we saw roadside vendors roasting sweet potatoes on small stoves filled with embers. We too do the same in our villages. We do not have firewood stoves so we do not get embers. Baking is the next best option.

All this writing about plantains and sweet potatoes cooking on embers and fanning the embers to keep the heat is making me very nostalgic and hungry too 😊.

Changalikodan – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changalikodan

In the above photo rice is being cooked. After the rice is cooked the loges are fanned to remove the flame and plantains or sweet potatoes are cooked on the embers.

By Lakshmi Bhat

I am a person who believes there is not enough darkness in the world to extinguish the light of a small candle. We live in a small place in South India. I love reading, blogging, stitching, traveling, photography, listening to people and many other things which make life so very nice and interesting. Blogging is a fun experience, it has brought me into contact with people in different parts of the world and it is good to read about their everyday life. In spite of the differences there is a sameness which is fascinating. I have learnt and am learning something everyday. I have learnt to write haikus. I enjoy combining the thought and the number of syllables. I have always read books and I was happy to write short fiction. I had thought I would not be able to do so. Stream of Consciousness and photo challenges are fun too. Yes, there is so much in life that is sad and that hurts us. Many a time I wonder why life is so unfair to so many. We all have problems in life but the problems of many seems unbearable. This makes me feel so helpless. It is not possible to help everyone but we can do our bit, we can do something to help some in whatever way we can. Twice a week I used to go to a home for the mentally challenged . But I have not gone there since March 2020. I will start going there again but I do not know when. There have been many challenges in life and we have faced them with a positive approach. Our grandson and granddaughter have made life so much more richer.

3 comments

  1. Beautiful descriptions. The sound of the fan and sound and feel of the wind sounds lovely.

    And there is really something lovely about anything roasted, I think. Lately Daegan and I have been addicted to eating oven-roasted broccoli and cauliflower. Like you, we don’t have access to a wood fire but that makes the taste of anything cooked on it even better. I remember when we lived in the yurt, we made something like a big chulha (though it would be 20 years before I learned that word or saw one). Before we got our gas stove I would cook on that and the smoke would make anything I made taste amazing. Even after we got our gas stove I would sometimes cook dishes on it just for that flavour. (Or sometimes I’d cook on it just because our cylinder was empty and I’d forgotten to get a new one!)

    Thanks for the trip back to India and then a trip back to my own past. It is a lovely way to start the day. Take care and stay safe.

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