Mee and my Chulha Maggi :)

I have been to my hometown Garhwal, Uttarakhand few days back. It is Heaven on Earth. I travelled so many places in India (you can read my love for nature and places I visited in one of my blog http://joshimeenu.blogspot.in/2013/02/nature-and-mee_27.html), but Garhwal is the most beautiful place I have ever been to and no, I am not being biased with this sentence. Name of my village is Basola. It is said that before going to Badrinath, Lord Vishu stayed some time in our village. Hence the name Basola (kyuki Vishuniji kuch samaye ke liye yahan बसे they). We have a small Badrinathh Temple in our village which is the only temple in village. And my parents and other villagers say that a Snake and a Lion are often seen near temple in night(not everynight :P).

It is very rural area. Least developed what you can imagine. Though electricity reached my village few years back but it is not a continuous supply of electricity. It is mountain area, there is no scarcity of water. We have ample of lakes, waterfall, rivers, but one has to walk minimum a kilometer to bring potable water on hilly roads keeping a gagri made of copper metal over ones head. And proper water connection to each house is just a couple of years old. Even LPG cylinder and Gas stove is not available at every house.

The purpose of this blog post was not to describe the positive and negative aspects of my village but about something else. As every one of us know how the condition of Badrinath is and Kedarnath this monsoon is. While my visit was also in monsoon but our area was not affected from the natural disaster. It was raining but without causing any problem. But on the third evening of our visit, mee and my bhabhi were sitting in our open yard, facing towards our house. Bhabi said, "achanak se, river ki aawaaz kuch zyada hi clear sunayi dene lagi" (yes, we could hear river flowing hundreds meter below mountain absolutely clear, sitting at our house, and I tell you it is heavenly feeling). I looked around and saw rain reaching towards us from the mountain behind our house. I told bhabi, “Arey, river ki aawaaz nhi, hai wo dekho baarish aa rahi hai.) We immediately ran inside house, after taking all the clothes from clothesline at the end of yard.

It rained cats and dogs whole night. Mee and my family went worried. Pictures and videos of Badrinath and Kedarnath showing on news channels suddenly started to make us more uncomfortable. It was still raining in the morning. Chachiji told me that she is going to bring some fresh vegetables from our farm, which is 200 mt. away from house. I stopped her and forbade her to go out in rain. Rain in mountains can be very dangerous. Nobody knows from where land would slide while you are walking on it or you slip on stones.  She asked then what would she cook for breakfast. I thought and told her you don’t worry chachiji and let’s prepare Maggi. J

I asked her to light the chulha, yes the earthen stove, cut onions and tomatoes and cooked 18 packets of Maggi on chulha. I was feeling as if I am preparing Maggi for whole baraat. Eating Maggi in gaon, while it was raining heavily outside, was tremendous feeling. Suddenly Maggi tasted more delicious than ever.

So, this was story of “Mee and my Chulhe wali Maggi”