31 Flavors Sadhu - - Genuine? Leading edge style setter?

There he was standing outside the gate at Fire Mountain Ashram with the big raspberry bag stretched between him and his little assistant. He looked a lot like a nomadic herdsman who had just raided a clothing store, and both curiosity and red flags flew up in this mind as we approached him. Our crew had called us to the gate and explained that he was on his way to Shirdi Sai Baba, and it was customary to give him some rice and perhaps a few treats to sustain him on his spiritual journey.




Well, Jeanetta, queen of helping the needy and everyone in general, jumped into the opportunity to help a “holy man” and quickly returned with some rice and goodies for his long trip. Don’t we love her generosity!



Upon offering the sustenance, the sadhu with amused smile and somewhat impatient air, stuck his hand in the raspberry bag and pulled out a fist full of rupee notes. Oh, I see - - its modern times and rice is just peanuts now to a new age sadhu. I didn’t get to see how much loot he had in the raspberry bag. I hope it was full and he either was off to really receive an enlightening darshan from Sai Baba in style or off to Goa to have a really good time. Darn it - - I forgot to get his email. Either way, he was a good show and you see Jeanetta giving him some rupees. You will want to remember big raspberry bags if the recession gets much worse. FYI: apparently rice is not “just peanuts” cause he accepted the rice and goodies after the rupee offering was “in the bag.”


Check out the eyes of the little guy - - abused, enslaved accomplice or returning tulku? Son of renunciate or what? Hmmmmm.




India has its many moments of wonder.....










Please check him out and let me know what you think. Should we bow and say "Namaste" or as they said on The Apprentice, "You’re fired"?

Scroll down and post a comment!!

APPROACHING MEDITATION DOME AND DYNAMIC ENERGY SCULPTURE
















GANESH GRACES THE DOME GARDEN WITH THE FRAGRANCE OF THE EXOTIC CHAMPA FLOWER FILLING THE AIR

















KAI, FERNANDO, MARK GRIFFIN, MARK BONNLANDER, LAUREN ENJOYING THEIR ARRIVAL AT FIRE MOUNTAIN















UP ON THE THIRD FLOOR TERRACE OVERLOOKING NIMBOLI WITH GURU FLAGS BLOWING IN WIND

Guru Arrives... Bliss Abounds

What Women Can Do

What I have heard since arriving in India is "women can't do this, can't do that." That is pretty hard to take since I was instructed about Feminism at 21 years old by my mother-in-law, Gerry Monosoff, who was very active in breaking new ground for women in the 60's. American women would not be where they are today if it was not for women like Gerry standing up to those men who were telling women who, what and how they could be.

Here is Cuckoo (Vanita II) balancing grass that she has cut on the river bank as she climbs up our spiral staircase.

So, I do get all riled up when I hear things like "women can't do this, they can't do that." Like today, the men needed some help putting up some bamboo strips to make a shade arbor. "Women can't do that, they aren't strong enough."

Here is Vanita up there on the dome adjusting the curtain skirt next to the men.

"Excuse me. Weren't those women who were digging up those heavy rocks and moving them on their heads? And weren't those women digging up cement, digging up a leach field, digging up a compost pile? Moving rocks the size of a small child. Excuse me! Those women are strong and able and willing. So don't tell me they can't hold up a little piece of bamboo for a few minutes in the air while you men twist a little piece of wire around the bamboo."

I let those men know I could not agree with their decision not to let the women help them. I rattled off my upset even though I knew they would not understand a word I said. But I think they got my drift. Then, one of my colleagues told me the real reason why they didn't want women helping them. They didn't know how to talk to women. Men can't talk to women. Men have their own talk and women have theirs. Oh, Gerry, we have a long ways to go here in India.

Women Painting, OMG:

I feel I broke new ground today, when Vanita, my cook, said she wants to learn to paint. Oh my Goodness. "Women don't paint." But she has seen me mixing colors and painting walls, trim, whatever. And enjoying getting paint all over me in the process. And now she wants to paint. She was a little timid at first, but I said it was like putting on cake frosting. This is the same woman I am teaching to bake. Remember my Marathi is very limited, so I have to think of ways to explain things in words that I know. Anyway, she got the picture. "Ami soy-pak color." "We are cooking up paint." We both laughed and I loved seeing her try something new and breaking through those limited ideas of what she as a woman can and can't do. She got so inspired, she painted our kitchen. At first she had me mix the colors, but I had her make suggestions so that she could see how one figures out how to match colors. Before I knew it she took that paint and painted the entire kitchen with new paint. We were cooking paint today.

Jeera Biscuits (Cumin Pastries)

I am remembering last year when Dewa and I arrived in Nimboli and we were wondering how we would make food at Fire Mountain after the groups left and we were on our own with our cook, Vanita, who spoke no English, and we spoke no Marathi. How would we be able to buy food at the market ourselves. I guess we just cooked for ourselves those first few months, and bought food ourselves in Ganeshpuri and in Vasai, pointing to the things we wanted and allowing the vendors to take the money out of our hands appropriate to what they were asking.

Here I am with Vanita in the Fire Mountain Kithcen. ( I am always having a "bad hair day" so I have taken to wearing a scarf. "Look Ma, no hair!")

I began to study Indian food and vegetarian cooking, but sincerely wondered how we would get the nutrition we needed from only vegetables. I began to realize that the predominance of Indians are vegetarian. And the ones in our village are looking very trim and healthy.

Since we came back from our Ayurvedic treatment in Shivpuri last August, we began to embrace Indian food more easily. (See their website: http://www.healthayurveda.com/ and read Dewa's blog post titled "Akkalkot Adventures on October 18, 2009).

In fact, I started to really understand the power of eating mung beans and learned some interesting ways to cook mung, as well. Once I knew this, I could begin to ask Vanita to make these things, too.

Sunil was kind enough to let us borrow his oven, which his wife rarely used. So over the past few months I have baked a few Ayurvedic cakes and at Christmas time made some of my family's favorite Christmas cookies. Vanita told Sunil she wanted to learn to bake. So today I decided to bake Jeera biscuits with her, which is a little cookie without any sugar and flavored with cumin seeds. Really quite nice with the traditional Indian chai (tea with milk). Our Marathi teacher, Gita introduced us to Jeera biscuits, along with many other delicious Indian foods. She is an excellent cook and fortunately for me, can describe to me in English what ingredients she uses and how she combines them. Twice now, she has spent the day here at FM teaching me about four recipes all at once. What a whirl wind those events were.

Back to the Jeera biscuits: When baking with Vanita, I knew I was going to have to translate the recipe from English to Marathi. We could use the pointing out method. No problem. But I had not realized that we would then have to figure out how to write it in Marathi. Unfortunately, Vanita has had little schooling, and isn't fluent in writing Marathi. Dewa believes she is the type of student to be in the back of the classroom enjoying jokes with the little rascals. She is that kind of delightful. Dewa and I have spent five months learning the Marathi alphabet, which has 56 letters, and 412 conjugations. A little bit more complicated than English. Our learning has been slow. Fun at times when we are on the road and trying to figure out an advertisement, or a restaurant and trying to read a Marathi only menu.




Today we had to enlist some of the other workers to help us write the Marathi words. Since she said she wanted to learn to bake, I wanted her to have some record of how we bake the different items I envision us making in the future. So together, with my five Marathi primers spread out behind the cooking ingredients, we figured out how to write the Marathi word for each ingredient. We each wrote out our recipe in Marathi.
My Marathi teacher, Gita, will be proud of me. She has taught us well over the past five months, although we were not such good students, at times. Here is Gita's photo. You can see why we had a good time with her learning Marathi.













As Vanita and I actually made the recipe I had her refer back to her copy of the recipe so that she would read her own writing. What might have been a little cooking class turned out to include a mutual Marathi lesson: She taught me the Marathi words for ingredients, and then together we learned how to write it.

I can imagine that Vanita had to go to work early in life and didn't have time to study in school, which is how it is for most village women. Also, most women don't have access to bathrooms when they go to school, and so they eventually give up on school after being uncomfortable from either from "holding it" or walking into the woods to "do their business." This is a big problem all over rural India.

But here, under the auspices of Nityanandsa Education Trust, we are enjoying the companionship of one another and learning together. I imagine that this is what SNET is about: empowering women, one at a time if need be, to evolve, be more. What a sweet time we had.

Oh by the way, the Jeera Biscuits were tasty too. The recipe follows.

















Jeera Biscuits

Sift together:

1 cup all purpose flour. (next time I will use Nachini or chia seed flour)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder


In separate bowl, mix:
1/3 cup ghee
2-4 tsp buttermilk or yogurt thinned out
1/2 tsp sugar

Grind small:
5-6 curry leaves
1-2 fresh green chili

Mix all the above together slowly.
Add
1 tsp jeera or cumin seeds
Make a soft dough that you can be rolled into balls.
Arrange on greased cookie sheet.
Using fork, flatten like a peanut butter cookie leaving fork
prong marks, or not.

Bake 350 deg. F for 15 mins.

Bio Sand Water Filters ARE Improving the Lives of 400 Families

A few weeks ago, I tagged along with Shri Nityananda Education Trust Field Manager, Pervaz Kazi, as he interviewed twenty families within Nimboli village who had received SNET Bio Sand Water-filters nearly a year ago. The overall response was extreme satisfaction with how the water filter not only improved the families’ health, but also improved the taste of their daily drinking water. See how happy these women are with their "best friend."

Prior to receiving the SNET water filter, they walked to the end of their street where there is a government installed well. Unfortunately, the engineers located it directly in the path of water drainage system. Hence, the water is most often dirty. Secondarily, the well water is hot because Nimboli is situated amidst geo thermal activity. Over and over, we heard the recipients of the SNET water filter say they “liked how the water was clean and cool.” Many of them commented that they now bring their own filtered water with them to work, to school, and on any outings away from the home. They don’t believe they can get such cool clean water anywhere else, except to pay for bottled water.

The major sentiment of the women interviewed was relief in seeing their families healthy. Many families reported an almost total disappearance of illnesses caused by water born organisms, such as diarrhea, cholera, skin infections. Common colds and flu had lessened, as well.

What was surprising was to learn how often the recipients cleaned their filter. Some followed their instructions and cleaned them monthly. But some householders could taste the difference in the water after being cleaned and so cleaned the filter more often. The majority cleaned about every week or every other week, but one lady literally cleaned hers daily because she could taste the difference. Others cleaned theirs every few days.

Almost all of the filters were situated in a prominent place in the family’s home, be it in the kitchen, or on the back porch. Most people were very emphatic about the rewards of the water filer and expressed their deep appreciation for the improvement in the quality of their lives.

Of the twenty families we visited, only one person believed the filter to be malfunctioning even thought she cleaned it. Another man said his fell over ten days prior, but the amount of plant growth that had grown up onto it showed that it was probably not being used for over a month. He said he was not strong enough to put the filter up right and would need SNET’s help to get it functioning again. Both of these families were reported to the installer for maintenance.

Every week I meet people on the streets of surrounding areas who yet don’t have their own SNET water filter. I feel sad to tell them that we don’t quite have enough money yet to deliver water filters to their village. They hear of neighbors who do have one, and wish to receive the life changing benefits for their own family. I wish we could provide all the families here in the Tansa Valley with their own water filter.

Some of the other villages rely on river water for their household supply. This is contaminated by human and animal excrement up stream and is extremely dangerous to their health. Now some of those families have the benefit of cleaning the water with SNET water filter.

Read more about SNET projects in rural India. http://www.tmaseva.com/

Your donations go directly to providing new water filters to village families in need of clean water. $25 covers the cost of building and installing a life time water filter.

Jeanetta Monosoff Haley

Santa-Ananda Finds Nimboli

Santa-Ananda found his way to Nimboli today. Most people in attendance at the annual Christmas party had no idea how lucky we were to have this red suited jolly man actually find Fire Mountain Retreat's address in rural India. As you can see in the photo, Santananda and Mrs. Claus were having a good time singing us a few Western style Christmas carols. (Mrs. Claus let us all know she prefers Mrs to Ms. since she is an old fashion type of girl!) The local English and Marathi teacher, Gita Lotanker, even joined in the singing, since she had learned Christmas songs as a child attending convent schools. Most of the children were not impressed by the Claus' singing but the adults in the audience were amused and entertained by their antics.










Sunil Anaokar is holding son of Ananda, our neighbor and Fire Mountain staff employee, while two other happy flower children look on.


Kazi brought us the flower face masks and hats from Thane. They were too cute!!!






Not turkey, cranberry sauce, sage nor rosemeary were anywhere to be found within hours of Nimboli. So, Christmas dinner was a Fusion Style dinner, as they say in the food industry, a blend of two cultures. A delicious Chicken Curry was made by Sunil. Jeanetta believes no Christmas dinner is complete without mashed potatoes and turkey stuffing even if there was no turkey. She had to improvise with the recipe substituting local Curry leaves for sage. She has become quite fond of Curry leaves since her move to India and believes curry leaves was an improvement on the original recipe. Probably no one in the crowd knew what stuffing was, but she was not worried. She hoped that there might be leftovers, since stuffing is a family favorite for her. Kazi said he went back for seconds after figuring out he liked it. Vanita made her wonderful cabbage, carrot, coconut vegetable dish.

Kazi after discovering he likes stuffing!

Unexpectedly, many more people came then anticipated, but there was more than enough food for everyone. Jeanetta has no experience in cooking dal for 35 people and had cooked enough for probably double that number. Food never goes to waste as the staff were happy to take home leftovers. Sunil expertly handled the dispersion of food and candy to the 30 children who descended upon the party from neighboring houses.

Cooking vegetarian cookies and cakes without eggs is always a challenge since most recipes require eggs. But when Jeanetta and Dewa attended the Ayurvedic clinic at Shivpuri last summer, she learned some recipes for both. Fortuantely, some of the classic favorites such as Russian Tea cakes and Shortbread have no eggs and the basic recipe can easily be adapted to local ingredients, such as cow's ghee. Her mother, Muriel Manning, used to tell her that when you use good ingredients, you will make good food. And making cookies and cakes with cow's ghee is a winner.

Gita said her favorite was butterscotch cake. Now, Jeanetta is a card carrying chocolate lover. She does not even know how to spell butterscotch let alone know how to make the butterscotch flavor. But fortunately the internet occasionally works in Nimboli, and she could download a few recipes. The cake turned out to be a Butterscotch Pudding cake which is a much better error than a dried out cardboard type of cake. You bakers out there must know what this means. The speed of which the cake disappeared from the table tells us that it was a success.
Presents were stacked on the dinner table after dinner for the children to see. All of the staff's children were told to pick one. Fortunately, when one little girl received a toy truck she found an equally bewildered and disappointed boy holding a see through sack containing a pink plastic tea set. The exchange happened before any explanation crossed an adult's lips.

The adults were made to engage in a pink elephant kind of exchange. Everyone picked a number. As the numbers were read out, the person with the number could pick a new unwrapped present, or "steal" one from someone who had already opened a present. The person losing their present then had permission to "steal" someone else's present or pick a new one. There were lots of screams and laughter, especially as one young women was "not going to allow anyone to steal her present" and she didn't. What fun!!! What laughter!!!

Even Mrs. Claus was happy to be holding her present after it was "stolen" from her three times.

Santa and Mrs. Claus slipped away into the dark of night when no one was looking. We hope they come back again next year.