Sangam Dal

Sangam World Centre is my Indian home, its where I lived for 7 months on my first trip to India, its where I have returned to time and time again, on my own, with my rangers, my parents, Papa Owl and it is where I took Little Owl to visit earlier this year.  Sangam is one of the World Centres run by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and is based in Pune, India. Today, 16th October, marks the 48th Birthday of Sangam and to celebrate I thought I would share with you one of my favourite recipes from the Sangam Cook Book.  I have adapted the recipe to use ingredients readily available in the UK.

 

Ingredients

½ pint of red split lentils (200g)

oil

½ tsp tumeric

¼ tsp mustard seeds

½ tsp cumin seeds

large onion

½ bulb garlic

¼ tsp hing (asafoetida)

2 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp garam masala

½ tsp ground coriander seed

tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp jaggery (unrefined sugar)

6 tbsp coconut milk powder

Method

1. wash the lentils thoroughly until the water runs clear.  Place in a saucepan with a pint of water.  Add a tsp of oil and ½ tsp of ground turmeric.  Cook slowly until soft.
2. Meanwhile add 3 tbsp of oil to a second saucepan, ¼ tsp of mustard seeds and ½ a tsp of cumin seeds until they splutter.
3. Finely chop the onion and add to the saucepan, fry for 2-3 minutes.
4. Finely chop half a bulb of garlic and add to the saucepan along with ¼ tsp of hing, 2 tsp of chilli powder, 1 tsp of garam masala and ½ tsp of ground coriander seed
5. Add the cooked lentils, the tin of chopped tomatoes, a tbsp of sugar and 6 tbsp of coconut milk powder
6. Stir well and simmer for 10 minutes.

Part of the reason that I love this dish so much, is how versatile it is.  We often eat it as a main, served with rice and chapatis, but it can also been eaten on its own as a soup or as a side dish to a larger Indian meal.

Notes on Ingredients

Hing is a pungent smelling spice that really makes Indian recipes come to life.  I bought a tub of hing when I was in India which I expect to last me for years as it is to be used sparingly.  I believe the spice asafoetida is the same thing, and this is commonly available in supermarkets.  Garlic - feel free to cheat and use the pre-prepared stuff, although it can get expensive.  I often do a bit of both or add some garlic powder to top it up.  Jaggery is completely unrefined sugar which I have yet to find in a supermarket.  I tend to use unrefined brown sugar or just normal granulated sugar, however the BBC website suggests muscovado sugar as a good alternative.  Coconut,  the original recipe asks for 6 tbsp of grated coconut, feel free to do that but in reality, that's far too much work for me.  I've tried various coconut milk products and I really like the coconut milk powder as it gives you more versatility.  Coconut is a natural thickener and so I use this powder in many recipes instead of cornflour. 

This recipe has been reproduced with the kind permission of Jen Barron, World Centre Manager, Sangam.

 

Too Close for Comfort

Travel broadens your mind and opens yourself to new experiences.  As a whole this is very positive, but it also exposes you to risks and more than that, makes real of the news stories you hear of distant lands.

This photo was taken in New York on 10th September 2001. Yup. You can just make out the towers.  Less than 24 hours later and the world was a very different place.  Several days later, as I sat teary eyed on Eurostar, returning to good old Blighty, I listen to a family discussing the incident that had happened in a far off land.

My travels in India make news of events there seem so much more real to me than, say Malaysia, a country and a region that I haven't been to.  However, nothing brings that home more than when something happens in places I have been, or places my loved ones had been.  The coordinated attacks in Mumbai, November 2008 were too close for comfort.  The Taj Mahal hotel was under siege for days.  This is the same hotel where I had sent my parents for a few days on their own to experience Mumbai before flying home just a few months earlier. A place where I thought they would be safe.

I vividly remember standing in the kitchen at one of my Rangers house's looking at the photos in the paper. I had taken my Rangers to India the year before and as well as landing in Mumbai, we spent a night there and did a bit of sight seeing including the Taj Mahal hotel.  I turned the page to see an image of bodies lying on the ground inside Victoria Terminus station.  I looked at my Ranger and said "that was the station we arrived at". It was a station I had used several times myself.

Its not just terrorist attacks though - do you remember the hot air balloon that crashed in Egypt last year? Probably not, unless like me you had taken that flight.

And its not just international travel that has these risks.  I remember one Christmas in the 80s, my mum agonising over whether we should go to London to see the lights with all the IRA threats. My GCSE geography trip to Canary Wharf had to be altered as the IRA had detonated a bomb there just weeks before. As it was, a bomb was found in Trafalgar Square on the day we went.

More recently, the 7/7 bombings happened a year after I stopped working in London. One of the victims had been the head of my department.  A real person that I knew.

The news these past weeks have been full of flight MH17 that was shot down over the Ukraine.  First reports were full of this being another Malaysian Airways flight disappearing, but soon that changed as it was realised that that was just an unfortunate coincidence.

The real issue is why was that airline flying over a warzone? Apparently because that's what they do. They feel safe 6 miles up.  Malaysia Airways weren't the only airline to be taking that flight path, there were others Lufthansa amongst them. Lufthansa who I flew to Pune with in January.

Little Owl and I flew over Ukraine.

In January.

It could have been our plane.

It wasn't, and for that I am very grateful.

But it does mean when I look at the images, and listen to the news, it makes it real to me. More real than I would like.

Travel broadens your mind and opens yourself to new experiences.  As a whole this is very positive, but it also exposes you to risks and more than that, makes real of the news stories you hear of distant lands.

I am home

It's so hard to describe the love I have for this place.

And by this place I mean Sangam.

I have spent pretty much the first two days within the grounds here, letting Little Owl find her way and adjust to the climate.

 The pool is icy cool (it is winter after all) but that didn't stop Little Owl keep asking to go back in!

Little Owl has been welcomed with open arms by all of the staff here, literally, many of them I have know since I first came here in 2002.  It's been great catching up with old friends and introducing them to my daughter.

Another person we got a chance to see was Tarabi, who lives just across the road (the road which is now 4 lanes wide, each lane made up of bikes, rickshaws, buses and lorries travelling side by side and darting around each other).

This is just one lane.  Note how the 'traffic' is going in both directions.  Now times this by four.

 The whole neighbourhood has changed, its developed a lot over the last 5 years, the houses have got bigger (they literally just add another storey or two on top) and the temples, church and mosque all appear to, if not grown, had a little bit more decoration added to them.  

It feels wealthier all round, which is maybe not surprising when you see the hug new development on the horizon, a high-tech complex housing some of the world's call centres.

Little Owl and Tarabi

Tarabi has been welcoming guest from Sangam into her house for many decades.  She used to work at Sangam but is now well into her retirement (and her eighties!)

I could write lots more about the little things Little Owl has been up to, the people she has met, but what I'm struggling to do is describe what this place does to me, how it makes me feel.

It is home form home.  Not the cosy cuddly sort of home, but a place where I feel just a little bit more like me.  I am somehow more complete when I am here.  See, I told you I would struggle...

India is an assault on all of your senses, the sounds the smells.... and yet within the walls of Sangam, its all just a little calmer.  Sure you can hear the call to prayer (I just love that sound), and the siren at the ammunition factory announcing the change of shift (its a sound that gets you inside somehow), and even the roar of the planes from he nearby airport and the constant honking of horns from the road... but its all just a bit muted from inside, like life is buzzing round furiously out there but within the walls of Sangam its just going a bit softer, a bit calmer and with a bit more love.

Sangam Cup 2013

Yesterday I took part in a competition called the Sangam Cup hosted by Sangam which is a World Centre belonging to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

The first challenge was to get a team together and choose a 3 hour time slot in which to compete in the Sangam Cup.  Sounds easy but when I put a call out on Facebook asking for people to join me I had a team from all over the world!

Eventually we decided that 1pm UK time would suit everyone best and as the time go nearer, I began to get quite excited!  It was an odd feeling though, getting ready for a team challenge when I was home alone.

Then it was time... Ping... An email from India landed in my inbox and I quickly forwarded it on to my team - the Bandar-logs before I opened the document to have a read.

The challenge was a mixture of a scavenger hunt and a quiz.  It was split into four sections, Sangam, India, WAGGGS and Silver to Gold (Sangam is preparing for its golden anniversary in a few years time and this challenge is part of Sangam's birthday celebrations this week).

OK this was do-able but where was my team? Quick check of Facebook, there was Tina in Essex - she had her nephews with her but they soon got into the spirit of it creating a warli art birthday card and playing musical chairs (one of the tasks). Silver to Gold became Tina's section.

Within 5 minutes Hilary came through on Facebook.  Hilary was in Texas and was going to work through the WAGGGS section and set to work on recording herself singing the various songs we were challenged to perform.

Next a text came in from Canada.  Rachel had a busy day ahead but had got up early to help out. She took the lead in the India section and had great fun creating more warli art, making chai and counting to 10 in Hindi.

Then there was Suzanne sat in a hotel room in Columbia with only her phone available.  Not much help for surfing the internet and little in the way of resources but she did manage to find 47 hair grips in her handbag for another challenge.

An hour in and Lizzie joined us, she was just down the road from me in Sussex but when the internet let her down at home she took herself out to a local café!  Not able to sing or dance in the café, she set about helping Hilary with the WAGGGS questions.

By half time I had completed the Sangam section and set to work compiling the other sections - a much bigger job than I had imagined!

There was constant chat happening on Facebook, some sections involved everyone in the team doing something like signing up for a webinar (my first) or following Sangam on Twitter. Other tasks involved us making contact with Sangam through Skype and Facebook.

It was frantic but fun!

As the end of our 3 hours was coming to a close the pace stepped up another notch - everyone desperately sending their last minute tasks through while I tried to compile them into one document - the team started giving me a count down on Facebook - 14 minutes - can anyone do a yoga pose? - 10 minutes - photos posted to Facebook and Sangam Skyped about the videos - 6 minutes -  more warli art - 4 minutes - an answer for Silver and Gold #8 - 1 minute - "I've done the world survey" then SEND.

That was it, game over.

As quickly as it had begun it ended.

We hung around on Facebook, chatting for a while, congratulating each other on a job well done saying how we'll be better organised next year then said our goodbyes and got back to our lives where ever they may be.

In Sanskrit Sangam means "coming together".  The Sangam Cup did just that, for 3 hours I chatted laughed and worked with friends that I don't get to see all that often, but the Spirit of Sangam brought us together.

Thank you Sangam!