Thursday, August 31, 2023

Just another flight - not! August 28, 2023

On August 28th morning, I was chuffed. I was all packed and organized for my trip from London to Chennai. I felt totally in control. The Uber driver came within 3 minutes of my calling him. Usually it’s a hassle getting one to Heathrow. Today was different. For the same reason, we breezed through with no traffic. It was a bank holiday in England. The weekend before the September Labour Day weekend in North America. Check in and security were a breeze. I found myself in the Aspire Lounge, Terminal 5 enjoying a sumptuous breakfast. I made my calls to my sisters. Utta called and everything was just going swimmingly. I made my way to my gate thinking I would be boarded in an hour. Wrong. Things began to get really hairy at this point. The entire Air Traffic Control system in London was down. Hacked for ransom or for jollies? Cyber terrorism of some form? Benign system failure with not so benign consequences grounding hundreds of planes in one swell snoop? So many questions and no answers! No one was saying anything to help us make sense of the situation. It made the news. Social media and all news media outlets were buzzing about this unmitigated catastrophe. The pilot used the word “unprecedented” to explain this unusual occurrence. With the dawning of the AI era, this catastrophe brought to the fore our sheer vulnerability in a world where we are at technology’s mercy. The worst had happened! Hundreds of planes grounded in London airports, thousand of passengers stranded. The airport, passengers and airlines in a tailspin, the effects of which would linger for days. 

We were given food vouchers worth 10 BP each and told there was no take off time. The pilot, however, wanted to do right by us and give it his best shot to get us out of London. We were on a long haul flight that deserved to be prioritized by the much slower manually managed replacement Air Traffic Control system in effect, he said. He seemed like a man on a mission, capable of taking charge. He boarded us, had our bags on-boarded and started up his fully fueled aircraft. Now it was a waiting game. We were served food and drink. The crew was super sweet but had no answers except to say there was a legal time limit for them to fly us. The count down was on now with few minutes to spare. I pieced together that the pilots had to be relieved so as not to risk fatigue. Anyway the legal time limit expired. By this time, we were 3 hours on the tarmac. The pilot still held out hope saying that he was trying to get replacement crew who would fly us out. We waited for another half hour. Then we heard the not so good news that we would be off boarded. But there was some good news. One, our bags would not be offloaded. Two, we could pick up hotel vouchers as we disembarked. And so we followed instructions. In the midst of such grave uncertainty it was nice to witness a flight full of troopers. My English neighbour and I made our way out of the plane, grabbed vouchers to get us to the Holiday Inn Express. 

We joined a group of Indians, appointed one man, who seemed good at following instructions, our leader. We made our way out of Terminal 5 taking the Heathrow Express to T4. It was somewhat convoluted in that we had to go to T 2,3 first and then retrace back to 4 in another train. We joked our way through a maze of tunnels and literally as a light at the end was the Holiday Inn Express, our haven for the night. It was massive. Hundreds of rooms visible over several floors through an atrium. With quiet efficiency we were handed card keys. I gathered that it was probably routine for the hotel staff to process rooms for hundreds of stranded passengers on short notice. Anyway, the buffet was closing so we had to eat before we made it to our rooms. There was salad, nice tadka daal, rice and some steamed veggies. I made myself a plate and joined two of my co- passengers at their table. I bought myself a cider and enjoyed the meal. Then to my room, a nice hot shower and bed. Put it down to clairvoyance, I had actually packed spare clothes in my carry-on! I had everything I could possibly need for an overnight stay. Odd. I had a good sleep with the temperature set to 17 degrees C. 

I woke up at 8 am, showered, made all my phone calls and meandered through an interminable hallway to the elevator down, for breakfast in the cheery dining hall.  The place was buzzing.  The waiters were harried but I witnessed grace and kindness in the middle of utter chaos.  I got my oats and vegetable sausage, a nice cup of coffee and some fruit.  Terminal 5 was a sea of individuals in fleece jackets that said "Heathrow - here to help"! An army had been deployed and no expense spared to ensure customers navigated safely through the confusion to their flights. The folks at security were patient and cheery even though they had to figure out how to get us through with boarding passes dated August 28.   I thought I should treat myself to a nice perfume to mark this day! So I splurged on a Van Cleef Pachouli, even proudly boasting to Utta on the phone. However, in my excitement to board my flight, I ended up leaving it on my seat at the Starbucks right by the gate.   I only realized this post boarding, and the crew could not get it for me since it was inside a store and not at the gate! Someone needed that perfume more than me, I said to them. They were profusely apologetic even though it was entirely my fault! To make up for my disappointment, one crew member snuck me a nice large bottle of Prosecco, another brought me two bottles of white wine and treats and everyone stopped to condole my bad fortune.  They offered that I should call Heathrow's "lost and found" when I returned.  I made a mental note.  So much kindness!

Needless to say, this adventure actually enriched my flight to India and renewed my faith in the good in all. So many new people and experiences. Also never had the energy on a plane been so good. Everyone displayed remarkable calmness and patience on both days. There were no complaints and no crying babies. An atmosphere of joy and conviviality. We felt like a tribe of chosen ones! And we were white, black, yellow and mostly brown, given our destination.  Doctors, sales people, motorcycle enthusiasts, young mothers, pregnant women, couples, young and old.  Maybe it was me, seeing what I wanted to see? Anyway, this was yet another experience the universe had thrown my way that I would never have wished for and, yet, I was so grateful for!  I landed safely with lovely memories of this unusual flight and a happy ending!

Being adaptive while making sambar...

I am visiting my friend in the country this week.  I brought my sister along because she is visiting me in London.  My small cooking escapade illustrates how I have tried to incorporate adaptiveness to the everyday mundane.  

I brought farm fresh vegetables that were beginning to languish in my fridge in London, for a potential cook-in here to our gorgeous Midlands get-away.  We ate out all day yesterday and it seemed fair we should eat in today.  But I did not want to burden our host, my best friend from my high school days.  Maybe this morning I could delight her with some South Indian fare.  So I spontaneously offered to cook. I chopped up capsicum, carrots and onions and peeled shallots.  I had to wait for tuvar daal and curry leaves which the girls were bringing in from the store.  I usually cook a big batch so my friend and her partner, a Yorkshire man who loves sambar, have enough leftover for a couple of additional meals.  Now, on her way to grandmother-hood, my friend is cooking and freezing for her pregnant offspring, a busy London based doctor who picks up the food on her trips for R and R at mummy’s. Maybe there would be enough leftover to freeze for the mum to be as well?! 

 

This time I had to vary the order in which I cooked the food. I chopped up cabbage for a nice side!  Since there was lots of it, I was a tad nervous about getting the proportion of seasoning spices right.  Cabbage not cooked properly can be rank! I seasoned it with mustard seeds, urad daal, green chillies, curry leaves, hing and salt.  The big batch got cooked no problem, as I had used just the right amount of water to cook the cabbage then raised the heat to ensure the water evaporated before I left it covered for some slow cooking.  I then sprinkled some dessicated coconut and left it covered till it was ready to be transferred to a serving dish, just before we sat down to eat.  I was thrilled that forces beyond my control had conjured up a perfect cabbage dish.  I never take for granted how, despite my imprecise approach to cooking, everything comes together for the perfect outcome.  Or maybe it’s my non critical acceptance that manifests as perfection?  In any event, the more I thrive in chaos and less I strive for perfection the more creative and daring I get to achieve surprisingly great outcomes.  I highly recommend getting out of the mind’s way! 

 

Then came the hard part, a big batch of sambar in the instant pot.   I usually cook the tuvar daal in the instant pot (IP)  and set it aside, before cooking the vegetables in the tamarind water, also in the instant pot.  This way, once the vegetables are done, the cooked daal goes in ready for the final mustard seasoning.  All achieved in IP, no fuss, no mess.  Today, I was under a time crunch.  So I went ahead with step 2 and sautéed the shallots, capsicum, onion and carrot chunks in a little oil before pouring in the tamarind water, adding sambar powder, curry leaves and salt into the IP.  I pressure cooked it with the 12 minute rice setting.  When the tuvar daal arrived I could not yet open IP, which had not released the pressure, so I took two cups of it in a vessel big enough to be placed in the spare pressure cooker.  I was adapting.  People were hungry from all the cooking smells.  This cooker, it seemed, could not deliver the cooked daal fast enough to be added into the tamarind water with vegetables.  I waited impatiently and when we opened the cooker - a disaster awaited.  I had predicted this outcome somewhat given the tuvar had not been given enough room to relax and expand, but had gone ahead and done it anyway!  Now I had to wear my adaptive hat because the tuvar daal, my key ingredient for my much awaited sambar, was half cooked and nowhere near ready to go into the tamarind water with cooked vegetables.  Some quick thinking was in order- especially given my hungry sister who had begun to nibble on salads (I perceived a form of psychological warfare here).  I was the hold up.  With some quick thinking, I poured the contents of the IP into a big steel vessel, transferred the half cooked daal into a larger vessel with more water, so it could breathe, and placed that in IP to pressure cook for 12 minutes.  Through all this, I could sense my impatience and that of the rest, mounting at this imperfection.  There was also a mess around me that I needed to clear quickly, especially given it was not my kitchen.  


But wait there was more messiness to come.  I decided to forebear through the chaos, maintaining focus and inner stillness, undeterred by the delay.  Of course the audience did go to great lengths to reassure me that they were in no rush to eat!  I forced open the IP with the daal, when it had completed the obligatory 12 minutes in the rice setting, by mercilessly venting it.  Thankfully, the daal was now perfectly cooked and just needed some mashing.  For the next move, I needed an abundance of confidence and nerves of steel.  I had to take the daal out of the IP, pour the vegetable and tamarind mixture back into the IP and mix in the daal since I needed the size of vessel as the IP steel pot.  All very clumsy, given the heat and sheer quantity.  I also had no idea whether the consistency would turn out right.  Alas, I kept the daal thick and in one bold move emptied all of it into the tamarind and vegetable liquid I had transferred to the IP  . I brought it to a boil in sauté mode and breathed a sigh of relief that years of experience had not let me down.  I prepared the seasoning on the stove with mustard seeds, red chillies, hing, methi seeds and curry leaves.  Lots of chopped coriander had gone into the boiling sambar already.  The final flourish with the seasoning gave me a sambar that ended up being exquisite.  Taste, flavour, consistency - everything! I lifted the steel pot out of the IP and poured half of its contents into a serving dish - another bold move where all of it could have missed the mark and poured over the counter.  It took confidence, an unshakeable belief that to surrender to the process with focus was all I needed to do - the rest would be taken care of by faith in my abilities, experience and a higher intelligence which took over when my mind got out of the way.  Lunch ended up being a success.  And it was all because I had focused on being adaptive throughout the process, and had deliberately not stressed over the outcome!