A hobby for a hobby - by Harini Nagendra

This week's question is about Hobbies.

Hobbies - some people garden, others work on jigsaw puzzles, cartoon, or play music. What's your creative outlet when you're not writing? 

Writing is my hobby, and my creative outlet - so this is a bit of a meta-question. I've always written - or almost always, I think I started writing tiny stories when I was about six. Writing - essays, 'made-up' stories, limericks and the like - has been my go-to creative outlet from the start. I like to say that my fiction series, The Bangalore Detectives Club, is my life crisis - but in reality it's been my mid-life second birth, an alternate career that brings my life so much joy, and is a real de-stresser. When work life and home life goes crazy around me, I dive straight into 1920s Bangalore, a kindler, gentler time with clean air, good food, wide roads with no traffic, tree shade, bird song and the sparkle of sunlight reflecting off the blue waters of a lake - and I can feel the stress melt away.

So - what's my hobby when I'm not indulging my main hobby? The side-side-hobby?

When I thought about it, I realized just how neglectful I have been of all my other creative pursuits over the past few years - since writing has taken over nearly all of my spare time.

I grew up in a house of music. My mother, who is now 87, started learning Karnatic classical music when she was 5 - and she taught me how to play the veena, a stringed instrument that is a cousin of the harp, when I was about the same age. The veena looks a bit like the sitar, except you sit down cross legged, and place one end of the veena on your lap when you play. I was very attached to my mother when I was young, and as she tells it, fiercely jealous of this veena which was on her lap - I used to wriggle into her lap and push the instrument away. In sheer self defense she gave me her second veena and taught me how to play :-)

This is my mother's veena - and if you're curious about what's in front, this is the bombe kolu, traditional display of dolls at the time of the Dussehra festival, which lasts for ten days. On one of the last days, the veena is worshipped as an embodiment of Saraswati, Goddess of Music and Knowledge 

I have long ignored my veena, though - I rarely play these days, though I did promise my teacher that I would resume classes with her this month. (And now that I've sent off book 4 in The Bangalore Detectives Club series, Into the Leopard's Den, to my publisher, I really should make good on that promise).

I used to cook, and loved making traditional Indian food - and baking - but these days I do little of both. My husband has taken over much of the cooking, and my daughter does the baking, and they far surpass my skills! So I eat - and try and walk off some off the food, though it's always a temptation to eat more than I walk.

I do still retain sole proprietorship over some family recipes though - traditional sweets like Mysore Pak, a fudge-like barfi made with wheat, sugar and ghee, lots of ghee - and, since my mother can no longer make pickle, I am also the house's undisputed pickle maker.

Here's the raw material for avakkai - my mother-in-law's recipe for mango pickle - chilli powder, mustard powder, salt, sesame oil and mangoes

and the final product - many large bottles of avakkai, thokku, and other kinds of mango pickle, a year's supply for us, with extra for friends and family

Crochet is incredibly relaxing, better than meditation. I used to crochet, and I have a story about the skirt that my daughter and I call the "lock-down skirt" - but I'll save that for another day.

But what's replaced the time I used to spend on my hobbies - playing the veena, cooking, baking, crochet - has been taken over by writing. Do I miss my old hobbies? Of course. But time is finite. And I love my writing - so overall, no regrets - only gratitude for my mid-life foray into this wonderful side-career.