The Mooli Chors

It is one amazing experience living on a farm. The part that I enjoy the most about living in such an environment in addition to the openness, greenery, and lack of traffic and pollution is the fresh homegrown organic food. You can be rich as hell and have money loaded in your bank accounts, but if your lifestyle includes not being able to eat three good & fresh meals a day in peace, I believe everything you do in your life is absolutely meaningless. I am proud to be part of family that gives such great importance to these little but meaningful things of life. As a result, we have a special area in our house where we plant several vegetables, grains, legumes and herbs for our everyday kitchen needs. Based on the season, we plant and use fresh organic foods from our garden such as potatoes, carrots, onions, cilantro, cauliflower, radish, spinach, mustard, mint, green peas, black peas, corn, whole wheat, barley, bottle gourd, scallions, etc.

As the winter season started to say goodbye to north India, I was pretty excited about enjoying the last batch of winter vegetables before the summer seeds replace them. Just around this time (and this is just a couple of weeks ago), my family came across a very sensational piece of information. The moolis (radishes) in our farmhouse were constantly going missing. Every morning, the workers would inform us of an additional batch gone missing. For a good week, we kept wondering what was happening to the moolis. And the most intriguing fact was why just the moolis? I mean if someone was coming on to the farm to steal, why would he/she just steal moolis when there is acres of other amazing vegetables and grains. For the season, moolis weren’t really worth anything, so it’s not like they could take a bunch, go sell them and make lots of money on it either. So the question remained,” Why moolis? And who is this mooli chor (thief)?”

This sensational story was killing us. We were getting more and more worried about what was going on in our house. It wasn’t just the fact that the moolis were going missing but the whole thing was arising a big question mark on our personal safety and security in the house. We have a security staff and huge walls with spiked tentacles that would hurt any intruder trying to sneak in. So, who the hell was stealing from us and why? Perhaps, an insider? I decided that this mystery had to be solved and started keeping a special eye on the vegetable garden.

I became the team lead of a special crime branch called the VBI – Vegetable Bureau Investigation.  In order to increase my investigative set of eyes from 2 to 6, I recruited two top officers into my team, Shiro Chawla & Alvin Chawla. I asked my two officers to take an oath to help me find and bring these criminals to justice. They readily agreed.

 Officer Alvin Chawla(L), Officer Shiro Chawla(R) at the oath ceremony

The investigation started. We would frequently make trips to the area of the farmhouse where the stealing was happening and for days, kept a tab on the timings and the quantity of moolis that would go missing. But nothing was happening. We weren’t getting any clues except for the fact that the person stealing was pretty smart and knew his vegetables. He would pull out the moolis and if he found any one to be rotten or not good enough, he would leave them right there in the garden. He was collecting only the good stuff.

Frustrated from not being able to find the criminal, I thought of perhaps going an extra mile and do a DNA test on the moolis that were left behind. My officers agreed. At our meeting in the night, we completed all the paperwork and made plans to take one of the mooli samples to the DNA testing lab the next morning after which we would go to the VBI Data Analysis Unit and try to match it with the DNA records of all existing criminals in their database. It would be a foolproof plan and there was no way that the thief could hide any longer from us. The three of us adjourned the meeting happily and peaced out for the night.

In the middle of the night, I woke up to go to the bathroom. As soon as I was done doing my business, I just suddenly had this intuition and felt like checking up on the state of the mooli area. So, I quietly sneaked out towards the vegetable garden and to my astonishment, I saw a scene that surprised me more than anything else in the world ever has.

My top officer, Shiro Chawla, was slowly moving towards the vegetable garden. As he got closer, he smelled every area and made his way towards where the moolis were planted. Then, he started digging; with his nose and front feet. He was digging furiously. I kept a safe distance and hid myself in the dark so he would not be able to see me. He dug up three moolis before he found the one that he liked, the one that was perfectly long and round. With the perfect mooli in his mouth, he then started to walk back towards the lawn. That’s when it hit me. Holy crap! My top officer is ‘the chor’. Before I could wrap my head around what I was seeing, Officer Shiro Chawla made his way back to the lawn where my second top officer, Alvin Chawla (who is 5 years senior to Shiro Chawla), was sitting and waiting patiently for his piece of the pie. Officer Shiro Chawla happily came over and gave the mooli that he had so sincerely dug out to Officer Alvin Chawla. That is when I just lost it. Oh man, both my officers are the criminals I have been after all this time. All that trust I put in them!

Before I thought that it was all over, Officer Shiro went back to the vegetable garden and pulled out another nice mooli, this time for himself. Bringing it back with a sense of pride and achievement and all the dirt on his nose, he came and sat beside Officer Alvin Chawla. This was followed by a good 15 minute scene that included both the dogs biting and throwing off both the upper and lower ends (just like we do in the kitchen) of the mooli and enjoying the middle yumminess out of it.

At this point, the shock in my eyes from what I had just seen changed to a smile followed by bouts of laughter. "They actually know how to single out moolis amongst so many varieties of vegetables and also know which are the good edible ones?", I asked myself. Then I realized that I had totally forgotten that they are not dogs. They are human souls living in dogs’ bodies.

The next morning, I told my parents what I had seen. At first they did not believe me. Then, I decided to take Shiro to where the moolis were planted and tempted him with some tricks to recreate the entire scene. The entire house was under shock and laughter. We had finally caught the mooli chors.

Since that day, the mooli chors continued to pull out and eat moolis from the vegetable garden until the end of the winter season. Since they were no longer afraid that we would get mad at them for doing this, they were seen stealing in broad daylight in front of anyone and everyone and enjoying their moolis sitting in the lawn. Suggestions have been given to provide them with drinks and other salad items so their evenings can be made more enjoyable and fulfilling.

Alvin throwing off the top leaves and lower end before starting to eat his mooli

Shiro working on his mooli

About one week ago, the mooli season finished. Getting the last mooli from the garden ended up in a big wrestle match between my dad and Shiro. My dad won. I am sure it was probably in the wake of some new summer vegetable that Shiro has now set his eyes on. I wonder which one would it be this time. :)              
                                  

 

Shiro showing off his sense of pride and achievement after bringing a mooli for his older brother

This blog post has been written on a special request by Amrinder Singh Chawla and is being dedicated to the birthday girl celebrating her last teen year, Geet Chawla.