Tribute: Sabina, Scrabble, and the Spinach Rice

 "Get the Scrabble Board out, I’m coming next week!" she trilled over the phone in the summer of 2005. She had been invited to tour some vineyards and cherry and apple orchards in Washington by the US Department of Agriculture, and she had grabbed the chance to renew, among other things, our epic Scrabble battle that began in the early 1990s when I was heading the Sunday Times in Delhi and she was a principal correspondent. Jousting again after a decade-plus with Ma Sehgal, as we, the Sunday Times team, fondly called Sabina Sehgal Saikia, would be fun.

It turned out the vineyards and orchards weren't in Washington DC where I lived, but in Washington State, some 3000 miles across the country in the Pacific Northwest. Why don’t you route your ticket to return through Washington DC, I asked, but she would have none of it. "I'm coming 10,000 miles, and you can't do 3000?" she huffed, putting on an act of injured outrage, and telling me her ticket was already booked through Los Angeles. "Forget the Scrabble, don't you want your spinach rice?" 

That did it. No one argued with Sabina in the first place, and when you did, she knew exactly where to get you -- in the stomach. Spinach rice was her simplest recipe, something the Sunday Times of circa 1991-1992 feasted on from the time she decided that our Monday post-editorial lunches (mostly at Karim's in Nizamuddin) was too heavy, and she would rather bring a lunch 'dibba' to office -- for a dozen people. 

But that was Sabina. Big hearted, and brooking no opposition. Heck, I'm surprised she even allowed a couple of terrorists get the better of her. They must have been incredibly cowardly. 

Anyway, I hot-footed it to Seattle that summer day in time to pick her up from Sea-Tac airport. Fortunately, the inamorata practiced medicine in the area and we had a home close to Mount Rainier. No sooner Sabina put down her bag, she headed for the kitchen. No jet lag, no unwinding. "Cooking is how I relax," she said, rejecting all suggestions to treat her to Seattle's best eating places, including Blue Ginger and others in Pike Place Market. "What kind of food critic are you that you don't want to check out the best here?" I kidded (she gone from being a foodie to a food critic in the decade I had been away; she covered hard politics during my time at SToI). 

But she would have none of it; no eating out. About the only place she wanted to go was a mall to buy some stuff for her kids. Her ‘kids' were not just her two lovely children, but also her colleagues at Sunday Times, which she was heading at that time a decade after my stint, whom she so obviously loved. So I took her to a Nordstorm Rack, where she single-handedly shored up the American economy. 

At home, she cranked out her masterpieces, starting from spinach rice to fish curry (with halibut). But she wasn't happy with the efforts. "Yahan ke sabzi mein swad nahi hain (the vegetables are not zesty)...the spices are not fresh,” she complained. But gluttons that we were at that moment -- rather than gourmets -- we just gorged on her offerings. One afternoon, she engineered an unforgettable picnic to Snoqualmie Falls, making even ordinary sandwiches supreme. 

On languid evenings on the patio overlooking Mount Rainier, we played scrabble, breaking off to wax nostalgic about Sunday Times old and new. We laughed at our scrapes and disagreements, and our ability to constantly surprise each other. Like the working day afternoon when she turned up in office and announced she had just gotten married to Shantanu (she came to work after they registered their marriage and we all thought she was kidding). 

She never did beat me in Scrabble though, which is why I reckon she will be back. She wasn't one to give up, and I can't wait for another surprise.