This Saturday, I was on top of the world. I didn’t just land there by chance, it was a long trek to the top. Since the start of this sabbatical, I managed to do a lot of things I have been wanting to do for years, but hadn’t, because other unimportant stuff was always more important. I refer to the kind of things that don’t make it to any of the “Must do before I die”, “Everyone else except me has done”, “Family may disown if I don’t” or “Odds and ends to keep alive” lists and fall through the cracks. So, after dodging several parental responsibilities, and enduring an interminable ride to race course road, I landed up at the Bangalore Literature Festival to tick off one more item from the Important Unimportant Stuff list. Consider this a commentary on everything but the main agenda of the festival itself. The first thing that strikes you as soon as you enter the grounds is the ratio of tote bags to people. It is close to one. Anyone doing research on what to print on them (not that this is a realistic vocation, but hello dream job!) and what new-age handbag brands are a close substitute to TBs, will not find a better sample set. The second thing that struck me was the swimming pool. Situated in between two of the venues, in front of the #blrlitfest selfie backdrop, it was right in the middle of all the action. People gossipping in between sessions, groups doing the group photo thing, lost souls madly perusing the long agenda - everyone congregated around the pool. The pool itself was deserted. Except for one lone hotel guest who was swimming back and forth, unfazed by the lit activity around him. Shoutout and mad respect to this person who is now my definitive personification of the ‘you do you’ philosophy. The third thing that struck me was that I was taking my time meandering and moseying and not heading along to the main attractions of the event. There was an irrational urge to just stay on the fringes, lest I encounter it with too much intensity and one of us shies away.
Nonetheless, I mustered my lemony zest and walked into the room where two entirely lovable humans were discussing Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings. I no longer recall why I have been avoiding these talks all my life. The inquisitiveness of one person and the candid responses of the other, mixed with the sighs and wows from the audience - felt like my heart was doused in hot chocolate. On another stage, the Israeli poet, Amir Or was reading a selection of his poems. His voice. His presence. The outpouring of his heart. “Give us this day, the life of this day”, he read aloud. “All my tote bags are dedicated to you, now and forever”, I thought. Few things beat the privilege of having a poet read their work to you! The schedule said Shoba Narayan was there to talk about her latest book. I have fond memories of spending many a Saturday reading her articles in the Mint Lounge editions. Full of subtle wit, her writing is always insightful without being pedantic. So, this was a bit of a fangirl moment and I wanted to hear how she sounded in person. She did not disappoint. She had that most underrated of traits while speaking - pausing mid speech to find just the right word. There’s a longer post coming up about the full discussion and the book itself. But as promised, I want to talk more about the vibes while staying away from the events of the day. Art, according to Picasso, is supposed to wash away the dust of everyday life from your soul. What art does to me, is transport me to a completely unconnected world while one is unfolding in front of me. In the presence of beauty, I have never been able to stay in the moment. Beauty inspires in me thoughts of all other kinds of beauty. I imagine all the beautiful things in the world are interconnected and linked to each other, like hanging curtain lights, and I can’t help but move my gaze along the shining line from one star to the next. And so it happened that when I stepped out of the world of literature to get some coffee, I found myself at the ‘High Life fashion’ exhibition on the other side of the premises. My eyes followed a woman who had done up her hair in multi-coloured braids and sported jewellery that no one else but her, could have pulled off. My long experience with setting up ice cream stalls in these locations has taught me to distinguish the hunted look of the sellers from the hunting look of the buyers. I could tell she was selling something. I followed her into the exhibition hoping it was those braids. Her stall was teeming with people holding an entirely different genre of conversations from the ones at the lit fest, just a few metres away. I patiently waited for my turn, while questions ranging from ‘Do you have the piece Deepika Padukone wore in Koffee with Karan?’ to ‘Can you get me the Versace signet ring?’ were thrown at her. She fielded all of them deftly ‘You mean the Cartier one? Of course.’ and ‘I just sold it, I’ll have to courier another piece to you.’ By the time this surreal conversion ended, she had sold 8 knockoff pieces of different brands to said customer. I could see there were no braids, but I was now in the thick of things, and started looking for stuff that doesn’t have any brand’s name written on it, yet is shiny enough to blind anyone I am with. I leaned into the moment and bought something that I realised too late, matches with nothing else I own. I am no connoisseur of fashion, but I can appreciate art when I see it. However, the art of stringing words together to create worlds is my most preferred form of art. Except for paintings. And dance. I notice I am not making my point. Allow me to make another attempt. The art of storytelling is nothing short of magic. Stories are the only words worth uttering. True stories, made up stories, other worldly stories and blood curling stories. The next best thing, is to hear people talk about stories in lit fests. The next, next best thing is buying stuff that is heavier on the bag and lighter on the pocket (yes, books). My only regret is that I didn’t carry my tote bag. Next year, I will be better prepared. I will be the tote bag carrying, jutti wearing, flying in the wind indigo dye dupatta donning, purple haired woman - the one people follow into stalls.
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They say no good story ever started with a salad. They are wrong. “We are going to have salad with every meal from now on,” he declared one day before we were to go on a weekend trip to Chikmagalur. “He” refers to the autocratic, ambitious, ampractical (alliteration over accuracy) husband of mine. If we were going on a holiday and sustaining on salad, I had to do other drastic things to make up for it. I headed to the salon, and after a teary reunion, my stylist took it upon himself to change my look. “Blue hair”, he said. “Only if it takes less than an hour,” I said. “Of course,” he said and proceeded to hold me hostage for the next 4 hours. It was worth it, despite the size of the bill. The smurf look was gonna fit right into the hilly scene. I would have ideally liked to post a picture. Then again, the selfie collection of a person who is too embarrassed to freeze people mid task while posing for that perfect selfie, is just filled with blurry faces and missing limbs. The influencer life is clearly not for me. Anyway, we start off Friday afternoon with my blue hair, a blue suitcase, 3 umbrellas and a bottle of wine. We were headed to a homestay in a coffee estate. With instructions given ahead to the homestay that we needed salad for every meal. The brat is coached to be a good ‘travel buddy’, which mostly included tips on how to look out of the window in wondrous awe of the beauty around us, without asking for our mobile phones. The forecast was rain and heavy rain for the next 3 days. Lucky for us, we love the monsoon. We arrive at our destination in the midst of fog, clouds and rain, just as it is getting dark. We are greeted by the smell of coffee as soon as we enter the gates of heaven aka our very welcoming, very cosy, very green place of stay. The hosts rush us into our rooms and invite us to join them for a cup of coffee. Two things happened. The bub discovered what addiction means when he took the first sip of horlicks he was offered. I discovered that coffee actually tastes amazing, after all these years of ignorance. We got out our umbrellas and raincoats and went for a short walk just outside the estate. Stopped at the ‘Hill top canteen’ for some egg burji and the company of a black cat. We got back to our cosy room to enjoy the fantastic view of the foggy mountains. We had been experimenting with various board games. Catan and Ticket to Ride were the ones all three of us loved. Dungeons n Dragons was the one we were intimidated by. We finally got around to reading up the rules, watched a few hundred videos of the game and were all set to play it throughout the weekend. And then, we forgot to pack it in. Not one to be deterred by such impediments, the husband decided to do away with the multiple polyhedral dice and go with a simple coin toss. He was the dungeon master. Brat chose to be Gandalf. I chose to be Snoop Dogg. Yes, I am aware that I didn’t fit in. But I was determined to not let this game degenerate into an enactment of LOTR. The brat scoffed at my choice. “What is your power then, huh?” he challenged me. “I chill, severely,” I replied. We got into character. The DM put us in castles with assassins and beasts. I summoned dancers on my turn to solve every problem he threw at us. Meanwhile Gandalf was fighting Saruman (one sorry man, apparently) on his own, pouncing on Urukhai, mistaking Urukhai for Oorugai (the tam pickle), Uppuchek (the gult version of nippat) for Nunchuck and overall managing to put even the dancers to use. The game was interrupted with the arrival of deep fried chicken and french fries. If you ever wondered what there is to do when you go to a hill station with no ‘things to see’, here’s a comprehensive guide - you drink coffee/tea/wine and eat fried chicken. And when you are done, you realise that sunrise has turned into sunset. The next day we headed to the peak of Chikmagalur, Mullayanagiri. Our homestay was located quite close and a short trek got us there. We fortified ourselves with the maggi bowl that is a mandatory sighting on all hill tops. And then we started the 300 step trek up. The wind threatened to blow us away, the husband chickened out several times, but the little guy held our hands and dragged us to the top. The rest of the trip was spent heading out in different directions on walking trails. That is, when we were not gorging ourselves with the drool worthy food our hosts were dishing out. Last year for his birthday, we had gifted the bub a small canon camera. This might be the best investment we had ever made to maintain sanity during travel. He clicked pictures of the road, the bugs on the road, the fallen trees, the mist-covered houses, the umbrellas, us holding the umbrellas and just about everything else in sight. A trip to the western ghats is always amazing. The great scenic winding roads literally make you unwind. It was a very short trip, but we did manage to load ourselves with more coffee powder from the estate to relive Chikmaglur for a few more days at home.
PS. No salad or vegetables were harmed or touched during the trip or the writing of this blog. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of free time, must be in want of a good series to binge watch. My love for Tom Hiddleston won the stakes this weekend, and I started watching Loki. It is a disappointment, to say the least. TH is completely wasted in this one. And so is the character of Loki. To be fair, I am only one episode in, but I like making these judgements ahead of time, and be proved right later. My binge watching is normally accompanied by chips munching. The kind where you have to turn the volume up a few notches because you can’t hear over all the continuous crunch. However, this year, we got our hands on some really good mangoes and they have replaced everything else in the house. Mallika, Imam pasand and Neelum - these are the ones that really feed my soul. Now Alphonso, that just sounds like it started out with an ambition to rule all of Spain but has given up midway for a career in the travel influencer business. It’s great to watch something adult again. The kid is at the grandparents for the weekend, and we don’t have to watch Spongebob or Shark Tank. We had somehow tacitly come to the conclusion that it is ok to let him watch Shark Tank. Time will tell how big a mistake this will turn out be. Ducky's running commentary through the entire show with things like “Mark made an offer but he actually took the money from Daymond? I don’t get it!”, “Seriously, she wants five hundred thousand? I can give you a fifty thousand”, is gold. Speaking of ST, I’d like to call the attention of all entrepreneurs and corporate biggies to the fact that giving your 110% is no longer enough. It is now upped to 120%. There are of course the noobs who say they’ll give their 300%, but you can tell right away they don’t mean it. Now 120%, that sounds like there is a concrete plan to get there. Speaking of more interesting things, in the sweetest gesture anyone has ever made, the husband has decided to cook something fancy this weekend so that I’ll have something to write about. A week ago, he ordered a bunch of pasty, saucy things online. Miso paste, Sake, Gochuchang, Mirin - all going into making some juicy Red Miso Lamb Ribs. While I was watching Loki, the man was cooking the sauce accompanied by some very appropriate music playing in the kitchen. I refer to the music that you hear in all Hollywood and Bollywood movies alike when they have to introduce something oriental. The notes that sound like a tea party has turned into a jaltarang competition. I am going to call it Miso music from now on. Miso music is like a yoga teacher walking barefoot, like the feet don’t wanna hurt the ground. The sauce, at various stages of cooking, was brought to me for tasting. It got better and better. He slathered it on the ribs and put them away to marinade. The recipe called for grilling the ribs for 4 minutes on either side, so they can come out medium rare. Which of course, we promptly ignored and went on to grill them for 15. I mean, we are not animals. We don’t mind being part of the food chain for meat, but eating it raw, that’s where we have principles. Out came the ribs, all juicy and yummy. A meal of just the ribs would be too simple for the man. So, he stir fried some vegetables and here we are! We’re now waiting for the bub to come back home. He sounded pretty excited about this misu pisu dish that appa rustled up. He insists on ending each of these experiments with a rating and a "for those reasons, I am out."
It is my birthday week. The man isn’t showing any signs of making anything yummy. He keeps asking what he can buy for me. As if anyone needs anything nowadays, staying cooped up at home. Of course, I am not counting the vacuum robot and table top dishwasher that we have recently added to the pile of gadgets at home. More on how they don’t work later. Anyway, this morning, I let out a long sigh and announced “Do you know what I miss? What I really miss? The curry wurst. The one from Berlin, not the soulless, wussy weisswurst from Munich” “Do you now?” “Yes I do” “I thought I was making cake” “Do you not remember last week’s cake? We couldn’t even share it with anyone because the prosecution would have pressed charges for first degree. Premeditated.” Last week, when I was still pretending to be on a keto diet, a cake was attempted. To start with, sugar was substituted with stevia. The call to abandon ship should have been taken at this point of time, but he laboured on. To echo Ducky’s thoughts “I am definitely not ok with Stevia, who’s Stevia?”. The horror did not end there though. The one ingredient that could have salvaged the cake - heavy cream - was forgotten, tucked away between the basket of eggs and unused sugar. He tried to pass it off as a mudpie, but it was really just mud. It was partly my fault though. I keep forgetting to tell him I am only on a keto-ish diet and never on a keto diet. So, there really was no need for extreme stevia induced measures. “Ok let me check the curry wurst recipe” he said. “What is there to check? You take a 5 inch paper plate, place a large sausage, squeeze in tomato sauce from one end, mustard sauce from the other, hope they meet in the middle for a tango, sprinkle chat masala and stick two toothpicks in. Not very unlike the fruit salad person outside Cubbon park.” Ignoring me with a silent scoff and shaking of head, he got to it, “You won’t believe this but the sauce has 20 ingredients. Order curry powder.” “There is no such thing as curry powder. Unless you are in London and have gotten around to calling everything curry” “Also order worcestershire sauce” “This is getting complicated. There is no way I can explain to the dunzo guy what it is.” “Have you ordered yet?” Meanwhile, further research on Germany’s best sausages reveals the man is right. Apparently, a certain Frau Heuwer traded German beer for English curry and voila, the Currywurst was born. And so, the ingredients are ordered and the sauce is made. In a rare display of self control, we decide to put off digging into it, and save it for the picnic next day. The second half of 2020 was full of picnics for us. We were thrilled to have discovered spots around Bangalore that were full of lakes and trees, sprinkled with empty chips packets and premade cocktail tetrapaks crushed out of shape. All of that came to a standstill with 2021 turning out to be an apocalyptic action thriller. But it was time to pick up those trails again! Sunday morning, we packed off early to one of our favourite spots that was full of tall eucalyptus trees, with the basket of sausages, sauces, salamis and eggs in one hand and a football in the other. Just being outdoors does all kinds of good things to the heart. It did help that the curry wurst was spot on, tangy and wursty. An absolutely wonderful way to ring in the birthday I say!
Speaking of birthdays, I love all the wishes I get from banks and mutual funds. Makes my day, makes me feel my money is in the hands of good, sweet, caring people. This is a late post. It’s been 6 weeks now since we’ve cooked anything special at home or written about it. With everything going on around us, I just didn’t feel like cracking jokes, or looking for the funny side of life. A couple of days ago, a friend messaged, checking in on us. After we spoke about the absolute horror that is the world today, he said I have to keep writing; for him it was something to look forward to. Incidentally, on the same day, I also finished reading this book called A gentleman in Moscow. I don’t remember reading anything that so beautifully wove the awesomeness of the human spirit into a story. In the end, we all have to do what we are meant to do, what we naturally lean towards. In whatever way possible, and under whatever circumstances. And so, I opened this draft that I had abandoned all those weeks ago, with a resolve to get back to writing. Bear with me while I find my voice. Ever since we started on our cooking spree, Gawd (as the mister is referred to due to his ubiquitous nature) has been quite keen to feed diverse sets of people and bask in their praise. He particularly wanted to impress this couple who are known to experiment with very fancy stuff. The last time we were invited to their place, they fed us black rice biryani. It was the final frontier. Unfortunately, every time we made plans with them, we ended up canceling, for some or the other of life's mundane tasks came in the way. We had invited them over on the weekend of the Duck confit. But that did not materialise. This weekend, they called us and said they were quite tired of waiting for Gawd to cook, so they are taking things into their own hands and making some Miso glazed Fish. And we were welcome to join them. We gladly agreed. We made a trip to the in laws’, and had just finished a very satisfying meal of dal and potato for lunch, when they called us to ask if they could meet at our place instead. Not wanting to make a habit of canceling, and always happy to have guests over, we shook on plan B. They were getting the fish and we agreed we were just gonna order in the rest of the meal. I start rummaging the bar shelf to check what needs to be topped up. I notice my comments go unanswered and turn around to find Gawd ordering ingredients to make Mutton Varuval. With two hours to go, I tell him making an elaborate meal is out of the question. By now you already know, he doesn’t agree with most things I say. After much fight over who orders what and who cooks what, he finally relents and says he’s gonna make his go-to dessert even if he doesn’t make the full meal. Which, for the uninitiated, is the Tiramisu. Yes, he’s become that suave. We place orders for the ladyfinger biscuits (I’d draw the reader's attention to the post on said biscuits) and cream. This time around, he doesn't pull off all the peaks quite as prescribed. We order 3 different kinds of cream, and finally get one right. The recipe says we have to chill it overnight. Gawd scoffs at such recommendations. We’ll see, he says. The friends arrive with their fish and shove it into the oven. It looked glazed alright! It also smelt like what one would assume miso to smell like. Apparently it’s been marinating for over 24 hours. Meat appreciates patience. The fish comes out just perfect. And surprisingly, the tiramisu comes out great as well. We polish off a full bowl of it and stow away the other for later. The next day, the beneficiaries of the Duck Confit from the previous weekend call us home for some prawns and pork. Mangalorean pork and batter fried prawns they say, to lure us. This weekend was turning out to be all kinds of awesome. We postpone all other plans we have, and ask the son to get ready.
He says yes, but goes into the bathroom and starts his usual shower routine. Which is where, every time we peep in to ask if he is done, we find him holding the water wiper in a different position and singing into it, in what I can only imagine is his rehearsal for the Grammy’s performance. Anyhow, we pull him out, deposit him into a set of clothes and rush off, following the smell of prawns being doused in batter and dropped into the bubbling pan of oil. The softest pork with rice and the fried-est prawns with beer make for an excellent Saturday afternoon. We remember the remaining tiramisu stashed in our fridge. Taking advantage of living next door, we rush to get the casserole. This tiramisu was doused in coffee and dark rum. That meant we didn’t have to share it with the kids. Always a bonus. We sit around the table and finish it off in one go. Gawd’s balance of the universe is restored with all the praise showered on him. The end to my first draft read, “I hope we get to do this more often. Freeriding on other people’s kitchens.” That was probably the last time we visited anyone or had anyone visit us. The house definitely gets smaller when there are fewer comings and goings. Ten years ago, the mister had traveled to Prague. It was the first and only time he attempted a solo trip. What got to him in the end was having to call me multiple times to plan his day. There was however a thick silver lining. It was this dish that he claimed was the crowning glory of European food. The Duck Confit. Eating out was never the same again for him. Everytime we went out, he would eagerly grab the menu to see if they had duck and if they were confit-ing it. If by a rare chance the establishment had duck, he would immediately order it. The dish would be served the last, later than anything else we’d have ordered. He would look at it, tut-tut in disappointment and ask the waiter, “but my dear sir, where is the confit?” Ever since we started on this crazy cooking spree, I had been holding my breath, waiting for him to declare any weekend now, we were making duck confit at home. That weekend finally happened. I made a couple of calls to the meat stores on Saturday evening. One of them said, fresh ducks arrived just yesterday and asked me to hurry over. I took off immediately. I had been instructed to get 4 big leg-thigh cuts. The butcher asked me to take the entire duck or leave it. I made a quick mental calculation of the number of legs per duck, the weight of the duck and the number of people eating the duck. At 1.7kg a duck, I could afford to buy only one duck. I asked him to chop it up for me. While I waited, I walked around the store, and found this product. 3 dates to go. So many questions! The most important one being - To go where? It took me all of 2 mins to eat them, before the first chop fell on the duck. The second most important one was - Where does this madness stop? With the burst of energy the all natural snack provided, I gave my thumbs the usual workout with the doom scrolling on social media. An ad for an inner wear brand popped up “Matching underwear for you and your loved ones.” The creative showed 4 young people hanging out at their kitchen-cum-breakfast counter in matching underwear. Not at the beach, not 5 year olds, but adults inside the house. Do I not understand how life works anymore? Yes of course, I clicked on the Shop Now button. Luckily, the butcher announced he was done, and I could leave before more existential questions could assault me. I came home triumphantly. I offered to search for the recipe. The first link I clicked on led me to a recipe that read: Ingredients - 1) Duck 2) Salt. No more. Time and again, life proves that it is infinitely more amusing than anything I can make up. The mister sighed and took over and searched for his own recipe, treated the duck with the spices and love it deserved and stashed away the marinaded pieces in the chiller. The next day we began cooking what was the most time consuming dish to ever come out of our kitchen. He started with the side - red cabbage slowly simmered in vinegar, apples and orange juice. He left it on the stove and went to the balcony to catch up on his social media scrolling. In half an hour, the house went from smelling of sweet pungent potpourri to a dumpster on fire. Exhaust fans were switched on, black cabbage was scraped off the pan and eventually, the pan thrown away. We ordered a fresh batch of red cabbage and started the process all over again. Our oven, meant for a normal sized family, did not take all of the duck at once. There were 3 batches in all, with each one grilled for over 3 hours. The duck was roasted very slowly and patiently in its own oil, on a bed of semi mashed potatoes. Our guests arrived as the second batch was in the oven. We set up the table and served them the first batch of duck with the potatoes and passed the cabbage around. What goes with this - bread or rice they asked. Potatoes we said. They tried to hide their disgust and be polite. The mister insisted that the duck and potatoes along with cabbage was a complete meal and that, that was where the magic lay.
He kept asking everyone to have one more serving of the confit. Eventually one of the guests asked why he was calling the cabbage confit. We whipped out our phones and checked the facts. Turns out confit is a method of cooking. You see, the mister thought the cabbage side was the confit. Meanwhile, the son thought there was going to be 'duck on feet' on the table. The guests and the son alike accused him of trying to make cabbage cool. Various pieces of the puzzle fell into place. All those fights with the waiters, all those disappointments and declarations of breakup with the duck - they were all extra. There never needed to be any cabbage. Be that as it may, it’s safe to say there’s going to be more duck accompanied by cabbage in our house in the near future. I am a planner. When I say we need to look at the recipe and plan for the cooking two days in advance, I usually have a damn good reason. He is a procrastinator. When he ignores my call for planning, he usually has no reason. And when we have guests coming over, he goes the extra mile in the space time continuum. At 11 in the morning on Saturday, he messaged a list of ingredients to me. I made a stop at the regular gourmet store. To my dismay, apart from cabbage, they had none of the ingredients in my list. I pulled out my car and drove to a fancier gourmet store, the one with the basement parking, infinite wait time at the lift and expats shopping for their local ingredients in a global food store. I caught hold of the unsuspecting store helper in the sauces section. "Oyster sauce and Hoisin sauce", I rattled off. Without blinking an eye, he tossed them into my trolley. "Chinese 5 spice mix", I said. He directed me to a different section and a different helper. Helper #2 not only located the 5 spice mix (which I strongly suspect is our good old garam masala), he even offered to help with the recipe. I stopped him in his tracks. This is going outside my designated duty and I had no intention to over perform. "Char siu sauce and mongolian paste", I said. He sent me right back to helper #1. H #1 gave me the perfunctory smile, "Just what are you cooking ma’am", he asked. "Vietnamese rice rolls and chinese stuffed baos", I proudly declared. "Do you know the ingredients of the sauce, I can suggest a substitute", he said. I did a quick google search and it turned out char siu is made from hoisin, honey, soy sauces and the chinese 5 spice mix. In short, I didn’t need it at all. He sneered. I wilted. I took a unilateral decision to drop the mongolian paste altogether. It felt like summoning the collective wisdom of the great Khans just to cook a bao. It was way past lunchtime and the hour of the guests landing up was fast approaching. I hurried home and burst open the door to find him sprawled on the sofa, snoring. He doesn’t wake up until half past four. Eventually, he started off with the dough for the bao. The video showed the chef kneading the dough with chopsticks. I panicked. This was obviously not going to work. A mere 2 hours to go for the guests to arrive and we discover chopsticks are not just meant for poking around your plate of rice. Anyhow, sanity prevailed and he remembered the use of fingers and hands and got the dough all made and out of the way. In addition to the list I was given, he had placed online orders for rice vinegar, hot chilli oil, sichuan peppercorn and soy sauce. I could have just as easily got these from the store, but that would have been too easy and no fun. These were delivered in batches at our doorstep. The soy sauce was the first to be dropped off. He figured out he had ordered the Japanese soy sauce instead of the Chinese one. What is the difference you ask? It is the difference between being welcomed with open arms into the wuhan market vs our visas being rejected until further notice. But, we adapt and make do. We get on to making the minced meat for the stuffing. While the meat was being cooked, the sichuan peppercorn arrived. It was promptly ground and added to the mix. The meat was doused with multiple sauce combinations, leading to an aroma that lingered on for the entire evening. I was put in charge of the Vietnamese rice rolls. The hot chilli oil and rice vinegar were finally delivered and were whisked away to the sauce making corner. The rice rolls were the easiest item on the menu since the vegetables were already sliced into nice long strips. Must say, this is by far the healthiest snack we’ve ever made. The sauces is where the magic happened this week. There was a peanut sauce, a xxx sauce and a yyy sauce. All of them to go with the rolls and the baos. I have to go with xxx and yyy because he doesn’t remember their names. "How would Watson feel if Sherlock says he doesn’t know how he solved the murder at the end of it all", I asked him. "This is not him not knowing how he solved it, this is him not knowing the name of the guy who got murdered because he doesn’t care", he replied. I had to concede that point. As for the bao, I am happy to report we did not need to use the idli cooker for steaming. We discovered we had a steamer at home. We have unearthed many such appliances from our kitchen cabinets this year. If we take stock, I am pretty sure, we would find that 90% of the stuff in our kitchen is handed down to us from one of the moms. With the steamer, we went full legit, well as legit as we could, given that it was a plastic tupperware container and not the bamboo steamer that the panda in the recipe seemed to be using. Notwithstanding, the result was amazing. Trust me, the baos looked and tasted a gazillion times better than the wrinkled, rejected versions of uruk hai they look like in the photos.
I have been mulling over my writing a lot these days. Putting aside apprehensions on the style and content, I realised I really enjoy the process of writing. I might have even transcended the need for social approval. The last few posts I have written, I haven’t even bothered to share with anyone. I was happy to just have written something to serve me as a memory, of a time captured in words, to regale me in later years when I can no longer remember things in detail. In a world filled with pictures and videos to capture our daily life, I find writing to be very soothing and more accommodating of all my thoughts and feelings.
Hold on, I think I have just extolled the virtues of journaling, as though I have discovered it for the first time in the history of humanity. Oh, well! That’s what writing does to you, makes you feel like you are inventing all of life’s philosophy. As Wodehouse puts it "There is about the printed word a peculiar quality which often causes it to exercise a rather disquieting effect on the human mind. It chills." Having discovered this balming effect of writing, my mind ventured into evaluating how good I was at it. The report card did not look good. I promptly set about looking for writing courses that could hopefully set this right. I did boil down to one. Haven’t started it yet, but it’s there in this year’s to-do list. Intentions and everything. Meanwhile, I vowed to myself to continue the attempts. I have to admit the inspiration came from my dear son, over a conversation that went something like this D: Can you paint a masterpiece that is better than the Monalisa? Me: Erm, no. D: Why not? Me: I can’t even paint a masterpiece yet, forget about it being better than the Monalisa. D: Ok, can you at least paint a ‘piece’, doesn’t have to be a Masterpiece? Me: I guess. D: Well, get to it then. And so, I go on to the next episode in our cooking series. This week, Habibe dished out some Lebanese fare for us. It lasted us well into the weekday. First there was Tabbouleh, which conclusively proved that my disdain of salads throughout my uninformed life was completely uncalled for. Parsley, couscous, finely chopped vegetables - all served on a bed of lettuce - make for the yummiest salad ever. Then there was the Doner Kebab. The only reason I am even calling this a doner is to humour the dear husband. There was no vertical spit and there was no rotisserie, we didn't even use skewers to grill and carve up the meat later. We sliced the meat into the right size and shape and used a tawa instead. The spices were spot on though. The yogurt, cloves and paprika marinade was perfect and what the kebab lacked in authenticity, it more than made up in taste. The pita bread was a complete victory - it came out soft, fluffy and crusty all at the same time. The hummus not so much. Despite spoonfuls of olive oil desperately added to the mix, the hummus stubbornly refused to get the creamy texture required for a good photo-op. It continued to remain dry, much like my humour. So, a yoghurt and cream cheese spread was whipped up on the spot to add to the mix. In all, the pita pocket stuffed with chicken, hummus, tabbouleh and the spread was just what we needed for a sunny weekend afternoon. Oh yes, the summer is definitely here and we aren’t liking it one bit. A lot has been happening the last two weekends. The first weekend was mother in law’s birthday. She had been dreaming about stuffed cannolini for a few weeks now. So, the husband caved in and made it for her. I made a version of the Japanese Nama truffle which was so dearly loved that it might become a weekly thing I need to do. As I sat down to write about that weekend’s cooking, the son declared that stuffed cannolini is no different from lasagna and did not qualify as a new dish. One thing we were clear on, when we embarked on this resolution, was that we would make something new and different every weekend, otherwise it doesn't count. So, I had to concede and skipped the writing. This weekend, the parents had gone to get vaccinated. So the whole Sunday cooking had slipped our mind, buried under concerns of side effects from the vaccine, unfruitful discussions on the user interface of the website and zoom calls to exchange notes on the easiest ways to identify the nearest hospital. Meanwhile, I have been making an effort to get back on a keto diet after a full year of working from home. A year in which I made up the daily 10k steps solely with trips from the workroom to the kitchen and lockdown snaccidenting. So, in an effort to support the woman at home, the husband ordered some lamb and set out to make a dry mutton varuval. He has become something of an expert in cooking meat South Indian style. However, over the course of the 2 hours he spent grinding various kinds of spices and leafy things, he ended up with a gravy version of what tasted like pepper mutton. Nonetheless, I could not have asked for a better lip smacking start to the diet. The drama around the vaccination appointments and hospital visits took up the rest of the day, and it was evening by the time everyone was declared jabbed and packed off home. The next day started off with our cook waking us up with a gentle knock on our door at six in the morning. I tumble out of bed to open the door but then wake up the husband to discuss the day’s meals with her. I would do it, but usually I end up under planning and make at least one of us go to bed hungry. So, he insists on waking up and having the talk. We have a very beneficial symbiotic relationship with her. She usually goads me to have more than just eggs for breakfast (she isn’t aware of what goes into my tummy post the breakfast, or for that matter how many breakfasts I have), reminds the husband that he had made her promise to not give him anything more than eggs and indulges the son with whatever he asks for provided he first eats what she makes.
This morning, she takes over the reins and steers the discussion towards not only using potato but also mixing it up with a host of other vegetables. To be honest, I have never been a fan of pav bhaji. For one, I am wary of dishes where everything has to be smushed together. Are the vegetables too ashamed to be seen with each other? Why do they have to be made unrecognizable? Also, is it legal to have chat items in any other setting apart from the one where you are standing next to a cart in the middle of the street? But, decisions were made before I made it to the kitchen with a clean face and a clear head. The bhaji was ready and a dozen pavs were already ordered. Much later in the day, when the fingers were thoroughly licked and the bub asked for a second helping of the bhaji and rated it a 10, we realised that we had accidentally cooked our dish, ate it and didn’t photograph it. We had ended up making pav bhaji and pepper mutton in place of our specials. Do I regret that I have no photographs as proof? Yes. Am I tired of photographing the same pots and pans, on the same wooden table? Also yes. Do I need to upgrade to some respectable cutlery in the house? Strong yes. Am I ready to pause consumption, carry my plate of food into the balcony and take a fancy food shot with the foliage of DRDO and the construction dust of the new upcoming block as a background? No. And that, dear people, is how matters stand as of week 10, in the year of the cook. I finally got a chance to put my MBA to full use. I achieved Level 25 on the Ultimate Delegation Challenge. The cooking was outsourced to the husband and the writing to the guest. I did agree to find the answer to two critical questions though. First, can we agree on what the real name of this mouth watering dish from the hills of Kashmir is? The answer, is No. Is it Mutton Rogan Josh Or Mutton Rogan Gosht Or Rogan Ghost Or Gosht Rogan Josh? It is all of the above, except for the option where you mistake the mutton for ghostriders from Rogan. Secondly, is there an ideal pairing with the dish? The answer is Yes. Beer and Garlic Naan. If ever there was a complete meal on earth, to steal the words of Amir Khusro - it is this, it is this, it is this. Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this couplet, I leave the translation of this to your googling talents. And now, Ladies, gentlemen, overeaters, fellow slackers and free riders, I present to you, the one and only Jishnu Dasgupta, today’s guest writer on the blog. As regular readers of Assorted Items will know, these people have been killing it with one smashing gourmet meal after another. So much that self-respecting foodies such as myself often describe reading Icy's posts as arduous. But if you also live less than 2 minutes away from the author and her masterchef husband, it is pure torture. The knowledge that lasagnas, pilafs, sushi and other delicacies are being conjured up less than 300m away, is pain. So, this past Friday I swallowed my pride (I was hungry), and sent out a whatsapp feeler to see if we could invite ourselves (self, wife and 2 kids) to the Assorted Item Warehouse for one of their smashing lunches. Alas, I was shot out of the grey Nagavarapalya sky with a terse, "we're expecting company, so kindly stop inviting yourself over". Picking up remains of what I once thought was love for thy neighbour, I retreated to my phone looking up consolation biryanis that we could have at home. Sunday dawned, and my phone pinged. My heart leapt with an unnamed joy on seeing this “Buggaz you up for an impromptu lunch at our place? The guy who was coming forgot and is now in (location withheld) And we have a ton of mutton rogan josh lying around” The above message is the best appetizer I have ever had. Of course, I replied. When the Rogan calls, you answer with Josh! And like the SS Carpathia cheerfully sailing to the aid of the gravy-stricken Titanic, four hungry Dasguptas dressed in their Sunday best washed up at the Assorted Items Warehouse with shiny, hungry faces. Now I cannot fathom how the finest Mutton Rogan Josh I have ever tasted was rustled up by a relative first-timer like the chef. But be it known that the succulent, fall-off-the-bone meat was bursting with flavour. The gravy gave the meat a new life. The naans were simply incredible, especially the ones with a sprinkling of butter-fried garlic and coriander that was toasted just right. We literally moaned in sheer delight as we devoured one of the finest lunches in recent memory. I consider myself fortunate to have been given the chance to partake of this meal and then as dessert, be featured on the very blog that gave me the meal to begin with.
Burp. It was a long week of snacking. When I say snack, it might give the impression of a small dainty bowl full of small dainty things lying next to my laptop and me nibbling on them over the course of the day. In reality, I grab the entire family sized packet of salty goodness and go at it until my nails are scraping the assorted crumbs off the bottom. All this accomplished in under 3 minutes, sometimes without pausing for breath. Anyway, the weekend arrived, not a moment too soon. And brought with it the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s day. Any blogger worth her salt has to keep up with these things. I am already worried about the upcoming Women’s day. I could have written about the CNY if the other half of this resolution agreed to make momos. But no, he wanted to make a romantic meal. So, here we are. I was all for ordering cake and chocolate and calling it a day. By now you can guess, that did not cut it with the Valentine. So, long story short, we found ourselves researching dishes of the heart-and-soul variety. Once we ruled out the desserts, heart shaped pizzas and eggs cooked inside heart shaped holes made in bread, what we were left with was the Moroccan rice pilaf with olive and orange chicken. This was the obvious choice because there were two non obvious things going into the chicken. And let’s face it, pilaf sounds valentine-y, even when pulao doesn’t. The morning of the V day, I wanted to work out. He wanted to go out for breakfast. So, we walked to the breakfast place, 6km away. After gobbling down a ton of eggs, coffee mascarpone and other tasty, gobble-able things, we realised our car hadn’t followed us and quietly walked back the same distance. It was a bit much and naturally, we made up with many bottles of chilled beer. As the afternoon wore on and we could no longer keep off the hunger, we finally started making lunch. First on the assembly line was the making of the pilaf. All through the process, I felt the need to contribute relentlessly. “Too many raisins. Too few almonds. We should really have got those apricots...” This has always been the case. It all started when we first started cooking on our couchsurfing adventures, ten years ago. We were staying with a couple and their toddler in the lovely town of Graz, in Germany. We had carried along a ready mix for dosas and offered to make them masala dosa one of the mornings. It’s interesting how you naturally assume certain roles in a relationship. He started chopping up things and I started my commentary. “Too many potatoes, wrong ratio of masala to the number of dosas, too much spice...” Watching us bicker, they asked us who cooked at home. We had to admit it was neither of us - we had a cook at home, and this was one of the first times we were attempting to cook. Still, they were brave enough to try it and even claimed to have liked it. I’d like to think, we have come a long way since then. Soon, it was 3.30 in the afternoon and we were only done with the pilaf. He had not even started on the chicken and we were unbelievably hungry. I helped myself to some pilaf with mango pickle, thereby bringing the pilaf down to the level of pulao. And he slurped down the leftover chicken broth, giving it much the same treatment as filter coffee. Having nourished ourselves thusly, we got down to the flour covered chicken and doused it in orange juice and cooked it. With the olives thrown into the mix, the chicken was now perfect - bitter, sweet and sour - much like love.
Bam! Valentine-y end to the post. So, we really wanted to skip this weekend. He was in no mood to cook and I was/ am in no mood to write. But the son butted in and wanted the dad to make him sushi. He believes his dad is the best cook in the world. The only thing he credits me with making well is curd. Grudgingly, in search of some inspiration, we dined out on Friday night. We ended up at this newly opened sushi restaurant, which was thankfully empty (the things we are grateful for, these sucky days). The sushi was ok, but the paisa vasool was from the elaborate sauce quiz the waiter was subjected to by the man. The man and I made a trip together to the grocery store on saturday. After the noodles-spaghetti debacle, he didn’t entirely trust I’d come back with the right things. There was salmon, chicken, seaweed, sushi rice, avocado and a million sauces. I will need to dedicate a blog post to go into what these experiments are costing us. Of course, no price is too much to pay for experiences, and etc. I could write a bit more about what happened on Sunday, but I'd rather draw your attention to the fact that I don't want to write this post. So, moving on. When we finally got down to cooking, again grudgingly, many things started happening simultaneously in the kitchen. Chicken was cut into strips, rice was cooked in a pot with a cloth on top, cucumbers were sliced, vinegar was mixed with salt and sugar and even mushroom was brought into the picture. The man followed the recipe to a T this time. For him, that meant using glass bowls to measure and mix vinegar and salt, just like in the video. Vinegar was poured into the boiled rice, changing our perception of how rice can be eaten, forever. Chicken was teriyaki-ed. Cream cheese was taken out. Salmon was cut into pieces. And we were ready for the finale. The whole secret to making sushi is in the rolling of the roll. There were bamboo mats involved. In the video that is, not in our kitchen. At our most humble abode, as the Japanese would have put it, we made do with a plastic sheet. It took as much time to spread the rice on each sheet of seaweed as it did to cook the rice. Post seaweed no. 3, we got good at rolling the joint. I mean sushi. Sundays have now become something of a family ritual where everyone looks forward to catching up. As they say, food brings people together. No wait, I just remembered the beef over beef, and my own eye rolls at vegan substitutes. I meant sports brings people together. No wait again, that’s not it either, just remembered the cricket matches. Ah, now I remember! Nothing does. Nothing brings people together. Because people are petty and bicker at the slightest chance. I was told my posts have too much humour. So there, I hope you enjoyed the above nugget of darkness. Thanks to all the staying in during the past year, I have developed a rather unhealthy weekend FOMO. If I don’t do at least six different things, anxiety kicks in by Sunday afternoon and I make everyone around me miserable. But this weekend was right up there on my productivity scale. Saturday morning started off with a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle with the son. I squeezed in a book, a dosa at my favourite street vendor and put up some yellow shelves in the bedroom. All this before we even started thinking about the Sunday cooking. The time had come to experiment on a vegetarian dish. At first glance, it appeared only Indians knew how to make anything half decent without meat. Google tried to convince me dal makhani and misal pav were exotic dishes. The Western world seemed to have discovered only potatoes so far. So, we turned east. We figured Khow Suey was the best choice, considering how the son was chanting ‘noodles noodles’ for quite some time now. We were gonna invite some friends, whose kid is a dear friend of the boy. The boy wanted everything to be perfect, but also from past experience, didn’t in the least expected it to be. I made our list of ingredients to shouts of ‘we have beans in the house right, and I mean French beans?’ ‘Ice, is there besan in the house?’ ‘When I say beans, I mean more than 5 strands’, yada yada. Such a non believer! I zoomed off to the store and lugged in a whole lot of new stuff to stuff our small pantry shelf with. Come Sunday, the chef (I think he’s earned this upgrade in title, no?) decides he has to start cooking at 9 in the morning. The son’s friend was already at home. Both of them give us strict instructions - no broccoli, no spice, no coconut milk. So, we dice the vegetables, grind the spices and pour in the coconut milk. Which is when I discover this brady bunch of broccoli abandoned and sitting alone on the counter. One of the side effects of leaving raw material procurement to me is that I have no idea how much broccoli is required for any recipe. Luckily we are the kind of family that goes through an entire cycle of ‘dice vegetables, ensure all colours are represented, stir fry, sautee, toss, add seasoning, store in the fridge and let rest for 3 days’ before discarding the said broccoli. Guilt delayed is guilt denied (Did I just come up with the most amazing life hack or what?). The cooking this week was sponsored by Black Eyed Peas. That’s one chef and one bad line cook shaking their backsides to Hey Mama. It almost made us believe we were in a reality show. However, the post is dedicated to Sway, my current favourite track by Rosemary Clooney. The soup is done, and it’s time to boil the noodles. The chef discovers I have bought spaghetti instead of noodles. Did any of you know they are not the same thing? They are not. Much indignation later, online orders are placed. The wonders of customer entitlement combined with bad startup math ensure we collect them minutes later at our doorstep. While the noodles are boiling away, we turn to the garnishings. As everyone knows, the most critical part of Khow Suey is to have fancy bowls to serve the accompaniments in. Although, having seen it being made, I can tell you it’s not the bowls. It’s the deep frying. Everything and anything. The noodles, the onions, the garlic pods and, in what must be a culinary first - even the green chillies. The deep frying routine taught us quite a few things. For one, fried noodles confirm my theory that every cuisine has the equivalent of bhujia, thereby proving that bhujia is core to the sustenance of our race. For another, the time it takes for onion to get deep fried, is the time it takes to watch an episode of Brooklyn 99 and read that article on environmentally friendly products. Which is where I learnt about the “collapsible steel tumbler for easy travel”. One wonders, if you are the kind of person who is willing to carry a collapsible steel tumbler on your travels, surely you are the kind of person whose bag is the size of your car, and must be large enough to carry a regular steel tumbler? Is the tumbler the new towel now? Is that what we all need, to hitchhike across the galaxy successfully, while munching on fried onions in a steel tumbler? The chef made a meal large enough to last for lunch and dinner. The small humans called BS on it at lunch, and informed us kindly they meant maggi when they said noodles. I can’t imagine why they’d think we were gonna add broccoli in maggi! We have always endeavoured to never give them the impression that we were responsible parents. The big humans, however loved it and are now duly pressurized into returning the favour sometime to us.
The parents joined us for dinner. It is now difficult to say if they are just humouring us or really enjoying these culinary sojourns. Whatever the reason, their many epiphanies during the meal make up for it. Father says, “we are that 10% of parents who are fortunate enough to eat food made by their kids”, to which the father in law wisely replies, “eat slowly, you don’t want to finish the soup before more noodles come.” I had my own epiphany. We are not the clothes we wear. We are not the God we fear. We are not the food we eat. But if we are, I’m glad to report I am a burnt garlic pod dressed in coconut milk embracing the hot oils of hell. It was one long party. It started on Friday. We headed out to this beautiful place just out of town to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We landed there at 8 in the morning, just in time for breakfast. An excellent one at that. The butter meter indicated that the people were top notch in the service department. What is the butter meter you ask? Please. Allow me to explain. You can judge how much someone cares about you from how they serve the butter. If it comes to your table in single serve packets, know that they love you as much as I love staying off sugar. If it comes just soft enough at a spreadable temperature, they have warm cuddly feelings for you. If they mix it with garlic and herbs in addition, they are practically bending their knee with the Eiffel tower as a backdrop. This came with the herbs and garlic. Love declared and accepted, a day and half of debauchery followed from there on. We were too tired from all the eating to cook something nice on Sunday. Besides, Tuesday was father in law’s birthday. So, our cooking party was moved from Sunday to Tuesday. Given how he’s been asking if we were making a sizzler for the past 3 weeks, we decided to go for it this time. A roast chicken, with mushroom and pepper sauce, with a side of mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables. A plum cake from Thom’s bakery for dessert. Tuesday morning, I go out for a cycle ride and come back after an hour. The chicken is cooked, the vegetables are boiled and the sauce is done. My lone sauce making responsibility, taken away from me. At this point, it is safe to say not much is expected from me in these sessions. However, this was the week I discovered the husband’s methods. Apparently, he selects a recipe, gives me the list of ingredients and then makes a lot of disgraceful assumptions about how to actually make the dish. Like how it is enough to just mash the potatoes to get mashed potatoes. I swoop in, with zero humility and multiple instructions on mixing the butter, the hot milk and the churning (Btw, anyone realise this is how thayir sadam is made as well?). Meanwhile, with all the fancy cooking, we were fast accumulating ingredients that we didn’t know where else to use. We still had leftover bunches of thyme and parsley from the coq au vin and pasta sheets from the lasagna. It seemed sacrilegious to use paprika or parsley in sambar. I mean dhaniya has served us well for so many years. If I were a famous blogger, this is where I would slip in a product placement for the brilliant fridge-storage-boxes-for-greens that have kept the parsley and thyme fresh. I impressed myself by garnishing the mashed potato and the pepper sauce with the parsley. Having made invaluable contributions to the cooking, I proceeded to take bad photos of the food. The sizzler plates were brought in. Cabbage leaves were neatly spread on it. The chicken, mashed potato and sauce were laid out. Leading to discovery#132: You don’t really need an oven for this dish. The sizzler plate goes on the stove. Anti climatic, to say the least. We lift up the cabbage leaves and sprinkle a mixture of oil and water for the sizzle. Which brings me to my pet peeve - why do we need our food to sizzle? It is just plain uncivilised, uncouth and unwarranted to have your food sizzle. I, for one, was not looking forward to that. They say your emotions show up in what you cook. This time, how I felt showed up in the husband’s cooking. There was no sizzle. Not even a whimper. The dish tended to portray more of a demure South Indian bride look Arguments followed over whether the cabbage should have been boiled, or kept dry and raw, or boiled and then blow dried. But the damage was done. There were no fumes over our food. Nonetheless the fancy wooden sizzler plates were used and I got to tell my dad he won’t get a second helping of the mashed potato unless he finishes his vegetables.
We did the unthinkable this week. No, I am not talking about skydiving, or one of those quit-your-job-to-pursue-your-passion things. We had already done those, about two mid life crises ago. I am talking about setting out to make that pinnacle of desserts, the one “foodies” all over the world claim to know the exact authentic taste of. The Tiramisu. The previous two weeks of cooking has generated much amusement and interest amongst our friends. Amusement because the resolution we made was not the resolution Gotham deserved, or needed. Interest because they wanted to partake in the spoils of the Sundays. One such family, of the #friendslikefamily type, expressed the desire of the youngest member to eat Gawd uncle’s Italian cuisine. Dates were discussed, menu options were thrown around and long story short, we invited ourselves to their place. The woman of this house, who is the better cook, offered to make Spaghetti Bolognese with a side of fish. Considering how this all started because we were cooking fancy stuff, we offered to bring something to add to the mix. I suggested soup to il marito. Pappa al pomodoro. I am a closet soup fan. So closeted that I haven’t admitted that to myself. So deep in the closet that I would sooner fall out onto the other side into Narnia than come out on this side. The suggestion was met with incredulity. I could sense him questioning the fundamental building blocks of our marriage. I wised up, and dropped it. We fixated on our favourite course of any meal, the dessert. He gave the matter grave consideration and chose the tiramisu. Il marito is incredibly brave. It turns out Tiramisu is one of those recipes that is very simple on the face of it, and for that very reason, quite difficult to get right. We managed to find the ladyfinger biscuits at our gourmet store, ensuring we reduce our failure rate by at least 50%. Let’s talk about these biscuits and their nomenclature for a moment. These are a delicate, airy, sweet sponge biscuit variety that are a main ingredient in many desserts. They have a wikipedia page dedicated to them. You see these to the left of the picture below. And in the middle, you see the other kind of ladies fingers known to give Indian kids the ability to understand calculus. Wikipedia gently directs you to the Okra page if you want to know more about them. On the extreme right, are what actual ladies’ fingers look like. That is before we get into nail art and the associated horror. Wikipedia does not acknowledge their existence. Now, for more asynchronous learning, spot 6 differences among the three pictures The other ingredient that goes into the tiramisu is a mixture of eggs, mascarpone cheese, cream and sugar. The eggs of course, needed to be separated into yolks and whites and by their birth order. These ingredients were then mixed into three different combinations and beaten until different types of “peaks” were formed. They were all then folded into each other. Yes, folding is different from beating, which is different from whisking, which is different from spoonfuls of tasting during the making. Not to mention, there is a “gentle” version to all of these. Two hours later, when all of these were beaten into submission, the tiramisu was layered and shoved into the chiller to be set. The next morning, out of the fridge, emerged a dreamy sponge. Some cocoa powder was sprinkled for special effects and we were off to our hosts’ for the evening. After generous helpings of the spaghetti and fish, the piatto centrale was brought out. An emergency meeting was held around the table on how to cut a piece with all the layers intact. Knives and spatulas were brandished about. The youngest members of the households didn’t care for the scene at all, the dessert and the excitement around it included. They had their fun by stretching the dinner to a sleepover and then not sleeping for the better part of the night. The adults had the tiramisu over an extended conversation that involved three of us ganging up against il marito. This is getting to be quite the trend nowadays. But then again, il marito is brave. The gist though, is that debates that are had during dessert never end up in blows. It’s tough because no one wants to let go of their plate of dessert, and the moves you can make with a dessert spoon in one hand and a fluffy cloud in the other are quite limited.
This week’s adventure started on google with a hunt for the Sunday dish to be. An hour and five hundred links later, reading my way through “most popular foods around the world”, “average dinner in 195 countries”, “world’s most disgusting foods”, a quick backtrack and “top French foods to eat before you die”, I landed on “Easy French recipes”, a more accurate indication of aukaat. Before I do the grand reveal, a piece of trivia for you. There is a museum in Malmo called ‘Disgusting food museum’. Between the police procedurals and this, Malmo has got the gamut of human interest covered. Btw, the entry to the museum is 185 Swedish Krona for you and absolutely free for your toddler. You are welcome. Coq Au Vin emerged the winner. The dish eliminates the need to pour wine into a glass, both during the preparation and the consumption of the meal. Instead, it is poured directly into the dish. The original one pot meal. The French have obviously won at life. So Coq Au Vin it was, along with Lyonnaise potatoes. I can see now that I am going to be the one making the weekly trip to the gourmet neighbourhood supermarket. This time for Thyme, Parsley and the Vino. The friendly store helper asks me to buy rosemary as well. No sir, I am not going to be selling at the Scarborough Fair, none for me. Back home, mon monsieur puts the bacon on the pan. The grease that is generated is enough to fry the bacon, the chicken, the mushroom and just about everything else for the day. He wants to watch something while cooking, something 70s-ish Hollywood. Apparently, the perfect thing to go with the French cooking. ‘Grease’ literally suggests itself. In case you are wondering, the movie is still as terrible and fanciful as it always has been. My job primarily consists of following le monsieur, cleaning up after him, changing the volume of the movie in tune to the kitchen orchestra, and of course, assisting with the sauces and the broths. Nothing that can’t be thrown away and redone midway, if it all goes south. We discover just in time that the thyme leaves have to be taken out at the end. What? We clearly don’t know how such a task is accomplished. We end up placing them like this, hoping they stay that way. At this point, with the chicken, mushrooms, bacon, carrots and the thyme, it looks like something Getafix is brewing for the warriors of Gaul. I am trying to keep up with my other New Year resolutions as well. So, I open a book - Factfulness, which starts with Hans Rosling declaring he loves the circus. I steal sideways glances at the kitchen, he could have just visited us. It is a singularly uplifting book, for those of you looking to start the year with some positivity. He makes a point where he says the dim worldview most of us hold is not entirely true. For e.g the rich are not getting richer and the poor are not getting poorer. It gives me hope that maybe the fat are not getting fatter. This hope is essential when your only side dish is a bushel of potatoes. Which brings me to the soul searching question of the week - Why do we, as a race, love potatoes? How is it possible for one vegetable to get so much of our love? How shallow are we to be taken in by the dark wheatish complexion and the round shape? Back in the kitchen, the chicken has been drowning in the wine for a couple of hours and combined with the thyme leaves, it smells heavenly. Meanwhile, the twitter wars are raging on, between Sebamed and the rest of the soap world. I wonder why no one has made a soap with wine in it. That would resolve the pH debate once and for all. I’ll say it, everything should have wine in it. The potatoes are sliced and following the steps of this recipe reveals that we just made good old aloo fry. Which means, it tasted like la bombe. The whole family was called in for dinner, attempts were made at plating and all of the coq au vin mopped up with some amazing sourdough. In short, to paraphrase Danny Zuko aka John Travolta “We got chills, they are multiplying”.
Like all regular couples, on New Year’s eve, the man and I pondered over what resolutions we must make for the coming year. We went over the usual - eat perfectly, exercise regularly, throw in meditation for good measure, read a book a week and solve global warming. Given the number of times we went around the Sun, this of course, was a pointless exercise. So, we decided something unusual - that we would cook something fancy every Sunday. 52 fancy meals for the year. So, here we are, the first Sunday of the year. I receive a forward from my mum that says “start this Sunday with a clean heart.” So, I wipe the kitchen counter clean, call the man in and ask him to get to it. The dish for the day is Chicken Lasagna. The fancy ingredients, viz. pasta sheets, Thai basil leaves, paprika powder and grated parmesan were procured the day before. The fact that we thought lasagna is a fancy dish gives you a good baseline of where we are in this journey. The man begins by putting two mobile phones into action, one where the Youtube recipe lady is droning on, the other where he is playing a video game. The scene is enhanced with a half-filled, precariously-perched wine glass and bottle next to the stove. I am in the living room trying to set up a board game for the afternoon (the rules are as complex as the fancy dish). A few minutes on, I hear the first of the profanities from the kitchen. Turns out the recipe asks for the chicken to be cooked and then minced, instead of just suggesting we buy minced meat. I carry on. Nary a quarter of an hour passes, when I hear the sound of glass shattering and more profanities. It seems the paprika bottle was sacrificed at the altar of the aforementioned cacophonous scene. The game set up is paused. I roll up my metaphorical sleeves. Which brings me to this - how are women supposed to roll up their sleeves and get work done if most of our clothes are sleeveless or worse, so tight around the arm that you have to roll the skin up along with the sleeve? But I digress. Some of the paprika is rescued, the glass pieces are swept away, the counters are wiped clean and eyes are rolled at the man. Son rushes in wanting to know what happened, he is asked never to enter the kitchen again without slippers. He consoles us with the fact that at least the glass is not outside the kitchen. He’s very wise, like that. A quick google search on whether eating glass powder kills you, reveals that it is in fact ‘ineffective’. The recipe lady now says a béchamel sauce is required. I am enlisted and called to report immediately. I cook the sauce, while the man cooks the chicken. The pasta sheets cook themselves. A fine lesson in independence. I take out the very new, very cool baking dish that my mother in law had entrusted me with earlier this week. We take about another hour to line the dish with infinite layers of chicken, sauce, sheets and cheese. The oven is warm, the time is 1.30pm, the wine bottle is empty and the son is wondering if we are now doing lunch less Sundays, when all of a sudden, the oven refuses to be big enough for the cool new dish. Not vertically, not horizontally, not diagonally. The man is close to tears, we hug it out. We start the process of moving these layers into three small dishes. With each transfer I make, he does wild hand gesturing and makes cooing noises in fear. The Thai basil leaves end up not being neatly arranged on top. No matter. The oven is warmed yet again. The dish is shoved in. The son is given strawberries. 30 mins on, it is finally done. It doesn’t look bad and is obviously the best lasagna we’ve ever had. 30 mins further on, the board game is still half set up, one dish is fully polished off, one transferred to the fridge for tomorrow, and one baked and standing on the kitchen sill, waiting for orders.
PS: The Thai basil leaves were burnt to a crisp, a complete waste of fanciness. PPS: If anyone knows what to do with leftover boiled pasta sheets sticking to each other and daring me to throw them away, ping me. I want to go on a plane. A 17 hour non stop ride. Surrounded by crying babies and smelly shoes, rubbery food and fake smiles.
I want to go eat a cake at a cafe. Sit next to a family of 6, with boisterous kids spilling milkshakes. Stare at the cloyingly coy couples sharing a truffle. I want to go to a pub. A loud one where your glass vibrates with all the extra bass. Curse the inane music and the uncouth people. And dance next to a thousand armpits. I want to go to a kid’s birthday party. With soggy chips and coloured drinks. With a million small feet scampering along. With tired adult smiles and stolen glances at the watch. I want to go meet a friend. Crib to him about why we needed to meet when we could have just messaged. Get high and silly. Try to walk in a straight line on the bar. And fail. I want to drive to work. An hour each way. And go to work in an office building. With glass walls, grey concrete views and cafeteria sounds. I want to go to a faraway place. Where the monks and peddlers crowd the streets alike, where the bells chime all day long and where all the people can do is drink tea and eat noodles to pass the evening. I want to go live on a ship. For 30 days and 30 nights. Get sea sick and drink rum. Sing and swear like a sailor. I want to go to that chilly place. Where you need to take your gloves off to swipe your phone on. Where your hands can’t leave your pockets. And where you dream of the fire. I want to go to the mountains. Camp under the stars, next to the river and talk about how many mosquitoes there are. I want to go someplace alone, meet some strangers, shake some hands, share some hugs and feel all over again that we all suck, in different ways, but equally. Instead I am in my balcony. Watching the clouds float and the trees sway while the breeze softly ruffles my son’s hair. Haha, kidding. He’s screaming for dinner. Apart from learning that I have the privilege to think about things I have learnt during the lockdown, these are some of the [mostly irrelevant] things life at home has taught me:
At the Work Desk First, get off the bed and sit on a chair. This might be the only relevant piece of advice in the whole post. When you hear “I love you too” on your conference call, it’s not some new found love your colleagues have for you. They are talking to their kids. Or pets. Sometimes, even their spouses. So, don’t give in to the urge to profess your love back. Wear clothes to your work desk. Always. Even when you aren’t on a video call. It’s a good practice and helps you continue some of the non-quarantine beliefs you held before, viz. that you do meaningful work that’s changing the world. Don’t miss out on gossip sessions. Make it a point to do a few coffee break conference calls with your buddies from work. There is no greater bond than the bond of hating the same people at work. And we all know bonds are extremely important, especially in a sinking economy. In the Kitchen Never ask your kids how they want something cooked. They will tell you. Ooooh, they will. But there is a 99.75 % probability that it is not what or how they like to eat it. If you do an “Awesome things to cook” pareto, french beans are that one thing that end up so far down the tail, there is absolutely no reason for them to continue to exist. The effort it takes to cut them into small pieces, the amount of cooking time, the whining from your kids on how they look like chillies - make this an absolute non starter. The kind of arm workout you get while trying to scrape the bottom of your freshly made (read over-cooked) Upma pan is roughly the equivalent of 12*3 dumb bell rows. Never put two pressure cookers on the stove at once. You, in all your corporate double hatting glory, might think you are saving time. What you actually end up with is a) not knowing the origin of the whistle and b) two burnt cookers, the cleaning of which is the equivalent of 12*6 dumb bell rows. Life and Style Stay away from people who encourage you to learn/ do/ experience something new during this time. These are the ones that have live-in maids and obedient kids who are mopping the floor while said person is experiencing the new thing. On the other hand, actively encourage your spouse to do this. I have had awesome made-from-scratch bread and pizza happen in my kitchen. Lastly, and most importantly, Let It Be. As the great Oogway says [since my son just watched this for the 23rd time during this quarantine] “Quit, don’t quit; Noodles, don’t noodles; Don’t be too concerned about what was and what will be”. There are things not in our control, like the TV remote and then there are things that are in our control, like knowing where the cookies are hidden. Reach for what gives you peace. Here's a post I had put up on Linkedin...
I am not really known for my sarcasm (I mean, not on LinkedIn anyway!), but I want to take the opportunity of a momentary lull in my work day to jot this down. A piece on corporate etiquette. Corporate Etiquette - The Basics When you pass by someone whom you’ve interacted with before, say hello or at least smile. Don’t look through them or pretend you don’t remember them. This is not a 3rd grade mating game. Your personality type is not an excuse - this is part of creating a friendly work culture. And it’s on everyone - from the top boss man to the finance guy (not that I am suggesting the spectrum falls into this, just making a side point). Before you get into the lift, wait for those inside to walk out. If the lift stops at a floor that’s not yours, you are right at the doors, and you see no one in front of you, it means someone behind you wants to get out. Step out of the lift. Yes, this action is possible and allowed - the lift will not forget to pick you up later. Also, on the lift thing, if you are wearing a backpack, don’t use it to squash people’s noses. Personal space - yes, it’s a thing and it’s real - get acquainted with it, even if you can’t make friends with it. Lunch at the pantry - oh this one’s my favourite! Don’t spend hours at the lone microwave oven servicing the entire pack of hungry wolves on the floor. Put all your million dabbas in at one go, stay away from the bake option, and find a way to get your food in and out under 55 seconds. Yes, there’s science behind the number. The most basic and yet most lacking - Respect other people’s time. Accept meeting invites or decline. Don’t leave people hanging. When you accept, turn up on time. When you don’t, suggest an alternative, or inform them you don’t think it’s necessary for you to attend. I would love to elaborate on respecting other people’s work, in addition to time. That would, however, fall under the Dark Fantasy genre and not fit in with the Humour/Satire genre I am gunning for here. Don’t, and I mean absolutely don’t, comment on when people leave work. You don’t know when they arrive and you definitely don’t know what they have delivered. I know it’s difficult because all the gazillion coffee and samosa breaks give you brain fog, but take a deep breath and - Just. Don’t. Take notes. For Batman’s sake, take notes. Don’t walk in and out of meetings as if they were a discussion on government policy. They aren’t. There is a purpose - even if it is hard to find most of the time. And lastly, the curse of open offices decoded - don’t stop by to interrupt people when you see them looking intently at their laptop. It may even be work, you can never be too sure. It’s bad enough that you can spy on them, don’t push it by making them talk to you when all they want to do is check how long they can go without blinking. That’s all folks! Keep refreshing and there might be more! In life, I think, we should go all in. In everything we do. Love without holding back. Want something really bad. Work hard for it. Cry if you get it, cry if you don’t. Smother your kid with kisses until he runs at your sight. Hug your partner every time you see them. Crush on someone obsessively. Let it consume you. Allow yourself to think of nothing else. Do away with the what-ifs. Give in. Go all in. And when you are spent, get out. I have always wildly swung between carefully managing my image with every word I utter, to doing completely absurd and impulsive things. There are of course merits to both. Life curation helps you feel secure and make sense of your minuscule existence in the life of this vast vast universe. Let me paint a picture. Imagine yourself in one of the stone age millennia, safe inside your private cave, covering yourself with your DIY sheepskin blanket, preparing for the cold night ahead. Zoom out your lens to get an angle of the full cave, then of the forest, then of the country lands, then of the surrounding blue waters, of the blue green planet, of the solar system, then of the milky way, and all of the extending spaces of the universe. Now zoom back in to the tiny speck that is you, under the blanket. Right. Imagine the innumerable number of revolving objects that only need to change course just a wee bit to challenge the existence of the sheep skin, of the cave, of you. The balanced life you are trying to create is the sheepskin. Giving in helps you come to terms with your insignificant existence, and for that very reason, pushes you to make the most of your time here. Going all in lets you explore your instincts in an unbridled, unchecked way. Think about this - you have been given a chance to roam free on the lands of this glorious globe for a teensy tiny bit of time, to share it with the delightful life around you. And you are working day and night to ensure your teak wood floors are polished and buffed to keep you from sliding too far away from your cave. To quote one of my most favourite human beings - "To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people just exist." And the only way to live, is to experience everything in full. You owe it to your heart to let it feel things with the intensity they deserve. You owe it to your mind to let it dig deep until its curiosity is satisfied. Only when you do that, will you enjoy the journey more than the destination. And such. Disclaimer cum Introspection: All thoughts and ramblings poured into this piece of writing have no relation to the fact that my son has gone all in, into the world of Age of Empires. He keeps at it all day long, researching archaic civilizations and dreaming about halberdiers, elephants, archers, and halberdiers killing elephants killing archers killing halberdiers. Is this whole narrative just an elaborate way of denying this parenting fail? Most definitely not.
Of late, travel has become a choice between spontaneous, unplanned trips or none at all. Managing a toddler and two start ups is not a good situation for travel. It is in fact, the opposite of good. It is the death of travel. But we take what we get. One of those rips in the work-work continuum occurred during our wedding anniversary. We had a weekend to get away. 2 days can be a lot or nothing at all, and we wanted to make it count. We always do a toss between a few options – go to a cool resort close by, save on driving time and do nothing; or go to a nearby tourist place which is a 3-4 hour drive away and do nothing; or take a flight some place, do nothing and get back. It is fairly obvious what the common theme is. More on the art of doing nothing later. This time though, we wanted to do something different. Given the limited time, we ruled out many places and were on the verge of giving up when we hit upon the most brilliant idea ever. One of those ideas that in hindsight seem so obvious that they make you wonder what took you so long. We were going to go on a road trip, with no particular place to go. Just be on the road and do nothing. Conforming to my status as a lazy researcher, I messaged a fellow traveler and asked him for some suggestions on scenic routes. He rattled off a host of choices and we decided on the most straight forward option. We would drive from Bangalore to Udupi and drive back. This was the route we were going to follow: Bangalore to Udupi via Shravanabelagola and Mangalore; Udupi to Bangalore via Agumbe and Chickmagaluru. Saturday started early at 7am. As soon as we crossed Bangalore, I wanted to make a pit stop to load up on the munchies and grab some breakfast. But the husband suggested we don't eat until we got really hungry. Like all his ideas, it sounded awesome at first. We decided to stop only at Shravanabelagola for breakfast. We had a long drive before us. He drove. I sat in silent contemplation, about this trip. The concept of traveling sure has come a long way. From our parents’ generation, where the aim was to cover as much ground as possible in a day, we now try to ‘experience’ more than just ‘see’. And yet, most of us hold the Lonely Planet closer to us than our passports. There’s an unspoken pressure of doing all sorts of things because you know YOLO, and FOMO, not to mention FOBTWMO (Fear of being told we missed out). We are always so caught up in trying to get the best out of the place we are in, that we forget to just soak it in. So what really did I want from travel? After much staring at the grey road ahead of me, I concluded, to me, traveling is about letting things happen to you. It’s about letting go and wading in to the unknown. It’s trying not to have a purpose. Traveling to a place different from yours has to mean that at the end of it, you look at things differently, at least a little bit. It has to have evoked some feelings, some emotions, some thoughts in you that give you a different perspective, however small. Else, you could have chosen the resort next door. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just not traveling. It’s merely holidaying. So that’s what we decided to do. Do nothing, let things unfold and see what happens. One of the quickest side effects when you decide to do nothing, is that you get terribly hungry and suddenly all the eateries on your way look unappealing. Luckily, I could blame the husband for this one. We reached Shravanabelagola around 10am. We could see the giant Mahavir statue from afar. We went to the parking lot and figured it’s quite a walk up the hill, and for all practical purposes, breakfast would leave us happier. We were pointed to a South Indian breakfast joint that was crowded with all the devotees from the temple. Standing next to the parking lot entrance was an old man asking people if they wanted to have Jain breakfast. We said yes to him, the least we could do is go to a Jain eatery if not the Jain temple. The shopkeeper who showed us the South Indian joint asked us not to go. We disregarded him and went anyway. Turned out it wasn’t even a hotel. It was a room in a house with a few steel benches and stools sprinkled about. He had a white sheet of paper on which he had printed the menu and stuck it next to the Bhagawan-wala calendar on the stained wall. We decided to order one masala parantha. When he finally brought it to our table, it turned out to be sattu ka parantha and the best one we had ever had. We ordered one more and then one more. Quite satisfied with our choices that morning, we set out for Sakhleshpur. After a short coffee break at Sakhleshpur, we drove all the way to Mangalore. The national highway was a beauty. There wasn’t a single stretch of bad road. It was the perfect day to look out the window and day dream. We reached Mangalore around 3pm. We had long ago made up our minds to eat crab and only crab. Roasted in ghee. So we went to the much recommended Gajili and polished off their crab collection for the day. We then headed to Pabbas, the insanely famous ice cream parlour. After stuffing our faces with the goodies, we set out for Udupi. There are many towns in the Udupi district where you can camp for the night. We passed by the Kapu town and decided to drive through the interior roads. We parked in someone’s drive way and walked over to the beach from their house. It was a beach front house which was unoccupied for the day. We took our cheesy beach photographs against the sunset. It was close to getting dark, but we decided to sit there for sometime anyway. Holding hands with someone and looking at the clear waters of the Arabian sea is quite the way to spend an evening. Here, there was the added excitement of a possible trespassing charge. We tried convincing the security guard to rent the place to us for the night and failed miserably. An hour later, with our hearts full of love and shorts full of sand, we walked back to our car and set off towards Malpe beach. We checked into the Paradise Isle resort, facing the Malpe beach. It was 7.30 in the evening already. We unpacked, hit the shower and then went out to grab some dinner at the food stalls by the beach. We ate Gobi Manchurian and watched a group of 50 guys dance in an open dancing area until we were asked to leave. The next morning, we took a leisurely walk by the Malpe beach and discovered how perfect it was. The beach wasn’t a favourite among the tourists yet, there were only the local couples and their dogs going on their morning walks. It was quite clear that this unassuming town by the beach is not going to be this peaceful in a couple of years. The resorts, the beach houses owned by Bangaloreans and the students from Manipal were all indications that the beaches here will be the next tourist destination! We started late the next morning and hit the road. We drove via Agumbe this time, a small hilly village in the Shimoga district. It’s a charming little place close to Shringeri and Kudremukh, where a lot of the Malgudi Days episodes were shot. A visit to the Kudremukh national park would have been nice, but this trip was only about being on the road. So, we drove past the beautiful, wet views and continued on to Chickmagalur. The smell of coffee is what marks your entry into the Chickmagalur district. It makes you stop involuntarily at all the small, cute coffee shops set up along the way and have a coffee. Being surrounded by greenery on all sides and sipping on coffee with not a thing to do, our lives suddenly seemed very rich. For what is wealth, if not the means to afford you leisure! After the fifth coffee, we agreed to quit the place and started driving towards Bangalore. We were back in town by 8pm. After two days on the road, we thought we would be exhausted. But something about the monotony of the long winding roads calmed us down, helped us be alone with our thoughts and think up random stuff to write about in blogs. More road trips are definitely in the offing. PS: At the beginning of this post, I promised to talk about the art of doing nothing later. I have nothing. I only said that because I had learnt early on at B School that it’s a good way to stop people from asking questions while I am talking. All this while, it was right there. Like a shoulder pad on the map. Quiet, innocuous, making its appearance in our legends, zooming in and out whenever we thought of the mountains, and patiently waiting for us. It took us a long time to get there and the time we spent there was nearly not enough, but it was the right choice. Just one month after our visit came the terrible earthquake, striking at the heart of the places that held us in awe. Place: Kathmandu. 3 days. The husband and I. A dreamlike retreat. The agenda: To connect over dal bhat and momos, walk aimlessly, gaze at the mountains and if time permitted, nirvana. The first evening, I was on my own and google told me Thamel was where I needed to be. It was the biggest shopping district that I had ever seen or hoped to see. I was lost within minutes. I was hungry and went in search of some local food. There were hundreds of shopkeepers telling me what I needed, viz. shawls made of cashmere, pullovers made of cashmere, bags made of cashmere, toys made of - you guessed it, lingerie made of felt (yes, this is a thing), scary masks and a trip to the Annapurna range. None of them offered any food. Finding local food in Thamel was not a trivial task. One, Nepalese cuisine could refer to Tibetian, Newari, Pahari or a dozen other local cuisines. Two, the streets of Thamel were filled with cafes that insisted on being European. I desperately wanted to try the Newari cuisine. Because that had the selroti which looked so like a kodubale! After an hour of walking, I found myself in front of a huge place located in an alley that was within an alley that was within an alley that was... Everything, from the name plate to the menu to the posters to the customers, was Chinese. No one spoke any of the two and half languages I spoke. I put aside my quest for Newari food and pointed at momos. They came steaming hot along with chop sticks. I asked for a fork. The waitress did not understand. I gave the sticks a try and the momo promptly disintegrated. A man who was sitting at the next table saw my struggle and came over. He gestured as if to ask if he could teach me. I nodded yes. He took another pair of chopsticks and showed me how to use them by popping a momo into his mouth. I caught on and managed to gobble down a few before he could attack my plate again. He laughed. Everyone else in the place laughed. I was forced to join in. By the time I paid for the momos, the streets outside had fallen deadly silent. Apart from a few stray cats and shop keepers hanging outside their shops, there was no activity. I hitched a ride back in a taxi, trying to give landmarks to a taxi driver who understood not a word of what I said. The similarity with India fast disappeared and in those dark lanes, I found the phoren country I was looking for. The next day, we visited the Durbar square. This square has the greatest density of Unesco world heritage sites. A guide convinced me into hiring him for a tour. The square is surrounded with stunning pagoda style temples, palaces and museums built by Newar craftsmen. We started with the Kumari Bahal, a three storeyed courtyard that is the residence of the living goddess. The living goddess is a 9 year old girl belonging to a particular clan, chosen as the goddess by the priests. Every day, for a couple of hours she makes an appearance from a window where tourists can get a glimpse of her face and pray to her; she is taken around on a chariot during festivals while the whole town waits on the sidelines for a fleeting look; her picture is put on fridge magnets and postcards. When she hits puberty a couple of years later, a new goddess is chosen, the picture on the post cards is updated and she is sent back to her previous, mortal life. And you thought Audrey Hepburn had it rough in My Fair Lady. The best part of the square was the mix of Hindu and Buddhist architectures. The guide took me to each of these and threw a lot of random information my way. A sample of the things I was told – The Jagannath temple that had erotic sculptures from the Kamasutra, was where children came along with their parents, to learn about sex before being married off at the age of 8. The Hanuman statue opposite this temple had its eyes covered, because he was a bachelor and looking at erotic poses is a no no. The police station is next to the Kalbhairav temple because he is the god of justice and keeps the police honest. The tall pillar inside one of the temples cured people of orthopedic problems, all they had to do was rub the joint that hurts against it; it will however not work for me because I had no faith. What made the visit to Durbar Street worthwhile, was the scores of pigeons and the souvenir shops. Thangka paintings were the hot item followed by meditation bowls and Dalai Lama’s original design of the meditation mandala slapped on all kinds of stationery. We bought a painting of the durbar street, as it was a few centuries ago. At the end of the tour, the guide earned his full fee by turning out to be a Newari. He took us to his favourite lunch corner in Indra Chowk where mouth watering mung bara, masu bara and spicy aloo were made in a corner tucked away from the touristy streets. We discovered the brilliance of spicy food and ice cold water. Some more walking and café hopping in Freak Street and the neighbouring markets rounded up the day for us. The next day was our last day. We went through our list of things to do. We skipped the Boudhnath stupa, the Pasupathi temple and the trip to Bhaktapur. There simply was no time to waste in commute. Instead we went to the monkey temple. The monkey temple, like the ones in Durbar square was a mixture of Buddhist and Hindu deities. Served with a liberal sprinkling of monkeys. The expansiveness and openness of this place was charming beyond words. It is perched on top of a small hill. Any direction you turned, you would have either a view of the Himalayan ranges or an alleyway selling paintings of the view of the ranges. Any temple that doesn’t require you to take off your shoes or force you to fold your hands and pray to a deity is a winner in my books. It was more a place to congregate. Locals and priests doing puja. Tourists clicking photos. Kids coaxing their parents to buy them coca cola during a break of hide and seek. Monkeys grooming each other. A communal place indeed. We spent the afternoon just loitering around. We heard the Tibetian chant ‘aum mane padme hum’ for so long that we were lulled into buying a cd. I have not been able to get it out of my head till date. We headed towards Thamel for some more of the Newari food. Our favoured place this time was a small nook in the basement of a house. It satisfied the husband’s need to go to some place vague and I was just happy to finally see food. We plonked ourselves there and ate our way through chatamari (flat bread made from rice flour topped with meat, vegetables and eggs), chura (beaten rice made like chat), alu tama, chuela (fried meat that’s like a cutlet) and dal bhaat. All for less than 200INR.
It had started to pour, but we continued. One hour later, weighed down by 5 shopping bags and an umbrella that did not keep us dry, we gave in to the lure of the Himalayan café. Accompanied by some hot chocolate and marshmallows, I finished reading Looking for Alaska, while the husband went in search of wifi. The rain eased and we walked around until we got to the Mandala Street in Thamel. This was the answer to everything we wanted at that moment. Cafes, pubs, live music and the smell of pastries mingled with the smell of rain. Ever noticed how when you have so much choice, you end up not choosing at all? That was us, for an hour. We eventually made our way through some pies at Pumpkin café, thukpa at the Yangling, noodles at Sam’s club and settled down for the night with some beer at Zibro resto bar. The live band played soft rock and reggae in front of a large painting of Bob Marley. The mountains visible through the window and the soft lights over our table provided the back drop. It’s amazing how a single Bob Marley painting sets the mood of a place. We flew back home the next day having made the acquaintance of a city that is real and unreal at the same time. The mountains, a constant reminder of all that was real; the shopping streets, of all that was made just for tourists. To us, Kathmandu will always be this heady juxtaposition of nature, culture and showmanship. We promised ourselves we will go back soon, this time closer to the mountains and do more than just hunt for good food. Visakhapatnam, my last stop for this trip. The city with the naval base. The city with the oldest shipyard on the east coast. The city that is home to a lot of friends. And to me, the city that is the gateway to Arakku. I had a one day stop here before I boarded the next train. Once I checked in, unpacked and finished eating the mini bar goodies, I went down into the street. I figured I would go to the beach and get a lunch with a view. The autowala took me to the famed beach road and together we found a place that served Chinese noodles to foreign tourists. I ordered a portion of egg noodles, ploughed through the mountain for half an hour and for the first time ever left a plate of noodles unfinished. The beach was the strangest thing I had ever seen. And not the nice kind of strange. There were giant statues of gorillas, fish and people. There was hardly anyone walking on the beach, given the heat. With a heavy heart and stomach, I gave up exploring the beach and flagged another auto down. I asked him to take me to the most happening area in town. He said he knew just the place. So it was that I ended up in Jagadamba center. It was happening, alright. It was the time of Sankranti and everyone was out shopping. He took me on a quick tour of the place. I decided against getting down and risk getting lost amid the throng of shoppers. I asked him to take me around town. I had read so much about the Kailasagiri hill, but he had other plans for me. The Three Hills is where we are going, he declared. He said it was the underdog of tourist places in Vizag. I have been following friendly advice throughout the trip, I saw no reason to give up now. So up we went. As we passed through the streets, he gave me a quick lowdown on all the streets, showed me the shops where he shopped for his kids and where he took them to movies. It was a pleasure hearing him talk. I realised just how much I missed talking in my mother tongue. Sure I talk to my family, but it’s not the same thing. Only when you bargain for rides, clothes and vegetables in a language does it count. The Three Hills was so named because of the three hills in the area, each housing a different place of worship. The Ross Hill church, the Dargah Konda and the Venkateshwara Konda. He rued the fact that not all of them are open these days. He dropped me at Ross church. And I saw this. Translated, it means “holy family”. I made a mental note to buy myself a spinning wheel. The lookout from the hill, on the other hand was amazing. I took the mandatory few bad photographs from my mobile phone. This was indeed a great location to see the expanse of the city. The port and the naval base were sprawled out, making the city look vast and deep. It made me realise why people from Vizag miss the place like they do. The rest of the evening was spent on a long walk, trying to find a book store. The Amitav Ghosh that I was reading was proving to be too serious for the train journey. Luckily there were some friends in town, willing to meet, and swap some books. We had a lovely dinner in one of the terrace restaurants with a view of the beach. Better still, I got to come away with ‘The Pricey Thakur Girls’ for the next day’s journey. 6.30 in the morning is just the right time to board a train. There’s something about the early morning sights and sounds that make you feel like the city is letting you in on its secrets. It was a lovely morning and I had not felt this safe in a city for a long time. This train journey was different for two reasons. One, I was making the return journey the same day. So this was purely about the means and not the end. The other, and this was unfortunate, was that it was a passenger train on which I had a second class ticket. It was a Saturday to boot and thousands of families were out with their kids to make the day trip to Bora caves and Arakku. Nothing like a bunch of Telugu and Bengali families on a train to make you feel like settling down in the mountains among yaks that can’t talk. One set of family was teaching their kids to take photographs of the valley outside. Another was crooning to 90s bollywood romantic songs playing on their mobile phone. Paul Theroux says in his book that the railways are like a bazaar. To understand the people of a country, all you need to do is get into a train and wait for the drama to unfold. Stories are told. Fears are disclosed. Territories are marked. Class lines are drawn. I have to agree with him. Arakku is 130 km away from Vizag on the rail route. But it takes 4 hours to get there. It is 15 stations away with a 10 minute stop at each station. It seemed interminable. The innumerable tunnels were both fun and a device of torture. People screeched their lungs out with each approaching tunnel. Sometimes the tunnels lasted 5 whole minutes. There was no place at all near any of the windows to peer out. Everyone was leaning against the window bars. It was drizzling and that made the valley outside stunning in its beauty. There were breathtaking sights of the valley on the one side and waterfalls on the other. Water trickling through lush green is a sight to behold. But I caught fewer and fewer glimpses of that and increasing glimpses of the rats scurrying across in the coupes. The train was the dirtiest of the lot in the trip. I opened my book to see what the Thakur girls were upto. We arrived at Arakku by noon. I had two and half hours to kill before it was time for the return train. I got into an auto and gave him the brief – lunch and a good view. We stopped at a street side vendor to pack some bamboo chicken and headed to a view point. We went up along a winding route paved among trees that hid the otherwise smouldering sun. The view point came upon us quite abruptly. There were a few people clicking photographs and moving on; no one was really stopping there. There was a man selling honey and another selling spices. I decided to eat my bamboo chicken on the ledge separating this platform from the valley below. The honey vendor lent me some paper and plastic to unpack the chicken. I repaid his generosity by buying a bottle of honey. The lunch was delicious, the monkeys were good company and the backdrop couldn’t have been better. I got back to the station half an hour early, only to find that the train was delayed. It was one of those stations with just one platform and one train passing through it. I was quite amazed that it had a waiting room at all. A spotless, clean one at that. I parked myself on one of the stone benches lined along the wall. I had long since finished the book. And had only the 20% battery on my mobile phone to keep me engaged. There were a few other people, the men mostly sleeping and the women swatting flies. An old man playing “gimme everything tonight” on his phone kept us entertained. The mandatory drunk in the railway station kept us up to date on when the train is expected, which now was 2.5 hours later. I contemplated taking a taxi back to Vizag. He advised me against it, saying the route was not safe. So I waited at the station, which was singularly gorgeous. But I was miffed, I had enough of this, I was homesick and I just wanted to sit in the rat infested train and get back home. I spent my time dipping my finger into the honey bottle and slurping it drop by drop. Just when my finger couldn’t reach the honey in the bottle any more, the train arrived. I enjoyed the alluring scene for about 2 hours before darkness fell. After that, each time the train passed through one of the dark tunnels, I held my breath and waited for the dementors from Azkaban to come for me. As I sat there by the window counting the number of stops to reach Vizag, I realised I would be home by this time tomorrow. I mulled over what my biggest discovery during the trip was. It was this – take advice from strangers, load up your phone with bollywood music and travel by autos. You might not end up doing what you would have liked, but you will end up with a good story.
My third train was the longest on this trip. Lasting 26 hours, it took me from the west coast all the way to Vizianagaram on the east coast. This was my gateway to Vizag and then to Arakku. This was also the journey that I did not have a confirmed ticket for. My 2nd AC ticket was waitlisted at ‘PWL1’. For over a month! The mysteries of the Indian railway ticket. I got to the station early and bought a ticket that enables unreserved travel in the general compartment. The train arrived at the station. I got into one of the second class compartments. I zeroed in on compartment S7 for my unauthorized travel. A young Australian couple going to Hampi for the cultural festival; a shopkeeper originally from Hampi with a nuts & fruits shop in Goa, going back home; a man travelling all the way to Howrah in what he cited as dire circumstances; these were my fellow travelers. In the next ten minutes, it was clear that all of them had only general tickets. Not one of them had a confirmed ticket. I began to feel at home. I wheeled in my suitcase that was so far hesitantly positioned in the aisle, and confidently shoved it under the seat. I was not too worried. I romanticised about getting down at some random station like Dharwad and finding inner peace, or at the very least good peda. The travelling ticket examiner [TTE] came in. He had no berths to offer in this class and suggested I check in the AC compartments. I went in search of the AC compartment TTE. He shooed me away and asked me to check with the new TTE at Hubli. I got back to S7 to the sympathy and ‘I told you so’s of my friends (Yes, we were thick by then). In the meantime, while I was going from compartment to compartment trying to get a seat, I had clean forgotten why I was on the train in the first place. I was to enjoy the breathtaking view of the Dudhsagar falls between Madgaon and Londa. The Dudhsagar falls are amongst India’s tallest falls and this train offered the best view of them. I asked the Hampi shopkeeper [HS] if he knew when the falls would make an appearance. He confidently told me it was half an hour later and I was to lean onto the right side. As he said this, I noticed everyone making their way to the door and leaning onto the left side. I decided to follow HS’s advice (friendship is nothing if there is no trust). Ten minutes later, amidst the excited cries of everyone around, I caught a glimpse of the falls from the left side. Apparently I missed the full view. So much for the long trip for the sake of the falls. Although, the fresh air, that lasted for almost 2 hours, was totally worth it. I returned to my seat, HS asked me if I got a good view, I replied in the negative, he opined I must be quite daft to miss such a huge thing, especially when the train stopped there for a few minutes. The Australian couple, on the other hand, saw the full thing. When they boarded the train, they did not even know of these falls. I am sure there’s a lesson in there for me. I am just not sure what. It turned out HS was a great conversationalist. He told the Australian couple that they were going to Hampi at the right time, marked out the places they could stay at and visit. All sweetness. After he was done with them, he turned to me and said “I don’t trust these Christians. They are always trying to convert people to their religion. So are Muslims for that matter. I don’t know what religion you belong to, but you can see that I am right.” “These Australian Christians did not try to convert you, did they?” “Oh you just wait, they will, by the end of the journey. Which is why, I say Hindus are the only good people left. For that matter, not even all Hindus. Only those who pray to Shiva, he is the only God worth anything. He grants your wishes. The rest of them are fake.” “I see. What did you wish for?” “I wanted a rich girlfriend and I got one. She is not very pretty but I am seeing her because of the money. I am going to the festival so I can take her around. During this season, you can get lost in the crowd, and the town people don’t talk about you afterwards. If everything goes well, I’ll marry her later this year” “You are dating her for the money. Why is she seeing you?” “Oh, I have a way with women. Btw, you know what, if you don’t get your berth, you should get down at Hospet and come to Hampi. I’ll show you around.” Stranded as I was, the offer was tempting. I called my husband to ask if I should just go to Hampi instead of Arakku. He suggested, in his usual helpful manner, that I should do what I really want to do. I got him to book a hotel room for me in Hampi, just in case, and went back to making a mental pros and cons list of Hampi vs Arakku. Before I made up my mind, the train arrived at Hubli. The new TTE was a congenial man with a fatherly attitude towards life. He was checking our tickets, when a young girl, about 20 years old, got into our compartment. She literally lifted me off my seat, asked everyone to scooch over, and put me down a few inches away. Given how none of us had a confirmed ticket, we meekly accepted the situation. The TTE asked to see her ticket. She took out a general ticket, similar to ours and gave it to him. One look at it, he rolled his eyes, and asked her where she needed to go. “Perambur.” “Please get off in the next station, go back and find the right train.” After much theatrics and hysteria, he got the girl to leave the compartment. He assured me he would find me a berth at Hospet. I told him it was alright if he did not, I would get off at Hospet and go to Hampi. This gave him a headache. He did not understand what I wanted and just asked me to talk to him at Hospet and until then I should know that I was travelling illegally in the train. I offered to pay the required fine to convert my ticket. He said he did not know how to calculate the fine for someone who had a general ticket till Vizianagaram, had travelled till Hubli and may or may not get off at Hospet. I realised it did not really matter whether I got to Vizianagaram or not. I was quite enjoying myself. The girl who boarded the wrong train. The two guys who shared a home meal and friendly banter, while peeling an onion in the compartment. The travel agent’s assistant who took the train just so he could sell hotel rooms in Hospet, to foreigners for 1000 rupees a night. The foreigners who thought that was too much. The TTE who cracked jokes with a couple, until he gave up in the face of their stoic refusal to laugh. This then, was what it was about. It was about catching up with life. Seeing what people had been up to. People I didn’t normally meet in my day to day life. People that I recognized from an earlier life. Thoughts that I remembered having long ago. When you travel in a train, you realise what a narrow circle of people you mingle with. It’s easy to believe that’s all there is to the world out there. With these thoughts in my mind, we came upon Hospet. The TTE told me he found a berth for me. So, I was to continue my journey after all. I moved to the AC compartment. The compartment with the closed curtains suddenly seemed lifeless. The elderly couple who were already there were quite snobbish and got cross with me for sitting on their white bedding. So, I decided to retire to the upper berth that was mine. Looking forward to nothing interesting for the rest of the evening, I went to bed. The next morning, the lady from the lower berth wished me good morning, said she wanted to take a chance. I did not quite get what she meant. She said that she had wished me earlier and I did not respond. She did not know if it was because I was a snob or if I did not hear her. Sometimes people think the exact same thing of you, as you think of them. Talk about irony. With this newly attained wisdom, I got off the train at Vizianagaram. I wanted to visit the Vizianagaram fort but the taxi drivers told me there was no fort around. I showed them the Wikipedia page but they categorically denied its existence. No point in arguing if they were that embarrassed by it, so I gave up, got into an ambassador taxi, wore my blue shades and set out for Vishakapatnam. |
Aishwarya KalakataThe loss of and search for individualism has never been felt more acutely. Everything changed after I had a kid. But this blog is not about me being a mom. It’s about the things I do when I want to stop being a mom. It’s about telling myself that it is possible and that it is ok. It’s about my little escapades. Mostly travel - sometimes physical, sometimes mental. A desperate bid to stop my identity from being rolled into a single word. CategoriesArchives
March 2021
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