Culinary misadventures

Note :-  About the same topic as that of the last post. Might even have a couple of common points, what to do, that's all I felt writing about.


Being in your early or mid twenties and staying away from home, in a city, for work or for studies is probably one of the most decisive phases of your life. For most people, it’s the time when you start realizing, or at least start contemplating about where you want to head, and which waters you want to tread. Besides that, it could also be the time when you start having a serious stint in the kitchen. 

While I had started living in Chennai, eating out was a very convenient option. But later on, I started missing home food more and more, and trying out the different hotels and the roadside eateries, that Chennai is pretty abundant of, didn’t seem good enough. So I decided to test my culinary skills, in case there was any. Needless to mention, everything went catastrophically wrong, in the early days.

Cooking is an art. A unique vision on how the work of art will turn out to be in the end, is what separates an artist, from the others. Similarly, a good cook will have a vision on what kind of an experience the food is going to be, in the end; a quality that I completely lacked. My mind was always expectant of the impending doom, as I cooked. But the cooking maneuvers, or rather, misadventures, did teach me a few things.

During the early days, I used to order pizza, after I had messed things up in the kitchen. But soon enough, I learned that my cooking will never improve, and my confidence that I will never cook anything edible, grew manifold. So I would order pizza and then start cooking, so that by the time the disaster was complete, pizza would have got delivered.

As days passed by, I managed to develop a common procedure, to cook almost all of the vegetables, using only the essential ingredients. And by essential ingredients, I mean the things that are absolutely necessary to make it edible. For example, if you are going to prepare carrot fry, you can do without curry leaves or mustard seeds, but not without carrot, unless you are the people from my office cafeteria. There, they have these delicious meat rolls which, even if you dissect and examine, won’t be able to find any trace of meat. Also, I remember a hotel in my hometown, where you can consider yourself extremely lucky if your curd vada has either curd or vada. 

Sometimes, I used to call my mother, in order to ask for instructions. The conversation would go something like this.

“Amma, I have 350 grams of ladies finger, two onions and one tomato in the pan. How much salt should I add?”

“One and a half spoons”

“Okay”

I add one and a half spoons of salt, and later on, realize that the spoon that I am using is much larger than what we have at home, and probably I have added enough salt to shoot up my blood pressure to soaring levels.

“What about chili powder?”

“Which variety of Chili powder are you using? Is it Kashmiri?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Yes. Can you check?”

I have already put the chili powder in a can and thrown the cover away, so I frantically search the trash to find the cover, while my dish continues to get cooked. I take out the trash once in a long while, so I am quite sure of finding the cover.  I find it finally, but by that time, whatever I had in the pan has already burnt, and there is no need to add anything to the lumps of carbon, anyway.  

As I try to gobble up whatever has been cooked, I think of my mother. I think of how she used to prepare breakfast, prepare lunch, pack it for my school, and then go to work by 10. That’s probably your story too. Remember how your mother used to cook something different and tasty, everyday. Have you ever thrown out the lunch that your mother had packed? Think of that.

 Try not to cry.

Now, cry all you want.

Food for thought

I swirled on the living room couch, listening to the pleasant sound of a heavy monsoon rain. The tiny water droplets that rushed in through the window and lingered in the air, made me shiver. I kept swapping between the sports channels in TV, not stopping with anything for too long.

The aroma of ghee melting on top of a frying Dosa, on the pan, spread in the air. My mother knew that I was too lazy, even to get up and have my breakfast.  So, after some time, she brought me a plate, with a golden brown color, crispy Dosa rolled and kept at one end, and some onion chutney, which is nothing but a well ground mixture of fried onion, red chilies and tomatoes, next to it. I began to drool, as she brought me the plate.  The first piece of Dosa, dipped in the spicy chutney, went into my mouth, soon enough. 

I settled onto a channel, where a live telecast of an old cricket match was going on. In between, I took a sip of the hot filter coffee that mother had placed on the small table, next to the couch.

Bliss.

But not anymore. The society brings upon hundreds of restrictions on you, some of which are, hardly even fair, and the most exasperating among them is that, nobody will pay you, unless you work.  So, eventually I had to move away from home, first for my education, and then, for a job. The food that mother used to cook, became something that I could enjoy, only once in a long while.

The first thing that I learned, after moving to a city was that, the food doesn’t cook on its own.  Looked like, it took a lot of effort to create something that is edible, let alone, tasty. Often, I would make phone calls, asking for instructions.

 'Amma, how many whistles does the cooker blow before the rice gets cooked?'
 
'Four. You have poured enough water with the rice, right?'
 
'Ugh.  Was I supposed to add water, with the rice? But anyways, water is not an essential 
ingredient, is it? I’m sure it’s not going to alter the taste, much. By the way, who the hell is smoking, in my room?'


Practice makes things better, if not perfect, and so did my cooking. I did a permutation and combination of the chilly, turmeric, coriander and masala powders, everyday. Random vegetables cut up and cooked with all these ingredients, I proudly called them dishes. I was always willing to gobble up almost anything.


After my brave maneuvers in the kitchen for more than a year, what I realized was that, cooking is more or less of an art. An artist possesses an inner vision of how the creation will look or feel like, once it is finished. The same is the quality that a good cook possesses, and of course, the same was what I completely lacked.


Cooking, whenever I do it, gives me a sense of independence. I don’t depend on anyone else, at least to cook my own food. We, as a modern society, always tend to slip into a consumer culture, and fall into the fallacy that everything that we need for consumption, will always be readily available for buying. Living in a country where the national food security bill didn’t escape from getting stranded in the political quagmire, ensuring our own food security is something that each individual should be concerned about. Cooking on our own, could be the first step to that.


The infrastructure development is going exponential, but, what we often forget is that, unless someone cultivates, we don’t eat. To have our own fruits and vegetables grown in our own yard, may be, that’s how we should see ourselves in the future.

Now, that is some free advice, to the world, from me.


It’s dinner time. I am hungry.


Where is the nearest pizza shop?

The festival of inner light

I stood on the terrace and looked around. The sky was getting lit up in different colors. Different shades with golden tinge got mixed up, in the black palette, as the incessant bursting sounds announced the intensity of the joyous celebrations. Enthusiasm was in the air.

It was the Diwali night.

Most of my friends made it home to join their loved ones and add more color and vigor to the festivity. The happiness of being together manifolds the beauty of any celebration, and it isn't any different with Diwali. I was dejected that I couldn't do the same, but I was getting to know how Chennai, my second home, looked and felt during the special day, and I did feel a pinch of the excitement that was flowing all around.

According to the most popular legend, Diwali is associated with the killing of Narakasura. It is the festival of lights, and it also is the time to worship Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. So we celebrate, illuminating our houses, and a plethora of firecrackers go off, adding to the fun.

But sometimes, we get lost in the bells and whistles, don’t we? Rarely do we think that the festival of lights symbolizes the knowledge of your inner light. As we remember the story of Krishna slaying the vicious Asura, we should look for our inner demons, and slay them, so that we emerge as better people. Darkness is driven out of everywhere on this day, but our inner darkness also has to be driven away.

So, enjoy the day to the fullest, but, in the end, do take some time out, away from everything, for introspection. Without that, everything else would be pointless. Let this also be the celebration of a personal achievement, of having found ways to make ourselves better and eventually, make all of our co existence, better and more beautiful. 

Change, as I see it

As the bumpy auto rickshaw ride took me closer to my home, I gazed around, and kept noticing the striking dissimilarities between what I was seeing, and what that place used to be, a few years back. It was my once in three months homecoming, from Chennai, to the village in Kerala, where had I spent the first fifteen years of my life. I usually develop an inexplicable emotional nexus with places, but quite ironically, that never happened with the village where I was born and brought up.

“This place looks different, ma”

I exclaimed.

“Look who is being nostalgic now”

My mother’s reply was sarcastic, and I knew exactly why. She was also born and brought up in the same village, and we often discussed the evolutionary voyage of that place. She had told me how different, life used to be, during her childhood.  

“There was a muddy walkway, in the place of this road”

She points to the road, sounding dispirited. She goes on and talks about how agriculture was the main source of income for everyone, the enthusiasm and warmth that floated around during the celebrations of Onam and Vishu, how families were huge, how buffaloes, cows, goats and chicken were all considered to be members if it, and so on. And then, she tells me that everything started changing since people got enticed with the opportunities that cities offered. She reminisces that there was one lone buffalo left in our house, after we sold everything else, and I get the pun, only when she adds that, that buffalo, went on to study engineering, and lives in Chennai now.

I was of the opinion that, if you live in a place long enough, you would eventually develop an attachment with it, and when you see things change, you feel a pinch of sorrow.  So I put across my point pugnaciously, and try to snub her by saying that, there is nothing special in what a person feels for the surroundings that he or she lives in.

“Just look at the way people celebrate our festivals, these days. It was all about cherishing togetherness. But not anymore.”

She retaliates saying that it’s not the change, but the way things change, is what she finds admonishing.  All I can do is to accuse it all on the inability of the older generation to adapt.

But now, as I look around, I realize that, I too have started to miss the way things used to be. There were very few buses in our route, and we used to tell as a joke that, once that bus passes, you can sleep on the road, till it returns after two hours.  But now, the sound of motor vehicles lingers in the air, incessantly. The sprawling paddy fields, which also used to serve as our makeshift cricket grounds after harvesting, are all cut into different plots, and houses are rising, everywhere. The local primary school, has started English medium classes also. And the first three star hotel of our area has started functioning, in the nearest town.  

If you ask me, I wouldn't really be able to tell you, which all of these are to be welcomed, and which all are not to be. The infrastructure development and the better living conditions can be considered as a sign of the economic development of our country, and let us hope that it is the augury of a brighter tomorrow that awaits us. Our culture and lifestyle need not remain the same forever, but the essence and soul of it should. It is important to remain true to what we really are, and to sustain our inner virtues. ‘How exactly?’ is a question that is left to each one of us.  

Am I a little late here?

The blog has been dormant for a while and there have been multiple reasons like the latest socio political developments around the world and an appalling fall in the rate of monsoon in a bitter gourd shaped state in the southern part of India. I haven’t been watching too many movies, reading too many (Or even any) books for the last couple of months, which accounts for the absence of reviews. ‘Dark knight rises’ was the last English movie that I watched in theatre, and I did write a review for that. As I used to do with all of my movie reviews, I immediately sent it out to ‘The Hindu’, annoyed by the constant requests of the editor. But, by some unexpected turn of events, it didn’t get published. The editors had found it really hard to manage the e mails that flooded their inbox, after my previous reviews were published, and now, they are not going to publish movie reviews other than the ones by their own critics. Fair decision. But by the time I learnt that, one week had passed, so I didn’t feel like putting up the review here, because a movie review should never be that late.

Yesterday morning, as I opened Hindu Magazine, I found an article, which was a response to another one published in August. There was a subsequent reply by the author of the first article as well. The hot debate was about nothing, but the ‘Dark knight rises’. Damn! This movie is still being discussed. So why I can’t I put my review as well, in the blog?

First of all, I will provide the links of those two articles, which, I found, to be very interesting. Here is the first article, and here is the response.

I personally feel that, the allegations of Dark knight rises lacking the right political implications is void, because you can never thrust the responsibility of conveying the right ideas upon an artist. The greatest success, for an artist is when his/her work is being appreciated, discussed and digested by maximum number of people. Christopher Nolan could do that, with the story of a comic hero.

So, here comes my review, which is, a very small note, on how excited I was, about the movie. I am a Christopher Nolan fanboy, and especially a huge fan of the Dark Knight series, so it is possible that I have missed out on all the down sides, if any.

Again, all of this doesn’t matter because the readership of my blog is that huge.

Begins. Falls. Rises. Goosebumps!

Trilogy. Prodigy.

Movie : The dark knight rises

Cast : Christial Bale, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gorden Lewitt, Tom Hardy

Expectations, is a double sided sword. It could be an inspiration to go the extra distance, and sometimes, it could burden you, and even beak you down. This applies for films, too. Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark knight rises’, which was hailed as the ‘Most awaited movie of this generation’ arrived last week, amidst the skyrocketed expectations of the movie lovers. As the Villain of the film, ‘Bane’, tells in a memorable dialogue, ‘There cannot be true despair without hope’. But the makers of the film have delivered a piece of cinematic brilliance, which meets our hopes, and saves us all, from falling into the pit of despair.

It has been eight years since the Batman has vanished, after taking the responsibility of Harvy Dent’s vicious acts. Organized crime has been pushed into oblivion and the people of Gotham are having a peaceful time. But as Bane arrives, spreading chaos and fear, Batman has to come back. He has to revamp his spirits, to stand up to the stronger enemy.

There is so much to appreciate in this film, that it obscures the mind on what to mention and what not to. It’s superbly directed, and very well cinematographed. The cast has done well, without anybody falling short of the mark. The adrenaline pumping action sequences are as good as it can ever get. But the film has much more to offer, that the scintillating fights. The emotional depth of the film has to be attributed to the writers. They have created a soulful story, which depicts the inner battle of an individual, while leaving a room for all the thrills and frills.

The movie lacked a villain as good as the Joker, and you cannot be without getting reminded of Heath Ledger’s mystifying performance, as Tom Hardy walks around, as the masked villain. The film, as a whole, doesn’t reach up to ‘The dark knight’, but having a too good predecessor can hardly be a fault.

Bottomline : Worthy culmination of the legendary trilogy. Must watch. Just decide how many times.