Dear Delhi,
This is a sambar (pronounced s:aa:m:bur i.e the way you say it)
This is sambhar (pronounced s:aa:m:bh:aar) what you eat with your idly.
Yours Sincerely
I-guess-theres-still-some-South-Indian-Left-In-Me
(Disclaimer – I do not own any of the pictures)
I have been pretty down lately. Think seriously bummed out. I don’t really like my job or my boss. To be fair, I think that feeling is pretty mutual. So obviously the quality of my works suffers, because I do it with the attitude of picking up dog poo (you know, gingerly with as few fingers as possible but as neat as possible because it needs to be done). And most of all I lack the courage to make a clean break because the question “What will I do?” paralyses me.
Then I think if maybe I could use my free time to explore what I like. So I try to blog. Or read. Or write. Or cook. Or draft business plans. Or even watch TV. But my brain is unable to hold a thought. It seems that there are too many thoughts in my head to hold on to just one. But when I back on what I, errr, thought, I can’t remember a single thing that held my attention.
Sometimes though, a random thought catches my fancy and I become a little obsessed with it. For example, the other day my boss was droning about designing variable pay structures and for some reason I thought of temple dancers. And I just had to find out everything about them. So naturally I consulted the most knowledgeable of all time. Google. And as you can see, this wiki article is a pitiful excuse for an article. So I searched some more. And came up with bare bones but nothing substantial. I find it annoying. but I’m guessing its more because I hate having to stop before I’m ready to quit.
The other day – I can’ t quite remember what I was doing – but out of nowhere I remembered bits and pieces of some random shloka my grandfather taught me. When I started to recite it in my head, shockingly the whole thing came back. It made me realise, a whole eighteen years after he died, that he was a phenomenally intelligent man who had a wide ranges of interests and was knowledgeable on many things. All I remember of him, however, is that he ruined my summer vacations by making me study math. Regardless of how intelligent my family thought I was, I never enjoyed math and I never will. Its tragic I grew up in an age where the only metric of intelligence was a math score. Needless to say my family didn’t think I was intelligent for very long. The evidence, strongly pointed to the contrary. Coming back to my grandfather – I looked up this chant and…I wont bore you with details, but the point is, this was terribly interesting stuff. And I wish he’d spent more time talking to me about stuff like this. History, mythology, philosophy – he obviously knew all this and more and yes, I may have been too young for all of this but if he managed to stick that one bit in my head, for life it seems, he could have told me so much more. And then perhaps it wouldn’t have taken almost two decades for me remember him as something other than a sour old man who traumatised me into doing stuff I didn’t want to do just because he decided that was the way to do things. (Never got why he thought he had to take over my education – I had teachers and my own dad to deal with. Did he not think it was enough?)
So essentially, inside my head is an exhausting place. Its easier to just eat double chocolate chip cookies and enjoy the sugar rush instead.
AD (on the phone) – Hi, are you working from home today?
Me – Yes. Why?
AD – Oh, I wanted to ask if you’d got the flowers.
Me – What flowers?
AD – Valentines day flowers! I ordered them online
Me – Really? That’s so sweet, I’m touched!
AD – Aren’t I the best?
Me – Most certainly.
AD – Ok, now here’s the consignment number, why don’t you track your flower delivery status.
It must be love right?!
I really haven’t anything more to say about this than the rest of the world already has but when I see all the ladies on the Delhi metro reading this with such intense concentration, I wonder what the fuss is all about. I mean, of course I know what the fuss is about, I just don’t get how its made the grade for reading material for before office commute. Especially since my sister in law tells me the word in London, where she lives, is that its a huge hit for women who want to spice up their bedroom lives. To be quite honest I never made it past page 50 of Book 1 in the series. And now I hear they want to make a movie of it. What’s more, I hear Angelina Jolie wants to play Ana. Hmmm….I just dont see it.
Know what I do understand? Chocolate cake. This is the most fabulously easy recipe in the world. Its basically a chocolate sponge with loads of butter which is topped with a frosting that tastes like a melted chocolate bar, of course with lots, and I mean lots of butter. I made this for my brother J’s 22nd birthday. 10 days later, he’s still talking about it. If Mr Fussy liked it that much, it must be good. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge my awesomeness….Fine the awesomeness of the recipes from this book. The lady’s a genius.
Thanks S for the picture!
I’m a terrible driver. Nervous, jumpy and far too likely to close my eyes in sheer panic instead of actually doing something about what I (usually always) misjudge as a ‘do or die situation’ (mostly ‘die’) Which is funny, because that’s not my personality type at all. I take charge and get things done. But behind the wheel of a car I’m more likely to cower, moan, usually on the verge of tears muttering “God, please get me home in one piece”. I’m absolutely mortified if there’s irate honking from behind me – its like I’ve committed an unpardonable road etiquette faux pas. It would never occur to me that the other guy is just being a d**k. I also somehow manage to inch my way onto the footpath to avoid the bus next to me just in case….i dont know. Roll over and crush me for fun? But Road Rage? THAT, I’m very good at. You should see me cussing out idiot drivers and retard pedestrians…..from the passenger seat. AD’s the road, and I’m the rage. GO TEAM!(?)
In other news, we kick started season celebrations with cousin A’s birthday in the last week of October. I made her a red velvet cake. Actually it was a chocolate cake with tonnes of food colour in it. Except at the last minute the bottle I’d assumed was red food colour turned out to be peppermint essence. So I took of to the nearest store who would only offer me ‘sunset red’. I had to use it all because after magenta velvet cake, there was no way i was risking ‘orange velvet cake’. Yeah, knowing how much food colour goes into red velvet cake sort of ruined it for me. To trick it out, I frosted it with Seven Minute Frosting. I think i’m the only person in the world to serve a fully frosted cake with a bowl of extra frosting on the side. What can I say? My friends and family are pigs.
In the run up to diwali i spent an hour yesterday trying to put up lights. By put up I mean trying to toss metres and metres of electric wire around the place, willing it to stay up rather than actually doing anything constructive to hold them up where I wanted to. All I managed to do was tangle myself in wires lumbering around like Godzilla, unable to prevent some of the tiny bulbs cursing under my clumsy feet. But I managed to get the lights to stay where I wanted them to, and you don’t even notice the missing lights – almost.
So with the madness at work ending, I’ve spent the last month catching up on what I like best – reading.
When I think back about all the books I read as a kid, I’m convinced that I read stuff that was probably not appropriate for my age. Not racy stuff, but things that I may not have fully understood or appreciated at the time. When I was really young, my mum gave me her old book of short stories – I think it was called Adventure Stories for Girls – or something like that. And one particular story stuck in my mind -it was about a young French aristocrat who is rescued and placed in a boarding school in England by a mysterious man who is fighting to save the French nobility. At the time I had no idea about the French Revolution. And sadly to say, it didn’t, at the time, inspire me to read more about it. It was supposed to be terribly romantic and adventurous but the great story was lost of me because all I could think about was the heroine’s name, “Lucette”. Except it was lost on me because my stupid brain latched onto the name as “Lettuce” and for the life of me I couldn’t figure about why the dashing Mystery Man would fight to the death for someone called “Lettuce”. Poor Lucette. Even though she’s fictional, I beg her forgiveness for reducing her ‘brave yet tragic frailty’ to “lettuce”.
This morning my maid asked me what to pack for lunch along with aaloo parathas. So I said put the kadhi in (as its been staring at me for a few days and I’d hate to toss the whole lot). And she, in all wisdom smirks and says, “parathe ke saath kaun khata hai?” At which point, I told her it was food and since she doesn’t have any better ideas she can just follow mine. It got me thinking though. Who makes all these rules about food? I can eat whatever I want, however I want. If I take the leftover aaloo paratha stuffing, dump it in pancake batter and call it dinner, so what? If I’m hungry enough and want to eat last night’s briyani for breakfast, I will (I must admit, its been years since I’ve done this – I just cant eat like I used to be able to). So when people tell me things like “We eat rice in winter” (because its heavy and easier to digest in cold weather apparently), it strikes me as strange. Obviously the South Indians and the Bengali’s didn’t get that memo.
And if I start out to make cinnamon rolls then realise that I haven any butter left for the cinnamon filling, I just put chocolate it in and carry on. You know why? Because I can.
Instructions at the back of a piping bag & nozzle set
Rumour has it that it was your country that exported the English language to the rest of the world. Surely you can do better than this?!
