Cooking up a (pudhina-omelette) storm

I have come to realise that the nicest things I whip up in my little kitchen are impulsive improvisations. This morning I made myself a phudina falvoured omelette and I am feeling quite proud about the way it tasted. It took me all of 10 minutes to put together and left me with that feeling of goodness after a nice meal. Here's how I made it. Let me know if any of you actually try it out!

What you need: (serves 1 hungry girl)
1 egg
Fresh pudhina (mint)
Half an onion, chopped
One tamato, chopped
One red chilli
Three pods of garlic
Salt and Pepper

How you make it:
The first step is to make the pudhina chutney: Lightly saute the chopped onion, tomato, chilli and garlic pods. Add in the cleaned pudhina leaves right at the end and saute that for not more than 10 seconds. You leave it any longer, it'll turn bitter. Run the mix through a blender so you have a smooth paste.

Tip: You can make the chutney and store it in your fridge for upto a week. The fresh mint tastes divine with almost anything: bread, rice, chapathi...

The second step is the omelette itself. Beat up the egg with salt and pepper. When you have a nice frothy consistency, throw in a teaspoon of the pudhina. Cook the egg in a sausepan as you would normally do to make an omelette. I like to fold in the omlet when its still runny, so the ends get stuck. This way the omelette's crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy inside.

Serve the omelette with lightly toasted bread and a cup of hot chocolate.

Bon appetit!

Reality Check?

Like most children of the 90s, I grew up on a healthy diet of Bolywood cinema. When it comes to melodrama, nobody does it quite like us. Estranged sons dying in mothers’ laps, long distance lovers united after 30 years, fish mongers turning into bomb disposal experts so they can play with fate, pet animals coming to the rescue of damsels in distress because heroes turn villains by cheating on their wives...really, few things amaze me these days as far as Indian television goes. But last evening was different.

It was a regular weekday evening. My roommate (let’s call her T) and I were having a cold meal as we mindlessly switched between the evening news and Junior Master Chef. As to why we faithfully watch a cookery show involving 10 year olds each evening is anyone’s guess. I suppose we are fascinated by these children who talk texture and flavour, while we barely get past making a somewhat passable meal of rice, poriyal and curds. But I digress. At some point T switches to Colors which broadcasts Bigg Boss on prime time. We laugh over the concept of the reality show, while graciously acknowledging that it takes a fair amount of resilience to be holed up in a house that looks more like a high end furniture store, with a bunch of conniving roommates who have all day to plot your exit from the show. That house is nothing short of a devil’s workshop.

I don’t follow the show, so I am not sure as to why the scene changed from the house-that-looks-like-a-furniture-store to this little hut with only three people in it. But let’s cut them some slack and move on with what happens next. There is a knock on the door and the three inmates-one lady and two men get ready to welcome a new person into their ‘home’.  Standing at door is this small woman very obviously a victim of dwarfism.  But somehow, what was obvious to me despite my drifting attention span was not clear to the three inmates. They greet her with much enthusiasm, except that it’s the kind of excitement that most of us show when a little child enters the room. The lady proceeds to give the new inmate a hug, pecks her on the cheek and chatters away in baby-talk, all the while believing that it is indeed a child. The group soon finds out that the ‘child’ is in fact 19 years old and holds a record in the Guinness Book for being the smallest 19-year-old in the world. After understanding that the lady has a health condition which has resulted in her short stature, one would expect that the three inmates would treat her as an adult must be treated. Not on this show! The lady picks up the ‘child’, continues to baby-talk as she shows her around the house. Mid-way through this drama, the lady breaks down in a wave of sympathy for the ‘child’.

By this time I am very uncomfortable. But for some strange reason, we continue watching, flabbergasted. Perhaps this is exactly what Aristotle referred to as the cathartic effect of drama. But that was Greek tragedy. This is trash that goes under the garb of reality TV. 

Many years ago I had the chance to work on a video about differently-abled people. I was an undergraduate student at that point and it was something of a coming-of-age experience for me to interact with people who live with pride and dignity despite their disability and fight each day to be included in every aspect of life. During the assignment I spoke to an inspiring young man who was suffering from cerebral palsy. He was studying to be lawyer and dreamt of eventually impacting India’s disability legislation. Over a casual chat, he spoke to me about why he did not approve of Mani Rathnam’s Anjali, which was quite a land mark movie in its time. He found the movie unacceptable because the protagonist, who suffers from a mental disability, is portrayed as a rather good looking child, like any other ‘normal’ baby, whereas in reality a child with Anjali’s condition would indeed look very different. “It made me feel like we are ugly...so ugly that we cannot be accepted for what we are, the way we look.” His statement bothers me till today. I wonder what he would have to say about Bigg Boss. Is this real enough? Perhaps so real as to strip off of all sense and sensibility that one exercises while dealing with people, disabled or otherwise. Actually, I hope he didn’t get to see this episode of Bigg Boss. He would have realised that amidst TRP ratings, starlets who want their 15 minutes and the janatha that watches on, his dream of being included and accepted is a distant one.

Thankfully the commercials come on, breaking the spell. “Change the channel T, this is weirding me out.” After a moment’s pause, she changes back to Junior Master Chef. We watch on, quietly letting Bigg Boss and its star cast slip out of our minds.

 

Live a little...or as much as you can!

This evening I walked into the friendly neighbourhood hair salon for a what is called a hair spa. I have terrible hair. The kind that's always inviting polite enquiries such as "you're hair is difficult to manage no?" or "why don't you straighten it?". My hair has a mind of its own. And yet, I stubbornly refuse to take more extreme or permanent measures to tame it. I think in the twisted scheme of things I actually feel challenged each morning. Most often my messy hair wins the battle by staying messy. Ocassionally I score a point and manage to get to work with hair that's (somewhat) neatly pulled back into a pony tail...a thing that most other women seem to manage with effortless ease. Sometimes, I decide to cheat and get a hair spa. I feel almost gleeful when I step out of the salon with hair that cascades down to my shoulders.

But I digress. This post is not about my hair. It's really about what happened at the salon today. I am mildly scandalised that a male hair stylist has been assigned to do my hair. A hair spa involves some degree of massaging the head, neck and shoulders. In keeping with the Indian taboo against physical contact with the opposite sex, this is normally done by women for other women and presumably by men for other men. (aside: I would be very surprised to know that men indulge in hair spas.) But I decide not to be a prude and don't protest as the young hair stylist (very professionally, I may add) begins to wash and condition my hair.

We are mid way through the procedure and there's a bit of delightful chatter in the background from a small group of women who seem to be getting dressed for a wedding reception. I listen in to their conversation about red nail polish and tan coloured compact. I slyly sneak a peek as one of them deftly creates the smoky look with a a bit of blue liner and mascara. Suddenly one of them chimes in about how women need to spend so much more time to get dressed and look good. Men on the other hand only need to shave and dab on a bit of cologne to be all set for the evening.

I try getting my thoughts together on that observation, as I watch for a reaction from my stylist, who seems unfazed. In the meanwhile a senior lady stylist in the room suggests that God made women with much more care and hence the need for additional effort to look good. Men on the other hand were made in a hurry and therefore need only a shave and colgne. She also politely adds that the lady must not grudge the additional time she spends on herself. I am amused and stumped all at once by the stylist's quick repartee which captured her thoughts and threw in a bit of advice for her customer.

The lady however seems a little offended. She launches into a long story about how her six-year old son is alone at the wedding hall. She is hassled about being away from him for a few hours.

I am not going to pretend like I know what it is to be married and a mother. I am aware that I carry with me the arrogance of being single and footlose. But the disclaimer apart, I think the ocassional guilt-free indulgence on yourself is perfectly acceptable, perhaps even healthy. Do it for yourself; not because you need to look good for a wedding reception. And seriously, your kid is probably happier running about by himself.

I tune out the chatter and my stylist works his fingers into my scalp. My face pulls into a content smile as I think about my hair cascading down my shoulders. Today I win.

Gotham needs a hero...as do the rest of us!

The final scene from Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight has resonated in me over the past week, as I watched Lance Armstrong being sullied over doping allegations. I am not here to contest his innocence or guilt. (Though, I cannot help but wonder at why the USADA would rather believe the testimony of group of people and Armstrong’s competitors at that, instead of the dozen anti-doping tests which proved that he was clean.) What has bothered me is that the USADA has chosen to target a man who is something of an icon for the millions who battle cancer each day. Even if we were to believe that Armstrong the doper exists, why don’t we have it in us to let it pass so that Armstrong the hero can live on? Is the truth really worth that much?

As the music reaches a crescendo, the Knight concludes in a way that is possible only for a hero in a movie:

“Sometimes truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”

Independence Day Special

It's Independence Day. I watch on with interest at the splashes of tri-colour in every social media site, the lovely peacock doodle on the Google page, the sardonic status updates that stand testimony to the arm chair cynicism of my generation. Everybody seems to be scurrying to express delight and disgust alike on the world wide web. Social media has, unwittingly perhaps, urged urban middle class Indians to spare a thought (forgive me the cliché) for a nation that turns 66 today.

So here's my contribution. I will try and spare you the jai hind brand of patriotism as I will keep out the cynicism...I think there's been a fair bit of an overdose both ways. The momentary thought that I spare is to reflect on what growing up in a free, democratic India has meant to me, with the privileges that I tend to take for granted and the shortcomings that often seem larger than what they really are.

I am 26 years old and enjoy good health.

I had a happy childhood.

My parents were delighted and proud to have two girls and no boys.

I studied in some of the top institutions in the country. 

I can speak English fluently. 

Higher studies and a career of my choice were a given.

But it makes me sad to know that I may not have been 'allowed' to make the same choices if I was a boy.

I am employed in a large multinational company and make enough to pay my bills, rent a comfortable apartment, eat out often and go on an occasional holiday.

I  have traveled abroad twice...alone.

And yet I am scared to be out alone after 10 pm in any Indian city.

I have the space to choose my life partner when I am ready for it.

But I know there are rules to exercising that choice. Rules that govern who can be loved and how.

I belong to the 'majority', in terms of my faith.

I have rarely felt the need to justify my identity as a Tamilian Hindu Woman.

I have lived in the south all my life and grew up in Chennai-easily the most peaceful metro in the country.

I have never seen a riot, never missed school because of a terrorist attack.

When I look back on my list, I feel rather thrilled, almost smug perhaps about the privileged life that I lead. But even in the rosy hue something seems amiss in seeing my life as a privilege rather than the norm. After all, in the global scheme of things, I lead a regular life. Not one of extreme luxury or happiness. Perhaps what I or anyone else can realistically expect is to be (slightly?) better off than our parents. I suppose rags to riches wouldn't be much of a story if it happened to everybody. We are a large nation and for every one of us to slowly make that climb and reach a reasonable standard of living is going to take more...much more than 66 years.

A Sepia Moment

To (Aji) Thata...who introduced me to the delights of Haleem

It’s the holy month of Ramzan. Every evening as my cab drives past Thilak Nagar, I am assaulted by the scent of meat cooking in rich, spicy gravies. The little stalls that dot the area are preparing to serve the Muslim families who will break their fast in the evening. Inevitably, I am transported to my days in Hyderabad, when Ramzan, for those of us who aren’t Muslim that is, was synonymous with Haleem. At first sight, a plate of Haleem looks anything but appetising-mutton cooked slowly in lentils to a gooey consistency, with a layer of ghee floating at the top. But give it a couple of mouthfuls and you will realise that the dish is truly the stuff of the gods.

Come Ramzan, and each week I would sample Haleem from a different restaurant. My partner in this weekly culinary expedition? My Eighty something grandfather. Every Friday evening it was something of a ritual. He would pick up the packet of Haleem and have it ready for me by the time I returned from work. After a hurried shower I would carefully open up the packet-typically an inconvenient foil wrap which was liable to a ghee spill if the edge wasn’t snipped close to the top, warm it to just the right temperature-a tad bit too hot and the smell of super-heated ghee could be a turn off, and serve it in three brown melamine bowls that lay waiting in my grandmother’s crockery shelf. I would tuck in, pausing occasionally to comment on how it compared with the Haleem that we had sampled the last time around. Thata, always the connoisseur with all the fine things in life, would wait till he had eaten the last spoonful to give his verdict.

Cut to my last weeks in Hyderabad. Fittingly enough, it coincided with Ramzan. But this time around, thoughts of Haleem were pushed to some remote corner of my mind. In a month’s time I was to head out of the country. There was work to wrap up, shopping to be done and a visa to process. Our little ritual became sporadic, sometimes because I was delayed at work, but mostly because my enthusiasm was channelled in a different direction. It was not until the very last day, as I had lunch with Thata that I mentioned in passing about barely having sampled the Haleem that season. I can still remember the day vividly. The monsoon had set in and I was worried about finding my way to the railway station through the heavy down pour.

A few hours before I boarded the train, my grandmother and I realised that Thata was not in the house. A quiet man, it’s easy to miss his absence in my grandparent’s sprawling old bungalow. It was pouring outside and my grandfather’s car was not in the garage. I instantly sensed a hint of panic in my grandmother’s otherwise confident bearing. But before we could evaluate our options, we heard the car pulling in and stepping gingerly out of it was my frail grandfather, a little package of foil wrap in his hands. Amidst disapproving looks from my grandmother, Thata quietly handed over the package to me, cautioning me to snip it carefully to avoid a spill. 

On Reading The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction

Since it was first released in 2009, I had resisted the urge to pick up a copy of the Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction. The book’s cover, featuring a sari clad buxom young woman wielding a pistol, promised the kind of guilty entertainment that I associate with Bollywood potboilers of the 90s. Having grown up on a healthy diet of English Classics and eventually armed myself with a Masters in English Literature, I like to think that I am rather selective about my reading. Not for me the pretentious writers who claim to have arrived, with their urban dramas that demystify the IITs and address the issue of inter-caste marriages.

But with Tamil Pulp Fiction, the choice to ignore the book was somewhat tougher. The cover apart, the book promised an entry to popular Tamil culture of the kind that has always been out of my reach, despite having spent the best part of my formative years in Madras. I grew up in a home where English was predominantly used for communication and went to a school which actively encouraged mastery over the language. Speaking Tamil inevitably became a mere survival skill-it helped me get past the rickshaw drivers, pay bills and order for extra crisp dosas. What’s more, I stayed blissfully smug about the language hierarchy in my life and by the time I realised what I was missing, I had moved out of Madras.

When I finally bought the book last week, it felt like the culmination of an existential battle between my rather elitist approach to literature and my need to reclaim (discover?) my Tamil roots. Ironically perhaps, Pritham. K. Chakravarthy, the translator and compiler of the anthology says in her introduction to the book:

"This book is an attempt to claim the status of literature for a huge body of writing that had rarely if ever made it into an academic library, despite having been produced for nearly a century."

If buying the book was a culmination, reading this was truly the anti-climax. It has made me wonder if my Masters degree had closed some doors for me even as it had opened others.

My internal angst aside, the book delivers on its cover’s promise of entertainment. Detective fiction, love stories of the Mills and Boons brand, science fiction, social messages and supernatural thrillers-each short story contributes to a rather heady cocktail. The stories, originally penned in colloquial Tamil, have been collected from serialised stories in weekly magazines and the cheap glossy-covered novels that you would find stacked in roadside tea stalls. The selection spans half a century-from the late 1960s to the present and most of the writers are evidently household names amongst many Tamilian families. The collection also throws in interviews of the writers and the cover pages of the original publications, which make for a delightful insight into popular entertainment of the yester years. As I read the book, I could almost picture my aunts and uncles in their younger days, eagerly scrambling each week to find out what happened to their favourite characters-hurricane Vaij, Shankarlal, Jeeva or Susheela.

For me, the success of the book is in its translation. Chakravarthy manages to keep alive the Tamilian identity of the characters, while making the stories accessible to the wider English-reading audience. And in the rather twisted scheme of things, this seems to reflect my own state of limbo between the two languages that define my identity! Salman Rushdie in his Imaginary Homelands perhaps says it best:

“Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.”

Smarter by the Phone

“Watch where you’re going, you really should take your eyes off that phone once in a while!”  A colleague of mine exclaimed rather irritably. I had barely acknowledged his presence in the corridor and had narrowly missed a painful collision against a pillar. I glanced away from my phone, guiltily thanking him and attempting to make small talk, all the while distracted by the gentle hum of my brand new HTC Explorer.

For years I had been disdainful about ‘those types’ who were glued to their phones…on busses and cabs, in cafeterias and waiting lounges, at their work stations and even in their homes. “What is it about wanting to be connected all the time?” I had wondered. And “No, I want an instrument that will serve just as a phone, not the entire universe!”  I had snapped at many a persistent salesman who had tried to urge me in favour of a more empowered phone.

And so, stubbornly, I graduated from one ‘mobile’ phone to another. My very first phone, a hand-me-down from my father, was the Nokia 1011, which resembled a cordless phone. My classmates at college had fittingly nick-named it ‘the brick’. During a session on self-defence, it was even added to a list of objects that a woman could use to protect herself, if she’s attacked! Then there was the Nokia 1100, which came with a little torch light. I think I fell for the advertisement, which featured a jolly Sikh truck driver who rigged the phone to the base of the truck because his headlamps had died out. The advertisement was spot-on in positioning the phone for working class Indians-sturdy, dust resistant, long battery life and of course, there was that torch light which was my reason for getting the phone, since it coincided with my stay at a dingy University hostel. If you use a pre-paid service and actually still recharge your phone at a kirana store, chances are that the store owner will use a Nokia 1100 to top-up your phone. I feel delightfully nostalgic when I see the flattened plastic keys, the paint peeling off. My third phone was a Nokia 1661, a cut above the other two because of its camera which faithfully gave me grainy pictures and its coloured screen which brought alive its little icons. By this time I had been sucked into the eLearning world. I couldn’t help but notice the similarity between the interface of the Nokia 1661 and some of the less visually appealing courseware I have created.

So, what changed after all these years? Why did I suddenly sign up for a smart phone when I seemed perfectly at ease with its less endowed, distant cousins? Well, I guess I was starting to feel alarmingly disconnected from the world, and I don’t mean this in the sense of not being able to update my status message every nano second. I realised how much lesser I knew about things that would actually interest me. I mean, of course the Hindu continues to update me about the latest scams in the country, the petrol hike and the IPL matches. But I want to know about other things as well! What does Janet Clarey think about mobile technology for learning? Why is Amitav Ghosh Tweeting about the atheist who won the right to wear a religious pasta strainer in his ID photo? How did the wedding of my friend’s friend to an Ethiopian look in the photographs? Sure I can read blogs and tweets and view pictures using a computer with regular internet connection. But that would involve taking time off. Why not instead enable myself to use minutes in the day that I spend waiting for cabs to arrive and depart, for my coffee to be made, for my computer to boot.

I think I was also influenced in large measure by an article I recently read in the Forbes magazine-Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years. It talks about how web companies that don’t adapt to the mobile space quickly are going to die out. It also quotes the example of Instagram, which has evolved almost exclusively for the smart phone market. The writer predicts that increasingly, companies will assume that users will prefer to use mobile applications instead of websites. It scared me to think that I would have to wake up one day to completely revamp the way I use technology. And as an Instructional Designer, the parallel with my work is not far to seek. If I am to be designing learning for a mobile interface in, say, another five years, I should at the very least be comfortable using mobile technology for my personal work. After all, I entered the web learning space under similar conditions.

So, a month into having a smart phone, and how do I feel? Well, I have smugly boarded the bus of ‘those types’ who are glued to their phones. But what I have come to appreciate the most in a smart phone, is the design. You have a 2x3 inch interface to fit a universe of applications; it needs to be visually appealing and intuitive to use. Having struggled alongside graphic designers to fit five lines of text and an image into a much larger space, I think my admiration for smart phone application designers is superlative. I have a fun application called the Bathing Cat on my opening screen. She’s quite a pointless battery drainer really. But I can never cease to be amazed by the detail that goes into animating the cat, her flirtatious looks, her little bathing tub, brush and towel, all packaged in an icon sized,  1x1 cm space.

Cut back to five minutes of distracted small talk with my colleague. My already minimal attention to our conversation is quickly reaching virtual nonexistence. The hum of my phone, at least in my head, has built into an irresistible whine. My phone seems to have taken on the character of the spoilt cat that’s constantly trying to get my attention.  I try stealing a quick peek, but my colleague catches on quickly. He says with a heavy sigh “I guess I’ll leave so you can go back to looking at your phone.” He walks away, perhaps aghast that I don’t so much as try to protest.