A short rant

Hey you! The girl in the awkward high heels with bunions and fallen arches. Yes, you....with the face and hair aged by unfair expectations, chemicals and heat. Do you realize that your breath is shallow from holding it in so your bulges don't show? The bulges that are a reminder of meals that have been missed or eaten in haste. Your falsely whitened teeth try to hide the nicotine stains, a habit picked up to fight the weight battle and spurred by insecurities. You in the creative wardrobe, mixing and matching designers and colors so it appears that you have new clothes on every single day. You with the painted talons that get in the way of living your life freely. You soldier on daily with repeated onslaughts to your body and soul, trying desperately to fit your square peg into round holes. You who finds substitutes to fill the emptiness that results.

Stop and think whether the reflection in the mirror is your own. There are places to see, languages to be learnt, boundaries to be shattered, planets to be saved, children to be nurtured, peaks to be climbed, books to be read and written, strays to be rescued and beaches to be walked barefoot on. There is a life to be lived in comfortable shoes and clothes. Wear your body with pride. It is your very own unique stamp on this universe. Step out of those uncomfortable clothes and expectations and breathe......

Battered

The color, a pristine white. The consistency, soft fluff. The quantity, more than anticipated. The result? Perfect malli poo-like idlis. These, accompanied with getti chutney, molaga podi-nalla yennai and fragrant sambar is the equivalent of a symphony orchestra playing upon your taste buds. Add degree kapi to this and gastronomical nirvana is attained. Sorcery of this high order was required in those days by the lady of the house to make sure that her sour gent sang a happy tune at the breakfast table (OK, more like a satisfied grunt) and felt sufficiently charged to leave the comforts of his Bombay Fornicator to go face the world (I'm positive that I got your attention now. Now go Google it).

The perfect idli batter has to be the holy grail of all Tamil households. It is the stuff of legend and closely guarded family secret recipes. It is the reason why many a homemaker is celebrated for her kai pakkuvam and others sidelined as also-rans. It is amazing that something with just two ingredients (rice and urad dal) can reduce many a new cook to tears. Here, I share my journey from making tear-stained, concave discs to the aforementioned delights that are equated to the jasmine flower, a string of which would grace the lustrous single plait of the successful lady who managed perfect idlis every single time. She wore the flowers like a crown to match the smug smile on her face.

Cut to me, a decade or so ago. Wet behind the ears, eager beaver cook raised among culinary greats and married into a family of hall-of-famers. I thought that I had the idli thing in the bag, thank you very much. I mean, how difficult can making idlis be? I've eaten them all my life. Quite simply put, I was dead wrong.  After the first few disastrous results, I figured that it was possibly because I had a humble "Oster" grinder and not the sophisticated "Ultra" grinder. So, hubby bought me one. I tried and failed miserably once again. I changed the kind of rice used (turns out that one needs idli rice to make idlis. Duh) The idli Gods started to smile upon me. It was not a fully benign smile, more like a small crack on a stern facade. My idlis started to become convex but were nowhere near perfection. I let go of my ego and started asking everyone for their recipes, even the close-mouthed mistresses of perfect idlis. They tried to dodge my keen questions, but I persisted until I gathered every last secret ingredient and every last secret tip to make my batter rise like a phoenix out of the ashes of my pathetic idli making efforts. I tried every ingredient under the sun including cream of rice, flattened rice flakes, cooked rice and even corn flakes. I kept my batter covered with old blankets and sweaters to keep it warm. I let it rest in a pre-heated oven and sometimes in the furnace room on top of the dryer while it was being used. I used my ingredients in every ratio and proportion possible, skills that would have made my middle school Math teachers proud, yes, even the ones that had given up on me for good. The idlis started resembling what I had eaten many years ago and yet something was missing. They just were not fluffy enough. I thought in desperation that it had to be because I had the misfortune of living between the arctic circle and the Tropic of Cancer. My husband however, categorically said that we could not move and muttered something under his breath about not getting what idlis had to do with latitude.

So, I persisted. I endured long monologs from ladies who claimed that they only had to cast a passing glance in the direction of the batter for it to erupt like Mount Vesuvius out of the vessel and flow out into the plate kept underneath. I sighed in envy at a friend's ease at feeding an army of hungry junta with idlis made from the very last drop of batter, perfect from start to finish. Needless to say, I was never picked to bring idli-sambar for any pot-luck and was relegated instead to bringing dessert while my poor deprived family bore the brunt of my sub-par idli making. One fine day however, my idlis started getting good, then better and finally a day came when my husband grunted at the breakfast table. I thought that I was hallucinating and ignored it. Then, he grunted again. Could it be, I thought. "Idli supera irukku", he said. I fainted with happiness and once recovered, I got ready to buy a fresh jasmine string to adorn my short bob. This would be the happy ending to my story, complete with a rousing ovation and subsequent encores had it not been for the recent healthy revolution. "Did you taste the idlis at Sangeetha's house?",  my friend mentioned at the last get-together. "She makes it with quinoa, brown rice and horsegram in the ratio of....."  As Vadivelu would aptly say at this point, "Shaba, kanna kattudhe!"

Dachau

I find it hard to sleep the night before I am to visit Dachau. My mind slips into consciousness and out. Dark dreams in shades of grey color my sleep. A deep sense of foreboding fills me as alight from the train into the bahnhof. The town is somber and filled with elderly people with kind eyes.....eyes that are filled with understanding. However, I am reluctant to make eye contact as I board the bus that will take me to KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau....the memorial site of the first and most important concentration camp of the Third Reich. An eerie silence greets me when I get off the bus. Trees line the cobblestone pathway leading to the site. As my shoes crunch on the path, I close my eyes and can hear the marching of feet....both the military precision of soldiers and the nervous shuffle of would be inmates. My heart clenches with fear. I hear raucous laughter and light hearted chatter. Confused, my eyes fly open and are greeted by a group of school children visiting on a field trip. I drink up this sight of youth and hope, who are on their way to embrace possibly the darkest part of their nation's past.....it is impossible to move forward without a deep understanding of what precedes. Lost in thought, I come upon the road that originally lead to the gates of the camp. Rail tracks are partly buried in the sand and I see the commandant's quarters at a distance. I come upon the wrought iron gate with infamous words  "Arbeit macht frei" on them. As I enter the grounds through the gates, I shiver and tears begin to flow. Mere minutes into the museum, my mind shuts down, unable to rise above the oppressive sadness that fills the air. Floor to ceiling posters detail the political climate preceding the rise of the Röhm Putsch, timelines encapsulating Hitler's regime, personal accounts of inmates who survived the camp, visual and descriptive vignettes of unspeakable horrors committed by humans on fellow humans.....my eyes read every word and yet not one registers. I walk around like a zombie with images and words swirling in my mind.....like photographs in rapid succession from a camera gone wild. I come upon a section on poetry written by inmates of the camp....words written on forbidden paper with forbidden stubs of pencils. Fresh tears flow as I read one written by an eighteen year old to his mother, who probably never got to read those words of complete despair....thank God. There are uplifting tales of brotherhood, of humanity in the face of horror. They are but a bleak streak of color on a desolate canvas of sadness. A short film concludes the tour.....more senseless words and visuals. I cannot bear to walk over to see the living quarters of the inmates (of the many rows of sheds, only one is kept intact). On the walk to the exit, I see a wrought iron sculpture showing stick human figures grotesquely caught on barbed wire. With every step taken away from the site, my heart lightens and I realize that I have not taken a single photograph for remembrance. I reach Munich and go straight to church, where prayer soothes mind, body and spirit.

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Disconnected

But Siriously, what did we do before the advent of the smart phone? Well, we had to write with a pen (not stylus, you techies!) on paper, for one. Remember those address book/diary/planner thingies....wonder what happened to all that cheap plastic/leather and paper? Oh, I'm pretty sure they are still in your home.....flew back from China after being morphed into another useless possession. We used those to keep track of important things in our life. We would take notes on a notepad and stop at a gas station or convenience store for directions. We would wait to get home so we can connect with family and friends over the land line. Now we just bark at our phones. A while ago, when the first Bluetooth earpieces were the in-thing, my MIL and I were out on a walk. She saw this man pacing around in circles, having an animated conversation with what appeared to be himself and with a very sad face said..."Paavam, avannukku yenna prachanaiyo, let me pray for him!" Wonder how she will react now to people yelling in helpless rage at their phone while the phone replies in gibberish.


This talking personal assistant is a bit worrisome though.....my offspring talk for hours to the phone and the phone replies patiently, albeit with attitude. Just to put this in perspective, when I ask how school was, they reply in monosyllables. The line thins between the human and the robotic and the robots are winning, at least in my home. We have more gadgets in our home than we do windows.......a bit disturbing if you ask me. Hand-helds are changing the way that we socialize, even becoming our security blankets in an uncomfortable situation. Awkward pauses in conversation are a thing of the past....people just whip up their phones and disappear into a personal virtual world and come back, for want of a better word, re-charged. In everybody's defense though, it is easy to get lulled into believing that the phone is a real person, because even I find myself talking to the phone a lot these days. However, the other day I asked if it would like to talk about feelings and got the following reply..."I'm not sure I understand....would you like me to run a web search for that?" And then, I remembered that many men were possibly behind programming the smart phones. Droid! I didn't just say that, but come to think of it, somethings are still comfortingly familiar!


Addendum: I found this hilarious and pertinent to the post...Enjoy!

Couch on the curb

Autumn Movement by Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

Thoughts on autumn are rather morose, always with a sense of doom at the upcoming winter. The carefree days of summer have come to an end and apart from the brief, breathtaking splendor of fall colors, bleak days of winter await. The days are alternatively beautiful and warm or cool and blustery. One never knows what to wear or how the day will unfold. It is a time of chaos, confusion and sleep pattern changes with the end of daylight savings time. Jackets are sent to be dry cleaned, flu shots are taken, summer clothes put away and nuts stored for the winter. Amidst all this, there is an urgent need to de-clutter, going through closets, shoe racks, garages and sheds.......letting go of things not needed to make room for other essentials. This happens twice an year, in spring and in fall, and no sight is more representative than the couch on the curb.

There it sits majestically, patiently awaiting its fate in the hands of the clean-up truck.  It's an ugly old thing, often wearing coffee and wine stains or results of an ironing mishap (or two). It sports runaway springs which have lost the battle against incessant trampoliners and sag-lines which indicate seating preferences of the family that owned it. It is sometimes a relic from the distant past, which reminds us wistfully of days bygone and styles we fondly refer to as being retro. It weaves a story like no other....of TV dinners, first stolen kisses, gazing contently at a newborn sleeping peacefully in arms, life altering announcements, lonely dates with a tub of ice cream, riotous gatherings, conversations, sport rivalries, huddling in a blanket and watching a horror movie and quiet cuddle times. It encompasses the emotional roller-coaster of a life well lived. Yet, here it waits, abruptly cast away from being the silent spectator of that very life. The decision to do away always comes with some measure of sadness even as the delivery truck is awaited with excitement....the harbinger of new, furniture and memories alike. Bittersweet is the word that comes to mind.

Change in seasons and in life can similarly be bittersweet. Even as greenery turns to desolate nothingness, it provides us with a sensational swan song of wondrous pigmentation. For most of nature, winter is a time of rest until rays of sunshine hug closer to the earth and life cycles are renewed in spring. In the human world, life still goes on in earnest. We are layered, cold and sun-deprived. Yet life goes on at a frenetic pace, seldom slowing down and never stopping. If the world will not pause around us, can we instead pause within for a self-check? If we are ensconced in our own small universes of personal highs and lows, how can we open our consciousness to new and extraordinary experiences? How can we enrich our lives and take it from mundane to miraculous? We do get so comfortable in our own personal spaces, beliefs and routines, often unbending to the new and unfamiliar. Maybe its time to pause, reflect and put the old familiar couch on the curb. As with everything else in life, magical experiences and subsequent memories await.

I don't do movie reviews, but......

Spoiler alert: Please don't read if you plan to watch Ra.One or 7aum Arivu.

Randomly Accessed nonsense.....

Correct me if I am wrong, but Shahrukh Khan refused to do "Enthiran" with Shankar and one year later made this film???? The mind boggles! So, was he trying to make a superhero movie or a convoluted love story? OK, I will keep this simple...the story was non-existent, the jokes were inhuman, the Tamizh speaking and noodle eating made me want to cry, the dialogs made me want to be an ostrich and bury my head in the ground, SRK had a bad-hair-first-half-of-the-film and in the second half, was perched uncomfortably on the roof of his house in a tight superhero suit, Thalaivar's cameo was painful (he is niceness personified, but he must now know when to draw the line), Dalip Tahil made me wish that I was blind and deaf, Sanjay Dutt and Priyanka Chopra could have spent their time more wisely, who the heck tailored Shahana Goswami's suits and did her hair (shudder!), the CG looked good, Kareena looked awesome and Arjun Rampal looked brooding and delish. Maybe Shahrukh should have stuck to formula and made a movie about how a geeky scientist lands a smoking hot girl in the first place. This could be set in a chateau in the alps and/or Amsterdam, with dreamy looks and great song picturization. Just when the audience is wading in sugar syrup, Arjun Rampal could have come in and created some brooding and delish ruckus, followed by tears. Then, Amitabh and Jaya could have been the wise and elderly matchmakers with saccharine smiles who unite the couple in the end. Everybody say "Shava Shava!" Seriously though, Ra.One could have been a truly fun flick if some semblance of focus had been maintained.....what a shame!

Making sense of it all....

I am fine for the first five minutes of the film, blissfully counting Surya's six-packs and enjoying strains of peaceful Mohanam, that seems to be the popular scale for most east-asian music. I'm only mildly flummoxed at a certain Pallava prince leaving for China one fine morning because his teacher felt it was a good idea.....I tell myself that this is the 6th century and possibly the era of following instructions from teacher implicitly. Then, said prince starts to teach the art of Kalari to the people of China and somehow becomes much revered Karate/Kung-fu master who accepts poisoned food from his hosts because they don't want him to leave their land. I marvel at the speed at which I become brain-dead. Then, there is circus type buffoonery and some very half-hearted romance between the lead pair. This brings me to Shruti (of the Hassan fame): she is a lissome lass who has her mother's delicate features......very pleasant to look at until she decides to go spoil it all by opening her shapely mouth and talk in Tamizh. At one point, she lambasts some elderly scientists who mock all things Tamizh by speaking in chaste VJ/RJ Tamizh....the irony! Surya (and six-packs) don't disappoint, except for a very questionable choice of wardrobe. However he looks lost, as does most of the cast and by now most of the audience as well. The villain (appropriately called Dong Lee) is, to put it kindly, a blight on the face of all villains. For one, he actually looks cute in an eastern kinda way. Also, he does not actually do anything per se....just looks weirdly at random people who then do his bidding. Where is the scar on the face, the feral look in the eyes and the snarl, I ask you? Ding dong wears street clothes and looks pretty....even item girls need to shake a leg to get paid! By the time Biowar and scientific references roll around, I am comfortably ensconced in a coma. Key concepts are explained via Google searches and Wikipedia,3-D images of DNA strands are visible through regular microscopes, genetic memory is jogged with injections and immersion in a liquid chamber and I truly don't bat an eyelid. At this point, you could have told me that I am dear Moammar's long lost daughter and I would have cheerfully agreed, even marveling at the striking resemblance. It is all genetical, or is it genital? Pardon me ladies and gents, my neuron's are truly fried.

Inexpli-cable

The joys of cable television are many. Food channels tell us what to eat, do it yourself channels tell us how to build, design channels tell us how to design, Fox tells us not to like democrats, CNN tells us just the opposite, nature channels tell us that there is life beyond the TV screen (a life that we are unlikely to see outside the TV), fashion channels teach us to distinguish between real and unreal bodies, teen channels show us how our children are going to look and speak like in their tweens and teens (insufferable brats who complain loudly about how lame most things and their parents are), preschool channels train our youngest to watch the tube, so that they have a long attention span only for watching TV and maybe take a leak or two in between (at this rate, how are they going to get potty trained, I ask you?)  and, when we are in our sleep deprived mental dead zone, shopping channels tell us to pick up our wallets and order things that no sane person would buy. Sports channels tell our boys that it is OK to plonk themselves in front of TV for hours on end in smelly boxers, scratch their privates, cheer loudly with profanity, drink plenty of beer (not light beer, because every light beer manufacturer claims that all the others are watered down. So, just to be safe, no light beer) and ogle appreciatively at thin, well-endowed girls with long legs. "Women's" channels teach our girls how to read tripe, how to balance their checkbooks, how to get in touch with one's self (whatever that means), what designers to buy from, what celebrities to gush over, how to unfairly raise expectations about their future mates (who are presently watching aforementioned sports channels), how to get therapy when their boyfriend dumps them, and most importantly, how to cry at the drop of a hat. 

So, we live in homes that we decorate many times over, depending on the current trend. We save to buy cars which depreciate as soon as we leave the dealership. We spend thousands on electronics, which get outdated in a few months. We spend even more on fashion must haves and then pay a home organizer to organize them into a small closet, away from our spouse's eyes. We try out new recipes on our brand new Calphalons, burn the food consistently and then buy new copper pans to hang pristinely on our pot racks. We buy Williams Sonoma bakeware for our see-through glass cabinets and then go out and eat everyday. Following this, we take out expensive gym memberships and be disappointed that we need to actually work-out to reach our fitness goals. Alternatively, we realize much to our surprise that watching toned bodies work out sweatily on TV is not as satisfying as we think and actually makes us reach for that bag of potato chips or that tub of ice cream much faster. We have children because it seems like a good idea at the time or we desperately need the tax break and then stress out when we figure out that they have a mind of their own. We chide our kids for watching too much TV or gaming incessantly and promptly spend the better part of our evenings watching "Jersey Shore", spending hours on Facebook trying to find out what our "friends of friends" are up to or gambling online with 1,034,000 to 1 odds.


Newspapers and magazines proclaim that the sense of well-being is at an all time low but, don't panic dear readers....there is always therapy, Oprah or this guy.........