Culinary Love!

I love to experiment! Be it with a new look, a new type of book or even cooking! And evidently, today's successful experiment was cookery-based.

Being a 17 yr old, who is about to turn 18, I believed that it was imperative to be able to sustain myself on things beyond maggi and toast and the likes. So I set myself the challenge that I'd cook a whole meal for the family.

Now, bear in mind, my family isn't just me and the parents. My family is my parents, my brother, my pilot cousin, my house helps and me, with my mum's mum in tow for the while. So cooking for 8 people was the task and despite the fact that there was dissuasion from every corner, I stuck to my gut and decided that this had to be done. I couldn't turn back at the point when I'd promised myself, and I was intent on dazzling.

After rigorous searching online, I was able to zero down to 3 basic recipes - dahi ke kebab for starters and avial and dal with raw mango. These required intense preparation and after printing my recipes and getting the ingredients, the evening was mine to use!

Cooking, I admit, is tough. I wonder how our moms and their moms and absolutely anyone who cooks on a regular is able to manage and multi-task. I had to chop, check, stir, mix, knead, and god knows what else. Luckily my househelp was an utter darling and helped me through it all, but I think I tired her out too, considering she's never cooked any of what I'd planned!

My mum constantly checked in - "can I help?" "need me to do something?" "are you sure you need no rest?" My grandmother also needed to be told to stay out while I toiled and trudged. Too much care and love makes one nearly blind to the concept of committment and loyalty to the cause. Even if the cause is to merely cook, not save the world.

It was time for dish one - the kebabs. We'd already faced major disaster with that considering I messed up the proportions of the curd needed and didn't let it leave enough water, which disabled it from being bound easily. The besan was our saving grace, but 9 on 10 isn't a bad score, nay? My father kept gushing his approval and I'm superiorly glad he liked it!

Next was the turn for the mains. The dishes turned out exactly how I needed them to be, except that I couldn't put my yellow chilli powder into the dal, which was an essential ingredient to lend it colour and flavour. Working around the incompetence of the groceries to be able to give me my condiment, I concentrated on the avial. I've seen it at restaurants and eaten it with pleasure, so I was capable of understanding the flavour, body, texture and look the dish needed. Gladly I can accept that it turned out to be the dish of my dreams! It worked perfectly and I've never seen my family eat that fast!

The reason why I'm sitting and describing this whole episode as it were is because I've never been so proud of myself before! I've never done something so huge before and I'm still overwhelmed by this whole episode. I'm glad I made my family happy and did something to prove that I can survive wherever I go now, that I'm ready. Ready for a life without any hunger or any dependence on anyone to set a plate for me to eat on.

Modesty, very honestly, isn't my style. And for once, I take pride in being slightly boastful about having accomplished something that a lot of people my age cannot do. And this is an open invite - you're welcome to come and demand me to cook something for you, provided you give me at least a day's notice =)

I Win =) I Lose =(

I'll begin with the simple and blatant admission that Monopoly is my favourite game. I may not be money-minded in general but I cannot resist the charm of the game made of money and everything to do with the art and war that is business. I can play the game day in and day out, and I even play with myself, using two separate counters and money stashes, just as one would play chess by themselves, being both the black as well as the white army. When I do that, I win and I lose. I find pleasure in beating myself, as much as I enjoy beating others at the game, as I seldom lose. Seldom here entails a 1 in 15 chance.

I'll go ahead with another simple and blatant admission that I'm not a gracious loser, but this is restricted only to monopoly. The rationale I follow there is, why should I lose at a game that I love and that I'm the best at? Its like Charlie Chaplin losing a Chaplin look-alike contest, which has happened. If I lose the game, or begin to see signs of losing, I'm immediately put off. It becomes worse because I'm the banker by default and its crushing to see the other person rake in the moolah, while I sit there with bare necessities in hand, sometimes not even that.

As luck would have it, the last few games I've played, I've not won. Not even close. For me, even second place by a margin of $500 doesn't cut it. Even when I've played the game against myself, I haven't rejoiced at the fact that I won part of it, but I've reflected on the fact that I've lost the other part. I guess its probably because I've begun to realise what its like being on the other side of the fence. Not like I put the person in a pathetic, pitiable state when I win against them, but I realise that there is another side. I can lose. And by large margin or small, I can be defeated at my own game.

I don't play a shrewd game. I'm not a ruthless businessperson who can do anything to win and I play fair. Somehow, I think I'd begun to think that since its only a game, everyone roundabout uses that ideology when playing and doesn't play a mastermind-type strategy and totally kill me. Regardless of the fact that everyone plays fair [considering I'm the banker, money doesn't escape my eyes], there's no accounting for how going-for-the-kill and shrewd another person can be and how a game can transform them. Which is really what makes me feel bad when I lose is that someone else didn't play as casually or graciously as I did, though we both had equal chances of really making the other person beg. Point being, they took their go, I didn't.

Funnily, this only makes me understand that the game, if it can change anyone else, it changes me too. Instead of being a gracious loser, a good sport, a kind person with no hard feelings, I become a sore loser, a spoilsport and I even get cranky and irritable. Not cool and awesome things to admit on the worldwideweb, but its something I have to get out into the open, so that when I read this again after the passage of some time [considering the first draft is what I publish, always], it'll only make me a more rounded and mature individual and drill into me that people are different, even if the battle field is even at all ends.

So there it is, my admission of my love for Monopoly and the even larger possessiveness for the top spot in the game. I may change post this, I mayn't. This may ward people off and I may have to play Monopoly by myself forevermore, but at least I don't have to live with a pent-up flaw that I refused to acknowledge just because I could hide it.

=)

[the board is always laid for anyone who cares to join me. 5 more players only, no teaming up.]

That’s my friend Mudit Ganguly. He’s as crazy about Lady Gaga as the country is about Sachin Tendulkar. and then a little more crazy. and he loves her style, her music and her sensibility and knows every single published detail about her!

this is his entry to the virgin mobile local blogger contest so that he can meet Lady Gaga and her team at the Monster Ball in New York!

And, this is me promoting him! =) please watch and vote! it is the want for a journey, as part of a journey of love, talent and life!

to vote, go to this website http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/a28ea26abe4f57b78153be5d2b7a23f5/192

=D

A New Part of Me

As I enter a rather larger domain of my own in life, I realise that there is so much more that I can share with everyone that is a part of who I am and what I like. There is a new part of me that I'd like to excavate into and find plenty to discuss. And after a lot of waiting and very little thinking [impulsive that I am], I've officially started a new blog called "My Roaming Eye". If it isn't evident already, its going to be all about journeys - mental or physical, ones I take and ones I hear or see.

I love travelling and unraveling whatever it is that is in store wherever I go or my mind takes me. Journeying is a rather important facet of inspiration, because you can't exactly take anything forward without having gone there first. And the going takes efforts. Efforts that we need to make, and the effort that I'm fully ready to put into really letting people into my world, quite at the same time as I journey into it.

There will be times where I will revisit something I did ages ago or something that has lost mention in the last few years. Those journeys are really the ones that will make me stronger, make me smarter and just make you a much more integral and internal member of my life, for having shared that with me. The endpoint to this being that there were and will be many starting lines and much baggage on the way, but all of it would only lead to an end someday, and its all part of one journey I want to go on, and hopefully take a few of you with me =)

the new blog address is myroamingeye.tumblr.com and I hope you'll join me there as soon as you're as prepared as I am. Not to worry how long from now that is, I'll be waiting at the end of the line =)

-Untitled-

No taste for seasons

as if there were none.

No joy or sorrow meant

for battles lost or won.

craving, yearning

for any kind of love,

a pining soul dying under

weighty decisions made above.

No care for natural beauty

for no concern she'd heard,

Neither a cackle of geese

nor a chirrup of birds

Emotionless she stood

Sleepless she lay

Dreaming, wishing

for vitality to be taken away.

Oh for a change of climate,

oh for a glimpse of the glory

possibly an anecdote, long-forgotten

or a childhood story?

oh for a wish to wish,

or a chance to relive

maybe a passer by who could

out of goodness, give?

but no second glances come

towards her countenance

none yielding to her look

that sought acceptance

ignored, abandoned

and fearful still

living in squalor

out of His free will...

[any suggestions for a title would be welcome]

Feeling the Feeling

A feeling is not just a come-and-go representation of what we think at the moment. A feeling is really a part of us that needs expression. Almost like the steam building up in a pressure cooker. There's a lot of it, and once it finds even the tiniest gap, the whistle goes off and the steam is let out in a huge burst. Okay, not huge, but you get what I mean. The resultant impact is a visual burst of steam, a squeaky whistle to go with and a bit of heat, and a pretty well cooked serving of dal or vegetable.

The same is with feelings, really. They come out in fits and starts after seeing an opportune time and there's so much too them that they fail to go unnoticed. They have some amount of impact or relativity with someone or the other who goes out to connect with them. Someone's looking at the various areas that the feeling exposes, and someone is looking at the product that the feeling creates. But to you, and solely to you, the feeling means something that is let out of your system. I bet even the pressure cooker looks forward to losing a bit of its steam.

Taking that forward, the reason we're actually okay with letting off this steam and are told not to bottle our feelings inside us is so that there is space for more! We have social and emotional experiences every moment, either conscious or unconscious. To keep it within us and not share what it meant to us or what feelings it arouses is to arrest its impact. Which is why we seek expression. Most of us do so by channelising it into a creative field. I write. and so do a lot of people. What we write is a literal expression of what we're thinking and what we're feeling.

Once the feeling escapes us, and I say escape because it really is trapped and has a lot of better things to do than sit around in a crevice of our mind, it ceases to live in us. It has found a happier place to be [just being polite here. I know how much some of us would rather just let it live inside, rent-free, if nothing else]. That doesn't of course mean that we won't feel something like that again. It means that the feeling we attached to it this time, will not come back for the next time. Its variants may always exist, but THAT feeling won't come back. Like the feeling when you eat chocolate after going on the longest crash diet ever! [3 days. true story.] Point is, that feeling has wandered off to connect with another individual, who would identify with the feeling and give it a new residence.

Now, I've had this experience, as have friends of mine, that they cannot connect with their written or expressed feelings like someone else can. If you read what I've written, full feeling intact, and you go through a wave of emotions and thoughts because of what I wrote, I may not be able to reconnect with my own written word. Something that came out of me. But that's because my mind has now given that space off to another set of feelings and doesn't feel the need to connect back with something that it housed for a long time before letting go. Trying to reverse time and re-feel the feeling is like trying to stuff the steam back into the pressure cooker. Trust me, it will not happen.

And so, at the end of this seemingly endless rant, I know for sure I've let out my feelings on feelings. Even though they may never come back to me, I know there's nothing to regret or want back here. I've felt it, harboured it, thought it through, been on a roller coaster with it, before finally saying good-bye. And I think we had a pretty good time, too. Its just that I don't think I can spend my life, or a large part of it, tied to one feeling just because it was mine at one point in time...

=D

The Storm of Creation

There's silence before
the storm descends
and silence creeps in after.
In the interlude,
everything is caught within
a stormy breaker and crafter.

It breaks the barriers of quiet,
tearing down the shroud
beneath which lie voices.
As shrieks and howls,
they escape their silent captor,
and they rejoice.

The storm surrounds me
and I, rapt by its beauty,
Am part of its destructive thrill
In the eye of the storm,
caught in a crossfire of thoughts,
I surrender to its will.

It takes me up,
blinds my conscience,
but leaves my creative spirit awake.
As I swish and tumble
in this unexpected rush,
there's more than sanity at stake.

The storm collapses
as do I,
sapped of energy and words.
Resultant broken restraints around,
I step into the light
to see the flighty thought-birds.

As I return to shelter,
past the ruins of
the storm's wild embrace,
I long for it to
enchant me again
with its creative grace...

[Image courtesy - Shiree Gilmore: Eye of the Storm]