Happy Hausfrau Series: Akoori

14 Oct

Greetings from the home of the happy hausfrau! Don those aprons and follow me into the kitchen, chop chop.

This blog has given me many things. But since my last hausfrau post, its greatest gift has been the realization that you guys are kindred spirits. You love eeda. I love eeda. Ergo, TrueLuv4Evah. We’re twin flames! Yolkmates from lifetimes past! With the crack of each shell, our karmic connection  (and LDL) grows stronger! And in celebration of this life-changing event, today we make akoori: authentic Parsi scrambled eggs.

Joining us on this journey of Higher Learning are:

Clockwise, from top:  Salt, cooking oil, 2 medium onions (preferably red), fresh cilantro/coriander, the 3 Magi of Indian spices: coriander, turmeric, and red chilli powders, ginger-garlic paste, 2 medium tomatoes (no, you aren’t seeing things, I substituted), and 4 eeda.

Why are the eeda white this time? Because we’re an equal opportunity household and value diversity.

Start by pouring some oil into a pan and remembering to turn on the heat.

Drizzle and then sizzle. Oh yeah.

While the oil’s getting all hot and bothered, turn your attention to the onions. Onions, I’ve always felt, are the classic middle children of all god’s creations. Put to work, but not really acknowledged. Hands up if you’re a middle child. *keeps hers smugly lowered.* :mrgreen:

Peel and chop the onions into fours. The reason you’re being spoiled with so many pictures today is because we had a guest photographer in the house kitchen. I hereby dedicate a song to him: I love yoooooooou, You pay my rent.

Hit that ‘chop’ button. GRRRRRRRRRAAWWWWR!!!!

Once the onions are soft and translucent, add a teaspoon of ginger-garlic paste and order them to assimilate. They’ll meekly comply if you threaten to share the Parsi sugar-in-milk story.

Next, your tomatoes do the bump-and-grind routine. In red spandex. And leg warmers.

Add them to the pan and give everything a big stir. Oh you rabble-rouser you.

Next, add a flattened teaspoon of turmeric. …..

A heaped teaspoon of powdered coriander…..

And a flattened one of red chilli powder. You can substitute this with 2 green chillies if you wish.

We 3 kings of Orient are

Adding heat to OJ’s eeda

….and so on and so forth.

Dust the mixture with salt and stir, stir, stir.

Add chopped kothmir and stir, stir, stir. If you go all North Indian on me and call this “dhania”, this is all you deserve: 🙄

At this point, the akoori base starts looking decidedly green. In my mother’s kitchen. In mine, it stays red. But you know what Michael Jackson said. It’s what you are on the inside that matters.

Ready to crack your eeda?

Why do I have such gnarly fingers?

Oh look at that cozy family of four, the resident photographer gushed. We’re still humoring him. Because he pays the rent.

The resident photographer would like you to know that this is when you pop your waffles in the toaster.

(Pssst! English muffins/rotlis/toast will do just fine.)

He also thinks it imperative that you know the perfect heat setting to gently scramble the eeda.

I don’t eat no butter, he proudly proclaims.

(I get all my cholesterol from eggs.)

Scramble away, but ensure the eggs are still moist and slightly runny. They’ll continue to firm up after you pull them off the heat, and you don’t want them too dry.

Ladle the akoori onto the waffles and serve right away. And before you dash off, here’s a nugget of trivia: The Bollywood movie ‘Being Cyrus‘ was first titled ‘Akoori’, except there were concerns that the general audience wouldn’t know what that was.

Wisdom Wears Neon Pyjamas: educating the world, one clueless blog reader at a time. 😎

Jumjoji!

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Poop Goes The Weasel

3 Oct

I’ve recently switched doctors and my new one wanted to conduct a series of routine tests, so last week, I traipsed along to the clinic, empty sterile container in hand, to donate some pee to the lab. Walking toward the entrance, I noticed a man—middle-aged, Asian, balding, with slightly rumpled clothes—headed toward the entrance as well, with a bottle of stool sample in his hand. And so began my not-so-pleasant reaction to the swishy brown contents of his bottle. All conversations in my head will hereafter be italicized:

Eww! Gross! How could he just bring poop in a transparent bottle like that? At least cover it with a paper bag! Some people.

Swish, swish, swish went the poop, as the gentleman stepped into the clinic lobby, with me a safe distance behind.

Disgusting. It’s so runny. Good thing I haven’t had any breakfast. Seriously, I get you’re a recent immigrant, but watch and learn, my friend! No. Scratch that. You’re not my friend. No friend of mine would walk around with poop in public view.

Poop-swisher took a seat, bottle in hand and on full display, while I chose one at the other end of the waiting area.

Really? Holding it so close to you like it’s your lost lover? You’ll die of an infection, man. Oh god I’m going to hurl. This should be illegal. There are kids with compromised immunity in this place. Have you no concern for the wee ones of the world??

Poop-swisher stared benignly into space, clutching the watery contents of his intestines.

I don’t believe this. Why couldn’t he just do it in the bathroom here, like everybody else? Maybe he has a performance anxiety issue. Maybe he had one of those tiger mums who said “Poop now or forever hold your piece.” Well, he’s sure holding his piece now!

Poop-swisher adjusted his position and I looked away for a moment, to give the impression I wasn’t turning cartwheels on the inside and emanating guttural gasping sounds of disgust.

Holy guacamole! He’s raising it to his mouth! Omigod, he has Pica! Somebody get mental health medics in here! Noooooooo! STOP IT! Don’t drink that!!!! I’m gagging, oh lord I’m gagging, I need the bathroom. Now!

Wildly looking around for a nurse or medical aide, I saw Poop-swisher from the corner of my eye, calmly take a swig from his bottle of Starbucks Mocha Frappucino, screw on the lid, and put the bottle beside him.

Oh.

“…………..”

 

If you ever repeat this incident to anyone, dear reader, you and I are OVER.

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Violence Against Women Awareness Month 2012

30 Sep

Hands up all those who have never heard of or witnessed an act of violence toward a woman.

Thought so.

Starting tomorrow, or today, if you’re anywhere ahead of Pacific Standard Time, we kick off Violence Against Women (VAW) Awareness Month 2012, that will run through all of October.

I’ve shared this with you before and I am proud to continue to extend my support to the cause and the fantastic team of people behind it.

If you have a story to share, or are among the lucky ones not to have a violence story of your own, hop over.

Read, write, spread the word, encourage friends/family to speak up, offer support. Just don’t be an ostrich and pretend all’s hunky dory, and that if it doesn’t affect you directly, you’re going to sit pretty and not let it affect you at all.

This initiative doesn’t promise to change the world. It is intended to remind you–if the daily news doesn’t do that already–that violence, frequently gory, life-altering, vicious assaults on women’s bodies, minds and spirits, is far from declining. It could be happening next door to you as you read this. Or definitely down the street from your comfortable couch. Don’t believe me. Just read the statistics. And for the love of god or glitter, do your bit. Here’s your chance.

For more information on how you can help or contribute a post,

Write to: vawawareness@gmail.com

On Twitter, follow: @VAWawareness and RT our tweets

On Facebook, ‘Like’: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Violence-Against-Women-Awareness-Month

 

So am I going to see you on http://vawawareness.wordpress.com? 🙂

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Alphabet Soup

27 Sep

When possible, eat your words.

They are low in calories and almost always make someone else feel better.

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Documentary Review: Family Album

24 Sep

I am delighted to have made Chabi Ghosh’s acquaintance. She died in 2008, at the age of 91, unaware of my existence, never having met nor heard of me. How then, do I know she played the piano, was part of her college basketball team after delivering 2 girls, and had a naughty sense of humor that belied her nonagenarian-ness? For this and other stories, portrayed with simplicity and charming reserve, I have Nishtha Jain’s ‘Family Album’ to thank.

A documentary that I watched yesterday as part of the San Francisco South Asian Film Festival, Family Album generously allows the intersection of photographs, memory and cross-generational stories rather than forcing their paths to collide, and what struck me long after I had finished watching, was how little the filmmaker injected herself or her agenda onto the frames, letting the subjects speak for their own histories. And that is precisely what photographs become, irrespective of what we wish them to be—chroniclers of history, crystallized pieces of time that hold individual yet shared versions of stories that become the truth, regardless of the fleeting reality of the moment.

Taking us back to Calcutta’s old families and ancient baris (and reducing me to a quivering mess at the sight of all that achingly beautiful history), Jain introduces the viewer to clans that traces their kinship back to 38 generations, interviews multiple generations of the same family, facilitates their reminiscing ever so gently and occasionally, and asks very relevant questions.  Do we become our photographic memories? How do frozen frames elicit stories, how do we hold on to and pass on these stories, and in becoming the repositories of familial myths, how do we perpetuate stories? With one brief view of a family tree that abruptly ends after records of double-digit generations, the camera silently contemplates the white sheet of paper and we feel the story seeping away.

You guys know I’m a sucker for history. The confluence of time, architecture and the human narrative intrigues me. But what you may not know is that photography holds a terribly special place in my heart, given that I was born to my first teacher of this beautiful art form and am married to someone who continues my education in the field. For this and the reasons listed above, ‘Family Album’, a companion piece of City of Photos, struck a deep, resonant chord, but even without the personal context, is a delicate and valuable contribution to the world of documentaries. Catch it if you can lay your hands on it sometime. I reckon you won’t forget Chabi Ghosh in a hurry.

~~~

Updated to add: I wrote to the director, sharing this review with her, and here is her response:

Dear OJ,

Thanks for taking out the time and sharing your thoughts about Family Album. A lovely review. Reading it means a lot to me as I couldn’t be there in SF to present my film.
Yes, Chobi Ghosh is so endearing and unforgettable. I loved her spirit. She was about 90 when we were shooting, she had a clear photographic memory of things from her distant past but her present memory was very short. She wouldn’t remember things we had talked about a few minutes ago. In a way she was in a happy state. She was a great storyteller, there are many more stories in the footage. Unfortunately I couldn’t put everything in the film.
You can buy the DVD of City of Photos by making a payment on www.paypal.com to raintreefilms@gmail.com. It costs USD 40 plus shipping cost USD 5. This DVD is for home use only.
Warmly,
Nishtha

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Your Friendly Neighborhood ‘The’

22 Sep

The streets of the South Bay are littered with them, lying forlorn and agape by the side of an open drain, watching me as I drive about my daily business. Occasionally, I’ll stop, pick one up and add it to my Bag of Definite Articles, to donate to yet another person who habitually drops them.

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Writing and Reading

18 Sep

Sharing your writing with someone in its nascent form is like carving open your womb for them to inspect: You hold your breath and pray.

That they won’t: poke about with a sodden stick.

Won’t: Touch the tender bits.

Will: Notice that you’re inflamed.

And that, when done, they’ll hurriedly close the gaping wound and not tell you in agonizing detail about the tumors, the polyps, the cysts and fibroids, the bleeding cells, the lacerations, and the festering gunk they saw.

Hope. You can only hope. For once it is opened, it is owned by the sky. And you can only peer hiddenly from the shrunken margins of your own verse.

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Loth the Troth

14 Sep

My honest answer to “Do you want kids?” depends on whether or not I’ve spent the last hour with a friend who has one.

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Book Review: Island of a Thousand Mirrors

13 Sep

I went in with my eyes wide open, knowing the subject would be dark, unaware of the treatment of it by this woman with a dazzling smile who asked me to review it within an hour of meeting her. Growing up in India, some latitudes north of the Sri Lankan civil war, meant it had remotely touched me as a child and teenager through political rhetoric, waves of radiated human anguish and the assassination of a Prime Minister, but beyond that, I was a clean slate.

What I was unprepared for, was how much Nayomi Munaweera’s labor of love would demand from me as a human bystander, make me invest in the lives of its characters and their teardrop-shaped country, draw me in and make me stay, in spite of the savagery around me. There are novels you breeze through, nod “Good read”, and move on. Pick up Island of a Thousand Mirrors only if you’re willing to carry it within you for life.

Crafted in present tense and delightfully crisp sentences, one is busy falling in love with the emerald isle and the language used to sketch it, pretending nothing untoward will ever happen on this idyll where Munaweera’s father grew up. But that is the curse of history and hindsight: we’re forced to look back over our shoulder and bear witness to its horrors.

In the creation of drama, several authors rely on words of deafening thunder and grandiose landscapes of pain. Nayomi Munaweera makes you do the work, as her sentences play supporting roles in a beguilingly simple manner: her descriptors exquisitely gut-wrenching, her voice matter-of-fact, she draws out your blood, your angst, your despair at being human, like a literary shaman.

This searing debut, so beautiful it hurts, is pyrotechnics and poetry.  Award-worthy, absolutely, but ultimately, so deeply enriching that you’ll be infinitely poorer for giving it a miss.

Island of a Thousand Mirrors, published by Perera Hussein, releases on September 15th, 2012.

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By Your Leave

9 Sep

We do not grieve the dead.

They have no need of it.

The grieving we do is purely for ourselves.

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