The Art of the Perfect Roti

Styles in cooking differ; as many styles are available as there are people. This is one lesson that I learnt once I got married. For many of the food items that I knew how to cook at home were made differently here and held with amusement as well.

It was strange how a simple task like making a chapattis or a roti can be so different. My mother makes it big and wide as big as the tawa at home. It's soft and my comments were always along the lines that all her anger at people she sublimated in the act of making the dough for chapattis.

Here, at the new place, the rotis were small enough to fit the vessel my new mother-in-law (I mean one and the only mother-in-law) had and she could make it round and soft and full, like the ones shown in the advertisement for atta.

First, my trials at making rotis were met with laughter and my husband would remark:" Do these rotis go to the gym everyday?"My father-in-law said: "Kid, I'm past 65 and my teeth are shaky. If I eat these everyday, most probably I wont even have to visit a dentist". True to what he said, three months after I landed, his tooth fell.

Somehow I kept on making rotis and didn’t give up. Finally in a historical moment that witnessed great applause from all, the roti came out perfectly made and soft. More than my years at the college, these few months in the kitchen were the toughest in history.

A writing woman gathers no fat

Every writer needs a space to write, be it a lap-top or a quiet corner in the room, where you can sit and mull over things, real and unreal, present and past, serious and trivial. That idea of a sacred space can be found in the writings of many women writers, especially Virginia Woolf who spoke of the need for having a room of one's own.

For a woman to write, she needs to be free from the guilt of not doing household chores, unless she is well-off and has one or many house-helps. Otherwise, writing is like walking on tight rope- you might fail to balance the work world, the home world and the world of words. But creating balance comes out of setting priorities in day-to-day life.

Writing is a great relief from the world of stress; it can release lots of tension and keep you occupied with the jigsaw of creating good content. The satisfaction that you derive from writing a page can never be compared to that a well-cooked meal or a sparkling floor as each has its own value in life; but a piece of writing has a lasting value in that a meal disappears in a day or two, depending on the artistic talents of the cook and the floors have to be swept again and again.

Recompense

For every word of harshness that you hear,
There is equally a word of love somewhere.
For the darkest hours of the wakeful night,
At the end of which is a beautiful dawn.

For the loss of innocence of childhood,
There is the growing maturity of years.
For the loss of a life near river green,
There is lot more sunshine to equal.

For the trenches that this life fell into
There are the new scales that it climbs.
For the years lost in search of dreams,
There are these words on a virtual page.

Which brings in daily, strange comfort,
For every friend lost, that of strangers.

Barn-owl in the backyard

Cowrie shells

Once we were both wanderers every day.
We looked at each other and the world;
Picked up cowrie shells from the sands
As we roamed the seashores together.

The shells were of many shapes and sizes,
Smooth like porcelain and treasures;
Much like our words and thoughts then
That exuded much love and many dreams.

We spoke of cowrie shells and the seas,
The words began late but never ended,
Who you were I could never know well,
Condemned to be a wanderer after all.

You remain an enigma now; a stranger with
Whom I spoke of dreams and cowrie shells.

The Black cat with green eyes

Shadows

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Your words dance across the pages,

They swirl and twirl and laugh.

Mine are like bits of coal before them,

I hide them away in embarrasment.

When I miss you, I seek their laughter,

Your lightness and your fooling around.

Then I remember that though like coal,

You hold them close to your face.

How else can I put a finger on my joy,

That comes to me during saddest hours.

How else can give a reason for your face,

Dark and long for so many dreadful days,

The dark shadows are still on your face,

Though it's been a long long long time.

One last word

In the bright season of May

years ago our paths diverged;

not that I didn't love you,

yes, I did but there wasn't time.

Time, for us to start afresh

with stubbles of old loves,

for you, with your silences

and me with my clowning...

after the tears wore away

and my heart forgot its pain,

nothing remains of the old,

except a few flashes in words.

But now the world forgets not,

even after years of tears

it brings your name to me

in whispers and laughter.

True love it may have been

No longer live but in words.

Butterfly

Boanarges

The years have flown so fast, 

she says, in her soliloquy voice,  

a sign for me to sit up and wait 

for the final dart.
   

When it comes I'm already 

to swallow it down easily  

with a lot of lousy phlegm 

and heavens, plenty of patience. 

Yes, she loved listening to herself.  

You need to do what she did. 

You need to do things exactly  

How she used to do it all along

Hate and love, love and hate,  

She advises all her adversaries.

The poetry of trees

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, we fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness. Kahlil Gibran

The Indian Terminator

The world as portrayed by books and movies are fragments of a bigger world, events and people and objects given importance based on one's perspective of life. Jane Austen's world view was influenced by the importance she gave to love and marriage; while George Orwell saw a world that was afflicted by forms of political power; the mainstream commercial movies of Bollywood told love stories, the old wine in many new bottles.


Given the amount of publicity given to the movie, Ra-One was disappointing. The movie is only Bollywood's version of Terminator 2 : Judgment Day though not as good as the orginal. As you start viewing the movie, you are shocked by a kind of comic beginning starring Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Sanjay Dutt. You feel a surge of disappointment as the movie progresses. The graphics dominate the plot and you feel that may be this movie was made for kids. But the jokes on condoms and poweryoga startle you into realising that it cannot be. As G-One bids farewell to Sonia, you are suddenly reminded of the farewell scene in Terminator 2 : Judgment Day. 


The movie comes alive somewhere in the last 45 minutes and you feel that you have wasted a lot of your valuable weekend time, watching a movie that is badly arranged anyway. The world view of the creator is rather confusing: to defeat a machine you really need another machine. The saving grace is the song "Chamak Challo" that somehow makes up for the entire movie.

Cross-roads

Your coffee will be cold, the very words,
That fetched you back to me just now,
When I felt years could erase a memory
That I do not wish to bring up again.

Drawing a boundary separates the terrain
Into many different nations on a map.
But is erasing a person from life the same,
For us who were so much like each other.

Conflicting memories the mind brings back,
One of love, one of hatred, one of desire,
All etched against the summer rains
And cross-roads in our individual lives

Yes, I had taken a lonely path away from you
I remember, drinking coffee.

Woe-man

Out of the rib of man, she was created,
The source of life and mother of all men,
(And women), her yoke made heavy
By the first sin of disobedience.

Yes, she was not alone in her sin,
But his paradise was taken away
Though not as condemned as her,
In sinning against the Creator.

Thus sorrow became her fate,
She shrieked as her flesh tore
And brought forth her children
And her husband smiled proudly.

A strange tale is a woman’s
Whose flesh takes a man’s name.

Love at first sight

She stood before the holy place hands folded,
Her face all aglow with the beauty of her heart,
Her eyes closed as she muttered her prayers,
Enough wisdom to live well and nothing else.

Stepping out into the courtyard, her eyes met,
A radiant face, equally aglow with radiance,
Purity and love so much that she forgot herself
Felt as if she was looking in a mirror.

Climbing down the steps, her racing heart,
Flashed to her a future of mutual joys,
Her heart, a butterfly fluttered and flew
As she saw the rituals around the holy fire.

She mused wisdom indeed God has given
To walk away from love at first sight.

Where knowledge is free

 “You and your Google Books”, that’s what my friends keep telling me all the time. A few years earlier, friends teased me about quoting from books and living by some book or the other and planning to write books. 

But now with the changing times, I swear by Google Books. Anything from Literary Theory (I’m a student of English literature; the fascination never ends) to cooking, I find this library extremely useful. 

Even the MLA handbook has a format for Google Book entries. So, this is a season of reading but not in any library but from where I am. Thanks to technology!

Orchids

Expression

  FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
  Of five long winters! William Wordsworth 

A mere string of words
A string of musical notes
All come from the soul,
Of an artistic mind.

A harmony that creates
When from all around
Noises scream at you
Real and imaginary.

A monumental silence
Eclipses everything else,
Unspoken unuttered
Unlived unspent.

Five years have gone,
Since I lost my words.

Paradise

With laser eyes, my paradise open to me,

With hungry eyes, I savour the words given me.

Little did I know how much I am grateful

Until I had to write a few lines about you.

The smell of books- new, fresh, musty, old,

The thirst of knowledge, ancient, new,

A plethora of tongues give us news

Of what happens around in the world.

A familiar terrain when fraught with doubt,

When dumped with work from all around,

A haunt of silence and discipline,

A place to complete education.

For contemplation or for distraction,

You still are to me my inspiration. 

Blog

Blogs are dying, the newspaper said,
And just remembered one that I had,
So thought of checking its pulse,
To see if it is still alive or dead.