Jun 30, 2011

All things food :-)

                                     
                                         Courtesy: http://www.artandcritique.com/

I finally created a new blog for my experiments with food as I have slowly and steadily grown to realise that food interests me immensely and that I devote quite a lot of time reading about food and my last couple of posts contained a proportinate amount of  food writing in general, be it food being cooked in my own kitchen or in some restaurant, cafe or in someone's house. I am also quite fascinated by food photography and hope to be able to take my first baby steps this evening. I am excited like a little girl who gets her first dolls house and cannot wait to start playing with it. I am gonna try making Deviled Eggs tonight. Let's see how the photographs turn out. Shall be uploading them in my other blog soon. Roll the drumssss and here you go Spicy Deviled Eggs that I am calling it.

Dearest "New My Very Own Food Blog",

I hope I can keep up to the true spirit of food writing which is to love all things food and to be able present  all things food in a delicious and spectacular way. This is my humble and modest attempt to be a part of this food blogging world that is filled with such talented food writers, food bloggers, food photographers and food stylists. There are many, many food bloggers who have inspired me enough with their wonderful writing and fabulous photography. I have no idea how long I shall last and how far we shall travel but here is wishing  me best of luck with you, that is my endeavour at food blogging. :-) Yeayyyyyyyyy!!!!

Love,
Utopia

Jun 27, 2011

I needed to write and so here I am.


Does this happen to you ever that you are overwrought with this urgent need to write? That all you want to do is to put those words on paper and see them take shape. They might amount to precious little but you are anxious to put your thoughts out there and see them in the form of words, in some ways so tangible yet intangible and fleeting. It happened to me right now in the middle of this working Monday and so I left everything and started typing this incoherent piece that it shall ultimately turn out to be.

I’ve been happy lately or maybe it is just being content. I guess it is the feeling which comes when one knows that I am finally doing something I have been wanting to do for sooooo long and even if I don’t quite reach there I’ll somehow find my way. Damn it but now I realize, how important it is to listen to that little voice in my head that had been saying this like a mantra for years and years. Sometimes even if we want something so bad we just sit around twiddling our thumbs doing nothing at all. Why do we do that?

I am also the happiest when I am the busy. I think most of us human being are programmed that way. The weekends when I am lethargic and don’t feel like getting out of my bed on Sundays are the Sundays that I am my most dissatisfied self. The Sundays I wake up early and complete all my household chores are the Sundays I am my merriest self.

I went for my weekly vegetable shopping this Friday evening as I happened to get out of work early. Most weekdays buying groceries or anything after work is so taxing but surprisingly I was very eager that day. It took just half an hour and for a change I didn’t crib to myself about having to bring everything, all alone upstairs. The one time I almost always am convinced that I do wanna get married is when I am out vegetable and grocery shopping cos the loads are always so heavy and it is so unfair having to carry it all by myself. Yes then I’ll have someone to share this task with me. Silly me.

I replayed a particular scene in my head the way I wanted to, the same Friday evening again and again and made my peace with someone. Have you ever done that? To make peace with a certain person who in reality will never bother to do so and I’ll never get the apology or the poetic justice I think I deserve so I play it out in my mind over and over again in the fashion I would have wanted things to unfold and strangely peace prevailed. My make believe peace but peace nonetheless. Closure at last.

PS: I found this poem in the morning and it left me disturbed. It was so Sylvia Plathish.

Jun 24, 2011

Jun 22, 2011

Drifting


In House Legal “Boring” Counsel. I suddenly thought of adding “boring” to the entire term last morning sometime amidst piles of work. Bleargggghhhh! I am thoroughly bored substantial part of the week and the weekends pass away like the blink of an eyelid and woooosssh it is Monday again. That feeling of life being perennially Monday is so agonizing. I need a change rather I want a change. I am tired of seeing the same people at office day after day. I so know that once I get that change I’ll miss these people but even then. I am tired of it all. The city, the people, mundane life. I wonder how we manage to spend years and years doing the same thing and living the same lives. I remember that feeling of being trapped sometime in Pune in my second year there. There were more than 3 years ahead but hell I couldn’t wait for it to get over. Once college got over I couldn’t wait to start working and once I started working I couldn’t wait to get a fancier job or study some more. The longest time I have spent in a city is Kolkata which would be 8 years of my life and then Pune which was 5 whole growing up years as I danced my way from teens to my twenties and then its been a large helping of Delhi, a touch of Chennai , a dash of Bangalore and Kolkata sprinkled here and there. Kolkata will always be sprinkled here and there. :-) What is bothering me right now in this entire concoction is the overly generous helpings of Delhi. I am done with this place now.

When does that feeling of “I want my roots here to this place” set in? How do you realize this is the city that you want to have a house in, raise kids and live a life in? Maybe because I don’t have all these bindings of a relationship hence I do not feel rooted to any place at all. Home is Kolkata and that is that. But with other cities I have mostly have either a very detached relationship or a love hate relationship like Delhi now. I was very very detached with Pune. I probably spent the better part of my young adulthood there but the only reason I ever go back there is cos a very dear friend of mind stays there. I never feel passionate about living in any city like some people swear by the places they live in. Is it a sign of my restlessness of finding that one place I know I can see myself live the rest of my life and even if its alone I would be able to dwell in it perfectly content alone. Yeah I need to find that place soon, in the next couple of years. I pray I do so.

Jun 17, 2011

A dinner party and the curious case of the knock on my door....


I finally managed to cook up a storm in my kitchen last evening. Yeayyyyyy! The mission being feeding 5 hungry boys and time given was two hours inclusive of the time spent buying the chicken, the cheese, the mushroom, babycorn and a bottle of white wine. So I made pasta in white sauce which was accompanied by store bought garlic bread.( I can’t wait to learn how to bake bread). I came home quite irritated with the boys to have left me to do all the cooking on my own but again this isn’t new. They have always invited themselves over without any hesitation and I always presume the role of the Official Chef and me feels its more like a crown of thorns now. Sigh! But honestly I was amazed at my own multitasking and organizing skills as I started off my assignment with single minded determination doing the chopping and peeling while simultaneously boiling the penne . By the time the penne was done, I drained the water and laid it to dry tossing some refined oil on it so that it doesn’t stick and become messy. I finished washing and chopping the mushrooms, baby corn , half a kilo of onions, two tomatoes and peeling the garlic which was the most irritating bit. I made the pasta first because I wasn’t so confident about it as much as chicken curry that one can make with my eyes closed. Instead of making the traditional white sauce with flour and butter as the base I used milk and heaps of cheese and that was the perfect alternative as the pasta turned out divine and the boys were raving about it even this morning in office. The Chicken Curry didn’t have that many takers since half of them were vegetarian and the ones who were non-veg had already stuffed themselves with pasta and gotten completely wasted on alcohol.

We were listening to such sideyyyyy songs by somebody called Sharry Mann and the song was called Chandigarh da chaska. Heard this unknown song by Mohit Chauhan called Mai Ne Meriye which was more like a folk song when he reminisces his home in Himachal and he went on and on about Kasauli and Shimla. J and R were tripping on these songs until Vik put his foot down saying he wanted to listen to Sayonnee and there I was changing the music and having my wine from the wine bottle directly. I was doing this after almost 4 years. I mean drinking wine right out of a wine bottle and refusing to share my wine. The boys found it so funny that I wouldn’t even part with a single drop of wine. They were dying to make some random cocktails out of beer, wine and whiskey but I wouldn’t budge. They owed it to me after all the cooking I had done. I was so content just to sip the wine and feel the wine bottle in my hand , listen to music and watch them create funny chaos and crack shady jokes. I didn’t do much at all after my marathon cooking session. Even the feeling of tiredness was a sweet one, as if all that toiling was worth it.

The party ended at 12:30 when some strange sound was heard and it was as if someone had knocked on my door and there was no one in reality. There was silence in the room for 10 seconds and then the debating began if all of us heard the knock or not. Me in my inebriated state said it happens all the time and I am pretty used to it. They were stunned. These idiots left within 20 minutes flat, running away like headless chickens cos they got sooo scared. Hahahaha! This morning they kept trying to sell the idea of changing houses to me saying my place is haunted and how can I stay there alone and how real the knock was and how convinced they are that there was a presence that night. I do not believe and I don’t even want to think along those lines. How sad! Hahaha!

Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE, 2001: A Space Odyssey



PS: I slept with my lamp on last night all thanks to these stupid bums who have planted the seeds of an imaginary ghost in my head.

Jun 13, 2011

I need inspiration...

                                Courtesy- Flickr
Just because I have a tattoo on my back and I am a dunce in Math doesn’t mean I am a Fashion Designer you stupid stupid boy!

No offence to Fashion Designers but I am anything but the artsy, creative kinds. Don’t I wish but alas I never was so for someone to pass such a statement in a supercilious tone sounded more like an insult to me. He definitely wasn’t the types who’d understand fashion and appreciate its nuances. He was plain and simple ignoramus. Bleddy pissing off.

I don’t feel like cooking at all these days. I try to motivate myself to cook but I just couldn’t get down to making anything all of Sunday when I sat at home reading and catching on my sleep. Why am I going through this “I don’t like no cooking phase.” That is so not me. Guess it is just easier to cook when there are people around. Maybe what appeals more to me is the idea of feeding people rather than feeding myself.

Over the course of three weekends I have realized that the only kind of Math I can do is plain and simple addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. I am not programmed in my head for Mathematics. My head was and still is only wired for humanities and social sciences. I am glad I figured that out more than a decade back. Now to get over with the Math. Sigh!

I made a new friend or at least I hope I did. She is 22 and a budding Mathematician and we get along really well despite more than half a decade separating us. Talking to her is so refreshing and different as opposed to the stale office talks or the jibes one gets to hear every once in a while. I love listening to her future plans and her dreams. Takes my mind in a different direction and for those couple of hours I feel I am a part of a younger, different and a vibrant world.

There you go. Another random post. I don’t have anything substantial to say. Life is randomness personified at its best right now. Hahah! I need inspiration yet again.

“The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.”

Jun 9, 2011

This post is lacking a soul.

                               Painting-Rip Van Winkle Sunset by Jamie

Does smoking one lone cigarette in 2 months make me a smoker? Hmmmm why do non-smokers or had been smokers always point out how so and so night I was seen smoking so technically I am still a smoker. Bull shiteee! I smoke once in a couple of months and no I am not even fighting any urge to smoke and it isn’t a battle any more so bugger off. Period. Just because you dare not have one thinking you’ll get that urge again doesn’t mean since I had a smoke some happy night out with friends I am a regular smoker. Actually maybe in my head I never was much of a smoker. There I confessed.

The weather has been so moody off late. You have two oppressively hot days when all of us are melting and sticking our asses to the Air Conditioner and the third day like magic appears the cool cool breeze and voila one day in the morning while sitting in the bus stop all I can feel is the wind on my face. My last two FB statuses have been about the wind actually.

I read this and found it so inspiring. Just what I needed to hear and guess who sent me the link? You almost always manage inspiring me. Guess you always will.

My house feels so empty without my Mum and Sister. I do not like at all. Thank God for tiring weekends and 6 day weeks. Delhi has just lost all its charms for me at least. I have stumbled upon a couple of new blogs and fabulous writers all in their own right. All this reading really makes my day. What would I do in a world without blogs namely historical, travel and food blogs? Hahaha! I shudder to imagine.

I did chalk out a long long post in my head but alas look how spartan this post looks. Something is missing. There seems to be no soul to this post. Hmmmpppphhhh!

Jun 1, 2011

To my rapidly vanishing "Twenties"

Now I think I realize what Daphne Du Maurier meant when the Protagonist at the end of the book says rather wistfully I’ll Never Be Young Again. I found this poem while browsing some site last evening. I fell in love with it right at the first line though the very essence of it only came to me after two, three readings. I took a print out home and made my Mum read it. Every once in a while I find some poem which appeals to me or touches a chord somewhere and this one did as I approach the end of my twenties in a little over two years. Okay yes two years is a long time but even then I feel somehow me and a some of us were happier people a couple of years back. The World was going to be our oyster. I say it still will be but that joyous feeling seems to be absent. Now the realities somehow bite me more. Happiness as a state of mind has to be maintained and worked at. Such is life. Some myths have been shattered, dreams broken into fragments but trying to be rebuilt again. That passion and zeal almost vanished in the middle. We were silly, wild and happy 23,24 year olds and we thought the world was at our feet and we shall conquer it all. The follies of youth I tell you. To be 23 again. Sigh! Here’s to my rapidly vanishing “twenties” and maybe Cheers to the approaching "Thirties". Hope you maybe as interesting and in some ways a little less harsh.

To My Twenties

How lucky that I ran into you



When everything was possible


For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart


And so happy to see any woman—


O woman! O my twentieth year!


Basking in you, you


Oasis from both growing and decay


Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis


A palm tree, hey! And then another


And another—and water!


I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,


Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,


Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable


For the moment in any case, do you live now?


From my window I drop a nickel


By mistake. With


You I race down to get it


But I find there on


The street instead, a good friend,


X— N—, who says to me


Kenneth do you have a minute?


And I say yes! I am in my twenties!


I have plenty of time! In you I marry,


In you I first go to France; I make my best friends


In you, and a few enemies. I


Write a lot and am living all the time


And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you


After my teens and before my thirties.


You three together in a bar


I always preferred you because you were midmost


Most lustrous apparently strongest


Although now that I look back on you


What part have you played?


You never, ever, were stingy.


What you gave me you gave whole


But as for telling


Me how best to use it


You weren’t a genius at that.


Twenties, my soul


Is yours for the asking


You know that, if you ever come back.

Kenneth Koch
You have to find your own peace. You can’t let all this noise get to you.  All this is temporary. Even this feeling of upheaval is temporary. Don’t let this cloud your senses or your mind. This isn’t it and it was never going to be it. You are more than all this brouhaha. This doesn’t define you.  You are more, way more. You are not about to lose your identity with this. This is just a momentary state of mind and time like tide will change like it always has.