Mind in a boat .. self in a …

The boats are feeling left out in my life. ‘An explanation?’ you ask, I concede.

Regular readers already know I use the public transit into work.

What readers don’t know is that through no fault of mine, I have sidelined the aquatic altogether. The ships and ferries of the world crave for my company, but I turn a cold shoulder on them. Life can be hard I tell them, and they understand, but wither away nevertheless. Just to keep the blighters happy, I’ve decided to take a boat ride down a river.

‘What is this frivolity about boats?’, you ask. There is a reason. My commute everyday now proudly includes a car ride to the transit terminal, followed by a jolly train ride, followed by a charge to the bus stop conducted at approx 30 mph  and then a frustrating ride on the bus. When you read this, you can readily imagine the plight of the boats. I mean if I were a boat or a ferry, I’d have raged and ranted. “Pure evil” I’d say and generally spread the message around on shore while docking at the yard and such. I am not sure about the vocabulary prevalent among boats, but I can assure you I’d have used the finest to make the constabulary shrink.

I am not a hard hearted person. In fact, I am soft hearted. So, the last time I went to a bookshore, I did something noble and wise that could appease the boats without actually getting on them. I bought the book ‘3 men in a boat’, and I must tell you I am perfectly enjoying the trip down the river.

Mind in a boat .. self in a bus

Service with a smile

I wonder whether the poor thing would have a roof over its head tonight, or be let to stand outside.  California is warm now, so it should be okay. Ever since I knew the husband, I knew the car. Better yet, I’d received an appraisal about the car and therefore the husband’s tastes from a friend who had met him before I set eyes on him or the car.

I loved our Acura Integra. I loved the moon roof, and the fact that it made a noise like a whirring jumbo jet when pushed hard. Come to think of it, I never named the car, or associated a gender with it. After my long ride home on the public transit, I would find myself humming something and walking towards my car, only to find the engine start up with the same song I’d been humming a minute ago. The whole day, the tune would have slipped my mind, but the sight of the car would bring it on again.

Not a single complaint from it when we posed in front of it, or parked it in front of national park entrances for the ‘Patel shot’. If ever a car had a smiling face, it was the Acura Integra model we had.

The husband’s write-up on the car when it reached 100K is here.

Today, we sold the car. I’ll miss you Acura – thanks for the decade long journey.

Mystery Spot

I have kept quiet for too long. KQED programs lured me, but I stood firm, and every time a bumper sticker from the cars mocked me, I held my ground. It isn’t for anything that we grew up singing

When temptation comes my way I shall not be moved
When temptation comes my way I shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water
I shall not be moved.

Then one day you realize that sometimes temptation is a good thing. Giving in is fine. Like the time you say okay to that piece of milk chocolate. And so it is today.

For the lost-count-of-sightings time, I saw the Mystery Spot bumper sticker gleaming from a navy blue SUV ahead of me and decided to just blog about it.

If you live in California, this menace is pervasive. The blighters are yellow and should blend in with taxis, only they don’t. They stick them on cars. When the father was visiting, it was his dear wish to stick them on our car after we made the mistake of taking him along to mystery spot. In fact, he got 2 of them for surety. I tried subtle hints to dissuade him. At this point, it is prudent to inform you that subtle hints don’t work with the father when it comes to aesthetics. I tore some tissues in my throat and the issue was amicably resolved. The bumper stickers were spared my cars’ butt.

They found another home.

I only found out the next time I visited my home in India where they had taken up residence. They were stuck on the toilet door. So you get the picture. You stand up to go the bathroom, and you see a yellow sticker called ‘Mystery Spot’ gleaming at you from the bathroom door.

Now:
• Folks have wondered what is it people do in there for so long in the mornings. Always a mystery one would agree. Especially when someone else is waiting for the premises, this mystery is a thrilling one.
• Mysterious sounds emanate from the room (both when occupied and not)
• The mind works in its mysterious ways, and produces theories and hypotheses waiting to be unleashed on the world in the mystery spot.

I confronted the mother on why this eyesore was plastered on the bathroom door. She wrings her hand up in the air, muttering something about kitchens not being the mystery spot, and how she takes particular care with all the ingredients she uses, and moves away with a tragic look on her face.

The mystery was solved. I have had cause to comment on this blog, that the father, while gifted with a mind capable of mastering numbers and analyzing stock market indices is particularly challenged in the aesthetics department. I wish to point you to this link about the décor in the house to refresh your memory.

https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/the-colourful-house-by-the-daughter-of-the-colour-blind-father/

So, while he was looking for a place to stick the damn things that had survived 2 customs clearings unnecessarily, and travelled round the globe, he had come upon the kitchen door. He seemed to have cracked a joke or two about the mysteries of cooking. I must tell you that the mother is as gifted with cooking as the father is not with interior decoration, and she took this onslaught on her creative domain personally. Consequently, the mystery spot remains the bathrooms, and every time I throw my mind back to the mysteries of the room, the revelations surprise me.

Drat that genius that came up with free ‘Mystery Spot’ stickers.

Common Sense?

The news delivers again. A california woman is suing Google for being hit by a car while walking on the Interstate in Utah. According to her, she googled directions to walk someplace on her BlackBerry.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20006379-71.html

Now, when you google from a computer, it gives you the warning that some places maybe missing crosswalks or something like that. But apparently, the blackberry neglected to give her this crucial piece of information and she being an all trusting sort of species, just went on. Even the fact that she was led onto a freeway without any traffic signals and cars and trucks cruising along at 65 miles per hour seemed to have skipped her. She was concentrating on following the directions see?

It must have been like that with that poor old demented soul who ordered hot coffee, and then sued McDonalds for making the coffee hot. Now, all coffee cups are helpfully labelled: “Caution, contents may be hot.”

http://cleveland.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/the-mcdonalds-hot-coffee-case.aspx?googleid=281136

There can, on the other hand be more generic and dire warnings to help people

Don’t procrastinate

Do today what you can do tomorrow, and do now what you can do today. But go easy with the coffee, it’s okay to procrastinate that, because you want it to cool down before drinking.

Read this thing completely before making decisions, and then proceed to a 35 page declaration of washing off responsibility.

Look before you leap. Caution: leaping is dangerous to health, and may result in injuries. Also, leaping between objects should be done with care. I mean building to building – better left to Pixar animation, cushion to cushion few millimeters apart, can be done after reading 38 page clause declaring you are responsible for the actions of your own leaping.

Or one can just be reminded subtly to use one’s common sense.

P.A.League

I already had a tentative membership into the P.A League, but this week-end my membership was confirmed. Yoohoo! Can you all cheer with me?

The P.A.League confirms membership when the following conditions have been achieved
1) Look dashed silly (in public of course) There isn’t much point in being silly with only the walls as an audience.
2) Do things that sane men and women scowl upon in real life, but would perfectly enjoy on reel.
3) Have a bunch of folks point their fingers at you, and make little effort to hide their glee.

I must tell you achieving the third is the roughest. If you think having a couple of folks who barely know how to eat out of their own plates jeer at you is easy, I’d have to suggest some classes for you. I suspect it would be harder for a stiff upper lip kind of person I assure you.

I realise I have gone on just needling your interest in the P.A. League, and you brain is now aching to know what it is. Is it the Personal Assistants Club, or the Polymath Agrarian League?

I’ll feel cruel if I withhold any longer. So here goes. It is called the Prized Asses League. To feel like  a prized ass, you can either do things like this:

https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2006/01/24/a-new-genre-in-the-footwear-industry/

Or, take up the daunting task of engaging children at the Kitchen Khiladi fest. I cannot say the whole event was like this. I wasn’t feeling like a P.A member for 90% of the activities I indulged in with the children, but towards the very end, I was running out of options, and started a freeze dance program. In hindsight, that did not seem like such a good idea. For one, I went in with the assumption that all I had to do was stand in the sidelines and start and stop the music. This game is a sophisticated one where children are supposed to dance when the music is on and freeze when it stops. I obviously thought that they would dance and they would freeze. Turns out, I had to lead them. I am not sure how Goliath felt when he was swinging in with the Davids, but I felt close. At one point, I froze in a funny posture to induce some fun and giggling into the proceedings, and two of them pointed at me and started howling (with laughter thankfully, I can’t tell you how bad it would have been if the children cried on seeing me dance)

Every once in a while, letting my inhibitions go with children is refreshing. It teaches me the importance of having a sense of humor and taking life lightly. I am thinking that would immensely help these folks too.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100519/ap_on_hi_te/as_pakistan_facebook

CIF Kitchen Khiladi

I had a unique culinary experience recently. I made something (food presumably) that has very little semblance to what one actually eats as food. I tried a combination of speed, innovation, novel ingredients and completely wrong ratios.

The evening tugged at me – the weather was bright, and the daughter and I wanted to play football with our hands. Perfectly normal so far you’ll agree. The evening however hard you try to stop it, marches on into the night with a steady trumpet blow. Then one is left with dirty football hands and a hungry stomach. So, I figured I will just make something that smacks of speed, health and aroma. A touch of Thai and Chinese would not hurt, I added as a mental note to myself. A smear of turmeric here, a touch of soy sauce there, and a whisp of basil.

I don’t know if there are competitions for the greatest flops. But that dish with the Indo-Chinese-Thai-Italian flavor just smacked of failure – on a colossal level. I think it even smelt Mediterrnean when the winds blew in a south westerly direction.

Given this performance, it is almost impertinent that I should be hustling you all to a cooking competition. But, I would like to salvage my position by saying it is for a good cause, and the important thing is to try something new.

So here goes. Cancer Institute Foundation is conducting Kitchen Khiladi – the brave, the creative, the explorers of unchartered soups and medleys, gather ye. Make a difference to cancer care while having fun.

Limbo between Roti Land, Poori Land and Parotta Land

I tend to agree with Vasundhara Chauhan. Who is Vasundhara Chauhan? Why would I agree with her? These are valid questions and deserve to be addressed. V.Chauhan penned this article in the Hindu where she deplores the flood of standard dal makhani, butter chicken, and naan wherever one looks for good indian food.

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/04/25/stories/2010042550280700.htm

Imagine my surprise therefore when I stepped into an Indian restaurant, and they asked me whether I wanted Naan or Chappati to go with dal makhani and mutter panneer. I went in for the Chappati – the old jaws need a break sometimes and soft chappatis would fit the bill nicely. The chappatis arrived, and if anything, they were worse for the jaws than a bunch of sugarcane chunks.

The chappatis did not stop me from taking a mental trip down the Cauvery river, however. Yes, the chappatis were a sturdy breed that is the hallmark of the South Indian Chappati Making Foundation. You see the folks of the S.I.C-M-Foundation have a process:

1) You first sit on the floor with a huge bowl of flour, and one leg outstretched from beneath the saree.
2) You tip a generous serving of oil in the flour.
3) You knead it to a rubbery consistency that is bordering on hard. Sort of like those mock cork balls.
4)  You take up approx 323 sq ft with spread out magazines, and flour and generally shoo the crows and children wanting to play with the flour away.
5) Then, you proceed to roll out triangular chappatis that have a tendency to shine with oil
6) Once this arduous process is done, you can proceed to the actual task of putting them on the tava. Oil should be used again and poor triangular blighters have to be flipped back and forth till you have a coloration that tells you not to expect something soft.

The SICMF does not like to see soft chapatis without oil. The chaps have to be mid way into being poories, stop short and decide in the last minute to become parottas, and stay in the limbo between Roti Land, Poori Land and Parotta Land.

The process takes a brisk 58 minutes for 15 chappatis, and is usually served with ‘Gurma’.

For the records, I was not scarred excessively with the chappati-poori-parotta treatment, since my mother broke her ties with SICMF early in her career, and we had fantastic, soft rotis instead of chappatis.

Is there a gene for this?

I honestly try to keep my nose down and go about my own sincere business. Everytime, I do that, I swear that some guy makes it a point to throw something like this at me and taunt me, just for the sake of it.

So, here goes. Apparently, a bunch of drunk humor challenged drunkards(did I call them drunk already? I must have.) So, where was I? Yes, humor challenged drunkards, did this to a fellow human being. They shoved an eel up a person’s a** as a joke.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/man-dies-after-eel-is-ins_n_560842.html

I am not one for macabre scenes, and take this opportunity to express my disapproval. But seriously, how does one think of these things? Forget all the negative psychological effects on the eel for a moment, and ponder on the sickening psychological workings of these men.

I grew up in a boarding school where ragging was rampant. I never understood the bullying mentality. I’ve read books and listened to spirited discourses from the father, who particularly disliked bullies.

Coming back to the eel episode, I think the fact that they were drunk was not the cause. I’ve seen drunk men doubling up as mild entertainment for the sober ones. For being able to hurt someone, the instinct may have nothing to do with being drunk. In this case, being drunk is an attribute. There must be a gene that wants to hurt people, and that is the gene to be squashed for all of mankind. Yet for all the advances we have made, we have not been able to isolate this intent to hurt and treat it.

Is there a gene for this?

Daffodils and AT&T

Every once in a while, I am in the middle of an eloquent sentence, and just letting the poetic slide from my tongue.You know how it is.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

Silence. I realise there is no reciprocation. It’s as if the other person isn’t there. Okay, I agree that wasn’t me it was old Wordsworth with his silly daffodils, but it could have been me with the ripe troubles of life, like the vast canvas poem I once wrote.

Why? That can’t be right. I mean, that thing that I just said was pretty hot stuff, and the folks I am talking to aren’t that insensitive to my needs of dialogue. I reach for my handkerchief, to wipe away the tears, when I find my call failed.

Call Failed. Try again? The phone looks at me with a touch of innocence.

Well, I can try again, but you should know that hot stuff like daffodils don’t just roll off the same way again. What comes out is a dull, and slightly drooping daffodil, just wilting by the window in the sun. Just imagine what humanity would have lost if Wordsworth had tried calling in the poem to his fiancee to write down immediately before he forgets, and AT&T dropped the call? (One could argue of course that the vast canvas poem was worth being dropped, but that is entirely a matter of perception. )

I have an iphone that I love for all of its features except its signal quality. I thought it was just me till Jon Stewart endorsed my view on his daily show. I have to say that I totally love his jab at AT&T and Apple.
http://www.dailytech.com/Jon+Stewart+Goes+After+Steve+Jobs+Apple+ATT+and+Appholes/article18263.htm
Excerpt:
I mean, if you wanna break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There’re no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T’s signal?!

Today, I was sitting and minding my own business when AT&T calls and badgers me about some random thing like plan changes or something, and AT&T drops their own call. HA! And HA! again.

Justice.

Snow White & Shanta Sakkubai

No. Thanks. I am not nuts yet, but I am quickly pushing those around me there with this song. This is a song that appears first in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs movie by Disney.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY3aljAO7qU

This movie was one of Disney’s first movies, and is very like Shantha Sakkubai (an old Tamil movie that appeared around the same time.) Allow me to explain.

Poor Shantha Sakkubai was hurled at us when entertainment options were limited to the state-owned-and-deemed-appropriate era of Doordarshan. I assure nothing else could have made me endure “Jai Panduranga ..” from Shantha Sakkubai.

http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/article257245.ece

Shantha Sakkubai’s plight was one of misery, yet she never quailed in her belief of Krishna. Her mother-in-law ill-treated her. What did Shantha Saks. do in return? She just belted out a melody in retaliation. I tried telling Shantha Saks Baby that if she stopped this infernal singing, her mother-in-law might go easy on her. But you know what happens to wise people. I was hushed and bundled off to “play”.

I was jarred to see that Snow White seemed to have followed a similar tactic in her days. The Queen throws her out and has a huntsman set after her. She runs through the forest – horrible beasts coming after her. Pretty thick situation to be in, if you ask me. But, Snow White asks the birds and squirrels what she should do, and they tell her to sing.

No wonder, it is a tradition in South Indian arranged marriages to have the girl sing.
https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/singing-vs-almirah-assembly/

Just whistle while you work.
And cheerfully together we can tidy up the place.