10 Items Or Less

There are things that a person always wishes to do, but realizes that he has not done all those things at all. And then there are things that a person does. So it was time I decided that I will start doing things that I've been putting on hold. Since beginning of the new financial year (because that is the way calenders work in financial industry), I've done quite a few things now that I've wanted to do since quite some time. Some of those important, others not quite important.

This is just a list of all those things, just accidentally falling in public domain:

1. Accounts

A long cherished desire to learn accountancy from scratch, a desire that we couldn't fulfill in our B-school with little time that we could allocate to it. A piquant (please don't pronounce it as "pee/cunt") subject for those even remotely interested in finance. Have slowly started it and though not going full-throttle into it, I have managed to maintain a sufficient tempo so as to not lose the brownie-points to be cliamed in a job-interview if I need to attend one.

2. Guitar

My father wants to learn Traditional Vocal Indian music ever since I can recall. I asked one of our colleagues if he knew where could I buy a good guitar in Hyderabad & what were the things I should keep in mind for that. He said that he wanted to learn to play a guitar since the past 35 years, but it might as well be another 35 before he got one. Then I saw myself 20 years down the line, wishing I too knew some music. Decided that this was going to be a key difference between me and anybody else, I went to a music shop and bought my first real six string in the summer of '09..... and then, there it was: a guitar, wrapped up in a bag, ready to be tuned with a tuner and strummed with picks; all for a nominal amount of Rs.2,600/-. So far I've learnt three basic chords, how to pick alternate strings & E phrygian scale (which I only recently found out is not a scale) ...something that seems only too fair to me to have learnt in four sittings.

3. Beach Shirt

That your attire reflects your attitude is something which came as a hard learning to me. Since then, I've been looking for a good beach shirt for me. After a long & tedious search, I found a white shirt with floral prints, loose to the core, the essence of which is pure, sinful comfort. Though friends' plan of a Goa trip is way ahead in distant future, I've already begun the preparations for the ordeal.

4. Wine

Learnt to be the drink that endows divinity to food, straight from the wineyards of Bordeaux of India, Nasik (well, Nasik is as good an option for me as I don't know the difference between the two varieties) came two bottles of wine; one red, other white. During a get-together of friends, I popped the cork and not-so-accidentally also popped by wine cherries. That broadens my alchohol portfolio to include champagne, rum and red & white wine (since beer and breezers don't qualify as alchohol). Although I still have a long way to go to fulfill my dream of getting terribly drunk once in a life, I can still boast of having reached one more milestone in the journey.

5. Stinkers

Written my first stinker mail just a couple of weeks back. A fantasy treasured in the heart since I learnt of the virtues of a stinker now stands fulfilled. However, I knew that guilt would inevitably follow, (and indeed it eventually did) I have successfully become an MS Outlook skunk.

Now I know that typical list will have 10 items, but I'm not inspired by "Dasvidaniya". Instead, I'm inspired by "10 items or less", so I'll just stop at 5 for now. Hoping that the future brings more beginnings than endings...

Hasmukh :)

A New Beginning

"How much will you experiment with your skin?" asks the lady in the idiot-box. Since I neither have the financial muscle nor any hope that my going to the stupid skin clinic might bring any change for the better, I decided that I wouldn't experiment anymore with my skin... after all, unlike Micheal Jackson, I only have 3 layers to spare!

But tell me, isn't it only this trait of experimenting which makes the Homo Sepian Sepians higher to other species (or at least so is the mass credo)? So I thought of experimenting with my food for a change. Now what is the favourite food of a bachelor? Omlet...! (OK, not much room for experiments for me here, because apparently, cocks do not lay eggs.) The next best thing: for all these years, they've asked for only 2 minutes of our time... yes, you got it right! MAGGI!!!

I was just finishing it when I thought of making some little changes, so there opens the cabinet, out comes my chef's hat, I fling the door of the fridge in one smooth motion & my of-late-pre-programmed-to-reach-for-my-favourite-item-in-the-fridge-since-last-week hand reaches its destination. The product which scarcely needs any more variety in usage, a dream of marketeers to work with, a sauce which goes with almost everything, a form of most widely relished sweet & it also has as many health benefits as the taste & flavour...sauce nahi boss, it is a chilled bottle of "Genuine Chocolate Flavour Hershey's Syrup"! Oh the brown bottle, oh the round cap, oh the thick-brown-non-stop-zig-zag-almost-erotic flow of the nectar, oh the dulcet sound when I stop squishing the container... (if only I were a woman, I might have had an orgasm) but alas, only chocolate lovers can understand the poetry in dark chocolate.

Now I'm also a painter of the James Pollock school, with only chocolate sauce instead of paint & my once-masala-flavoured Maggi instead of a canvas. I manipulate my chopsticks to let the confection get evenly distributed on each and every strand of the now divine Maggi and enjoy it while it is still warm. And having had a scrumptious portion of the same, I have the generosity of giving out the recipe for the greater good of mankind, abstaining from becoming a millionaire by selling this idea to lots of dumb people who would pay for crap like this for they are too tired of using their brains.

I, the undersigned, hereby invite you to share your secret recipes & ingredients to make your Maggi better, so that we all can live to see a better tomorrow (and please give tomato ketchup a break you morons!)

Hasmukh :)

Hunger

The photo is the “Pulitzer Prize” winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan Famine.The picture depicts stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.

The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat him. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.

Three months later he committed suicide due to depression.

http://www.worldsfamousphotos.com/stricken-child-crawling-towards-a-food-camp-1993.html

I received this photograph in a forwarded email sometime back. I wanted to show it to somebody, but couldn’t find it in my hard-drive or in my inbox, so I googled it out. There are quite a few copies of it on the internet, this is the link to one of them.

Everybody of is debating on the page about what is wrong with the system, what needs to be done, what are the duties of the world bodies, rich people who don’t do enough charity and who knows what not. But I want to ask these people, “Did any of you ensure that YOU don’t waste any food?” If you do it & further ensure that everyone you know also doesn't waste any food, in the long run the Aggregate Demand is going to come down drastically. If everybody who eats decides to purchase only that much that he sincerely wants to eat and doesn’t waste any food, this is going to save the life of a significant number of people every year who die of hunger; one way or the other.

“Lofty ideals” you’ll say. I know that charity begins at home, so I’ve made every effort to ensure that I don’t waste any food and also try and ensure that everybody I know doesn’t disrespect or waste food in any way whatsoever.

I’m not asking you to give me blood, time, devotion or absolutely anything at all. All I’m asking is for you to promise me that you’ll not waste any food, ask for only that much that you’re going to eat and make sure that everybody in you share a table with, does the same. This is the least you can do to (literally) save the world.

I may not be alive to see the day when nobody dies of petty reasons. Nevertheless, I would still want that day to arrive. Hope that it arrives soon & further hope that you have a positive part to play in it.

Hasmukh :)

Flames

Have you ever been tempted by somebody cooking Mediterranean food, gently pouring exquisite red wine in a pan and heating it so that it catches fire and shows some of the most enticing colours; colours such that you feel like you want to dissolve in them for the rest of your mortal life?? The only thing that would hamper you from living this fantasy is probably the absence of such conditions in the first place in a day to day life. Well…meet someone who just overcame that barrier and found a way to enjoy the same feeling in a normal Indian kitchen!!!

Actually it’s just that I’ve been trying my hand at cooking lately. My journey in the kitchen dates back to the times when I was about 9 years old when I had my first encounters of the fiery kind. My hunger had driven me into the kitchen and like many other fellow Indians, my cooking started with the good old Maggie 2-minute noodles to satiate my writhing guts. The war on terror (of hunger) has continued unabated since then, just like its namesake; with no hope of a truce in the foreseeable future. 13 years old and I baked my first pizza. (Not joking at all…though it was more of Indian food than Italian & the recipe included some bread, capsicum, tomatoes, onions, cheese & of course ketchup; which due to lack of a better noun would be called a pizza.) Later at the age of 14, I successfully made my first cup of tea without using any clay or a potter’s wheel. Just like the hero grows up in a 1980s Bollywood movie, my cooking continued with stupendous pace with me learning to make laddoos, coffee, shakes, curries & earning a perfect 10 at the age of 20 to make my first chapatti which was just-the-right-thickness, just-the-right-softness, just-right-grilled…and behold thy breath; A PERFECT CIRCLE! (Though this was just a prototype and mass production would take a long long while…& efficiency, another 3 millennia.) Today I learnt to successfully make much-better-than-just-edible dal & rice. And this is where I found the treasures of the kind known only to Mediterranean chefs, (except for all those who also happen to be in direct contact with fire.)

Place: Kitchen at my home
Preparation: “Tadka” for my dal

I started heating the oil and put some “sarso” in it. My hunt for some of the other exquisite ingredients (read Asafetida/ “Hing”) took me longer than anticipated and when I returned victorious to my workstation, as if out of nowhere, I was greeted by the sight of a three coloured flame in the “tadke ka katora”, just like we learnt in our 6th grade text-book!!! And as the towering inferno went higher & higher, and for a cross-section in time, I could unravel the mystery of what would be the feeling of burning the house down!

Thankfully the size of the inferno towered to just about 7” and the fire department’s services were not availed. Much needless to say that I managed to escape without a scratch or a burn (actually I didn’t runaway...to quote from the poem Casabianca, “The boy stood on the burning deck!”). The tadka was then remade by my very educated mother who just showed how to make a proper tadka, (can’t one see anything else except the cliché nine planets?) And when I started boiling it, I put a few “Aritha”s (used to treat hair) instead of “Kokam” (an ingredient that gives tang); identified the error & corrected within a response time of less than 58 million nano-seconds. For the record, the dal was highly delicious & I savoured it with my mother & sister. Hope that in the times to come, I manage to cook up something as delicious everyday with as much fun as today and lesser danger...

Hasmukh :)