Just Saying..

Do you admire fearlessness? What about Courage?

I personally think that fearlessness is different from courage. 

Fearlessness is brain's inability to process the consequences. So its really stupid people who are fearless. Like toddlers.

Courage is fully knowing the consequnces but making a stand for what you believe in, despite that.

Let me give examples: driving your bike on a highway (where two wheelers are not allowed) in the fastest lane is fearlessness.

Stopping your car, instead of zipping away, to apologize to the other person whose car you grazed, is courage.

I am fearful and ambuj is courageous. Not complaining!

Existential Dread

"When the act of escaping seems more dreadful that the thing you are escaping from"

I have a nasty fear of heights.

I cannot climb stairs if there is no railing to hold onto and i can see the fall beneath. I cannot look down from a balcony without losing my orientation. 

Mostly its because i do not trust myself to not fall. I feel i will initiate the fall because my body feels disoriented and clumsy, with too many degrees of freedom. When i look down from a height without something solid to hold onto, the panic makes me dizzy and as my head starts swimming, the panic mounts. 

It is a vicious circle. I guess you cant understand it till u feel it.

I still find myself trying stuff like Canyon Jumping, Rappelling, Paragliding. Everytime i did such an activity i was distraught. I was reeling with fear of death. So I have asked myself why do i get myself into situations where i would feel this way?

The reason has manifested differently on all the occasions, but the reason is losing face. 

That i wont be able to face myself and others, if i cannot see this activity to the end. That not doing this activity would mean that i need to beg someone to help me back to the starting point. The fact that not getting on that paragliding chair would mean enduring snide glances from the crew.

So i choose saving my face over fear of death everytime.

It is stupid really.

Constructing Faces

I sometimes think that our faces are modular.

You can have similar "kind of" features without having the same face. And no i don't mean ethnic features..

Have you ever been forcibly reminded of someone when looking at a stranger/ celebrity. On second look you realise they don't look anything similar, but something in their face will insist upon reminding you of someone you know.

It might be the protuberance of the eye or the way their nose wrinkles when they smile. I am forever asking people "doesn't she/he look like ..." and i always get a weird look.

Doesn't happen to you? Ever?

At the Souk

Taking shelter from the sand storm raging outside, she was acutely aware of the number of people crowded together in the small tea shop.

The streets of the old souk had been quickly deserted.
The air was sand; to breathe was agony and seeing was out of question.
Screeching, merciless storm had blown away the ragged awnings of all the peddlers' stalls in the old souk even before people had found some shelter.

She felt the panic rising in her, she did not know where her mother was and she had no hope to find her before the storm abated. She tried to calm herself down by trying to count the number of people in the shop. Next she made a game of guessing the trade of people in there by looking at their garb.

It was not working, she could not fool herself. It felt as if her mind was whirring with gruesome possibilities and her body was very slow on the uptake of the requisite reaction.

Battling with her rising sense of dread, she waited out the storm. Once it was over, she almost got crushed in the stampede of people straining to get out.

When she finally made it out of the shop, she started looking for her mother. She took a quick look at the other possible shelters in the souk. Then she realised that her mother could be looking for her, so she went and sat down for sometime near their usual baqala; mother dint come.

It was getting dark now and she had not yet spotted her mother. It was the jinns, they had taken her mother from her, because she had not been a good girl of late. She wanted to cry and scream for help, but she was not sure if anyone would put up with her tantrum, right now.

She was scared to go home without her mother. What would Baba say? She had misplaced his wife in the sand storm. He will not believe that it was not her fault, he will tell her that she had invited the attention of the jinns which had now cost her, her mother and his wife. Oh and the baby's mother too.

Despairing, she started walking towards her house. She regretted slipping away from her mother to look at the glass bangles. After the bangles, her attention had been captured by a snake charmer who was putting up a show nearby. She had completely forgotten about finding her mother and then the storm had made it impossible. She had been deposited to safety by the wave of the crowd rushing to take shelter.

She could now see her house. She resolved to go and tell her Baba bravely that she had lost her mother and could not find her. As she entered the house, she heard her mother's voice. She was home! It was wave of welcome relief that washed over her. Her mother was safe at home. She rushed to meet her.

Mother was singing a lullaby to the baby, she turned and noticed Azza running towards her and realised with a start that she had forgotten her at the souk.

Nostalgia

In January 2012, after we got married Ambuj and I went to Europe for a short trip. In the last leg of our trip, we were staying in a hotel in Interlaken. 

Switzerland seemed to me a laid back country, people were mostly old , they would close at 4 in the afternoon and go home, they would not open on weekends. They wont disturb u and (resolutely, how much ever you request them to take a pic for you) they wont be disturbed. 

When you are in such a place you tend to imbibe the relaxed atmosphere especially when u find a book in the hotel that mildly interests you and is of suitable length so that you can just finish it over the duration of your stay :D

It was a story about two girls (i can only somehow picture Betty & Veronica), and their entangled love life in Paris; with lots of complications, emotions flying high, misunderstandings etc, but there was something about the writing that i loved. The same something that i find in Poirot novels; something that Anita Desai recreates in her descriptions of indian homes, the same something i found today in Maupassant's stories.. 

..it is the description of the world which is long gone; the way things were. The time when people had houses with gardens and overgrown bright pink bougainvillea would spill over their walls, when on sunny afternoons people sat outside in their green lawns on white wrought iron chairs because they dint need air conditioning.

When i look back to those days, i want to remember the name of that book but it eludes me. It was not a famous book, (i think?) none the less i would like to know which one it was so that i have the peace of mind that i can read it again if i want. (Yes, i can get paranoid at times) 

It has been very long now and i cannot remember the name of the book. Everytime i get some free time, i try to search the internet for it and each time i am reminded of the painful little i have to go on.. I dont even remember the names of the girls... and I am scared that the longer it takes me to find out the name of that book, the lesser i will remember..

I am sad now, i will read an Agatha Christie to feel better.. bye.

What Women Want

The female pysche has been the topic of much discussion and gossip. There are people actually making money out of their "skill" to read a female mind.

To summarize all these myriad websites offering help to men, the general consensus seems to be that women do what they do, because they relate everything to their basic need of : Safe and Secure future. Once this parameter is met, they do a further selection based on who is more "fun" to be with; you know there is Safe boring and then there is the Safe adventurous.. so they tend to lean towards the non boring :-| (Surprise, surprise!)

I guess if more than one guy is left by then, women would sort based on other characteristics important for them.

How amazingly logical!! 

I was reading a short story today "Femme Fatale". The story is very short, but the writer goes to great lengths describing the place, the cafe the protagonist is in, the crowd, the smell, the sounds etc etc. What happens is that the girl is with the guy, who is head over heels in love with her. She is not so much moved by him. He finds her in a passionate embrace with another girl and commits a suicide.

Another short story "CockCrow" was about a Baron trying to woo a married woman who publicly treats her husband with disdain. This Baron guy is relentlessly pursuing her and she manages to always be just on the verge of letting him take her. Finally after seeing him hunt down and kill a wild boar with his bare hands, she calls him at night to her room where he falls asleep while waiting for her to emerge from her vanity. He wakes up to find her looking at him with the same disdain she shows her husband.

Moral of the story, girls do what makes them happy. Every girl has a different perception of what makes her happy. If i am financially secure, then security might not be on my list. 

You cannot box down female pysche in a book. You cannot teach a man how to always "interpret" every girl correctly. 

We are the more evolved gender. We are the thinkers & feelers and you are the doers. The only way you can understand us, is to go through the process, the emotional turmoil, what we call sticking through the thick and thin of it; and then, finally, you will somewhat understand ONE of us.

Trying Hard(ly)

I have lost my sight,
my eye for the mundane
Forgotten the words that would spout
Without having to think and strain

I am trying hard
much too hard it'd seem
to do what i did well once
when no one took notice, but him.

Need i say more? I am slipping back into thinking that i am randomly writing. But then i tell myself that the point of this is not to become a writer but to just write.
One day out of ten i would write something i wont be ashamed of, other days i will embarrass myself.

So what!.. 

ADHD

It is the pop generation. We have very short attention spans. That is why people are moving from words to pictures; so they can say what they want to say in pics before the audience moves on.

Do away with books, bring in the comics.
Do away with blogs, watch youtube
Do away with thesis, make ppts

Being Me

So last week was a "Hate Charoo Fest". 
It might have been a "Throw Stones at Charoo Fest" but please dont blame me if i missed the exact name of the event while braving through it.

My manager, whose mind i don't know very well, has made my position somewhat like the security friskers you meet at the entrance to a Mall or airport. And my peers are; well, the people i am supposed to check for bombs. The idea is that i am supposed to put a check on non-urgent spending and increase efficiency. 
Only my peers are none too happy about being frisked (please dont laugh at my metaphor)

Last week we all met to iron out the differences and to work out who will do what. You know what happened? We all fought. They were all at one side of the table and i was at the other side. Only one of the colleagues, was defending me apart from my manager. 
You would think i would be at least thankful about my manager supporting me, but i was not; because i think it just fueled their antagonism. I think if everybody had publicly condemned me then, they would have felt avenged; now i think they will only resolve to make my life tough; tougher than it is today.

Is it OK to be hated? I guess yes, it is OK to be hated.

Different people display hate differently, some get angry at you, some will make sure you never enjoy doing what you do with them, some will just ignore you and some still will not be able to do anything while they hate you.

But, it hurts everytime you realize someone hates you. 
Me. 
Hates me.

Or maybe hate is too strong a word....but dislike wont do.

PPTHHPTH!!

So Navratre started yesterday, and i decided that i was going to fast for all 9 days.

As soon as i decided that my Baniya brain started calculating the best way to avoid the single biggest inconvenience of fasting: no food.
So i made a pact with God; i will have only one normal meal in a day. (and in an aside i added that i can eat all the fruits in the world, drink all the milk/tea/coffee, and eat Kuttu and sendha namak any number of times a day) :-/

God was not very pleased.

Yesterday i had a normal lunch and then for dinner i had "special fasting food". The "plan" was that my cook will make me kuttu cheela (less oil than puri) and raita of sendha namak. I think i overestimated her knowledge of north indian food, because what she made was not cheela, they were "rotla", the thick roti.
If you have ever had kuttu in your life, u know what i went through trying to eat them. My stomach felt queasy, but i told myself thats because m fasting.. :-/

Today morning i woke up and realised that i was unwell. (ummm.. tummy upset- diarrhoea type unwell). Everytime i came out of the loo i had to walk back again.
It did not help that Ambuj found it gravely funny. One time he scared the living daylights out of me when i emerged from the loo and he jumped out of nowhere and went "PPTHHPTH"

We had a row, and then he realised that i was unwell afterall, however funny my sickness might be.
He offered to stay home from office and look after me. I told him that he is not needed where i am facing problems so he might as well go to the office.
Then he enacted for me, what will happen if i try to go outside to buy meds; what if i go outside to buy fruit; what if things go bad and i have to go to a doctor and the auto ride is "bumpy", worse if i am in my own car...
I was "moved" by his excitement concern for me for being sick today, that i had to be taken care of (for a change i am not incharge, hummphh!) so i agreed.

Needless to say that he kept blowing raspberries every now and then, making me jump and get self conscious. Once when i tried to lift a bucket to water the plants, he asked me not to do anything stressful (like lifting) or i would go "PPTHHPTH!" oops.. How nice!

There is a saying in Hindi, "कोढ़ में खाज" which means getting your troubles compounded in bad times. So we went out to buy medicine for me and we could not find even a single medico open. At the fourth shop were were told "आज हड़ताल है" All India!

God must have been real ticked off by my double standards.

Anyhoo, i came back home and did my tried and tested "घरेलु उपचार" I swallowed a tablespoon of dry tea with water. Since then i have not had to go :) though i still feel queasy.

And now no cheating on my fasting.

Jai Mata di! :D

Superfudge caramelitas (recipe)

This is a sandwich brownie recipe. This is awesome just trust me..

Superfudge brownie batter

Featuring, in order of appearance:

Butter 55gms

Baking chocolate  45gms

Egg 1ea

Caster sugar  20gms

Vanilla essence     a splash

Flour (maida)  15gms

Crushed Walnuts  xxxgms

On very low heat in a pan melt the butter. When the butter is soft or melted put the baking chocolate in it.  Stir till choc is completely melted in butter and consistency is like soup.

Tip 1: chocolate tends to burn, if u want to be very safe put the butter choco mix on a double boilet instead of on direct heat.

Tip2: to quicken this step shave off your baking chocolate bar into smaller pieces which are easier to melt.

Next whip the egg, sugar and vanilla essence till completely combined and light yellow and thick.

Add to this egg sugar mix the butter choco and mix to combine.

To this finally add the flour and mix BY HAND. Finally add the walnuts and mix by hand to homogenise. Your batter is ready

Tip 3: i crush the walnuts using a chopper so that the size of crushed pieces is like lemon pips

Salted Caramel

Butter   20 gms
Whipping Cream   1 Tablespoon (Tbsp) - this is not whippED cream, u can use Amul fresh cream instead
White Sugar   6 teaspoon (tsp)
Sea Salt/ Salt   1 pinch

Before we launch into how to make caramel, you have to remember that Caramel comes in different consistency. The consistency is managed by tweaking the ratio of butter & cream. If you want it more liquid use slightly more cream and slightly less butter. But if you want it to set when cooled then use more butter than cream.
We are shooting for slightly set type of caramel here, so that after cooling you can pick up a piece of brownie without creating a mess :D

Now onto how to make the caramel:

You need two pans,
in Pan # 1 put butter & cream on low heat and let it simmer (do not burn it)
in Pan # 2 put the white sugar and let it melt. you have to pay attention to the sugar. I would suggest to keep it on medium heat and the crystals will start becoming weird :D. The sides will melt first, when that starts hapenning use a spoon to mix it and then it will melt rapidly.
We need to get the sugar to a yellowish color, but not burnt.

When the sugar is melted and yellow take that pan off heat.
Pour the butter-cream mixture in that sugar pan and mix it with a spoon. add a pinch of sea salt and u have a caramel :)

Baking the Caramelita

We bake in OTG, no microwaves allowed!
Set preheat to 150degC, on top & bottom heat setting
Take a OTG safe dish (Metal/ Borosilicate/ Ceramic) i used a 6in x 6in square dish.
Line it with baking paper, or what you like to use (foil also works)

Now spread half of the brownie batter on the dish, ensuring that it covers the bottom properly.
Put it in the oven and bake for 8-10 min (it will be slightly set not fully done)

After that take it out (use mittens please). Spread the caramel on top of the brownie layer. If your caramel has set, warm it up a little (can use microwave or cooktop). Then pour the remaining brownie batter on top of the caramel and try your best for a nice sandwich with minimum mixing of the layers.

Bake for 10-12 min at 150degC, top & bottom heat setting.

Tip 4: Having very liquid caramel will be easy to spread but will cause a lot of mixing, however thicker caramel will be difficult to spread but will be great to keep the layers separate. The not being able to spread problem will be fixed when u heat it and then wait for a couple of minute after spreading to let it thicken up.

Do NOT eat it while hot, wait for it to cool down to room temp, then refrigerate it at least for an hour (do i have to say, do not freeze it please?!) and then cut it into smaller pieces and enjoy :)

Dont judge a book by its movie

I am sure you all have at some point or the other seen a movie based on a book you lovvvved. I am sure that 75% of times you have hated the guts of the director for making such a chickensh*t version of the story.

a) they kill the best parts or modify them to fit in the timeline

Snowwhite and the Hunstman? I mean really? classic fairy tale gone horribly wrong. What does that Deer mean? who is the prince charming?

b) they chose the worst possible actors to portray the characters in the book

Snowwhile and the Huntsman? Kristen Stewart is only good to portray a constipated tree. Chris Hemsworth (dirty and uncouth) is trying to romance (?) a tree, its like watching a dog.

Yes my eyes got burnt when i watched this movie.

But even other movies fall into similar category. 

Harry potter got the characters right they are the same in my head, but i hate them for modifying the plot to fit the time. 

The Help did not get Aibileen's character to my liking, there was something off; but Minnie was spot on!

Twilight series' (yes! i have read the books & seen the movies) Bella is completely off. You know it might be an unpopular belief but Bella was supposed to be normal in the book. Quiet, thoughtful but normal; not fidgety, not constipated, not grimacy (if thats a word).

 [No i am not having a Kristen Stewart hatefest, she is just playing the wrong roles really]

The only movie that does justice to the books is LoTR.

I like the movies better than the book. For one the book is such a heavy read, secondly the movie has trimmed out ONLY frills around the plot. Tom Bombadill for example. A lot of people make a lot of noise about it, but really it was the most boring part of the book for me.

Anyhoo, keep reading.

PS: i made caramel brownies today :)

A Day in Life of Crazy Me

Crazy crazy trip.

So Wednesday night we were supposed to fly to Delhi, for our interview at SBI loan branch in Delhi on Thursday morning.
Super planner that i am, i did not sleep well on Tuesday night, so i was sleep deprived all Wednesday. Yay!!

Wednesday Evening:
After we reached home from office, it was pack and go time. I was practically sleeping while standing up. So i gave my phone to Ambuj, and slept in the taxi to the airport. Somewhere along my brother called, who was coming to pick us up and I talked to him and then slept again.
At the airport, we got our boarding passes, we ate some snacks and then proceeded to the security check. At the security check i realized that i do not have my phone on me, so i assumed Ambuj has it (like always). Panic kicked in when we reached the other side and i realised even Ambuj doesnt have my phone!!

You would think that after losing 5 phones in a short span of 5 years, i'd have a pre-defined reaction procedure.
But no, i always panic and start pulling my hair out.
You would think that having dealt with all 5 debacles (and paid for replacement) my husband would have a contingency procedure.
But no, he always goes in that mode where his body language makes it clear that i have messed up and he is helping to clean up. x-(

The first attempt was "Find my iPhone", bhai isi din ke liye to ye app bani hai!
But my phone was showing offline. And after this i gave up all hope. But Ambuj asked me to call the phone, just in case.

I called, and it was picked up by someone (wow!) who sounded like an expat. She told me that she is on her way to Versova, and after dropping her, the driver will come back to give me the phone. I told her that i will be flying out, and requested if she could keep my phone instead of the driver, and i will collect it from her on Friday. She told me that she works in Powai (wow # 2!) and i can collect it from her there. We exchanged numbers and i thanked her profusely for helping me. Her name was Sandeep (desi with a firangi accent!)

Friday Morning:
We reached SBI office (still very much sleep deprived) and the paperwork took a good part of 3 hours. We were surviving on Ambuj's phone, for both our work calls, calls related to query from teh SBI officers. So around 12 noon, Ambuj's phone died.

Like the super planner I am, i took out my power bank and offered him to recharge his mobile. He looked at me and said, "i do not have the cable for charging."
Whaaat.. I mean seriously?! this is regularly expected of me, but Ambuj! Never.

So we waited without any phone, for the formalities to finish. Then we realized that it is impossible to hail a cab in Delhi without a phone app (after jumping up and down for 15 mins on the curb). So we took an auto to find a store which sells the cable. the first one we spotted was "iGenius" Apple store, K block, Outer ring road, CP. They told us they did not have the original cable from apple, but sold us a new "non OEM" cable.

You know these "non Apple" cables are not so bad, the one we have from Capdase works just fine and is more durable. So we bought it and then went to a nearby coffee shop to drink something while the phone comes back to life. After 30 min of checking every 2 min, we realised that we had been taken for a ride, this cable is s**t.

By this time i was in a frantic mode again. I had to reach office and get some work done, and we were not able to get a cab. It was unbearable, unimaginable and frustrating that we were stuck because our mobile phone had collapsed.
I started waving out to cabs on outer ring road of CP like a huge flapping bat. Ambuj tried to restrain me, then i think he decided if you cant control her, join her. We spend 20 mins trying to coax full taxis to ditch their fare and take us to gurgaon.
No success.

While i was busy hunting taxi, Ambuj found another apple store and bought the real cable. i wore its packing as a bracelet so that i do not forget the craziness in a hurry. 20 min later i was snoozing in a taxi bound for Cyber city :)

Tonight i am finally going to catch up on all my sleep.

Oh btw, i got my mobile back.. faith in good human nature restored (for about five minutes, then we tried to reverse out our car, and met the generic homo sapien- the ass***e)

Embargoed

Now that i am writing again, this week was filled with things i can talk about for hours.
I dont know where to start so i will talk first about Po..

During a casual discussion i found out that one of my old Manager's (the mentor for Ambuj & me in our formative years in SL) has quit.
I was shocked, he was the personification of everything i believe about my company to be ideal. He was a person we all looked upto. And it was hard to process that information.

I went and i told Ambuj. Suddenly everyone else appeared to be abnormally normal, how come people are not reacting? Oh right, because they do not know him.
While i was still entangled in whys and hows of it.. the idea of the impossible was introduced.

He might be happier now that he has left the company.

He left because his wife wanted to return to their home country and SL has no business there due to the sanctions. He left because he (correctly) prioritised his life over work. He left because he did not undermine that his wife also works and has a career (she is a doc).

I'm still sad, and its pretty bad when u cant blame your sadness on anyone, because everyone is right.

I'm Back

You know, if we wait for Life to happen to us, we just keep standing at one point forever.

If i judge what i write, and if i write only what i think is creative, i will perhaps never write. Because i am too harsh on myself, when i do start judging.
The entire point of this blog was to not judge, to not care and to only write, whatever i want to.
Like even kharab english chalega. Jo ki na hindi hai poora na english hai baba.

So brainwave: this blog is not about creativity, it is about writing something everyday (i feel like Po who got enlightment/ inner peace too soon)

Also, do you know, blogging has fight clubbish powers :D

सुकून मिलता है दो लफ्ज़ कागज़ पे उतार के
चीख भी लेती हूँ, आवाज़ भी नहीं आती
(Not my lines)

The daily blog is back on!

Kuch bhi..

In favor of my sanity, in favor of not killing creativity just for a stupid resolution, i have decided that i will not write everyday.. But only when i uave something to say; which can be every day but loke like it wont be.. But it can be.. 

An idea worth talking about should be processed, thought of and then put down physically. If we do not do that, we have not done it justice.

Keep checking back..  

Mirror mirror on the wall

I have an annoying habit of asking ambuj to tell me whether i m as fat/ weird/ sloppy as some random girl i point at, when we are somewhere outside. He keeps telling me to just check the mirror. Poor guy!

But when i come to think of it, i cant remember what i look like at all points of time. Like i can remember how someone else would look when they would be laughing, sad, angry.. I dont know how i look. Not until someone takes a pic and i am horrified.

We have a mental image of ourselves, that has nothing to do with our physical image. What we see ourselves as is not what the other person is seeing.
Its not just my face or way of carrying myself, or the way of talking. Its everything that i do which has my face stamped on it. This is why we have habits (which we are unaware of) that others dislike or find funny.

Weird, how we do not know ourselves in the most basic way.

Redeeming Paris

Paris turned and ran, back to the safety of Hector's protection...

He admits that he is a coward. He admits that in face of death, he forgot all his pride, honor and valor and just ran from certain death. He does not try nor pretend to be a hero.

Why is Paris's cowardice repugnant?
What would most people do when death is staring them in their face? Show honor? Show integrity?
I think they will choose between fight or flee, based on what they think will help them evade death.

Then why is Paris, who does not strut around as a hero, such a disappointing character?
Did he not offer to face Menelaus alone to avoid the bloodshed that will result from Trojan war? His heart is in the right place. What can he do if he is weak, unskilled and cowardly.

I think what upsets most of us is the fact that he let so many people die, when he was so scared of dying himself. But I think that wheel was already in motion once Helen fled Sparta and came to Troy. Even that was Aphrodite's doing not Paris'.

What was Paris' mistake?