Birth Month Update

It has to be most lame birthday I have had in my 1000 year life on earth. First of all, I bought a bucketload of things earlier in March. Like, an iPad (admittedly, I have barely touched it up to now), and a Garmin (Love It), boots, and clothes, and things. Not to mention an inverter battery, and new tires for my car, and stuff like that. When some NGO called me repeatedly and emo-blackmailed me into donating some money, I sort of did that too.

So, all in all, it was no time to treat myself to an iPhone (like I did last year) or anything. & I went off to the holiest of holy places - Tirupati. Though I couldn't walk up the steps, go stand in the Serpentine queue, and get darshan of Lord Venkateshwara, I was happy that I could visit there and see a whole new bunch of students!

First up I met up with some 200 girls in the Engineering stream at Padmavathi Mahila University. It was a great experience to be in a room of enthusiastic, well dressed, neat and tidy students! It was great that it was all girls - strange as well! I spoke about a bunch of things and threatened to ask Chemistry questions if they didn't interrupt me. So, interrupt me they did!!

"Who is really your inspiration" they asked - after I had rattled on about Tessy Thomas and Kathrine Switzer and Lijjat Papad. I hmmed and hawed and said this and that and finally the bulb clicked and I said "MOM" - and they all nodded happily at that. And I nodded inside as well, because, well, that's epiphany in public.

I then spoke in the weirdest shaped room in all the civilised world! I mean it was a super wide room - how to cover that much ground? I walked everywhere and had them swivel their heads like that horror movie child thingie, but still, it was weird. This was in IIT Tirupati (temp. location). I spoke about adapting to change, and marathons, and stuff like that, and it was good fun though the bunch was pretty rowdy and noisy.

We ended the session with a loud karaoke rendition of Lungi Dance, and I resisted the temptation to Dance Like It Was My Birthday. After all, 42 is no joke. Yep, that's me, the forty-two year old who rode a train and took selfies and resisted the temptation to eat Masal Vada in the train station. 

Meanwhile, the child has, in a moment of inspiration, and in an attempt to avoid learning html coding that the school wants her to, started to blog. I mean, she has started today, just hope she keeps it up. I will be fine with all the hazing-the-mom activity if she keeps it up and practices writing or vents her thoughts, or whatever it is she wants to do with it. Here, read if you want to:

New Kid On The Blog

Chop Chop Chop We Go

The part I like the most about cooking is the chopping of vegetables. I would like to claim that I am pretty good at this. As in, my pieces are even, and I get the job done fast. These are the two aspects of veggie cutting that are most important. Believe me, I have served as assistant cook, in charge especially of veggie chopping many many times with many many good (but quick to criticise) cooks. There are some small aspects such as not wasting too much of the veggie in the guise of peeling, ensuring removal of icky bits and bits with potential worms and such-like, good washing, etc. which are necessary but not sufficient characteristics to earn the Crown.

Although I don't like to eat it anymore, I absolutely adore cutting vegetables for Aviyal. Simply because it involves so many colours. And there is a definite requirement that they be evenly long cylinders in shape. I don't generally like unidimensional-ness. I am constantly interrupting myself and parallel processing. I have a million browser windows on all the time. I like my veggies mixed up, especially for colour.

All this is not to say that I don't enjoy, what some may think of as, the actual cooking. I do. My sister insists I enjoy it because I don't do it often enough. That is a possibility. But I have not yet figured that out. My single days of cooking don't count. My weekend forays to feed the love of my life don't count much. My Indian experience has generally involved a hired cook. My repertoire is not large and is shrinking rapidly. It is rather heavy on vegetables (possibly because of the love of chopping them!). The food itself is rather simple, and is unlikely to satisfy most picky people. I go easy on the spices as well, in honour of a husband whose lifetime of irregular eating habits is catching up with him, so to say. Overall, an honest rating of my food will be: Edible, but Blah.

Nevertheless, I enjoy the process. I get lost in the mist for hours. It relaxes me. Even the most hated task of cleaning up the counter after the task relaxes me. I had a rare opportunity to indulge myself last night. The cook was absent (huh). The husband is in Mumbai. That left the monster and yours truly. We switched on music. She does that herself, of course, as any self-respecting 5.5 year old would. We drew from a book called 'Learn to Draw Animals' - I made Leo the Lion; Chris the Cat; Tim the Tiger. She made Priyadarshini the Lioness & Christine the Cat. She struck my Chris off to say 'Chris the TomCat' - a term that she uses to refer to Male Cats while the rest of the world KNOWS its the Cruise-Holmes duo.

I made Sambar (Capsicum) & a Mixed Vegetable Subji (Beans, Carrots, Potatoes, Onions). She wanted Salad so we had that too in the mix (Cucumber, Carrots, Ginger, Lemon). I kept some plain Dhal aside for her. She ate in a glass bowl the size of my pinky finger. I had to feed her the last episode of dinner, i.e. curd. My evening jadoo-pocha person kindly did the dishes while I polished the counter to brilliance.

Loved the world.

Now the cook is back.