Relentless

the scorching heat and the uncomfortable fact that despite air conditioning, when the weather wants to be a bitch, you have no control. Even normal everyday stuff seems to sap you of every ounce of your energy. the door bell rings and you just pretend you didnt hear it because walking up and opening the door and dealing with whoever is at it is going to take more effort than you wish to spend. 

Morning walks with the energetic dog whose friends are all over the next two colony roads makes you yell out more than usual. come back, not here, slowly and dont jump are all the bewildered dog that has hair like four woolen coats can here. this is the only time of the day when he can feel anything like his playful self, because in less than 30 minutes, the heat is at a boil. despite the fact that you can have a cold shower or sit with the A/C, you still feel you are worse off than the poor furry dog. 

Chores for the day get put back and delayed till it is almost time for dinner, yet there is no dinner. Making do with leftovers and short cuts, even the K man who never notices anything realises he has been eating dosa for dinner for 3 days on a trot. the seeds i planted a few weeks ago refuse to show any signs of sprouting and make me more anxious than i care to admit.

work that normally takes a few hours, stretches into weeks till someone not so gently tells you that you have stuff to do. even then, you grudgingly try to make a big show of finishing the simplest of stuff.

I have often asked myself why i become a different person when the heat is at its peak. I frankly do not know. and after all these years, am finding it increasingly tough to accept that the heat turns me into a different person.

the wait for the rains is like an animal on a parched dessert land. I work one day at a time, waiting and watching for signs of the earth that it will rain soon. The peacocks in the adjoining plot went nuts a few days ago. I knew that they would know before us all. so when the first drops of rain fell to the earth, I ran out and stood outside to feel them on my skin.It lasted all of two minutes and the heat after that was unbearable again. But in my heart, I knew that it was just a matter of a few more days and all would be well again.

and then, just like that, it began to rain. not pour, but drizzle a few times a week. sometimes i wake up to a wet street and puddles and dont mind it at all. hell i love it.... I cannot even remember how the heat humbled me and made me batty. that in my book, is when the tides turn. Welcome rain.... bye bye summer... you were such a bitch

just so i don't take too long a gap

I have nothing specific to say although I came here to post something. Just so I don’t take another hiatus and disappear for a long period of time. This disappearance has been a pattern with me.

I’ve had a pretty good month so far. The biggest change has been going to the gym and as always, when there is something new in my life, I obsess about it for a while. It consumes me and that’s all I can think of until I have a new love interest! So currently, as in the past with mad men, or actor Simbu (yes…. Go ahead and judge me!), my terrace garden, colour blocking trend or even the dog, I am obsessed with circuit training and every waking hour online is used for this. I watch videos, read articles and am generally overdosing.

The rains have arrived and it has made me and Sage very happy. He for one has quit panting too much and is sleeping like a hibernating bear.

Yesterday I received something by courier and used my fingers to rip through the parcel, only to have an open staple pin tear ½ a centimeter of my finger. It is making typing this very painful.

This is the fourth day running when I put off going to the parlor… scanning my face everyday and loathing the fact that my eyebrows need grooming doesn’t help. Do you also do that? Imagine you look like a bear with unthreaded brows?

We are having ragda patties for dinner tonight. Hopefully my first time experiment will be successful.

I shall stop here…. Here’s a picture I clicked with my Iphone a few weeks ago.

This is the St George’s Church in Abids, Hyderabad. I went after more than a year… all because my mom is here!

time spent

i think more than ever i need that anonymous blog now! the last few days have been a roller coaster of emotions, feelings and yes, temper too and i really really need that blog to vent... i am very troubled over my mood swings of yesterday.... i dont think i have it in me to be giving and accomodative and selfless especially with children...and that has agonised me... 

well now that i have confessed on a public forum, we've spent the last few days with family ... eating meals (overeating in my case), napping, talking and watching a lot of TV... movies, cartoons, myriad mytho babble and yes, cricket. 

we went to watch Housefull yesterday. i think its time to say, move over david dhawan, sajid khan is here to stay. he seems to excel at the mindless sitcom stuff which is funny in parts but has no head or tail.... lara dutta is a fine actress who hasnt gotten roles to do justice to her talent. deepika padukone is a treat for the eyes....as is arjun rampal... him and anyone else in the frame, and your eyes are rivetted on the hunk that is rampal.... akshay and ritiesh have excellent comic timing and that's been said before... its a mindless timepass film about lies and cover ups and theres nothing more to the story or the lack of one... we bought a new p&s camera for my sil and a giant teddy for the niece....pil's are in chennai for a couple of days so k and i are holding the fort....

i've been home bound for the last few days as its fullhouse here... but am happy that have spent some time with yoga after what seems like a year... it really does make you feel better and more energetic....

the heat has been relentless, almost touching 45 officially, so must be atleast a degree more in reality. mangoes have finally graced our table and tongue...so far himayati has been fabulous and banaganapally very disappointing.

so long then... till the next time....

summer bummers

bah!! its blistering out here and wearing this damned collar isn't the easiest. K has given up his morning (ok! mid morning is more close to it) coffee and has something cold... juice, lassi or a smoothie...maybe on the weekends i can bribe him with beer.... he's taken to wearing his sun glasses even inside the house till his eyes adjust to the heat and glare! my maid is very happy, there are hardly any dishes for her to wash, there are more glasses than any other kind of vessels for her, food is hardly getting made....we're eating leftovers straight from the fridge because we cant bear to eat hot off the stove food....i am searching for summer friendly recipes for salad and other easy to do and minimum cooking required stuff....conversations in our home are almost in monosyllables cos anything more than that can send both k and me into a tizzy with the effort it takes....

We bought mangoes. far from being luscious, they were forced ripened and disgustingly sour. all that precious sugar to salvage them. i am going to wait another couple of weeks to eat them.

on another note, in order to bring some relief to my house handling, rid myself of tedious trips to the supermarket every month and prevent murder every time the maid tells me we have run out of washing soap, i made a visit to a hyper mart and stocked up on non perishables especially washing and cleaning agents for 6 months. shopping of any kind makes my heart go thump thump... under the guise of "for the house" makes it even better! the biggest pain was to find storage space for all of this, but its done... it did lie on the kitchen floor for 2 days, but we (mostly K actually) finally put everything away. Let's hope this twice a year buying helps. though i have been strictly buying only the stuff i have on my list, the temptation to buy needlessly is always there, multiplied by the times i visit the super market. for the perishable staples, i should now just use home delivery!

happenings in my part of the world

after a long time i sit here past midnight with my computer...just the nerve racking and brain numbing sound of the machine dumping earth in the plot next to our apartment to keep me company.....k is in slumber land....he's hit the sack earlier than usual today...has it got something to do with the fact that his daily nocturnal talking companion is busy packing for a train he has to catch early tomorrow morning?? i dont know... and if its true i dont grudge them or their conversations..... i mean i hardly expect K to spend hours discussing the nuances of organic cereals with me...or the difference between unbleached flour and maida..... when i know that i cant even spell some of the things K talks to SRK about, who am i to grudge?

the chill has ebbed a bit, but my ice cold feet remind me i am sitting in a good hyderabadi winter this year..... i have spent the day well today.......infact one of the nicest things said to me today was by V my driving instructor, who said "actual mein aap join karna hi nahin tha, bilkul smooth aur cool chalarey aap tho.... no tension" i cant tell you how happy that made me feel....was a big boost to my driving confidence..... considering the fact that i waited this long to do it!! then i wondered if he was just soaping my ego...and decided to leave it for what it was worth....

i was chatting online with an old colleague this afternoon and i mentioned my driving classes...he asked me " what are you learning to drive? a plane?" most people cant actually believe that i haven't driven a car all this while... i mean technically i have a few times, but not with the intent of driving...i have always been given the steering wheel because i was just being indulged in.....

i had lunch with S today and we got into a chatty zone when she suddenly jumped up because it was precariously close to the time her daughter comes home from school and before i realised what was happening, she was gone!! it reinforced to me that parents always live their life by the time tables of their kids!! its nerve racking and very humbling, somehow both together................... tomorrow i will have lunch with a few other friends.....cook them idiappam and ishtu..... yum yum!! cant wait for tomorrow!!

weekend discoveries

The rains have come and seem to have abated for a while…..it poured unbelievably for a couple of days…I love the rains…I think it is my most favourite time of the year….and I like nothing better than to watch the sheets of rain fall…..to me everything seems better suddenly with the rain…the earth…it smells awesome when it first gets wet….looks greener (never mind the puddles and bad roads) ….from my fourth floor apartment, I can see a traffic signal about a kilometer away and the lights from there plus the vehicles rushing past always seem awesome… snug under a razai, reading a book or watching a movie, hot ginger tea as I watch the rains….. I am a true blue water baby…a crab….but much as I love the rains…I realize that to most people it is the most inconvenient almost difficult time of the year…..the slush, the puddles, the vehicles splashing water as you walk on water logged roads, daily wage earners not getting employed cos of the rains….the newspaper boy who does rounds when I am still snug in my bed….

Of late in hyderabad due to the bad drainage of water on the roads, manholes have been kept open and as many as three kids have gotten washed away….its sickening…and scary…and ever so often I feel guilty about all that I indulge in….i am truly grateful to my maker for all that I enjoy…the peace and security of a family, or a home, food and comforts that I don’t believe I deserve any less or more than the next person….i try therefore to be thankful …of course there are days when I crib, but they pass quickly…..if there’s some thing that I don’t seriously like about the rains, it is my exotic doormat made of water hyacinth that has gotten suddenly wet and refuses to dry completely……….

Its been a day since I began this post… I have been busy with my writing….for the articles and also Escapades…..it has become like a part time job, I spend so much time on it and on the various other links that I frequent that I’m thinking random thoughts must be feeling like a step child……am not going to succumb to posting just about anything for the sake of it! That’s not the point of this blog anyways…….

If you also read Escapades, then you’ll know that I have been cooking almost into overdrive since feeling better last week…..all weekend it has poured and comfort food was in order, so i made quite a spread and have been trying out different stuff, from pav bhaji, cutlets to subway style sandwiches, i even baked a cake!! that for those who are privy to my earlier baking disasters was a feat!!

We had guests on Sunday…actually cousins of mine….relatives are so different from friends….i mean I seldom “hung around” with my cousins….i’d have loved to but we almost always tend to meet at social and familial gatherings and that’s that….you don’t get to know them as the individuals that they are…since this drop in was devoid of any other agenda, we got talking and the fact that we were related became just a technicality…………….it was such a refreshing change and we discovered so many things that we had in common.....we had a whale of a time….i did, I don’t know if they were just bored to death!! It was like time spent with friends and that in my book is a huge compliment!!

K has been writing too…he began on the weekend…a chance meeting on a flight with one of the country’s best cinematographer, now turned director has resulted in a casual exchange of ideas for movies and a future collaboration maybe….…I was very excited…star struck as I am, this might be my only shot at actually seeing abhishek bachchan…….so he’s been on the phone and computer for the better part of the last four days…endlessly discussing story ideas and concepts…..what this did to him, was restarted work on his unfinished book………he is currently in what I call the “ZONE” ……..he’s just obsessively focused on his writing ….he has been up all night working on his book and hit the bed around 10 ish this morning so I guess he’ll be out till the evening…he’d begun writing the book a few months ago….and then hit a road block….i’d goad him to finish….(nothing more exotic than being the wife of a writer) and in true blue writer style he’d refuse until it all came flooding thru………last night he’d gotten back into the ZONE and will not want anything of the outside world till it passes….the best I can do is stay out of his hair…..and just hope and pray as hard as I can…for abhishek bachchan if not anything else!!

In the meanwhile, I have to finish what I am being paid to do…its so amusing that while you enjoy something immensely, the minute it becomes ‘work’ it begins to drag!!

i have a new blog!!

it was like the fantasy of being Simran each time you watched DDLJ, or romancing richard gere or robert redford or brad pitt for that matter.......when i would read food blogs, i would wonder how it would be to have one myself.....and then i would chicken out....not laziness, not the lack of time.....simply the fear of what perceptions i would be giving out, of me as a person when people read my blog (that is if they did read it in the first place)

anyways, i thought i would give it a shot......if it only served as a journal of what was cooking in my kitchen.....i mean the internet does give you the fantastic cloak of anonymity ...... if you want it that is..... so yesterday, after battling with the computer for a few hours, writing and rewriting the posts, agonising over which pictures to choose, i finally published my brand new food blog called Escapades

Escapades hopefully will help me chronicle my love for food....and the explorations and experiments that i have with it.....

for my initial post i just added the recipes that i had written down while learning their unique style of cooking from my MIL, and then added some of my own......with this blog i hope my cooking will get more inventive and innovative...that K will be subjected to more variety than i have been dishing up till now!! husbands, they are such default guinea pigs!!

So that was the excitement that dominated my last couple of days......much to the chagrin of an irritated K....i kept dashing off to the computer every spare minute!! The monsoons have arrived in Hyd...yesterday there were strong winds that deposited dust everywhere they could....as usual the power went off for several hours (thank god for generators).....and worst of all, a window pane was blown to smithereens in one of our bedrooms.....when i heard the crash, i was on the phone with a friend and told her "oh oh someone's windowpane seems to have broken to bits" as an afterthought, i ventured around the house to check.....(while still being on the phone).....only to realise that the joke was on me.....cleaning up, least of all shards of broken glass isn't the nicest thing to do....thats what wound up my day yesterday...now the painful task of getting it replaced....

since quitting work, many things have changed....like i dont wear a watch anymore, and have no idea of days and dates....(have missed a few b'days becasue of this) ....but a growling tummy always tells you taht its way past breakfast time and as a self respecting foodblogger i cannot serve / eat stale bread!! gotto go!!