Masterchef YouTube

Dinner time at home has become an awaited treat time. Mmmm. What will mum whip up today?

All were getting quite fed up of being fed on predictable dal-bhajji-roti-chicken curry-mutton curry routine.

Tawa and 5 Spice were definite beneficiaries along with Dominos.

Till one day I said, " Enough is enough." I couldn't do "You eat what I cook" any longer so I decided to cook what they'll eat.

I started by Googling recipes. Then I discovered recipes on YouTube. My own personal cooking class! Renowned chefs showed me step-by-step how to conjure up these scrumptious dishes. I couldn't go wrong. I followed measurements and time precisely, transferred my laptop to my kitchen platform and paused and played and followed the recipe videos keenly as I merrily cooked away.

In the past fortnight I have delighted their jaded palates with chicken teriyaki , chicken satay and peanut sauce, garlic and rosemary roasted raan, Malaysian burnt chilli garlic noodles, Thai noodle soup and Buffalo chicken wings  to name a few. Closer home I have dished out, with great nonchalance, Hyderabadi mutton biryani, dal batti and undiyo. And mouth watering desserts, even if I say so myself. Churros with chocolate dip, lemon key pie, gooey brownies and banoffee pie. Gourmet heaven! I am dying to try my hand at some French and fusion food.

It's of course a blessing that I can get almost all the required ingredients within one km of my house.

I no longer worry that my daughters don't know how to cook. Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay or The Naked Chef or Sanjeev Kapoor on YouTube will teach them better than I ever could.

All they will need is fast speed internet and an iPad installed in their kitchen.

Wannabe TechTonic

I think I am fighting a losing battle.

Blackberry was all alright. I understood it.

iPad was cool. I wanted it.

But Android enabled smart phones ! With millions of apps!!

Cloud computing!! Enhanced augmented reality!! Near field communication!!!

MIND BOGGLING!!!

I can feel myself stretching and struggling to  keep step with leapfrogging features-enriched, upgraded-version, new age gizmos.

I dread the day when I will just give up trying to match pace with all these "technological advances."

But what I dread more is the pitying look in my kids' eyes when they talk about some new thingamajig and I just look at them uncomprehendingly.

And it will happen.

I had the same pitying look in my eyes when I was trying to explain a PDA to my 60 year old father.

My Father and Books

The habit of reading was a gift given to me by my father. 


He read continuously and voraciously. He was a professor in a University and reading his subject matter was de rigueur for him. As a child I often saw him sitting at our dining table, his head bent, pouring over thick, hard bound tomes with incomprehensible names like 'Dynamics of Labour Relations In India', "Applied Psychology in Human Resource Management'. His tools for these readings were a pencil, an eraser and a six-inch ruler. He underlined and wrote notes in both the margins. Sometimes, I noticed, that he underlined some lines bold and sometimes he marked full paragraphs. He also kept a sheaf of white paper next to him and by the end of the evening, this would be covered with his spidery handwriting.

But come night and after his dinner,  he would retire to bed with a racy, contemporary novel in hand. He would switch on his bedside lamp and lose himself in the latest pulp fiction. This time, his tool would be a dictionary kept always at reach. He seldom bought books. He borrowed from friends, from the library and also bought second-hand books from the raddiwala. Once I was married, he would come to Bombay to visit me. During these visits, a visit to Flora Fountain to the second hand book stalls on the pavement was mandatory.  He taught me, in fact, ingrained in me, the respect for books. He would first cover the book he was reading with an old newspaper. He would never ever dog-ear a page. He would not start reading till he put a bookmark in the book. If he ever saw a book left upside down and open at the spine, all hell would break lose. We could not lick our finger to turn to the next page. And if the book was a paperback, we could never try and force it open at the spine. The book had to be gently cajoled to reveal the print near the binding. God help us if we cracked the spine of some book.


He was an inveterate borrower of books but he always but always returned the book to the lender.On the other hand, he lent his books very grudgingly. More often than not, he made some excuse when someone spotted a novel in our house and asked to borrow it. In fact, he used to hide his books so that he would not have to lend them. And if he did lend his book, he was extremely particular about having it returned. He remembered and he was unabashed in asking for his book back.


His interests is books were wide and varied. He used to read a lot of regular, mindless fiction. He had the entire library of James Hadley Chase, Agatha Christie, Perry Mason and Nick Carter. He read Jeffery Archer and Sidney Sheldon. He devoured Harold Robbins. But he is the one who introduced me to Ayn Rand.  He read "How to make friends and influence people" and that became his bible for some time. Alvin Toffler's Future Shock was oft quoted in my house.  He read "Notes to Myself" and "Who Moved My Cheese". In later years he developed a keen interest in philosophy and theology. He read Samuel Becket and Francis Bacon and Nietzsche. After I was married, he gifted me 'Discovery of India', ''My Experiments with Truth' and 'An Autobiography of a Yogi'. He read self-help books, books on Yoga and  books on diets. He could discourse  lengthly on Indian Economy, Indian history, World history, World politics and theology. His favourite topics were World War II and Indian fight for freedom.


He one told me that as junk food is harmful for the body, mindless fiction, which I preferred, was stunting for the brain. He strongly advised me to nourish my mind and soul with "good books."


I am eternally grateful to my father for gifting me my love for books. Books have been my companion as long as I can remember and I hope I have passed this bibliophilism on to my daughters.

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead

 Bill Maher's tweeted, " Somali pirates, Gaddafi's son and now Osama. Do NOT fuck with Obama, he is a Gangsta."

Osama has finally been hunted down, executed and buried at sea.

Its 10 years since 9/11. 10 years is a whole generation in today's Intel 7 processor days. Its taken the US Army, MI5, Mossad, CIA and ISI 10 long years to hunt down a Bedouin terrorist and bring him to his knees, well, death. (Who will get the $1 million prize for his head?)

And apart from the satisfaction of having revenged the ignominious attack on the Twin Towers, apart from making OBL's death a symbol of the USA might and apart from trying to send out the message "Don't mess with us, we will hunt you down and kill you" what has the last 10 years achieved? Is USA any closer to dispelling the distrust and hatred the Islamic world has against it? There is a new Cold war now. Its the Islamic world against the Western world. Instead of pouring billions of dollars every day into a war in Afghanistan (who are they fighting for the last 10 years in that arid, mountainous, Godforsaken land ?) and a war in I-raq, the USA, being the moral policeman of the world, should try positive affirmation, try and solve the Israel- Palestine issue objectively (not influenced by the huge Jewish lobby), try and understand the Islamic culture. I feel that today an average Muslim person has become defensive and belligerent about his religion. We seem to be attacking his core belief an being. And he attacks back like an alley dog does when stones are pelted at it, by baring its teeth and growling and trying to bite.

Osama's death is symbolic, there is no dearth of Osamas in a world where followers of the largest religion in the world feel marginalised and misunderstood.