NATURAL TOX

There can be no eyes that are more penetrating or judgemental like when you’re under scrutiny sitting hot in the parent trap.

Their hexa status bespectacled by the rims that survey the world with squints without their glinting presence, is no hindrance in their x-ray vision that surveys in surprise their genetic product who has somehow toddled off into the world and is ungainly in their existence without their touch.

So begins the examination that led to the conclusion that I have acne due to stress.Stress a word that somehow my parents find  answers to all health issues,a magical diagnosis that doctors could well heed to.Your skin is dry,comes a wry observation as,or the dark circles around your eyes,become a scarring comment,that makes you run for lemon,if a cucumber has already not been placed on my eyes,i.e.

Which brings me to the point that I should introduce my famous parents of the previous para fame.they come as a team,father and mother diagnostics,function as a dual observatory but the healing is in the hands of my mother who in her recently developed google world,has added cinnamon and aloe vera to co exist with my child hood memories of trying to make faces under a mask of gramflour and yoghurt.The same mixture was first scrubbed on me to the musical score of a crow taking away all dirties ,which were addressed in my innocent childhood as ‘chee ,chee’.

Needless to say that my skin under such expert guidance and scrutiny bore no pimply fruits during my teenage years as my father put me on a only soap and oil diet.sans chemicals my vocal protests against demands for creams and nail polishes met with a firewall,but my skin gleamed.

If you practice a thing regularly for three weeks it becomes a habit,if you practice it over decades it pores into your genes,so making faces through gram flour still brings me joy,cracking eggs expertly removing the yolk lining my neck with a newspaper that is torn just so,to apply the mask in my hair,and protect my clothes is an expert application that I have mastered,still it makes me the most revolting thing on two feet within a thirty meter radius,but the joy in me while picking that egg,and the sight of me looking like one with my hair jammed together in a concentric crown of egg yolk cement may just put the neighbours running inside,but I get away, because though I may shy away from henna(having experimented with its colorful delights too though,how could I resist!)the whole country is pretty tolerant to egg heads courtesy seeing generations of hennaed mops.

I may not be orangy but patriotic to the core and as the nation does so does me,with variation. im not alone in my desire for natural cures,I have placed mine directly onto my parents feet,as I inadequately tried to explain my conditioning before.

But my experiments are sometimes to the extremes,

socially speaking banana is a fruit for the skin that works inside out best,but if you were to test the adhesive skills of banana I could probably write you a PHD,one day I decided in a way to benefit my skin I should probably apply a layer all over my body and then scrape it off,idea simple on the paper of my mind but execution got sticky,literally.

But I slip sometimes safe in the fact that I'm incharge of an obedient ward,being my skin,

But the bespectacled lookers don’t miss a hairline crack so recently noted was the dryness of my skin and the acne that surrounds it.

It was surprising when eruptions emerged victorious at last, after years of suppression,seeing me become  best friends with lacto calamine,I was also at this stage flooded by my parents and friends fueled respectively by their hereditary knowledge at the solution that lies behind,I shed off the medical pills and lotions suggestions , having a tendency to naturally avoid anything artificial.

Usually in my kitchen everything edible has by now found a way onto my face tomatoes,potatoes,rose water,aloe vera measured in kilograms( I draw a line at eating it though,but to admit I'm secretly willing to try it too)and of course the faithful gram flour.

And now in this crisis I drew on my ever present faithful ingredients.

In all this one cure stood out the seller was a very coaxing and believable saleswoman,she is the same age,(which makes her more believable somehow)she had all the right words I have never had it all my life and even the odd  one would vanish in the face of her pasty cure and most convincing of all its easy to make.deal sealed. ingredients : juice of ginger mint and tulsi leaves.Im on the job pronto.

But as is the slip between the cup and the lip,as is me in motivation from the desire to the actual ingredient lid.

I reduced them to two because of lack of sourcing and then finally one due to sheer laziness at plucking so what remained was ginger.

.

Do you know in me Is also a desire for instant results,so I apply it to my skin ,and have to curb my want to run to the mirror,just to see if any benefit has transpired in a nano second,I control the urge under my adult veneer, though I do walk extremely close by one as I go on my travels later to the land of kitchen or washroom I figure out a mirror in each path.bowing to my child within.

All hands on deck,I applied the paste .what I wasn’t prepared was for the seeping in of the ginger leaving a burning blaze in its wake. My skin was on fire and as I sat in front of the tele trying to wish it away.

My mind hypnotically turning the thought,it will go away,its only natural,no side effects,but these thoughts are along with a niggle of , 'Is it?maybe the other ingredients were the scale balancers',and ' I shouldn't do the one woman army decisions of removing ingredients at will.'

In my eagerness for results I had not even googled whether it was good for the skin or not.I had just believed the advertiser and marched on to the mortar and pestle.

I mean it was all good for tea,I love grinding the ginger and getting the juices to soak into the water along with the tea.but skin I wasn’t really sure so sitting there with a burning face I realized I may have been a tiny bit hasty.

When the ginger did get propped up on my google screen eventually,it was a validatory vision.

And when I read the affirming word my heart did a little jig,it was like life long applications had suddenly seen the light of technological approval.they were in cyberspace floating like a fact amongst the million others but it was there,my fact.and it was correct.

So I went to the fridge and pulled out some more and applied

As i wrap this up ,Im still not the glowing beauty but  a faithful follower still.

 By the time I write again I will be drowned by drinking water,caked in bananas chlorophylled by tulsi,fumigated by turmeric,baked in a steam room ,crushed under tomatoes and burnt by ginger.

Are you listening mumma?Im a hopeless convert,by choice and conditioning.You can rest your x-ray machine I have turned into a self diagnosed naturo-path lab assistant.

Till my next post,may the egg smell I write with leave you with my gooseberry oil,smearing forever by its stingy fruity smell and singeing your memory by my signature‘natural ‘goodness. Even google says so.

Diver's Stream

Diving is all about letting go.

I could probably sit cross legged and give sermons on how, but I’m sure by the end of my experience you’ll realize to enjoy the full pleasure scuba diving,what I foretell is actually a biological must.

Diving.

Once the idea was planted in my mind, images of me with fins floating around, circled a deep hole in my conscious existence.

That’s how I found myself dangling over the side of a boat masked and weighed by a cylinder full of air, and self pumped with knowledge that volume of air is inversely proportional to pressure.

Which basically means that if you’re somehow hovering above your group under water and were you to breathe deep in then that bubble inside you that fills out with air, will make you rise like a phoenix and you may find yourself bobbing along the boat that shot you down, chatting with surface men rather than the fish below,and diving is not anthropology its a part of zoology so staying down is a must 

I did have a friend on the course who had much the same affinity to the boat and deep breathing as I did to exhaling, so I was mostly found closely examining the sand on the ocean floor and my friend was found interacting with the boat staff.Our lovely instructor would be found somewhere in between pointing towards the lovely Flora and Fauna,to observe, which is the basic reason we pick this skill of under water diving.Or did you assume that I did this heavy cylinder training under water just so I could paste a cool photo of my self on a certain site so my friends living their mundane lives could go green as they saw it from their desks buried under work.

To be frank most of my fish lining the script of my diary of my 8 long dives are basically ones which I processed as my instructor said it and I stared at him blankly for a second then went,right! and scribbled it down.

The first time I went under water with my equipment and weights to do training I thought I'm a professional,the sign of all Ok became like my personal mantra.I felt like a queen ,though a queen with a bursting bladder,on that I will just elaborate.

The feeling of royalty was systematically demolished by nature's conspiracy. Let me explain how.

It is said that drinking water early in the morning is a great way to start your internal organs working,and I'm a huge fan of it's said.Well after hopping on to the boat ,(which I must point out was after a halt to the washroom),within an hour my fully functional internal organs were ready to cleanse my body of toxins again.I felt that pressure,a small tinge and my internal alarm went off,but I calmly smiled at my instructor who was showing me how to drop weights and rise in water,how to signal all OK..

Basically once the feel to go takes hold then go, I must.

It being an all male crew I was looking around for some kind of female intervention,someone to hold hands with and just swing by to the nearest washroom,now the deal with under water is you don’t just swing by anywhere,words used for motion in diving are stepping or back flipping off a boat,clambering back on,and then swimming.Swinging, No. It would take an hour minimum were we to declare emergency and cancel training and head straight back.

The point was how to air the doubt,and that all was not OK,tell him why and still maintain the elegance, in front a group of men.

Faced by such situations I must admit, putting on a brash face and coming directly to the point is handy, My directness was  met with a laugh by my instructor and he gleefully informed me that I was floating in the world largest’ free to go’  place.

Curving his hand around the ocean with a proprietorial air, owning to the fact that my hair which were I repeat coiffed back in a bun, slightly waving in the water (to my delight) were being washed around by his processed morning water.

Horror crept up my insides,and I cannot describe how I calmed my mind and reminded myself of all the beautiful fish in the ocean and how cool I look in my gear, that I only go under water with my regulator in mouth and soothingly reminded myself of buckets of shampoo standing in my room.

  

Calmness prevailed,albeit short lived.

That we loose body heat 25% faster under water, they told us, but what they didn't say is , its because you’re streaming jets of warmth out of your body. At a rate faster than intake,and to my dismay a much higher frequency too, as I was later to discover.

Years of training were up against a challenging situation which literally had the solution ‘out of the box’

I’m sure my mother diligently drilled into me at an early age to signal when I was ready to go and then as I grew I was pointed to the direction of the washroom.

My training was floundering in face of the lack of proper steps to be followed. Faced with a new area of being, had seen me first signal my desire to go, but the direction I was being pointed to, was definitely not a washroom I could find a door to.

So I muttered my thanks at his helpful gesture, ignored the male calls of joy at crassly shouting about their exploits of firing jets under water, and with a hurting tummy went in for my first dive.

I had decided not to do what men did, topping that I was sure the women in other groups would do no such thing.

So I followed my instructor along with my bobbing friend to see schools of fish. If my words could paint a picture you’d see in national geographic, then that’s what I’m telling you. Picture the prettiest setting under water with sunlight streaking through a calm wall of blue, fit some colorful rocks in, and then leave a shoal of yellow fish in it and snap this shot as they swim by you in a geometrically aligned wave pattern, freeze this.

This pretty scene in my eyes,was making Kodak memories. Right about then I felt a little nibble on my ankle,(here I should tell you I was wearing a knee length wet suit, giving access to biting fish ,corals and yes the sun to my legs, knee below, giving me a tan which six months hence also lovingly circles my knees in dirty contrasting rings. Never again, full coverage next time) anyway back to the nibbling fish. Which my instructor later informed me casually was the pretty little clown fish, whose jovial way of looking cute and nibbling you is basically telling you to get lost and its actually shouting at us, but his speech gets lost in inter-species translations and the disparity in our sizes. We are the intruders here, I was told. Now that word also didn’t go really well with my definition of what I was doing, as opposed to my self image of an explorer.

Well an explorer with a now quite an urgent bladder.

In my mind the mantra was repeating itself lets go lets go.My mind was now effectively diverted from clown fish, insistently nibbling or not.

But my bobbing friend suddenly found the ocean floor and was  following our instructor with great interest,signaling mindlessly his best understood signal,at odd moments.While I tailed behind forgetting I was trying to copy his swimming style from behind. Pondering over the seriousness of my uncomfortable situation,took on massive proportions..I toyed with the idea of ‘why should boys have all the fun’, and then decidedly said no.

We went ahead some more,with me in a haze of my own and the argument seemed to take hold of my mind and suddenly the side where no one needs know was tilting the scales.

I quickly reached the decision point, and decided to let go, But as in life, its very difficult to let go, two words that could make our life heaven,(I should know)going against my life long potty training, was rebelling against my insistent pressure.

But as I was taught effectively pressure is inversely proportional to volume, as my pressure was increasing the volume had to go down. Science. Pure Science.

I will not describe the actual process or my ritual would loose its secrecy in male type cries, but all I’ll say is it’s warmly heaven, and all those who have been there would connect with this release.

Well there is my handy little tip for diving coming to an end, I am sure when I do dive again I will need to be reminded of all of Boyles laws again, because registration is not my strong point, retention weaker still. So I will leave the expert technical tips for now and just say that for a great dive and a clear mind,eat less breakfast, as my bobbing friend would attest to(I eat like a horse, but THAT is his story to tell ,this mini tip  just to cover every base),but even if you cannot control your gastro pleasures like me and it all wants to regurgitate, do one thing promptly let go,just let go and back flip out and for the former, jet it around.(pun intended)

COFFEE OR TEA

I miss coffee.

There was a phase in life when I would be hanging around my mother while she made me cold coffee after I ran in sweaty from playing in the clambering summer oppressive heat.

Sometimes it was a tall glass left in the fridge and sometimes made fresh in front of my ricocheting energized eyes…

I have to be fair though how I stare at mango shake is more reverential, now that is a KING shake if there was any,if that is in the fridge my heart sings yummy yummy en route to the fridge and half way across town.

The thought of it sitting in the fridge gives me a smile,(though truth be told mango shake is best had fresh, the stage where the pulp settles and the milk floats on top all chilly and cold is not very appealing, Cold coffee on the other hand is a decent keeper in the chilly climes.)

But I still miss it.

First let me answer why did it have to walk out of my life and even after a few years in exile, trying to show it the door in , has failed to raise my stomach up to a toast.

Hungry is a feeling I love. I love to follow my nose to the table and we have a mini affair in the hungry period of my life.

Uptil I was sick with a pathogen that floats in the water and invades your stomach,relegating you to the back burner of metabolic stages for the rest of your life,incapable of digesting milk in simple things like tea and coffee, specially those.

Uptil then I could sip coffee like a snap.And yes digest leather.

When some people talk about  “in my hay days I could digest leather”days…I don’t mind as they are about sixty decades down the countdown,one can forgive their dedication to the rudimentary problem on creeping years..I on the other hand beat everyone to that grasping rant by three and a half decades.

In short coffee is not an apertif for me it’s a whole course, it leaves me feeling like the coffee with milk or tea with milk has taken over my stomach and shouldered out all empty spaces,leaving me full.

So after a few years of flailing around sipping all varieties of black teas and infusions,as a grown up(not giving into to kiddish demands of hot chocolate)The deafening queries of insensitive forgetful lifelong friends ,who hammer the question down my ears,do you want coffeeeee????I mean what happened to tea??that too black.My favourite answer should really be ,I still don’t drink it NO.

So why do I miss coffee?

Its how you miss a thing when you know your greedy graspy hands are just flailing

In thin air and what you want is tantalizingly a mirage oasis.

 However there is something about holding a hot cuppa in a crowded café while you reminisce about all mundane problems, constantly touching your cup to reassure you of its ebbing steamy presence,that kept pulling at my strings.

I don’t know how many of us would raise hands to this but asking for green tea in a starbucks queue with people waiting to steep their tongues with coffee, is an explanation waiting to fall on ears that judgementally come paired with ‘o you poor sod eyes.’

So to flow with the crowd on a caffeine haze ,wrapped in concerned conversations,peering into my coffee to take a contemplative break to find a great insightful comeback in the conversation ,I jumped into the fray by deciding on the black,which without milk in it, should technically not churn around merry in my stomach.Rather I think it shouldn’t.But body chemistry is all about experimentation.

That’s how I found my self in starbucks queues miming like the rest for black coffee.

(Its after going a couple of times Black no milk no sugar ,I discovered world over in all cafeterias you just say Americano…and it miraculously produces a black coffee.Why is Americano  “black” ?not being politically correct but geographically layman anthropology it should be Africano..PARDON!!!)

Drifting back.

However maybe my racist mentality is suffering from the snobbish demands,and Americano now moves inside me with a sluggishness that makes me want to pull at my hair,and walk for hours in circles trying to beat a heavy head and shake out the lead like caffeine from my system.

I'm tenacious it has to be said.I gave my crowd instinct driven desire more than a couple of shots.

I However today solemnly decide after walking an hour around the block after today's coffee  to shift back to green tea.I mean how many dinners could I skip just to hold a hot cuppa.

 I have yet not been able to identify my problem.Should I knowledgeably with a practiced painful air of the chronic describe the malady as a lactose or caffeine intolerance?Its not a known cause as my lazy bones haven't dragged themselves to the doctor yet.

But what I do know is the answer to your question.Coffee or tea??Meet me next time  at a tea parlour(thankfully which are fashionably catching up) and we shall practice my answer over an unfurling jasmine tea ball.

EFFUSIVE DIFFUSIVE

There are some sights that transport you back to a decade when you walked around observing life from a lofty height of four foot.The other day me and my trusted shaky and vibrating with music transport were doing an intercity loop between the parents house and mine.

The road less travelled by vehicles of courtesy,but more so by vehicles of might is right.Amidst all this gay chaos and cacophony,which I obviously battle with music,I happened to stop for a lady with a raised hand on my windshield, almost down my throat.

The lady was accompanied by a four footer drowned in a typical open box pleated neglected faded blue skirt,a favourite with many government schools in India,which swished around her ankles and  a shirt which was faithfully accompanying her from the three footed age,obviously meant to be enjoying a retired life but being dragged along,strengthened by Robin Blue and Nirma( a whitener and a magic washing powder, which could make you resemble an emitting orb of shiny white ,delivering your neighbours to jealousy and blindness)

But coming back to the young girl,fresh on her way to school,was the fact that she had probably stood under her mother’s hurried ministrations in the morning and  been drowned in Ponds( a scented Talcum powder).So up from this little tykes collar till her chin it was almost impossible to tell the colour of her neck or skin ,and with white socks that vanished under her skirt,the only colour indicative parts were her face and hands.The perfect “White Neck”

I know we are a country obsessed with the colour white,I wonder if that is one of the reasons that after camouflaging our neck and bodies,some smear it over their faces??

I mean nothing can reflect light better than white,and it was hard to miss even by my untrained child eyes,the caky self assured countenances.

If my idle mind were to span the reason for powder smearing tactics which had the whole nation in its shroud of loose talcum till at least the eighties,where a lot of white necks conferred in business meetings with other white necks,(a sure shot sign of early morning ritual completion)(though I’m sure even in the eighties there existed kindred people who hoodwinked the system, like me today in my car,keep guessing how!!!),the most plausible and non condescending, probably based on truth,reason is,for its cooling effects on a Hot almost equatorial country.

How from an invisible aroma that was meant to be just a personal signature,the white out spread to massive proportions of the body,peeping shyly out of collars in some and proudly stating its presence on others? Maybe the fact that the neck sports some bands of skin that get highly uncomfortable in the heat could be a remitting truth.

Initially the ‘thanda thanda dermicool’(an advertising slogan)was a towering product that cooled,and vanished off  shop shelves,directly onto ready,sweaty bodies.

So to combat the sweltering heat that grips the nation, the citizen’s wielded their powder boxes, empowered in their knowledge passed down from their parents and theirs before them,plus fueled by the ‘thanda’ (cool)   campaign.

But what happened to the white neck species? Why is it now not a generalization rather than my Barging down the road regardless of traffic, anomaly? They seem to have become suddenly extinct, probably hiding behind the air-conditioned doors, they exist only in need bound people who still refill their Desert Coolers every night.

They are also probably lost in the Dolce and Gabbanas of the world that enveloped the free trade India, Invading the bathroom space that muscled out the Talcum Powder, with a powerful spray, that Lasts and Lasts and Lasts; It was not a fair battle. It was Armageddon.

However some psychological factors will always trigger a reaction of my system that is entrenched in childhood memories. So the perfume which has won victories in different percentages over the Indian populace’s washroom stands, in my mother’s home it is a fifty -fifty partner, and every time she bathes and comes out swathed in all white dust, which is a precursor to the perfume in her beauty regimen, I feel Cool just looking at her.

And with that feeling some things never change,the perfume can pretty the air up but it doesn't usher the 'cool' in, however much we open up to free international porous markets. At least my generation will still love the white necks, the next, is a generation in transition, and this is just my interpretation.

ANT-ik TROUBLE

Have you ever given a thought to annihilating a trail of ants????

In all my happy sunshiny years I had never given it a thought.For me there are two sides of the fence, one is my side , which is the plaintiff,and the other is of course the offending side,the ants.

And being my court of justice, I at some stage in life having passed the judgment of ' found guilty',have been swatting them out of edges of the bed, trailing militarily along kitchen ledges,and sometimes most visibly hanging off my chocolate boxes.(could I be presented as a temptress for having aired them in public?)

And if I can swat all human offenders away from my chocolates then these are merely ants?

“But swatting them kills the ants”,wailed one of my friends,who could happily have been one of the guilty parties,as he was responsible for all the food strewn across my bed.

“look at these fellows”he mewled,simultaneously stopping me from going after another formation.,”they are just going about searching for food,and there it is, they are just happily doing their job”,he justified their most itchy presence on my bed.

All good and kind of him to say so,but I was wishing I had swatted him off as well as I woke numerously at night to kill off a few other formations, that had been granted bail, at the behest of their defensive lawyer in the afternoon,but continuing with their scavenging behavior even in the absence of the sweetly presence (mine excepted),I Thought my massacre justified.

Do I think of myself as unkind? Do I berate myself at the ruthlessness I show?

I wish I could say his words acted as enzyme for my coming off age puerile murderous self, but sadly I state, that as far as ants are concerned I now stock even more deadlier weapons off mass destruction, than my hands. Sprays of all kinds that could knock off cockroaches (convince them to go out of the house to finally rest in peace), mosquitoes(another offending cousin),and of course ants.

So no It did not bring about a life altering chain of events, however he immortalized himself in my memory, by associating himself as an ant lawyer, he will forever knock my head with his speech whenever I commit the crime. (Though not guiltless now.Every single time his head and his horrified expressions grow in their saintly proportions,I fear they could pop one day and fill  my entire existence, then maybe you would see a saintly me, sitting atop an ant hill meditating despite ant itches,but that also is a long long way off till then,I happily swat them out till god catches me out!!!!!)

morning madness

If you need to pick a song to hate,put it on as your alarm tone,guaranteed hatred.

Its the period post the alarm ,and I'm  focusing on the population that swings out and plants their feet straight to the ground and grinds them in,stuck in their resentment of being slung into action and heads meekly hung,bowing acquiescently to gravitational forces beneath, because this rude shock definitely cannot be from the department above.

Mumbling all about departmental politics and brushing hair that have fashionably been flung about at night,in throws of hurried passion,or just general squishing around as the head turns in and around looking to align itself to the rest of the appendages in that perfect illusory repose.

Unglueing the soles from the bedside, that beckons siren like,the trek to the bathroom is made in silence,or sometimes if our paths cross other time battled compatriots, we mumble in greeting,each steering a path to readiness, by time perfected rhythms in disgruntled silence.

A monotonous trek,navigated by vacuous eyes that stare uninspired into the day ahead,its like our spark plug became faulty at some point and we disjointedly continue because of lack of inspiration.

As a child you don't lack the fantasy to improve on the day and even though it begins at unearthly hours,you can see kids go from dreamily drooping on each other in school buses,to jumping out all legs and arms to greet their friends.

This Creativity, enthusiasm and energy all get lost along the winding path of time.

Long, long, time ago When I was'nt mistress of my wake up calls and my life ruled by seven to nine periodically bound classes each day,I remember clutching onto my quilt for just those extra five minutes,turning away from those insistent nudging,waking hands and then curling up and snuggling deeper into the softness that mostly smelt ,by that time in the morning of naphthalene and me.In those five extra begged minutes, I almost always packed in dreams of myself brushing and having already bathed. My amazement was truly genuine every morning to find on awaking that,the case was not that,and I was in fact five precious minutes behind schedule.I still Popped up and imagined myself at Malory towers.

But when we stand a few years down the timed path,What gets us out of the haze of the dreamy maze??What makes you ready to face the frontiers of land beyond bed??

For some it’s the sip of coffee,for some it’s the first printed line of the paper as it crystallizes clearly after fumbled efforts with the glasses,for some it’s the kick of their spouse,for some hot milk kept lovingly by a maternal hand,that guaranteed, churns the stomach muscles to expulsion and welcomes the consciousness into being.

For me it’s the feeling of pressing back into my pillow,and sniffing it from a different groove,burrowing my toes into the mattress,and stretching my self to face up again,as I fight a losing battle trying to remember my dreams ,because the speed with which they dance back into the oblivion of darkness, leaving me grasping at wispy strands, is confusing. Its either playing catch with my dreams or I tune my whole, to the strains of music that ensconce me into a world of its own. The rhythm beating down the sleep into submitting to the freshness of a spanking new day.

It’s the days that I get to greet like this and not like an electrocuted, confused sheep counting, time rationed shepherd, that I smile. Which is the best ‘good morning’ greeting I could give myself.(I still do not achieve enough nirvana to not hate my wake up tune though!!!)

I don’t know how strongly you subscribe to the Indian’s need a kick-start theory, or how religious you are about the concept but try it once, cheat your dream space by reducing the screenplay, and set an alarm for five minutes earlier.

Don’t even open your eyes just try and squish your mattress and curl your fist in the comforter as you breathe in deep , don’t try and compete with my celebrated dream catcher status, dance to your own tune and just think a happy thought. And it would generate warmth, not enough to make you not resent throwing the covers off, but enough to give you one moment of peace in the milling million of madness.

 (P.S.If the bed partner is new think also of the head-start you could get by hurriedly combing your hair to picture glossiness and readying your teeth to blinding freshness,benefits all around.

P.P.S don’t kick me I’m just a messenger nudging a theory into being, and it being late again tonight I’m sure my feet will plant themselves firmly to the ground tomorrow, but there is always hope for day after.

P.P.P.S becauseeee' tomorrow never dies',sorry, couldn’t resist my James bond repertory !!!!!)

HAVE A GOOD DAY!!!!

(tin tin tannin..Brittania..)

  

DOSA DARWINIAN!!!

Sizzling hot pan dribbles the water on its equatorial territory,making it leap and dance, ‘AH!! Its ready’, pronounces my sister in law.

I am standing in obedient attendance to the right,all tools in place. The thinnest flip,tick(available in plastic, steel and wooden forms),Batter: tick(after spending five minutes staring at the instructions and then carefully mixing the ingredients according to the exactness mentioned on the overleaf,I waved around scissors and poured into my multitude little containers,feeling slightly professional. I mean how difficult could it be?)

What are we making?Question is what are we creating by omission ? But that we shall come to in a bit.because the objective is to create a Dosa.or for future article reference cripsy’,courtesy my familial demand for this particular snap in the recipe.

It’s a papery thin savoury crepe,prepared from rice batter,which apparently has my whole family up in orgasmic pleasure if the bite is accompanied by a resounding crack of the crips dosa.AHHH!!! perfection.

There is a general law when you mention this dish,the gatherings mouth waters, but  the prospect of actually making it elicits,gasps of helplessness.My mom a cook of say thirty five years experience but courtesy lacking the genetic pool that fills the southern finger tips with ingrained flair of spreading the batter just right… she has just about started to get things under control, but still drawing a big Aiyyo illey,not passing the strict muster of my dad’s crispy demands.thirty five years of lumpy and thick,and perfection looming now.

Back to the present and finding my feet impatiently standing next to the stove,and post the dancing droplet pronounciation my hopes for the crips were running high,I mean here was my sis in law proclaiming knowledge to the ancient art,who was I to disbelieve! Its for me to dream up images of crips and her to conjure,well my task was also to make the batter,a task that should not be taken lightly.

So like I said me and my assortments were ready and set.

Though pronounced runny by the grand chef!! I still thought it held the hopes for a great cripsy.

Fingers crossed we added the delicately balanced batter on the hot pan that was to deliver it from its watery existence to a plate full of palate teasing crips..

But as most well planned events tend to walk down murphy’s lane,we stood there fighting a battle of prevention, against sticking to hot tawa by the runny batter,a battle that was valiantly fought by first the plastic flip(which turned up its plasticky fake lips at contact with the fiery beast,not a great idea),then the wooden flip,and then to hell with non stick ,full fledged scraping with steel.

But like they say events that have to unfold ,unfold and even the universe aligns its self to the hotness of the agenda producing a pan whose every pore has been homed in on by the dosa batter,caked in short.This I diligently washed, in the hope of producing a crips,in trial effort number two,did I tell you I am a very optimistic , persistent person.

This optimism saw me floating around the sink with my steel swipe,cleaning the slate paving the way to a clean pan,just around three times,before me and my sister in law rechristened our goal to what they call ‘Set Dosa” we decided crips had too much phoo pha attatched to it.

So set dosa it was.A fat little fluffy dosa,though here too ours resembled a beer bellied star fish,goa returned and totally sunburnt.Thanks to the pan which refused to comply by only conducting the perfect heat setting through.

After three washes and a name change,we still didn’t get the feathery delights promised on the flip side of that heavenly sounding batter packing.

Set,or unsettled or anything remotely like a dosa’s cousin.

Growling stomachs ensured ,we ate it with relish ,but the air bore the promises of an oncoming postmortem.

And as we concluded our medley of various cuisines for dinner,on the next note we started querulously naming the culprits, from the batter, to the company that produced the mortar, to the heat emanating unevenly from the stove, to the incorrect curvature of the pan, to the lack of skilled tools available to the professional housewives some thousand kilometers south of us,to the next time we shall swipe onions on the pan declarations.

 In all our muttered scientific analysis,we completely skipped the human error that bought two people who believed till recently that kitchen was paganistic territory ,gracefully relinquished by us to people who wielded their tools with grace and produced cripsies with an easy flair that could now make me green.

And just because we decided that the tools of edible warfare need not be alien anymore,doesn’t mean that with that pronouncement, and with the you tube parroted knowledge,and some gleaned from hour long conversations with mom, would come the skill of that little extra salt sprinkle ,that feel of the perfect heat off a pan, by waving your hand over it.The whiff of perfection by bending down to smell in a pot if the crackle smelt just right and The art to presciently predict the state of the contents inside a cooker after hearing x number of whistles from the symphony of the pressure cooker.SIGH!!!!!

All this gyaan evasively dances around me,while I play with grown up toys ,pretending to understand the hiss of the crackle,the whiff of the readiness of the oil ,and my favorite ,tossing the pot around,like Nigella the chef,grunting in satisfaction at the compliance shown by the residents of the pots,they however miffed with my carelessness decide to jump,practically out.

So after my professionally qualified circus antics I am also the official mopper around.

My transition from mopper to chef de resistance is an evolution ,by which I mean that by the time your eyes pop out of your sockets to evolutionarily make space for the presence of constant staring at computers,till then coming into my kitchen to dine will be an Amazonian experience, a chop off the old roach variety,throw in a little fire and treat yourself to he man and she jane meal.

But the air in my lair has love,lots of love,lots of smiles and tonnes of mischief!!!and hope.

So maybe for now you can place that on your tongue and let the spirit sip in and maybe the breeze brings in ghosts of Deccan supreme chefs to speed up the Darwinian experience a notch. BON APPETIT!!!