Ring it in

Be warned : the below muddle of thoughts has been penned down at an impossible hour and in a mushy state of mind…

Now that you insist on reading on…
The cabbie who drove me to office this morning, a very nice old man, told me a funny story.
“Back in the sixties, when I lived in a poor neighborhood, there was no much firecrackers. People used to come out in the streets and bang pots ‘n pans together.. ringing in the new year, that’s what they said. We had fun, ringing in the new year that way”
I don’t mean to be rhetorica, but this has been a very special year for me. Special in that weird way which makes you wonder and shudder all at once. Special because there is just a melee of memories, sweet and sour with just the right amount of garam masala thrown in together. Yet there is not one day that can be pulled away, held up to light, examined up close and stamped “Special”. Its exactly the dizzy feeling I get when I try to tell the leaves apart on trees that pass by as we speed away in our car. Everything looks green and pretty and exactly as it should be, but you cant tell the leaves apart.
So as we take a tentative baby step across this finish line of the year that went by, which is also the starting line for yet another journey, I cant help this old fashioned sentimental state of mind. I have realized the value of love, family and of real friends this year and I am not saying this because it’s the right thing to say. I am also watching myself in wonderment as something inside me is mellowing down inexplicably, wondering if that’s what maturity is supposed to be. I am thinking about everyone and everything that’s touched my life so far and I think I am mostly thankful (considering what a whiner I am, that’s a lot).
I have met some truly wonderful, awe inspiring people this year. They aren’t making the headlines anywhere, they are simply going about doing what they do best, in the best way possible. I have also learnt that “that’s not fair” is a ridiculous statement, because the boundaries of fair and no-fair fuse beyond recognition in the times we live. I feel unhappy about the things I have missed doing this year, like telling a friend that they meant the world to me, or calling a cousin just to say Hi. Its taken me some time to realize that none of what anyone does for us matters as much as what we can do for ourselves.
In that sense, I will always remember what the cabbie told me about the pots and pans and ringing in the new year.
No worries if there be no firecrackers… pots and pans, that’s all it takes to ring it in….
Happy new year my dearies and thank you for sticking by me in spite of everything. Hope some of those real dreams you have do come true for you this year, Amen…

Happiness

Happiness has a smell.
To me, it smells of flowing water under a summer sky. It smells of rustling cool leaves, their reflections flowing lazily in that water. It smells of hot stones and floral soap and chattering children and laughing women, as everybody plunges in the shallow but fast running river, splashing crystal globules of cool water under the fire-gold tropical sun.

Happy International Women's Day

I should love to continue the uplifting tone of our previous post for a few more days. I cannot though, because she has been crying. She cried yesterday for the one hour or so she spends with me, and she cried today before she stepped out of my home. I have known her for a year now and I have seen her broke many times before. I have never seen her broken though. She never said before that she wished she were dead, not even when she lost the only man who remembered how she had looked as a child, a ten year old bride. She grieves for him though he had taken to drink and beaten her with a stick reserved for the purpose every night, when he was smashed enough. Her health and that of the other three people of her household is failing rapidly. A teenage son who labors at breaking stones in the killing heat of the Hyderabad afternoon, a daughter who is young enough to be amused with fancy hairpins and works with her mother as a maidservant, a three year old grandson – the only memory of the deceased elder daughter who succumbed to medical negligence in her pregnancy two years ago.

My maid has been crying because all her children are suffering from some ailment or another and she is helpless. Her son has been running high fever for some time now; the doctors say he cannot stand the heat and the strain of such inhuman labor. Her daughter suffers frequent belly cramps, and then she cannot even sit up, much less keep her morning appointments at the several households that wait for their dishes to be cleaned.

They have already pawned all the silver she had saved up for her daughters wedding, which must happen sooner than later, because when you live in a slum where broke men come back home drunken in the nights, a teenage daughter is heavy responsibility.
Yet she says, it’s not about the money, as long as my children are well.

None of them can read or write in any language, thus reducing their chances for any other kind of indoor work next to nil. Every rupee spent on hospital expenses or medicines means a rupee taken away from weekly rations of food and travel fare. They still laughed and joked about many things till last week, not anymore. The burden is too heavy now. Yet they give another dimension to honesty when they hand back my gold earring fished out from below the dresser. Loss of that earring would have meant a little heartache to me, no more. Its value is enough to pay for her daughters pawned silver anklets, which is a shameful reminder of helplessness to her.

I don’t know what to feel. Giving her some money to tide the times over is always an option. It makes me feel gracious too. But when that money is gone, and the little child falls sick with Chikunguniya, she will be worse off than now because she still has a remnants of pride that wouldnt allow her to borrow anymore from me.
I don’t know how this will change. I have been thinking a lot about her now a days.
Let me know if you have any “teach them to fish” ideas.
In the meanwhile let’s celebrate the international women’s day.

Congratulations!!

Are you one of those people, who forward emails full of pumping feel-goodism such as “the only thing worse than an unfinished job is a job never started”? It feels so good to tell people to go out and catch their dreams, because isn’t that just what we have been waiting to do? We occasionally stare at the flat screen monitors in office and dream about the day when we will have arrived!
How exactly, we aren’t sure; we are still waiting for a few things that need sorting out first - marriage, a car, a house, a better workplace, anything. We lie down late in the night after watching some movie, which we have probably seen at least three times before, simply because they push it to our TV at prime time and we dont care anymore. Sometimes, before sleep takes over, we uneasily remember that little boy or girl who once confidently stood up and said “when I grow up I will be so and so!” and wonder, whatever happened in the meanwhile!

So when we come across this bizarre couple who have been crazy enough to decide that, everything else can wait, but not the dream, we tend to follow them closely. Especially when the dreamer is a girl. Especially when the dream entails quitting a plush job to invest twenty four months of her life for cracking one of the toughest competitive exams. Especially when, the other spouse builds a solid net of protection around this girl so that none of jeering or worried calls for sanity from well meaning relatives bump her off course. Together they toil through one milestone after another, as though a single entity, all the while dreaming the same dream.

Then one day, which couldn’t have come sooner, what with the countless nervous visits to the website, the results are out.

You know what the results are, when you look at the man, whose ebullience has somehow deified gravity, so he hovers slightly above ground. Then you know, what really a pay off is. There is no need to stop and wonder, what if, the result had been different? These two people would have still been heroes, don’t you agree? For heroism in our times lies in keeping our dreams alive.

I am not sure how big an impact the Women’s Quota bill would have on the women of this country. I am not sure whether there will be ever an acceptance for stay at home dads. I am very sure that the day there are more couples like these, the need for Women’s Day celebrations would have been obsolete.

Congratulations Niyati and Paresh!! We need our heroes…

Happy Holi

Happy Holi, dears.

Let the evil and ugly within ourselves be tossed into purifying fires. Cleaning the slates once in a while is what our times need the most.

A hurtful relationship that makes you brood or a cunning plan to outdo your colleague, let is pass through the cleansing fire once. I am sure it will make us better people.

Tomorrow, we will colour the world in the anticpation of Spring!

I bow down to thee

Of late I have been catching up on reading quite a bit. Thats the one thing I never get enough of. Every time I think about all the wise and beautiful things that have been written over the ages by so many gifted architects of our shared culture of humanity, I feel as if time is running out. After all, there will be only so may years and so many days and so many hours that I will have to enjoy this bounty, and there is too much I have to catch up on.
Every now and then I stumble upon a gem hidden in the clutter of the world wide web. I am not sure why I wasn't aware of this remarkable piece of writing earlier, but I am so glad I found it.
It is by Joyce Maynard, written when when she was 18.

I am thankful, I discovered it.

Here is an excerpt:

Every generation thinks it's special - my grandparents because they remember horses and buggies, my parents because of the Depression. The over-30's are special because they knew the Red Scare of Korea, Chuck Berry and beatniks. My older sister is special because she belonged to the first generation of teen-agers (before that, people in their teens were adolescents), when being a teen-ager was still fun. And I - I am 18, caught in the middle. Mine is the generation of unfulfilled expectations. "When you're older," my mother promised, "you can wear lipstick." But when the time came, of course, lipstick wasn't being worn. "When we're big, we'll dance like that, " my friends and I whispered, watching Chubby Checker twist on "American Bandstand." But we inherited no dance steps, ours was a limp, formless shrug to watered-down music that rarely made the feet tap. "Just wait till we can vote," I said, bursting with 10-year-old fervor, ready to fast, freeze, march and die for peace and freedom as Joan Baez, barefoot, sang "We Shall Overcome." Well, now we can vote, and we're old enough to attend rallies and knock on doors and wave placards, and suddenly it doesn't seem to matter any more.

My generation is special because of what we missed rather than what we got, because in a certain sense we are the first and the last. The first to take technology for granted. (What was a space shot to us, except an hour cut from Social Studies to gather before a TV in the gym as Cape Canaveral counted down?) The first to grow up with TV. My sister was 8 when we got our set, so to her it seemed magic and always somewhat foreign. She had known books already and would never really replace them. But for me, the TV set was, like the kitchen sink and the telephone, a fact of life.


Go read the rest here:
http://joycemaynard.com/Joyce_Maynard/E__18_looks_back.html

Thank You Joyce!

Being Her

That the ancient takes

more living space

inside her, than the new,

Is it true?


That she has loved

Babes unborn yet

longer than she knew

is it true?


That she’d crossed for love

a threshold strange

life in those walls she blew

Is it true?


That she sees too much

and feels much more

while you think those drops were dew

is it true?


In the choices she made

And the dreams she doused

Was naught but love for you

That is true.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness

I wish I knew this before
That when you smiled and stared away
It wasn’t insouciant hardness of heart
Rather too much guilt, too much pain

I wish we all knew this before
So we could peer down deep in our souls
And find the apathetic torches
With which we immolated yours

We didn’t know this before;
But now we know too much of past
The past we created in odium, yours as much as ours,
And we have this future now, we gape, aghast

I wish myself away sometimes
Feverishly dreaming of beautiful places
As if the gurgling springs, innocent meadows
Would somehow grant me what only you could’ve…. Forgiveness
=====(c)========================================

Delusions

So many times to breath for the first time,
To have gone through the same old new chos
Religious, Godless, confused myopic,
Breathing, secreting, cobwebs of thoughts

Will I ever learn and be done with it,
What they call as Wisdom of Stars,
Or in every birth and every death, start afresh,
Like a blank page, innocent? Ignorant?

Somewhere on the brink of dawn or dark,
I know, I knew, the reason and the answer
All I know now, is that, I have known, many times,
And I will know again, for a brief eternity

In the moment, momentous only to me,
when I cease to be

====(c)============================

Confessions

They watched her brand new feet
When she was but a two footer,
And spoke no coherent words,
Take her first step and then another

Oh what a clever little child, this!
Best in the neighborhood, nay
best, In the entire town of ours
such a darling, so much promise!

Say, my darling, you think?
Will she be a big shot lawyer,
she in her prim coat and collar
stand up for justice and order?

Oh, I think she’ll be an actor,
Look how she is born to it,
Flirty smiles charades of tears
Can’t tell when she’s playactin’

A clever little one she is I say,
She’ll be at the top of her school
We’ll never force her this way or that
But she’ll make us proud soon

So little Minnie grows up and fast
She’s all they thought an’ some
Lawyer or doctor or actor or anyone
She chooses she may now become

She doesn’t know in her heart although
Which path to set her foot on
Should there be just one, o why
Could she not try it all one by one?

She was hard on herself for this
And pushed herself so much
Reprieve she never gave herself
Worked and brooded, harder again

And thus it went on for the longest time
And Minnie was doing well enough
Well, she wasn’t a lawyer or an actor
But a good job found her somehow

“Course this isn’t the final thing,
For mom and dad are still waiting’
She hadn’t still made it big you see
And time, so ruthless was slipping

Every night, her dear old pillow
Heard her sniffle and mutter in
Dreams, such dreadful dreams she had
Running so hard, never reaching

So one day she said its ‘nuf
And thought she needed a break
Just some hard thinking you know
About the one path she must take

There she sits by her desk alone
‘Mommy I am alright, no one
disturbs me or gets me food right now
till I say its ok and I am done’

“Do you think she is in Love my dear?”
No, I don’t see how that could be
Never saw anyone ‘xcept her cat
Come around, other than you an me

So you think she needs someone?
To ward off some of those blues?
Well, that may be so you know,
No one likes being utterly aloof

When did she get that way honey
Was a happy enough child I guess
She works herself too much I see
Though makes so little progress

Did Minnie hear any of this?
Some tears are surely rolling
She flung that door open wide
Took the car out , went driving

She was back with the fading day
Spoke to none, didn’t Minnie
She had dinner by herself,
And went to bed early

Morning found her room all cold
Just a note flapping on the pillow
Mommy held it close to her heart
they wept, graying, getting old

And days went by, and months and months
They were angry and bitter and morose
Why their child now hated them
Never came back nor called or wrote

He knew not what to think of it
when daddy heard the bell one day
they leapt and rushed without a doubt
It did ring in that familiar way

There she was all right, their girl
Just a bit older than they knew
They dint hug or welcome her in
For a moment she kept standing too

Then there were smiles, tentative
Tears too there were a few
And they had noticed something in her
their daughter had changed for good

When the night fell calm and quiet
and they were afraid to let her be
for they hadn’t had a word till now
about the while she wasn’t seen

that was the time when they sat
together in a dim light in the porch
and she told them in a dreamy voice
of reasons, all travels, and more

“so down and out was I, you know
for I let you both down so
One day in the park I sat alone
‘twas evening, no, just a dusky glow

I looked at the sky above me then
And some magical surprise it was
It had the cleanest blue I’ve seen
Not a cloud or a bird in sight

I didn’t remember how long
It’d been since I saw the sky this way
I looked at it all right, I know
But saw it the first time that day

I asked myself what else I’d missed
So one by one they came
All those things I should have seen
And known that this was it

Like my dear old cat an’ my pillow
Who are surely the best in this world,
My mom and dad and all their cares
And weekends spent together

Well, I knew in my heart that day
What really does keep me going,
Sure, I dint want to believe it then
But I now I am glad for knowing

It doesn’t drive me, as it should
This dream of making things big
Home and hearth, and books and love
That’s what gives me peace

This ain’t what we set out for
But it’s what I really now want
Others I know there are for sure
For them, could be Acting or Law

Its not simple, this business of life,
You’ve taught me all you could
Will you love me now, as you only can
If I tread the familiar road?

======(c)===================

Some days

To sit by the window on a langorous day
Silver webs of spiders, blue skies stretch away
To let thoughts wander like gypsies of yore
How easy they come, dance, tug, and float

Cup of hot coffee, warm palms, old chair
Quivering of dreams, some magic, all day
Wet earth of the garden, rustling fall leaves
Is it the smell of coffee or of coffee memories?

Days of fairy charm these, so precious, so rare
My little piece of sky, by window, my chair
So clear, the hum of life, in my veins in wet earth
Rendezvous with mystery, a secret spring of mirth
=========(c)==========================

Summertime

Summertime


Slip down swift, low hanging branch
Barefoot run to mildewy garage
Three buddies and a brother and a sister
Sharing cupcakes in the 4’o clock blister

Grown ups, full bellies, all drowsy - asleep,
For they cannot bear the summer sun’s heat
They think its crazy that we can’t be still
For a moment all day, or when starlight spills

Oh, what a waste, there is so much
To do, gather, scatter, build and plunge
Hide in dark corners, seek hidden treasures,
Maps there aren’t, so ingenious measures

All day long, its busy busy time,
Candy for company and sweet drink of lime
We play, we scamper, tell stories and cry
Over Little fights, but make it up alright

Sometimes we hear the grown ups say
‘let them be, ‘tis their time for play’
They will grow up, before one can blink
Of that, this summer they shu’nt have to think

A time that’ll stay in their hearts all life
Like a warmglowing pool of golden light
Just a dip in there, in distress or pain
And they will be happy children again

==========(c)=================

Catching Butterflies

He remembers…
Crouching, Holding breath,
Eyes narrowed, intent
Slow step - step of stealth,

Smells of March wafting about
Backyard fringe of berry shrubs
Beneath his feet, grassy stubs
Steady now! Lub-dub lub-dub

There she was softly alight,
On weightless feet, sunning
Soft rainbow plumes, a-gleaming
Temptress, in mockery reveling!

Stretching out, cutting through space
Quickly cupping palms together,
‘Round a lone nameless flower
Delight! How palms tickled aflutter

He remembers…
Panting, as he ran forth to Sophy
Make her smile, what a rare trophy
Rainbow thrills, aquiver softly

“Lookey here neighbor,
Live across that fence, over there!
Thought you’d like a li’l souvenir,
We could be friends, y’know, if you care?”

Suspicion, suspended on her brow
Sophy, stealing glances for the prize
Careful or away it flies,
Give me your hands, there! Surprise!

Shrieks of horror, she runs away
Turns back at me just this once,
Mouth contorted in disgust
“Freak! Go away!” outburst…

I don’t understand, not now either
What’s wrong with a gift so lovely?
Even in death butterflies are comely
Well, the rainbow was there, mostly!

He remembers... the note under his door
“Don’t catch butterflies, they die!”
Silly girls! What good’s a butterfly
That flies away? Now or later, it must die

==========(copyright)========================

To Mommy with Love

I was refilling my tea canister the other morning. Idle thoughts were playing tag inside my head. What flavor for the tea today? Ginger? Cardamom?
Hubby says I hardly use the five million different tea powders we have foraged from Ceylon to Munnar. Why this brand?
Hmmmm… Mother always uses this brand. Okay. There you are! Am I still trying to play Mommy? Draping her endlessly long, not to mention tall sari around my six year old frame, bumming about the home in her oversized slippers? Well! Who knows?
Then I began to deliberately think of all the little things I do, not out of conscious choice, but just because, thats how its done at my place!! Puh-len-tee!!

I am not proud or happy about all of them. Baking however, is the thank God for it item in this list. Let me be clear here. Kitchen was the last place in our house where I could be found. There was no need for help over there. Mom managed it alone and beautifully. All I cared was, we got smackalicious food every single day, customized to our crazy idiosyncrasies(like one brother hating anything that remotely resembled mustard in his food, the other one a chilly buff, me living mostly for a good serving of Basmati rice , so on and so forth). Some of the best memories are walking into the home after a long evening of rough play, hungry, drawn in by the most divine aroma of freshly baked cupcakes. Then there was this time when my father went a-tin-searching in the kitchen looking for a quick bite, happened to bite into some horribly acrid white slab, and threw away the whole package of pricey yeast! That was no consoling mother for a long time. Those little fellows from that white slab made many a Sunday breakfasts absolutely delightful! Soft, fragrant thick slices of bread, buttered way beyond excess, with Jam or pickles piled on for good measure. It may seem incredible to people who have known me as a child that I ever took a liking to cooking (and an obscene obsession to baking), but seen from my perspective, there was no event more predictable.

Some of the most enjoyable time I have spent last year in my lovely apartment kitchen has been accompanied by my trusty oven. It has seen it all; chewy early batches of burnt cocoa, too embarrassing to be called chocolate cake, to golden crisp batches of buttery croissants. Every time something as amazing as only a homemade baked good can be, hops out of this oven, I send secret thanks to Mommy. I cannot think of a more fitting way of sending a muwaah her way than by sharing the recipe of her awesomely beautiful Marble Cake. THIS is what one calls a repertoire.

Ingredients:
Eggs: 3
Flour: 1 ½ Cups
Powdered Sugar : 1 ½ Cups
Butter (softened) : 1 Cup
Baking Powder : 1 tsp
Water : ½ cup
Unsweetened Cocoa : 1 Tbsp or bittersweet Chocolate – 100 gms
Vanilla essence : 1 tsp

Preheat oven to 180 C. Butter / Line an 8 inch cake pan (be generous with the butter!). Sift the flour and baking powder together. If you would be using chocolate instead of cocoa powder, now is the time to melt it (over a double boiler or in a hot water bath, without letting chocolate container come in contact with direct heat). Keep the chocolate mixture in a hot water bath (50 – 60 C) till the time rest of the steps are through. Cream the butter and sugar, till butter becomes fluffy. Add eggs and flour alternating with each other and mix well after each addition. Now, dissolve the vanilla essence in water and add it to this mixture. After the consistency of this batter is smooth and spoonable, divide the mixture into two equal parts. You may choose to keep one portion a little short of half if you are planning to use molten chocolate. Add the chocolate / cocoa to one part of the flour mixture and briskly incorporate it thoroughly.
Now comes the most surreal part. Spoon the vanilla and chocolate mixture into the pan in alternating layers. Once you are done (I prefer the top layer to be vanilla), run a fork in a ‘Z’ in the batter once. This will give the cake that swirly marbled look.
Bake at 180 C, for 45 – 50 Mins, till a skewer inserted at the center comes out clean. Let the cake rest in its pan for five minutes before running a knife around the sides and inverting the pan on a wire rack to cool.

After the cake is completely cooled, slice… and you will be proud of yourself dear. Swirling layers of chocolate and vanilla look like a match made in the heaven...taste even better!

Happy New Picnic

As kids, the three of us siblings must have been a real handful for my mother. Mere mention of a long travel and she would be visibly petrified. I have been known to send fellow travelers scampering for cover with my threats to throw up on them, because I didn’t like the way they smelled. Both my brothers played passing the parcel, except the parcel in this case was called “bawling to the top of your vocal cords for no apparent reason”. Then there were the numerous pee-pee breaks which were nuisance enough on road trips but a serious threat to the sanity of my poor mother in long distance train journeys. Besides, we (especially our father) loved the hawkers in those trains. Since eating and bawling at the same time wasn’t exactly feasible, we were occasionally allowed to eat dirty food. The pickiness which so dominated meal times at home was gone with the wind in trains. Our tummies however, had been too well and overly protected all along, so that sort of food did its magic soon enough. Then came the worst part, as you may imagine, given the state of toilets in sleeper class compartments of our trains. Enough said, you get the idea!

Picnics however, were another thing altogether. We were still a beastly lot to haul all the way up to the destination, but the considerably shorter distance clinched the deal. Most of our picnic haunts were located at walk-able distances. We usually went as a big party with more kids and their moms from the neighborhood. We could play as much and as long as we liked, while the moms busily knitted, chatted or fixed sandwiches and Rasna. Everybody came home pleasantly tired.
The inexplicably happy thrill I feel at the thought of a picnic even now must certainly have a good deal to do with those sweet carefree days.
So, on the long weekend for new years’, it was picnic that was on our minds. To tell you the truth, I was being a hopeless daydreamer. How we would stroll in the lush greenery, then bring out the tiny outdoor grill, make some sandwiches, collect a basketful of flowers, well well, if wishes were horses, I would own a stud farm by now.

Hyderabad is not the best place in the world for a quiet, green get away. We (me and Anurag) finally agreed on this seemingly neat place called Manjeera Barrage and Bird Sanctuary, not very far from home. A bit of fussy, meticulous packing of food, books, mats and whatnot by me, and a great deal of TBHPing for the directions by Anurag, we were get-set-ready-GO!

We couldn’t have picked a better place really. Quiet, cool and green, though the roads leave you asking for a lot more. The place is just off the Sangareddy town. There was hardly any water in the barrage, though we saw a great many birds.

The crocodile breeding center and environment education center is a small but well maintained place.

We found a cool spot, spread out the mat, fixed some sandwiches and fruits, and simply relaxed. It was really quite restful to look at tall grass flowers nodding away at the slight breeze, little fearless birdies going about their business, warm sunlight stealing through treetops on that cool winter day. I even tried reading a few pages from the Sea of Poppies, though I gave up soon because the crocodiles were being less lazy and more camera-friendly just then. We couldn’t find a good enough place for lighting a fire for the grill (alas!) though, it was really unnecessary on second thoughts. May be some other time.

Towards late afternoon, the bustle began to increase and the quiet charm of the place began to dull a little. So we packed up again, took a good look around and hopped back in to the car, happy and refreshed.

Jingle all the way

Winters are my favorite! Oh no offense Mr. Rain, you are a life saver! Howdy Mr. Summer of Mango Land, please don't get me wrong. I love you both too! But you see, this Mr. Winter here, everybody thinks him cold and gloomy! Poor Mr. Winter. That's why my heart goes out to him you see! No offense really!

Snicker Snicker! Now that those two are out of earshot, let me tell you the truth. Winters ARE my favorite! Sorry, did I say that before? How I love the crisp mornings. That carefully stored hibernating old sweater comes out all cuddly again. Oh the flirting Gerberas and Roses and a million other beautiful flowers. Not to mention the abundant green leafies, cauliflowers and apples. Its happy happy time but come Christmas and all I feel is homesick. You would feel the same way if your home happens to be in a pretty little place like Goa. Every little hamlet perfectly adorned with lovely (and real) Christmas trees, (cotton wool) snow, glittery lights and a general air of pure festivity!

Somehow this year, it didn't feel right to just sigh, wallow in nostalgia and then carry on. It was a long weekend and before we knew, without much pre planning, there we were, having one of the most memorable Christmas days, right here, in Hyderabad.

We even had this pretty Christmas star which Bijou brought (sadly, no grotto could be found). Ample food, complete with roast chicken and a semi-traditional fruitcake had us bursting at the seams. The fun part was supplied was Shveta and Laukik, who brought in this 3 D, Christmas scenery card that needed to be assembled and decorated. Everybody took a shot at proving their artistic non capability, though it turned out really neat at the end. All in all, this could be one of those times we missed festivals at home a little bit lesser.

It was the first time I handled a whole, uncut chicken and I should admit, I don't have the strongest of hearts. I had to continually remind myself that the chicken would have probably died in vain if I were to act like a sissy about touching it with love.
I improvised a lot on the roast chicken to make it palatable to the spice loving group that we are. I couldn't find any recipe, neither in my gradually multiplying cookbook collection, not on the net, which would precisely fit that “Stuffed and Roasted and not bland Chicken picture) in my mind. So this is what I ended up doing.

Ingredients
1.25 Kg dressed, clean whole chicken
Butter 50 gms
Baby potatoes – 12 - 15
Baby Corn : 3 – 4
Mushrooms – Handful
Ginger – 1 inch
Garlic – 8 cloves
Fresh Cream – ½ cup
Curds – 1 cup
Tamarind paste – 20 gms tamarind soaked in 4 tbs water
Powdered thyme – to taste
Coriander – 1 bunch
Green chillies – 4
Salt – to taste
Red chilly powder – 1 tbs

Serves 6 hungry tummies



Preparation

Marinade

Wash and pat dry the chicken from the outside and the inside. Liberally apply butter, salt and pepper powder to all the surfaces. Cover the chicken and let it marinate for half an hour.
Chop onions, green chillies, ginger and garlic and sauté on a medium flame in the remaining butter for 10 minutes. When the onions look glassy and cooked, switch off the flame. Shred the coriander leaves and add to this cooling mixture. When the mixture is completely cooled, add the curds, fresh cream, thyme and red chilly powder along with the strained tamarind paste and salt. Stir and to mix ingredients and grind to a fine paste. Divide the mixture in two parts. Apply one half thoroughly to the chicken from the outside. Again let the chicken marinate for a further one hour at least, or a whole night in the fridge if you have the time.

Stuffing
Cut baby potatoes in halves, chop baby corn, mushrooms and onion. Add oil to the skillet and stir the onions in it for 2 mins. Add all the other chopped veggies. Dump the other half of the ground mixture in the skillet on high heat. Adjust salt. Add a pinch of sugar to balance the tang of the tamarind. Stir vigorously till the veggies are well coated with the gravy and the mixture just begins to bubble. Cool the mixture.
While the stuffing cools, preheat the oven at 200 C, for 10 mins, without the roasting pan in it. Butter the pan in the center and keep aside.
Now, slowly push the stuffing into the cavity of the chicken. Make sure sufficient quantity of gravy also is spooned in. adjust the potatoes and corn pieces on the outer side, under the wings and neck flap. Hold the wings and neck near the body with toothpick if needed.

Roasting

Place the chicken in the center of the pan and roast for 1 and a half hours, at 200 – 220 C. check the potatoes by poking a long knife's blade in. Roast for a few more minutes if the potatoes are not well done. Though within one and half hours the chicken should be cooked just right, if you feel there is still some cooking needed, cover the whole pan with aluminum foil and cook for another few minutes. The foil prevents the chicken from over roasting on the outside.

Carefully unwrap. Let it stand for 5 minutes for the steam to escape. Serve!

Christmas or no Christmas, this will have you celebrating.

PS: I don't have a picture of the chicken, because... take a guess... well, folks devoured it before I realized I had no pic.

Knock Knock, there?

Hi, there!
Its cold in here, thanks to me! I was entrusted to keep this place warm enough for you and me, when we wanted that little sip of hot chocolate, or a friendly chat at by the hearth.
Sorry, I went missing. I never meant this to be such a long silence dear reader, somehow, the beastly sloth I normally try to keep at bay caught up with me.

In the meanwhile, I got married to my long time sweetheart. In fact, have been married for a year now and I still can’t believe it!! In a good way of course!

Pretty interesting things have happened to me while I’ve been away. For example, I discovered that I could spend 10 hours at a stretch in my kitchen, trying to bake the perfect croissants. I also discovered that I have a long way to go if I am to be the best person I know, though its very hard to accept. Somewhere along the line, I have picked up some fortitude, buried some ghosts and decided I want to try my hand at something I have loved always. Writing. I am really not sure how fabulous or super-sucking I may be at it, but we wont know till we try.

With the fresh new year, that ends the first decade of this millennium, I wish you all good cheer, love and peace. May you make a few discoveries of your own, fall madly in love (all over again is fine too), have your table always full of good food cooked with great care and a may there be a spring in your healthy step.

Happy New Year everybody!!

We will meet more frequently and regularly, unless of course, the Giant Turtle from that other galaxy swallows our earth.