Experimenting With Blogspot Layouts

Its been a while since I've published a blog here. And I wonder if this has become easier than it used to be. It certainly seems so... Or maybe my skills have improved. 

A seaside sculpture along the Cote d'Azur

There certainly appear to be more options, or perhaps I am simply finding them more easily and they were always there. 

So though this is a short meaningless video - its uploaded to the blog and guaranteed to load quickly. Lets preview this. 

Jivi Bai Choksey

Jivi Bai - mother of Gordhandas Jamnadas Choksey ?? - 1926

Got this vignette of this woman from mom at the breakfast table this morning.

Bhai and Ba lived with Bhai's father Jamnadas in a 2 rooms  on the 3rd floor in Douji-No-Malo in Bhuleshwar.

She ran the household with an iron hand. After completing her designated tasks, she would walk to the bead store in Bhuleshwar, from where she would return with a man's black velvet hat, pearls and other materials. She would spend the afternoon embellishing the hat. In the late afternoon, she would bring the decorated hat back to the same store and bring back 1 rupee for her efforts.

These beautifully decorated hats would adorn the heads of the wealthy young businessmen of Bhuleshwar.

She had a very shot temper that Ba sometimes got to experience.

How many of us see a bit Jivi Ba in ourselves today ?

Euro English - what a concept (borrowed from a note I received)

T he European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. 

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for 
improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as 'Euro-English' .. 

In the first year, 
's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. 

The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of 'k'. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. 

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced 
with 'f'. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. 

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. 

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. 

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'. 

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. 

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. 

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas. 

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl 

Ode to Fall

What is it about an October Maple ?
Competing against the crisp fall sky
It stands tall and confident and glorious

It knows it will soon lose all its leaves
And yet it happily sheds the lazy green of summer
To reveal a deeper, more striking color.....
Its inner core that has always been there
A warning of the upcoming winter
The October maple should fill our hearts with dread and sadness
And yet we bow to it in awe and wonder

What is it about the October Maple ?
We see it shed its youth and playfulness
And emerge as a mature and seasoned adult
Ready to step into the cold and dark of winter
And yet it makes us happy ?

Is it the knowledge of a battle won ?
Is it the knowledge of a life lived to the fullest ?
Is it optimism, hope or simple faith
that the leaves will return again
And the tree will be stronger
and even more beautiful in the spring ?

Its all that and more, she said. 
It comes from knowing its purpose  
and its role in Mother Nature's world.

Ode to the Mumbai Monsoon

oh how i love the promise of the Arabian sea

waves madly dashing ashore

dark storm clouds on the horizon

the rumble of thunder,

and the pouring rain. 

yes, I know. this storm too shall pass and nothing

nothing will ever be the same again

i love the prospect of new possibilities

the seeds of hope enclosed in every drop of precious rain

i love the promise of the phoenix
and knowing that it will rise again

yes i love a mumbai monsoon

yes i love walking in the rain

i love the cool refreshing feel of raindrops 

on my parched and fevered face

i love the sound of children thrash and giggle

as they engage in a futile race 

but mostly i love just sitting on that retaining wall

staring into the Arabian Sea

and fantasizing about all
 the wondrous things life holds in store for me. 

Everything remains the same

Hanging around the lunch table on a Saturday and we got talking of gulab jamuns. Perhaps it was right after eating the dudhi halwa that mom made - from scratch with raw dudhi and milk. And we talked about mava - the delicious brown solid that the milk turns into when it has been allowed to slowly evaporate for a a long long time. I've become a huge fan of the solid, and don't anyone ever tell me that the stuff they sell in a can in America is a substitute - cos its not.

Anyway mom talked about how gulab jamuns are made from mava - the brown solid. A little flour a little cardamom and you roll the damp mava into little balls and fry them up, before dropping them into saffron and cardamom flavored sugar syrup. Yummmmmmmm ! The stuff you make from a Gits packet - doesnt even come into the territory.

So mom was telling us about how when she was young they would make huge thalis full of Gulab Jamum for parties and to send to dad's friend, and about how she cannot even imaginge making that many so causally any more. She said, we were young and we would just undertake these huge projects and never stop to think of cost or calories......

And so I thought back to about a year ago in Memphis. Her parents were having a party for many reasons, and for no reason. My young niece Shruti decided she wanted to make "Cake Balls".

She started by making 3 pan cakes. These she proceeeded to crumble in the food processor. Then she mixed in cake frosting to make a big gooey paste. This she chilled in the refrigerator for a few hours. Then at 10pm after the dinner dishes were done, she brought out huge sheet pans and started to mould the cake and frosting paste into balls. The paste was cold. And we had to try spoons, ice cream scoops to ladle out perfect little balls. Finally, we gave up and dug in with our fingers.

The balls were then dipped in a chocolate sauce. Once the sauce firmed, we drizzled the whole platter with more chocolate!  4 hours after we had started the cake balls were done. You ate one and felt like you'd consumed 1000 calories. And we had made about 400 of these things. I made Shruti promise "NEVER AGAIN" shall we talk about making cake balls... though Shruti, the yoga teacher heard this story and is looking forward to making some.

I wonder if Shruti will look back at that evening and think - What were we thinking!!!

Is it or isn't it Maida or The Quest for the Perfect Samosa

My maid Radhika has been asking mummy to teach her how to make samosas. We've always prioritized it down among other Gujarati things, primarily because I can always get a passable samosa in the office cafetaria.

However, since we did not have much to do today, we decided we would embark on Project Samosa.
I hit the internet, and checked out recipes from a few of my favorite chefs. Mummy learnt to make samosas from Rewa Ba but she has hopelessly doctored the recipe over the years, and I was going after a particular taste.

So we made the filling in the morning, and I tasted it till I got it just right. Probably finished a quarter of the potato in the tasting. The plan was to make the dough in the evening.

While Radhika was at her own home and mummy was taking a nap, I decided to make the dough. I decided to add an extra little surprise that I've picked up over the years. I was going to add a teeny tiny bit of yeast to the dough to make it extra flaky.

There were many containers in the many cupboards in the kitchen. I recognized the rice flour and the chappati atta and the besan.. and kept looking for the maida. I wasn't going to let mom do her favorite half maida half atta under the guise of making a healthy samosa.

I stumbled upon what I was sure was maida. I made the atta with a generous sprinkle of ajwain and it tasted yum. The teaspoon of yeast bubbled up nicely. The atta worked very well. I had what I thought was the perfect samosa dough.

Mom woke up from her nap, Radhika arrived, and we embarked upon the process of rolling out the dough. Radhika thought we did not have enough dough. And I said, Yes, let me make some more. When she saw the container - she said she did not think it was maida. She thought it was cornflour. Mom bit into the crispy samosa and said "Oh its too crispy to be maida, it must be cornflour." I told them I did not think cornflour would feel so much like maida while kneading and cooking.

Papa ate up 2 samosas and said he did not really have the experience to tell anything other than that samosas were damn good.

So for the second batch of dough I used the "alleged" maida. It felt like rice flour. But mom and Radhika both swear that that is what Indian maida is like. So we are waiting for that batch to soak up. And soon we shall have the results.