Whats cooking??

Tears streamed down my face, my eyes were red and puffy. The world around me was hazy, everything seen through the globule of salty water that had accumalated in the gap between my eyelids. I looked down and the onion i was cutting, muttering curses under my breath! Ohh wait i seemed to have jumped the gun a bit, lets go back to where it all started.

You people might remember the article i wrote about women drivers ( you dont? meh, i had my hopes up for a minute there!) . Anyway moving on, this invited a lot of ( not wholly undeserved) criticism from a lot of female readers. In fact there were even some who told me you should try cooking once and see. Well i have and to be fair i am a guy who loves laughing at himself as much as he loves laughing at others. So here is a summary of my experience.

Okay one thing a beginner in the kitchen needs is a cook-book.It basically gives you a step by step procedure to make a dish which when finished produces something so totally unlike the pictures given in the book and probably never tastes like the author intended it to. But for the novice, its still something to refer to create something that at the very worst will not result in loss of life. To cut a long story short i got myself a book titled ” My first cook book” and entered the kitchen.

This is where reality began to sink in. While a recipe looks small in a book, getting it done in real life is no easy task. For eg, the writer takes into account that you will have bowls and bowls of cut vegetables at your disposal to be put in use wherever required. This not being the case, i cut the required vegetables by hand spending a lot of time and energy . When i was finished, sweaty and bothered with tomato pulp running down my hand, my dear mother explained to me how to use a food processor to finish the above work in seconds! ( Stop laughing!).

Decided to make a chicken curry which seemed to be quite simple. Problems plauged the endeavour from the very start.  The recipe was for one chicken. Having no idea whether the cut pieces in the fridge belonged to one chicken, i stood scratching my head. Finally decided to count the number of legs to determine and found out that three of them were present. Considering the cookbook had no solutions to such a quandary, i decided to go ahead considering the presence of an extra limb as an unavoidable genetic mutation.

However managed to get it all done at the end of 45 minutes and the net result was something not altogether unappetizing but could have done with less salt. Probably should not have cried so much while cutting those bloody onions.

Anyway this promises to be just the first of many misadventures in the kitchen as learning to cook has now become an unavoidable necessity. Hoping to keep you posted as i stumble, fumble and bumble my way around the kitchen , complicating the simplest preparation and giving my dear mother a few more grey hairs!

A new start

From you special correspondent

( random red top british tabloid)

” We all know restarting a blog after an interval of a few months is always a daunting task. It is difficult to know if the blogger’s readers are still interested in whatever latest waste of cyberspace that is his new blog post , whether his blog been removed from a few blogrolls ( why would i keep this link? the whole thing is dead and buried now!) and whether people will actually remember that he was once  active ( relatively) on the blogging scene”. So said someone and no one took notice. In fact this quote has only been quoted to increase the size of this article and get a good payment.

This particular  blog has been dead for the last few months but there is talk about a return to blogging action. A lot of things had kept the blogger busy in the past  but the present  lack of activity in the blogger’s life coupled with a sudden revival of interest in literature after reading ” The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” may prompt a few updates in the upcoming days. While nothing can officialy be  confirmed, sources close to the blogger say that he has run out of patience swatting flies and may actually get off his lazy arse and put in a few posts in a similar vien to the ones in the past.

A dedicated reader ( trust me we had to search high and low for this unique specimen) when interviewed said that she could hardly wait for the new wave of posts while absent- mindedly flipping through pages of a magazine and barely stifling a yawn. We could find no one else remotely interested in talking to us and hence spent the whole day betting how long Mickey Owen would stay uninjured and discussing if his hamstrings had a half-life less than radio-active plutonium.

Your reporter then proceeded to curse her luck for having to cover such a non-story and hoped that the next story she could cover would be fractionally more interesting which in retrospect actually sounded quite feasible considering the present story had been as interesting as watching grass grow.

A letter!

One fine day while checking my inbox to see what the US universities have been upto I glanced upon the following mail.

Hey,

We are planning to create a collection of all our experiences ofEngineering and compile it onto a DVD. For that, we require each ofyou to write a paragraph on how the past 4 (or 3) years have been foryou. Limit it to about 250-300 words. This will feature with yourphoto that we will take on farewell day – so dress well and come.Also, if you have any pictures of our classmates and you’ve notalready given it to Malpe, please do it as soon as possible. Butbefore that, delete any repeats that you have.If you have any doubts, ask me on Monday and get this thing done bythe coming Wednesday.

Heston

Now my experience in this college would be hard to summarise in 3000 words rather than 300. After a lot of time spent deliberating came up with this one. For me the criterion for the letter was simple : it had to be cliched and nostalgic and reflect the sentiments of the rest of the class.

To all the wonderful people who make up the class of BE Electrical,

Four years ago I walked into the F.E Electrical classroom with apprehension not knowing what to expect. Even to this day I feel the same way while entering class, there is no way of knowing what the crazy bunch of people whom I call my classmates have been up to and most of the time it is nothing wholesome!

They same time flies by when you are having a good time and the last four years in SPCE bear testament to this fact. It feels only like yesterday when we were eager eyed F.E’s shying away from our seniors and today the rest of the college looks upto us.

As a class we have laughed at the smallest things, fought for the silliest reasons  ( almost always involving kushal) ,taken tension about submissions together and sometimes even studied a bit. Inspite of not being the best of athletes we have played every single sport under the sun ( literally) and probably inspired our insipid juniors to do the same. Almost everything new in college can be traced back to our class whether it be blood donation, clothes donation drive or more recently Sardar Patel Quiz Club. Inspite of never doing well in rink football or winning the dance in Techno Break   ( something we had planned to do in first year), we have left our indelible mark on this college and long may our legacy thrive.

Every day has been a learning experience and I am not talking about lectures here. The multitude of shared interests has really helped make the last four years exciting and memorable. I doubt i will ever be able to reach the same level of familiarity with my classmates which i have become accustomed to in this wonderful class.

Its been a pleasure being able to share space and be a part of your lives and its something I shall always thank God for.What I have experienced in this class is a priceless treasure which I shall keep close to my heart till my dying breath.

I wish everyone the very best for their future and I am sure it will be a bright and successful one. Perhaps we shall meet one day after a few years to refresh our memories and laugh about all the wacky things we had done in these four years in college. Till then let this be my contribution to the class effort of keeping these memories alive long after we have passed out from the doors of our esteemed institution.

Yours Sincerely

Deepak Mohan

A Photoshoot

The sun shone mercilessly down on the amphitheatre. The stone seats were boiling hot. There was no breeze from over the lake. All in all an unwelcome place. The few living things in the area had retired to the sparse shades of the trees which stood on both sides of the gravel path.

They converged to the spot. 60 of them dressed in white and blue. As expected there was no unity in the time of arrival. Some were early while some had to be threatened with dire consequences if they failed to grace the occassion. True to form there was a lot of shouting, laughing and teasing. The din could be heard in college but being a regular occurence was ignored. The authorites had given up on ever bringing order to this chaotic group. BE Electrical had developed quite a reputation for unruliness in the college and this photoshoot was going to be no exception.

The two designated expert photographers (sic) waited patiently. There was a lot of confusion as the class tried to arrange themselves. Three perfectionists assisted the photographers in making a jumbled mess of the seating arrangement. There was a lot of shifting and moving as people tried to make sense of the gesticulations and instructions . The class waited baking in the summer heat. There was no grumbling; the atmosphere about as cheerful as a meeting of a suicide helpline. Sweated flowed profusely along with the choiciest abuses as the class tried to get along with the photoshoot.Finally the perfectionists relented and ran upto the top of the formation conveniently missing out on vacant spots in the lower rows.

Everyone wanted a copy of the picture and for some reason the technology of photo transfers using pendrives had slipped their minds. Four to five different cameras were used to take the same picture and for safety sake two pictures were taken from each camera. With so many back up options things couldnt go wrong but unfortunately they did. The photos were not much appreciated and there was talk of another photo session at 4pm. The proposal was vociferiously shot down considering the heat which had left the survivors looking like participants in a wet t-shirt competition. They moved  rapidly to cooler confines. Who cared if the photos were unsymmetrical or people were looking away or holding green water bottles. After all we have never been perfect role models and it is only justified that the photo reflected the same.

The photoshoot had made everyone nostalgic. A reminder of time in college ticking away and the end of a glorious chapter in our lives. From now on everyone would be going their separate ways, some abroad for further education and some to work ( finally after 4 jobless years!). It had been a wonderful experience and time spent in this college would be sorely missed.There was a reasonfor this sudden nostalgia . A change from the familiar to the unknown is always accompanied by a certain apprehension. The mind trying to find refuge in past memories instead of contemplating on what the future might hold. There was a general uneasiness and the news of the impending farewell on 9th April did nothing to improve the mood.

An hour later we were back to normal. The last few days of college were not meant to spend in contemplation and sulking. It was up to us to have as much fun as possible in the limited time available to us, to create a legacy that would not be easily forgotten and in general soak in as much as of the unique atmosphere at SPCE which cannot be experienced anywhere else in the world. And boy are we going to put this plan into action!!

Loss and Repentance

He was six. The age where every day brought a new adventure and every night he went to sleep with a clear conscience. He was staying at his grandmother’s house , a village 50 kilometers from the nearest city. He spent his days exploring the surrounding countryside with his best friend Bruno. Bruno was 10 years old, black and with soft silky fur, a mongrel but one of the friendliest, smartest dogs around,

That fateful day he woke up quite early in the morning. Today he wanted to walk to the stream which lay some distance to the south and spend the day in the water with Bruno. To his surprise all his family surrounded the kennel, their faces somber. Bruno lay motionless, his tongue lolling out staring at the congregation with sightless eyes. Why was Bruno not moving? Why did he not bound towards him, his tail wagging, the air resounding with his joyous barks while attempting to lick every uncovered part of his master’s body? His mind raced. He was too young to understand death. He wanted to run towards Bruno and shake him awake. He was held back by his mother. Her eyes welled with tears as she tried to explain to him as best as she could the circle of life ending with inevitable death. He listened, his legs seem to give way. His blissful world had come down crashing around him. He sat down on the cold hard earth feeling helpless.

He watched as the labourers dug the earth near the outhouse, moving mechanically, their emotions not clouded by the tragedy which had just occurred. It took them very little time to dig a small grave and they callously tossed Bruno’s body inside and covered it with red mud. He ran inside and got some flowers from the prayer room and laid them on the grave as respectfully as he could. He sat by the grave absent-mindedly chewing a blade of grass determined to gave his faithful friend and companion company till his mother came to fetch him.

A few hours later, he was sitting on the low wall which surrounded his house. He wanted to get away from it all. He felt his pockets and found a small picture of God which his parents had given him. “ If you pray hard enough you will get what you want son”, his mother’s words rang in his ears. Holding the picture close to his chest he prayed for the return of his dog. He turned back in expectation but God had failed him this time. Bruno was still sleeping in his earthy tomb oblivious to his master’s prayers. Disgusted he flung the photo into a nearby bush. His parents were obviously wrong, God did not exist and nor was he as merciful as they led him to believe. Like millions before him, he felt God had deserted him when he needed him most. He resolved to never pray again and buried his face in his hands and cried.

That night he tried to sleep but something disturbed him. He remembered his mother saying that God rewarded good children. Maybe he had been bad and Bruno was taken away from him as a punishment. If he prayed hard and behaved himself, God would be happy and he would be reunited with his dog. He had to find that picture first thing in the morning and plead for forgiveness. He turned around, hugged his grandfather and went to sleep. That night in his dreams, he played with Bruno ;  their friendship transgressing lives and domains.

Her first driving lesson

Before going any further let me state very clearly that I have only the highest regard for women drivers. The last thing I want is a bunch of crazy, angry women armed to the teeth hunting me down for resorting to stereotypes.

She had heard many times that women made terrible drivers. Her blood boiled at this abominable attempt by the male gender to slander her sex. Being a woman she was well aware that she was naturally gifted and could excel at whatever she wanted. She had been waiting impatiently for months to turn 18 so that she could have her first taste of driving as promised by her parents. She wanted to prove to the male population that they were just a bunch of arrogant , stuck-up flea-bags who resorted to stereotyping women to cover their own inadequacies.

I was sitting by the ramp late in the evening. I had forgotten the house keys and had been waiting for mother to return from her latest shopping mission when she walked by with her driver. Her face stern, eyes glinting with determination she almost walked by without noticing me. ( How I wish things would have stayed that way! ). Suddenly she became aware of my presence. ” I remember you saying that the easiest way to reduce our rapidly expanding population was to allow only women drivers on the road! “, she said, her face failing to conceal her obvious rage and contempt. I shrank back. I had never said anything like that but she seemed to be in a no mood for a civilized debate. ” Now you are going to sit in the backseat and change your opinion once and for all! “. I tried to make a million objections but for once God had decided to take back the power of speech which distinguished me from the rest of the animal kingdom. To cut a long story short I found myself in the back seat of the car.I looked at her driver; his face resembled that of a condemned man contemplating the gallows.

The first five minutes passed by smoothly. While lesser humans take ages , she had deciphered the intricate mechanisms of fastening her seatbelt in this interval. Now her driver explained to her the working of the accelarator, brake, clutch and gearbox. She drank in all this knowledge knowing that each small step brought her closer to her ultimate goal. But being a woman she could not help being impatient and all she wanted to do now was to start the stupid car and drive it around the colony basking in the glory of her latest triumph.

The driver told her to change to first gear. She yanked the gearbox with terrific strength, derived from her supressed rage at having been denied all her life upto this very moment. The driver looked at me. I could read his thoughts, if she carried on like this, the gear would be soon flying out of the windshield. He tried to sweettalk her into stopping for the day, his mind obviously drifting to his family waiting for him back home. She did not budge.

Now he asked her to gently release the clutch. She was very gentle, the car only rocked like a prize horse at a rodeo causing me and the driver to bang our heads on the ceiling. We were still stunned when she decided to give the accelarator a shot. A brick wall stood 50 metres away and we were heading for it like a moth towards a flame.  ” Press the brake”, we shouted in unision. ” Which is the brake?”, she screamed the terror evident in her voice. Her bright idea had not gone as per plan. ” The one in the middle, press it, press it for Gods sake! You are going to kill us”, we sobbed. She pressed down hard. Her driver had forgotten to wear his seatbelt. He flew forward banging his head against the windshield, a nasty bump forming on his forehead . For my part I had hit my nose on the seat ahead, tears were streaming down my face.

She was shaken for some time but immediately regained her composure. ” It was just a minor blip, I will be learning in no time”. She walked out her head held high. We heaved a sigh of relief. God did not want us to be crash-test dummies on that particular day. I walked out wondering what every man has pondered in his lifetime. ” Why must they always act out the stereotype in their attempts to disprove it!”

Hello world!

I am on wordpress now!!

Just an update

When i first started this blog; I was very enthusiastic churning out posts at an amazing frequency. Since then the motivation to create new posts has somewhat diminished and to my surprise there have been no new posts for almost 2 weeks. There is probably a reason for this inexcusable lethargy. The last few weeks have seen a flurry of action in my life which has left me with very little time to update the blog
So here is just a brief summary of events in the last two weeks

SPACE : SPACE 09 promised to be bigger and better than ever before. (snigger). While the day-time events were better than last year the pronites really took boredom to a whole new level. Winning the last quiz of my last SPACE would probably be the most memorable moment of the whole festival. The one phenomenon that puzzles me is the lack of enthusiasm from the majority of people towards the festival. While a fraction of my class worked our asses off trying to spice up the festival, the rest were busy playing cricket in Bhavan’s ground ( Incredible but true!). This years SPACE also saw the introduction of compulsory seating in the quad during a pronite in a scene remniscent of a school festival. Considering the organised chaos in the quad that was a hallmark of all festivals till date; continuing this tradition will result in the ultimate death of the pronite. ( which judging by the present standards may not be such a bad thing after all!)

Results : Being in final year has a distinct advantage. The days when the rumour of an impending display of the result which would stir the class like a hornet’s nest have long gone. There is no pandemonium at the mere utterance of the word, rather a weary walk to the exam centre contemplating the same journey made in previous years. It was afternoon on the first day of SPACE when the results finally came out interrupting our ( rahter expensive) lunch at the food court. This year the gods had been merciful to us. Almost everyone in my group passed and I got a 78% ( which is quite surprising considering the amount of time I spent in GRE and admissions last semester). Anyhow alls well that ends well and thats one monkey off my back for now

The Admits : At last, at long last, two admits have arrived. One from the University of Texas at Arlington and the other from Austin. I apologise to all my friends for being excessively depressed during the dark days prior to this when nothing seemed to be working inspite of their assurances that everything would work out in the end. I am now finally in a position to give that damn seminar on GRE and the admission procedure with a clear conscience. My heart goes out to all those who will be forced by the IEEE committee to sit for it against their better judgement.

SPQC : SPQC is the only thing worth looking forward to every week although my active participation is being resented by a lot of people for winning all the previous quizzes. ( Seems everyone else also wants the honour of showing Chinmay the finger after winning!). So this time I have been requested to set the quiz along with Heston . Its my first time and setting a quiz is turning out to be fucking hard. I just hope I manage to set a half decent quiz and not end up killing SPQC once and for all.

Lectures. The lack of interest in football from my esteemed classmates has seen me sitting for far too many lectures than recommended by doctors to maintain mental health. For the first time in eight semester the defaulter’s list does not have the honour of including my name. A sad reminder of how incredibly boring this semester has been.

Anyway thats it for now. Signing off hoping for more frequent updates ( Yes, I can hear the multitude praying for the exact opposite but turn a deaf ear to their protests!!)

A Few Childhood Memories

“Girls are like slugs. They serve some purpose but it’s hard to imagine what.” Reading the above panel in Calvin and Hobbes took my mind back to my childhood when my sentiments closely echoed those of Calvin. Getting bored on a Saturday afternoon with nothing to look forward to for the next three days, I decided to make this long post about a few childhood memories.

1. The routine miracles : Calvin would have been proud of the fuss I made about going to school; until my mother had a idea that to me today classifies as pure genius. She convinced me that if i prayed real hard; I would get chocolates in my lunchbox and my water would get coverted to orange squash. It really did happen and these little miracles reconciled me to spending a quarter of my life-span gaining knowledge. It was only much later that I realised that God while perfectly capable of turning water to wine had entrusted the duty of converting water to orange squash to my mother. In fact she even hid behind the curtain to eavesdrop on my prayers to find out which chocolate was to appear miraculously in my lunch-box. What appears to us strange and wonderous in our childhood days always seems to have a perfectly logical explanation later in life

2. Wanderlust : A restless day in school saw me wander away from my class unnoticed. School was just across the road and going back home seemed like a great idea. How a 4 year old boy crossed the busiest street in Jaipur on his own without becoming road-kill is still unknown and may count as a miracle ( A real one this time!). After finally managing to pack me away to school my mom was just sitting down when she heard me singing outside the house. I knew the colony but didnt know which building my house was in and I was just roaming around singing ” Tinkle Tinke Litti Tar” at the top of my voice. She rushed out and picked me up and the story had a happy ending except for my teacher who got a real-talking to for negligence of duty and was suspended from duty.

3. Cats : She had just given birth to 5 kittens and was protecting them much like a lioness protects her cubs. National Geographic was not around those days and I unwittingly picked up one of those kittens. A blur of motion is all i remember till her claws made contact with my face tearing away half my right cheek. I remember blood pouring down my clothes and tears streaming down while I howled like a dog that has just been stoned. I was rushed to hospital while she was thrown out of the house. Since then I have had a dislike for cats and I believe from their reactions the feeling is mutual.

4. Girls : To prevent me from crying my lungs out while being bundled to school; I was dragged at times to a neighbours house whose two girls went to the same school. Apparently I found it shameful to cry in front of girls and went to school without a fuss. Looking back I have fallen prey to the wily ways of girls even before I could comprehend their purpose on this earth!

5. Fireworks : It was two days before Dusshera and the older boys were stuffing crackers into the effigies of the demons for Ram Leela. I was standing by as a curious bystander and suddenly noticed a lighter that had been left lying around. As soon as I figured out how to operate it; I tried to set fire to the big heap of firecrackers lying around. Luckily it was snatched out of my hand before I blew us all to kingdom come. In fact his timely action is the only reason why I am still alive and writing this blog today ( Yeah i know what you are thinking; He should be publicly hanged for his foolishness!)

And with that I have posted enough for the time being. Of course I did not remember all the details and its only through painstaking research that I have managed to present my reader(s) with the accurate and unabridged version of these events!

Secrets to a Successful Blog

So here i was sitting contemplating on various random things like why did my accent suddenly turn psuedo- american while talking to staff from the admissions centre of universities and whether it was possible that someone had created a voodoo doll with my resemblance when another pertinent question struck my consciousness. I was checking my number of profile visits or people who read this blog ( I admire your courage!!) and found the number to be around 20. Considering that half of these were made by me to see if me clicking my profile increased the number of visits ( it does!) and whether people read my blog ( quite obviously not!) I am left with a clientile of maybe 3 or 4. Quite staggering figures those!!

Like any newbie blogger I had started this blog with the intention of catering to a wide audience, things were not quite working out the way i intended them to. So like I said at the beginning as a learning experience I decided to take a closer peek at some of the more well-read blogs and ascertain the reasons for their success . And then the reason for my abject failure struck me like a dumper truck at 100mph. I had been wrong from the very outset. Most of my posts were light-humoured sarcasmless takes on quite ordinary life events which I believed was what people looked for in a blog. But considering the posts in other blogs I have figured what really attracts the viewers must have one or more of the following characteristics.

1. The post mush show you to be a deeply disturbed individual struggling to find normalcy in a world where sanity is revered. So stuff like ” Nothing makes sense. I’m headed forward with no fixed destination. “is lapped up by the discerning audience

2. The message in the post be profound. In fact the profundity should be of such an extent that the reader necessarily must not be able to make head or tail of it. In some cases even the blogger must lose track of what what is being said and trail off into a plethora of unrelated big ( may not be GRE but substituting a big word where a smaller word could have been easily used) words that may not convey any information but make the reader draw his breath at such a sumptous offering from the literary gods.

3. Poetry : Who does not like poems. So fill your blog with poems while not giving a damn for meter or rhyme of any of the silly, archaic laws of poetry ( who the hell even knows about laws of poetry?)

4. The most important rule : people love misery. Seeing other people stumble through life’s obstacles is an elixir for most giving them an experience akin to nirvana. Obviously Buddha was quite off-the-mark when he said true love for all nature is the path to moksha and eternal bliss. All you need to be happy is see a fellow human-being suffer. And if you can make Anne Frank pale in comparison in your blog you have a wide readership almost instantaneously hooked to your blog messaging you to update it at all costs

5. Last but not the least express your deep anguish at any tragedies and wonder aloud when will things change, finish your blog and then get back to your normal life. Express your deep desire however to change the system in whatever way you can (obviously you cant!). The reading public loves to see rebels without a clue ( oops did i say clue i meant cause!!).

After preparing the list I sat down to see which of my posts confirmed to any one of the desired characteristics and sadly you the regular readers are already aware of the answer.

So here I am faced with a difficult decision : to stay true to the intent with which the blog was initially started or to change my style to accede to the demands of the reading public and transform myself into a media celebrity and gain instant popularity.

Keep watching this space with bated breath ( too much??) to find out What Happens Next!!