Saturday 20 October 2012

Durga versus Meredith.

A delicious Moha Shoshthi spent at home watching TV, reading, chatting on the phone, suffering headaches and power cuts.

I have watched many, many, many episodes of Grey's Anatomy. What is that you ask? My dear intellectual friend, kindly bring a paper and pencil. Good. Now draw four, or five or may be six dots. Name the central dot - 'meredith' , name the most shapely, adorable dot 'Shepherd', others don't even bother. Now draw lines. Lines connecting the dots. Lines hovering around the dots. One line passing through three dots, making triangles etc. Now over the lines write "sleeps with", "dies", "marries", and "has a baby" ...  you now have a blueprint of the plot. But it's still very watchable. Don't you dare judge me.

As usual I have digressed, what I really wanted to say was, that I feel like a surgeon and I shall analyze the syndrome of thakur dyakha.  No one actually sees the Goddesss, which in some places is a 15 inch thingy worshipped by a puroot (I spell it this way, since it rhymes with churoot, and I always imagine the former with smoke coming out of their orifices) . So the Goddess that symbolizes this Divine power, exists as a schizophrenic entity- the gigantic one to enthrall us, and the tiny one, worshipped by the puroot. Then we go about messing with our Pujor chuti and do more hectic stuff than we do on non-chuti days. Pujo-madness, pujo-frenzy, pujor-jama, pujor-egg-roll ... all to lull us into the comfort of believing that we are very sane people who don't shop all the year round,  people who don't touch junk food at all etc. Baudrillard baby would have had a field day with us. We would be like field rats in his lab.

Anyway.

There are species like me, who are very enthusiastic as long as they are well-fed, not feeling pee/poop/puke-ish and not experiencing any leg ache trauma. Then there are species like my father, who are self-proclaimed nastiks (atheists), yet will visit a pandal in the North Pole if they can. Just for fun.

Of course he visits the pandals on his own. Now that I am an adult (an obese one by the grace of God), I can't be dragged into these adventures.  So he comes home in the afternoon and all I have to do is ask , and he rattles off half a dozen names- Shuruchi Sangha, Badam Tola, Cheshotti Polli, Mudiali.... I beg him to stop. He proceeds with the description of each pandal and each idol, and the opinions. Camera? That's for less articulate losers. My father told a man with an umbrella that he was doing a great job by carrying an umbrella, that saved not only him but others behind him in the queue from the heat. The man apparently was very happy because others had been complaining about poking and stuff... losers of course they were. huh.

Once we went to visit the Mohd, Ali Park Pandal , where the theme was peace. The Durga idol had pigeons instead of weapons. The symbolism was lost on my father, and he asked the already-exhausted organisers- "ki korechen dada? payra, payra, payra ...eta Durga?" ... we pretended we did not know him.

Then once I was dragged into a 'bojra', a 'launch' which sailed on the Hooghly between the two bridges and it was supposed to be beautiful. However it was not because the loos were dirty. Then Tanusree Shankar's troupe was supposed to dance on another 'bojra' and we the lesser mortals were to view this divine dance from our own 'bojra' after that there was hindi songs and ... Biriyani.

The grand ride home was in the car of a  friend's crazy relative who took revenge on a driver who did not know the directions by not giving him the directions. Crazy relative kept mum as the driver took wrong turns and kept asking 'dada kon dike jabo?'  Friend, who sat  beside me , sms'd "I am sorry" throughout the ride as I glared at her. My bladder would have burst. It did not. I live to tell this tale.

There was a time when my entire maternal family went for a whole night trip. One aunt of mine, eats a lot, her children too eat a lot but she always thinks they are starved, UN-calendar, rib-cage-exposed-type babies. Anyway so she ate a lot and just before the car reached College Square- nature called. Very loudly. She was led towards the pay-and-use toilet. A concerned relative offered a bottle of water you know just in case. This relative's son immediately screamed ... "Ma ota jol na...Sprite."

I don't know if one has ever seen the Goddess on these trips. I haven't. (Had I been a guy I would have been pleased with other kinds of Goddesses but even that is impossible. ) The point is, I have seen enough to stay at home and watch Grey's Anatomy on Shoshthi. Shantih.

PS:  Latest Updates-
a.Bitchy woman doing her research in yankee-doodle nation is back town.

b.Father mistook one person's wife for another's and wondered why the father-in-law of the wife1  was spending so much time with wife2. Mother revealed that Father-in-Law of wife 1 is the father-in-law of wife 1. Mystery solved with a hearty laugh and zero embarrassment. Welcome to my family.

c.If someone asks my youngest niece her name, she says "Ami Ghosh", her mother's name is "Maa Ghosh" and father's...of course "Baba Ghosh".

Okay Bye.






Saturday 13 October 2012

Influenza

Don't you just love the word Influenza? Of course you won't if you think of a mucus filled snout but just think of the word as a word and forget the meaning ( Signifier ... Signified...remember? Yes now forget it.) If you still don't love it... then say it out loud...I n f l u e n z a....  it has a certain musical quality.

If it wasn't a disease it could have been ...erm...

"I am Princess Influenza ..."

"I'd love to visit the exotic land of the Influenza tribes."

"Harry Potter stared at Professor Gogoretti as he performed the 'Influenza' curse on the mule, of course Hermione wasn't looking, she knew it by heart."

etc.

Hmm. Beautiful.

Now let's come back to mucus-filled snouts. The problem is all good things in life are fast disappearing. Earlier whenever I had a cold, a tiny part of my heart felt great, because it knew that I would have two teaspoons of that delicious, orange Triaminic Syrup. Then it became Numenic Syrup. Then it disappeared.

I also loved the white tiny sweet Homeopathic pills which never did any good. Now that my mother allows me to do what I feel like, I don't choose Homeopathy treatment, but I miss the pills. Then there were green rubbery capsules filled with some kind of oil. You just had to put one in hot water and inhale the steam, capsules dissolved and emitted a nice smell. That has been banned.

Now all I have is disgusting Otrivin which leaves a bitter aftertaste and Cetzine without which I can't live through a cold and which makes me sleep like a log.

Anyway. Bye.


Tuesday 9 October 2012

Paneer Roll : Pet Pujo

Since I'm not shopping for Pujo, this is my kind of pujo, pet pujo. Hari Om. Let's begin!

Okay so many of you may be seasoned cooks out there ... and you may feel this post is silly but I don't care. I am going to do this. I made two yummy paneer rolls for breakfast (okay post-breakfast, coz breakfast at 7 a.m. was Maggi ... m still regretting that !) . Well now that I have wolfed down the rolls I can put up the pics. This was basically my take on this recipe.

First I prepared a marinade with yoghurt, turmeric powder, garlic paste, besan, ginger paste, chilli powder, garam masala, and kasuri methi. Whisked all that and then added the paneer cubes. Left it for 20 mins during which I chopped up onions, cucumber and coriander leaves.



Prepared the dough with atta but added few drops of oil with the water. Then made tedha medha rotis ! (Don't you dare criticize ... it's my first time! I am super happy about it!)



And getting the paneer cooked on high flame for about 5-8 mins, don't worry if you have extra curry, it dries up in the end.






Then it was all about assembling ....



and eating!



Okay bye.





Saturday 6 October 2012

Masterchef Favourites from the previous seasons.

Yet another Masterchef season is over. And for the umpteenth time , no NOT India. I don't watch the India series, so wouldn't know. The indian series brings Aishwariya and Akshay Kumar so I don't give a damn about it! I'm talking about Australia. I have swollen lymph nodes, a wisdom tooth that has decided to grow horizontally  and I have work, but my head tells me that I want to blog about Masterchef right now. Thought I'll list some of my favourite contestants.

Disclaimer: Series 1 was not aired in India. So my post refers to Seasons: 2, 3. Not 4, because it's too fresh in my mind and I'll end up putting all of them here. Especially since I had so many favourites: Andy - Ben (the love-buddies), Kylie, Julia (Dessert queen), Mindy, Amina and Alice.

1. Marion Grasby . Twitter: https://twitter.com/marionskitchen


Who doesn't love her? With a smile that makes her eyes invisible, she just strode into our hearts with her amazing dishes. She won so many challenges and was a power to reckon with in this particular season. She made some of the toughest dishes in the competition. She didn't win it but we all know she's a winner! Love her. Here's a blog post by a fan, written after her elimination : http://ruesdeparis.blogspot.in/2010/12/marion-youre-being-missed.html

2. Jonathan Daddia: https://twitter.com/JonathanDaddia Okay. Towards the end he was not winning the challenges and cooking mind-blowing stuff. Yet he was cute. I liked him. A Lot. He faced god knows how many eliminations and survived. Loved the way he got psyched up when he met Heston Blumenthal.


3. Callum Hann:

Finalist of the season at 20. Boy did I want him to win! Young, super-cute and a super cook. Loved his smile and his desserts!  Website: http://callumhann.com.au/

4. Hayden Quinn: Sexy surfer who is a great cook. Need I say more?  If you didn't watch that Cronulla beach challenge girls, you missed it BIG TIME! My favourite was a fish and chips dish that he cooked in one of the challenges. Was really sad when he was eliminated.  Website: http://www.haydenquinn.com.au/



5. Kate Bracks: Such an inspiration! All the way through. After the retro-coffee-cake, she sort of stayed away from the spotlight. But she grew from strength to strength and in the end, I don't think there was anyone who wasn't supporting her. A mum with a dream, who chases that dream. Love her... and her coffee cake and of course that Gingerbread house...Mr. Adriano Zumbo's masterpiece. And guess what? SHE WON!

6. Dani Venn: She's crazy (Korean rice burger anyone?), she's fun and she's passionate. The only person to have won two immunity pins in a single season, says a lot about her skills. Some of her risks didn't pay off but she was never too scared to try! Love her spunk. Website : http://danivenn.com/



This was fun. Might do a separate post on Season 4 Favourites. :) And perhaps one on the most irritating contestants (read cry-babies and overconfident ones). Okay bye for now!