Epicurean seasons

Before you read ahead – this blog piece could cause you to feel hungry at the minimum, rob the nearest kitchen, in any case high probability you will salivate: Issued in public interest
One season gives away to another….its perpetually changing maybe not as much for the people at the poles. The thing I like most about changing weather and new seasons is the variety of food that can be enjoyed. The cold drinks in the summer days…lemonades, chilled soda, Aam Panna, flavored lassi or just our old faithful Rooh Afzah. Your thirst can hardly be satiated these 4-5 months of the year. Then westerlies and eastern winds gush in with such fervour bringing the cloudful of rains, and then it just pours and pours like forever which reminds me of a nice reading “Bombay Girls and Bombay Rains”… tongue-in-cheek suggestion of unreliability and suddenness. Never mind, my nostrils catch the earthiness in the air, of the parched dust that soaks the rain, quite an orgasmic experience isnt it?… for all I care is actually deep fried crispy pakodas – any filling will do – brinjals, spinach, shallots, potatoes and cauliflowers, that makes me salivate!! And that cannot go without a hot cup of chai topped up with juicy cuts of ginger…

Gar firduas bar ru-e zameen ast, hami ast hami ast hami ast… Jahangir – quite a lousy emperor in my opinion- said that for Kashmir, its beauty and its heavenliness. Inspired, I decided to go there for my honeymoon in peak winters this year. Once landed I was enchanted with the snow capped peaks, the stay in the houseboat on Dal Lake where the room was heated by burning wood, the tranquility of sitting hand-in-hand in the shikara appreaciating the scenic views or when other salesmen in other shikara’s come up to sell jewels, dry fruits and to photograph you in kashmiri/pathani/mongolian/iranian attire and poses …all the same but gives them the incentive to click more to make you pay more… now you wouldn’t dare refuse your newly wedded wife. Anyways back to my gastronomic agenda, what I enjoyed most on my entire 6 day trip was our national food – piping hot Maggi in the middle of the dal lake, at Zam-zam restaurant (the last one at sonmarg before it becomes inhabitable), by the river lidder in pahalgam, at the golf course in gulmarg!! Coupled with a nice cup of Kahwa – (herb tea with dry fruits) is total bliss that can make you forget anything……and who told you I am romantic?? I fervently believe that instant noodles have been the greatest invention of mankind.

Winter is the time we eat, rather stuff ourselves with creamy, cheesy and buttery delicacies… the onset which arrives at Diwali – the time to relish the sweet savories. I actually don’t buy any for myself but the fridge refuses to be stocked out thanks to friends and family. And there’s no reasoning wife/mum would take to allow me another piece but it runs in the family to quietly sneek in at half in the night and devour the awesomeness. Recently gifting trends have only helped – chocolate boxes, candied dry fruits and hand made cookies. Waking up to stuffed paranthas, lunching on makki-ki roti and sarson ka saag, and sleeping off to a belly full of daal makhani and a generous helping of gajar ka halwa. Enough!!! Or did I miss the daily evening staple of tomato n cream soup, which paired with grilled sweet potatoes eaten like you are scooping icecream from a waffle cone… nothing beats the warmth and contentment.

Now since Thanksgiving, I have been waiting for that heavenly rum and fruit christmas cake…would anyone care to oblige? In my case it’s never a question – I live to eat, and love to eat. What about you?...

Life...Delicious ambiguity

Read this on a blog and loved it...

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learnt, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.” - Gilda Radner

Here's the blog link...very nice readings:

http://deeviations.blogspot.com/2010/09/life-it-teaches.html?

Change is challenging!

Life is slowly changing… as we learn during MBA change is often the most difficult thing... However what is very ironical is that even though change is very exciting and almost each person on the face of the earth wants to feel this excitement we all are so precautious about it. Such a livid approach to what comes new in your life…but even so I am a little discomforted by it.

Last few days I have transitioning from one role to another at workplace; this has required me to double myself into working on Business as usual at one end while training myself on the other role. Even as I am enthralled by the technicalities of the new role, I am so attached to the previous one that I find hard to let go. Humans like me can get bored and attached to the same things at the same time. While in college, I always complained of the oil dripping chhole bhatures served every Tuesday dinner time, I now miss the forsaken ritual.

Sometime I feel the fear myself, if i would be defeated by the unknown and the unexplored. But even then I reform my opinions to the fact that to be successful in life one need to look for challenges, and by challenge I mean what discomforts each droplet of me. I am my greatest challenge at times, which to me betters the benchmark theories of GE. What can be written down or expressed cannot be impossible, infinity exists in our minds and not on paper. We can strive to create our own challenges, burn ourselves day and night. I am enchanted at the thought of the fact that daVinci could write with one hand and paint with the other at the same time. God blessed him with two parts of brain much like any of us but he trained them while we keep one in the store for neverday.

I was reading a nice blog piece by Sadia Dehlvi on www.thedelhiwalla.blogspot.com, about Ramzan fasting. More nicer than the entry were the numerous responses put up by the readers. No doubt fasting in Ramadan is auspicious and one of things every Muslim needs to undergo to be called one, never-the-less it is quite a challenging experience. I mean it can be relatively easy for people working on an EMEA shift but to someone working 9 – 6 it requires patience and devotion. Compulsion sometimes and also to be among equals as better drives people, one reason due to which some of us mortals give in to hunger while on the outside we may be fasting. Purely speaking it is our soul that should fast, not the liver. Soul fasting can mean abstinence from some but not renouncement. One can express his devotion by giving up something he dearly loves for a month. I am no one to question a religions long surviving practice but yes we have to think hard as times are for sure changing. Compulsion should drive donkeys not humans.

Well said by Anatole France, “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” The perils of change often lead to the making of a tougher individual, while I am changing on a personal and professional front I hope it does some good to my future. I pray to be placid in mind and gullible to new knowledge. For now I feel like the slim matador on a new mucho grande hot headed bull, I cant fall off the back for I fear the stampings while I am conscious that the bull will for sure throw me away…Cheers to life!