Tagged Again! So here's more about ME.

Last Movie You Saw In A Theater:
Tare Zameen Par, Enjoy but don’t watch too many movies. Generally get dragged by the family to their favourites.

What Book Are You Reading:
Planet Polygamus by Shinie Antony &

Secret by Rhonda Byrne

Favorite Board Game:
Scrabble. Pictionary. Haven’t played any board games for ages though.

Favorite Magazine:
Good House Keeping and Wealth Insight.

Cosmopolitan Outlook Prevention India Today, Elle, Reader’s Digest. Subscribe to none, just pick randomly while shopping for grocery, and at traffic lights.

When she persuades me to go through it with her, and discuss which hair style, skirt, sun glasses, ballet flats we like, then, my daughter’s Teen Vogue.

Favorite Smells:
Love fresh Jasmine. First rain and the smell of wet earth. Kasoori Methi. Chapattis being roasted on the fire. Also baingan being roasted for bhurta.

Did you mean perfumes? ... keep changing, right now, there are three, L’eau par Kenzo, Issey Miyake L'eau D'Issey and Versace’s Bright Crystal.

Favorite Sound:
Some sparrows outside, some wind chimes, some faraway cuckoo. Sounds of a normal peaceful day.

Worst Feeling In The World:
The feeling that you’ve been cheated and you can do nothing about it. Or you can see what’s being done/or is happening is wrong but can take no action. Frustration and Worry. These can give me heart burn!

What Is The First Thing You Think Of When You Wake?
Wonder what’s the time...

Favorite Fast Food Place:
Dorabjee’s sandwiches,

McDonald’s Strawberry shake and Salad Sandwich,

Idlis floating in Sambar from Coffee House...can’t choose just one!

Future Child’s Name:
More like future grandchild...I like names like Kabir, not attached to any religion or region.

Finish This Statement. “If I Had A Lot Of Money I’d…”
Buy a spacious flat in Mumbai...Cuffe Parade. How much money did you mean? I saw these gorgeous houses opposite Gopi Birla Memorial School, in Walkeshwar....

Do You Drive Fast?
No. Though one day I will...

Do You Sleep With A Stuffed Animal?
No!!! But my cat’s always on my pillow : )

Storms-Cool Or Scary?
Love Storms. Find them exhilarating. Once I saw lightning strike last year, and once a tree nearly uprooted and once hundreds of mangoes falling off our tree...love watching storms.

What Was Your First Car?
My dad’s Maruti 800. On his insistence(read nagging), I learnt to drive on it, then never practised and didn’t drive again until a few years ago. Learnt to drive again, in the same car. It’s been with me for many years now. I love it.

Favorite Drink:
Milk flavoured with Rooh Afzah. Chilled.

Finish This Statement, “If I Had The Time I Would …..”
Create a separate blog for each Cause I feel strongly about, and update them everyday...maybe take out some Newsletters for better effect.

Do You Eat The Stems On Broccoli?
Yes, though I don’t like it. I eat it for fibre.

If You Could Dye Your Hair Any Colour, What Would Be Your Choice?
I am undecided. Healthy, clean, well cut greys OR streaked and highlighted coloured hair? I might try some dark shades of burgundy or brown. That will require regular visits to the parlour? No, I think I will keep some glossy grey strands.

Name All The Different Cities/Towns You Have Lived In.
Delhi, Mumbai, Kochi, Chennai, Vishakhapatnam, Port Blair, Wellington, Pune.

Favorite Sports To Watch:
Cricket.

One Nice Thing About The Person Who Sent This To You:
Dipali: I love the way she writes and the stuff she writes about, she calls herself a dinosaur but writes like she is from 2020.

Today I got tagged by Homecooked, love her food pictures and mouth watering recipes. Warning: Avoid her blog when you are hungry, it’s pure torture.

What’s Under Your Bed?
Dog basket and one doggy cushion, for pulling out conveniently, when the Lab puts up a demand.

And a suitcase (which should go in the loft) pushed underneath after scanning some old pictures stored in it.

Would You Like To Be Born As Yourself Again?
Yes. And live the same life. Maybe start blogging and driving earlier. Other minor changes.

Morning Person Or Night Owl?
Born a Morning Person...over the years I am only alert in the mornings and late evenings! So should it be both?

Over Easy or Sunny Side Up?
Neither.

Favorite Place To Relax:
My room.

Favorite Pie:
Apple Pie! Just out of the oven, and the aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg all over the house. Love it best with fresh cream.

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor:
Vanilla. Black Currant for a change.

You pass this tag to –

Naive Indian

Thought Room

Alankrita

Sraikh

Tags are not compulsory, do them only if you like. Will be delighted if you came back here and let me know you've done it :)

Of All The People You Tagged This To, Who’s Most Likely To Respond First?
I just hope they do it : )

the silliness of loving!

I was thinking of my favourite sounds for the Me Me Tag ....this is even longer than my other favourites, so decided to post it while I decide if I want my hair coloured Russet or Burgundy.

My Favorite Sounds:

The thump, thump of my dog’s tail, and some ridiculous, tuneless singing heard in this (mad) house.

(Being sung to the tune of kabhie tu Julie lagti ha, kabhi tu chandni lagti hai...tu jo achcha samjhe yeh tujhpe choda hai, tujhse ab jeevan bhar ka meine nata joda hai...)

Tu mera idli dosa hai, (THUMP)

tu mera garam samosa hai

tu meri aloo poori hai,(THUMP THUMP )

tu meri garam kachori hai.

tu meri finger khata hai (THUMP and SNEEZE IN EXCITEMENT )

tu mera big toe chabata hai.

dheere dheere karke

tu mujhko kha jaata hai. (LOTS OF DELIGHTED THUMPING)

A late Eight.

Tagged by Imp's Mom :) Just needed an excuse to talk about myself, here goes...

Eight things I am passionate about:

1. My family ... support, love, acceptance, no judgment...lots of freedom and space...

2. Photography: Loved taking pictures all my life, am not good at it, but ever since I remember I have been taking pictures...as a teenager I used to spend all my pocket money in buying film rolls and then getting them printed.

3. Animal Rights: They cannot speak for themselves, if we don’t who will?

4. Reading: Includes Harry Potter, Gregor the Overlander, Narnia series...and before that Bambi, The Lady and the Tramp, Black Beauty, The Naughtiest Girl is Monitor, Fatty, Larry, Buster, ‘George and Fred’...Also ‘Rich dad Poor dad’, which left the kids totally uninterested. And colourful, glossy magazines, gorgeous interiors, Astrology...

5. Blogging : )

6. My own time: Need my own time and space in generous daily doses.

7. Justice Equality Ethics Human Rights: Humans include women : )

8. Writing Diaries, journals, never-posted letters describing boring details of Daughter’s/Son’s newest achievements, when they were babies; ‘to do lists’; ‘Self Improvement Lists’; Goals for 2003, 2008, 2014...; detailed plans for dinners, birthday parties, what gifts, what return gifts, how much butter for how many rolls...

Eight things I want to do before I die:

1. Spend lazy Saturdays, playing scrabble in our favourite club, while Husband plays golf, and then have a hearty lunch under the open sky and coconut palms, watching the sea. Go home for an afternoon siesta and come back for Dance and Dinner in the evening....Not so simple, it isn’t, with all our pets, to do this we need to move to Mumbai!

2. Drive to Bombay via Mumbai-Pune Express Highway.

3. Open an Animal Shelter

4. Travel by road all over India.

5. Say Bollywood style goodbyes to all who matter.

6. Watch my kids settled and happy.

7. Watch better laws enacted to give women truly equal status in this country.

8. Watch the situation of women in all the countries where they are treated badly improve, (the way it has happened in Afghanistan) oh then I will die in peace!

Eight things I say often:

1.Thank god for blogging, wish I had started earlier!

2. I think you need to straighten your room!

3. Have you reached there? Give me a missed call...

4. Let me call and ask my mom!

5. Thank God!

6. I guess I have to accept some weight? Don’t want to look like a witch!

7. Another few years and they’ll both be out! (We won’t sit and cry, we will stay six months in India and three months wherever they go, three months traveling, just like the neighbours in number 05...)

8. I am not addicted to blogging!

Eight books I have read recently:

1. A suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

2. Panchali’s Mahabharta - C B Divakaruni

3. The Curious Incident of the dog in the night time

- Mark Haddon

4. A Thousand Splendid Suns- Khaled Hosseini

5.The witch of Portobello Paulo Coelho

6. Interpreter of maladies- Jhumpa Lahiri

7. Atlas Shrugged (a re-read)- Ayn Rand

8. Where the heart is- Billie Letts

And a 9. Planet Polygamus - Shinie Anthony

(still reading )

Eight songs I could listen to over and over:

There are many, many favourites. Quite a few are old favourites, from the days when we spent a lot, if not all our spare time listening to, collecting and sharing music. Friday evenings we were glued to the radio, listening to Ranganath Setlur on a ‘A Date With You’, and we loved to hear, not just our requests, but also our name on it. ‘In The Groove’ was another favorite, at 8 05 PM every day, just after the Sports News.

1. Boyzone - Words

2. Roger Whittaker - Disillusioned Fool

3. Door gagan ki chao mein- ‘Aaa Chal ke tujhe mein leke chaloon, ek aise gagan ke tale’

4. U2 - With or Without you

5. Carpenters - Top of the world, and the less popular ‘Sweet Sweet Smile’

6. Lobo - It sure took a long, long time/I’d love you to want me

7. Sinead O Connor - Nothing compares to you.

8. Beatles - With a little help from my friends, actually anything by Beatles.

Eight things that attract me to my friends:

I have done this here.

Four people I think should do this tag:

Alankrita,

Krishna Aradhi,

Philip,

Jyoti.

...and anybody else who fancies this tag :)

Edited to add small print : Tags are not compulsory, do them only if you like. Will be delighted if you came back here and let me know you've done it :)

I now pronounce thee Man and Cook. (you may now kiss the bride)

How Indian Homemaker learnt to enjoy cooking...

When I started writing a reply to Alankrita’s comment where she 'wondered at people who trained their daughters to grow up and get married' I found my reply was getting even longer than my usual long comments, *sheepish grin* ... I went on and on, remembering, rambling... There’s something so wonderful about sharing the stories of your growing years. ...the pleasure of talking about the powerful hands that were rocking our cradles; buying us “Amar Chitra Katha’, Enid Blyton, Nandan, Tintin and Parag; hands that insisted we needed a hair cut when we were dreaming of competing with Rapunzel; hands that talked about giving in and compromising, but fought to make us strong...my mother could confuse!

My mother did not say marriage was not a priority, she said she will not raise us to be ‘traditional’ wives, and 'they will find us' suitable husbands.
She was unconventional in a confused, inconsistent way, using tradition as and when it worked for her. As a teenager I had no interest in cooking, eating or in anything to do with food or kitchen. My mother showed me an article in a women’s magazine, it cribbed (in 1980) about how modern girls do not like to cook. The article said it was the mothers’ responsibility to make sure their daughters learnt to cook, because no matter how successful or modern she became, a girl eventually had to cook. It was just the sort of stuff you would expect from such a magazine. I wrote an angry letter to the magazine, and to my surprise they published it. My mother saw it before I did, and was delighted to see my name in print. She was convinced with my written logic, or maybe she thought if the magazine published it, it couldn’t be so wrong. Her half hearted efforts at ‘compelling’ her daughters to train to become good wives and daughters in law ended right there.

To the horror of some aunties, I did not even know one 'dal' from another. I was not proud of it, anymore than I was proud of despising Physics and Maths. But unlike Physics and Maths, cooking seemed sacred. It bothered me, but it did not make me enter the kitchen. People’s response never bothered my mom though. One of her lines was "This is the time for books and learning, if she is smart she will earn enough to hire a cook when the time comes. And do you think we will marry her off to someone who only wants a cook, then maybe we should train them to fetch water from the well also, who knows what future holds for them?"
I thought my mother was just being typically loyal to her children, she made many conflicting statements. She could not even dream of us not getting married, but she did insist that what mattered was not how like a perfect daughter in law a girl was brought up, but how the parents find the right kind of husband for her.

For all this talk, she was still scandalised when she first saw my new husband make tea. To be honest, so was I. In my family, men never entered the kitchen.

I was even more horrified when we were barely married for a month and my husband announced that two of his bachelor friends had invited themselves for dinner that evening. Why didn’t he ask me first? Now I was going to be laughed at, everybody would know I couldn’t cook. My brand new husband explained that he couldn’t tell them not to come without being rude. They were not coming to eat a gourmet meal, they just wanted to meet us and have some simple, home cooked food. More importantly, he assured me that after a few drinks nobody knew what they were eating, he also helped me plan a Menu. That was easy, I only knew how to make Butter Chicken and how to boil rice. I had a brilliant maid Polamma who had assured me she could make perfect chapattis, (my only condition for employing her) turned out whenever I asked her to make chapattis, she couldn’t understand what I was saying!

I just had the whole day to make an impression on our first guests. I opened my folder of Femina clippings, browsed through Sumit Mixi recipe book and my all time favorite – and at the time brand new, Lalita Ahmed wondering if liquor did really have that effect on human taste buds.

Polamma insisted dosa would go very well with Butter Chicken and stuffed Capsicum, but for that, the batter required fermentation, so she decided she would contribute to the cause with her uthappa, Sambhar and coconut chutney. I had seen Stuffed Capsicum cooked at home, and for this elaborate stuffing my husband helped me chop onion before leaving for work. So finally (the now famous amongst friends and family) menu was ready –

Starters

Cocktail Idlis (made without fermenting the batter), served with coconut chutney both made by Pollamma.

Open sandwiches – chicken (from butter chicken) mixed with mayonnaise (mayonnaise recipe from Sumit Mixi recipe book)

Cheese and Pineapple – cubed

Cauliflower florets, button mushroom, carrots, courgettes served with ‘Pink Lady Dip’ (from Femina, Recipe: mayonnaise mixed with ketchup, any ratio)

Dinner

Butter Chicken (IHM’s favourite then, and the only contribution)

Sambhar (Pollamma’s)

Stuffed Capsicums (mashed boiled potato, chopped onion and pepper stuffing, a joint effort)

Boiled rice (Pollamma)

Uttappa ( Pollamma’s last minute rescue)

Coconut chutney (entirely by Pollamma)

Egg Curry (Another Pollamma creation, cooked with tamarind, never cooked or eaten like that, before or after.)

Dessert

I can’t believe but I have forgotten. Was it custard (Weikfield with easy to follow recipe given on the cover) or was it Gajar ka halwa (made with Milkmaid, easy to follow recipe given on the cover)? Husband can’t remember either!

Our guests, the two bachelors, were thorough gentleman about the unusual menu, unusually cooked. (My husband insists they were not being gentlemanly they were grateful for a home cooked meal. He had been in their shoes.) After that first dinner they ate at our place often, and they and many other friends were welcomed several times a week. They became the guinea pigs for my newest passion, the unbelievably delightful, COOKING. Recipes were shared. We tried many kinds of omelette's, (yes, I could not even cook THAT till then). I was given the never forgotten mantra that ‘all dals taste good, if the tarka is good’.

I couldn’t believe I could actually cook. I wrote long letters home but although my siblings acknowledged my new talent, my parents still think my husband is one accommodating sweetheart!

The moral of the story is:

1.) Cooking is no big deal, can be a lot of fun, if the learner is enjoying the experience. I made sure both my kids enjoy cooking.

2.) Cooking has nothing to do with getting married. It’s a useful skill, just like driving, and everybody, across genders, benefits from knowing how to feed themselves well.

3.) If the food is not good, get the guests drunk :)

How important is it for a girl to get married?

Settled and Secure?

I have always felt that if Indian parents were not too worried about a girl getting and staying married most of their (girls’ and their parents’) problems will be over. From the careers they choose, the clothes they wear, the way they walk, talk everything they do is done keeping in mind the only future the daughter has - being a good wife to some magnanimous guy who will condescend to marry her if he's bribed with enough dowry.

Indian parents will sacrifice their daughter’s dreams to get her what they consider a dream catch...oops match.

The girl must marry, not necessarily to someone she gets along with, but to someone who will provide her security. This choice, generally from the same community, is not foolproof. But the girl must pay with her happiness, peace of mind and freedom for SECURITY. Sometimes she must risk her life for SECURITY.

Just think how easy our daughters and we will breathe, if we weren’t raising them to be secure wives, if we raised them not as girls but as individuals.

If we raised them to be self reliant, loving, responsible, independent, thinking, caring, dependable, confident, happy individuals.

If we unshackled our daughters from the ‘duty’ of getting and staying married.

If we allowed our daughters to marry as and when they meet the right kind of life partners;

If we supported them when they chose to marry someone who respected them as equals; someone who took it for granted that they will use their own heads to think;

Someone who loved his own family and respected and cared for hers; someone who accepted and expected her to do the same;

Someone who was a human before he was a man, not someone who would compete with her, but someone who thought they, he and she, made a team.

No pressure to give dowry. No worry that she will not be the proverbial ‘son’ to you. She will proudly be your daughter, and if you wish your Shravan Kumar in your old age.

Can you imagine how a girl’s life would be if her parents were not so worried about her getting married?

Edited to add: If happiness is truly what we want for our children, let's show them how to be responsible for their own lives, and let's set them free. Read what Dipali Taneja has to say, here.

Edited again to add: I found this absolutely fantastic post, read it to know how perfect our present day, marriage scenario is.

Added on 13th Sept 2008 : And month's later I find Amrutha's post on arranged marriages simply brilliant, and some of the comments discuss marriage and divorce.

Draupadi's Mahabharata

Phew! Just finished reading the book!! Since both our epics make me very angry with their reinforcement of (or recommendation of?) gender and caste bias, I grab any reading material that discusses them unbiased. This book is simply Mahabharata retold from a thinking woman's perspective.

What did Draupadi think of her mother in law Kunti who made Arjuna share his wife with his brothers? Her power struggle with Kunti; her relationship with Krishna; her lack of a relationship with the one with ‘ancient eyes’; all this beautifully retold.

Draupadi tells us her side of the story. She tells us what she thought of being married to five men she did not love. She talks of which one of Kunti’s sons made her heart beat faster. Like Scarlet O’Hara of ‘Gone with the wind’, Panchali pines for the one she can never have. She is in love with a man her husbands hate. Some of her most unfortunate decisions spring from this yearning.

Whether or not you are familiar with the Mahabharata, this book makes an interesting read.

Not as good or as strong as Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’, it’s still very much worth reading.

I wish somebody will write Ramayana as told by Urmila, Laxman's wife and Sita’s sister. Urmila spends fourteen years of Laxman’s exile in learning and argues against Sita's banishment. Even a child without any learning can tell it was wrong but since people listen to learned talk, powered with vedic commands, such a book would help people take a relook at our patriarchal, archaic texts.

Editing to add this very interesting link by Anuradha, who says, "Here is a fantastic interpretation of the Draupdi as she should be seen in real sense a - rebel and dare i say a feminist instead of a victim." Do take a look, here.

Edited to add: And read about Modern Draupadies here.