It's pretty, it's pure, its' white

Yep you guessed it right, its snow. Had never seen so much snow in my life. Last year it snowed alright but was just a tiny bit of snow for a while and then it was gone. This time around however its been magic. I realized I don’t miss sun as much when it snows, everything looks so bright even at night. Watching the snow flakes come down reminds me of magical tales, Narnia, Santa Claus and Christmas. Everything's bathed in snow, the roof, the trees, the wind even the fence has snow and its simply beautiful. I tried to click some pictures but what you see and feel can't really be captured, it has to be seen to feel its magic.

I wonder why snow is white, why not blue or pink or purple? Is it the reason we associate all good with white? If the sky looks blue, my brain would accept the blue flakes, wouldn’t it? But it shines and falls silver.

That said, snow can be nasty. It turns into ice making it impossible for driver to keep their cars in their control. I saw a lot of worry, annoyance and smirks on the faces of drivers behind the wheels during past few weeks. Car skid, circled 360 degrees and even came to a stop right in the middle of intersection. I was all happy watching people make snowman/snow women (he he,don’t ask), kids playing in snow and all that. But then the weather turned worst, weathermen predicted storm and compared it to the blackout storm which I thank god had not witness. For person like me watching such news can be quite stressful I tell ya. There were talks, news and emails about blackout not for few hours rather for days. Suddenly the dependence on electricity all zoomed in to me. No electricity means chilled icy water, no microwave, no heater, gosh no internet (god please give me a merciful death!). Wouldn’t my life come to a standstill? Jas rather seemed prepared. He had heard stories and wanted to be equipped for the worst. So we headed to Fred Meyer. There were so many people buying so much, that I winced. Their trolleys overflowing. Candles, Firewood, lots of food (really lots), torches, even portable stove. I totally freaked out. Everything I saw in those aisles I just wanted to buy, what if it gets too bad, too cold. What if this was it, Seattle under snow for all I know. I didn’t want to die without eating my favourite candy, muffin, the list goes on. Its all about food isn't it? Well Jas simply gave me a stern look and explained we weren't going to die and there is no reason to be all dramatic. Hmph! But we did get firewood and fire starters. I was all happy that we could still warm even during the possible blackout. But let me tell ya my friends, lighting firewood is a tricky thing. One has to know how to set it on fire. And believe you me it isn't easy, not until you learn the trick. Other than Holi (Festival of colors) in India, I had never tried to light a fire really. Oh yeah there were a couple of other times, I did watch people light fire but that was such a long time ago. Back in Goa at my GrandPa's house we had this large, very large, big black pot. This pot was large enough to boil water for four baths. This was when I must be around 10 yrs old and we didn’t have a heater in Grandpa's village house. No it wasn't the stone age. I remember watching Grandpa light fire at the first light of sun to boil water, and me sitting close by to remain warm. I never really tried to learn. I also remember Mum and other women in the house lighting fire to cook food. We were one of the few houses in our village that had electricity, gas stove and water pump but still for some reason Mum and my aunts cooked food on the chul (the wood fire stove), just for the authentic taste. And of course it was just for a few days, back in Mumbai everything would be modernized.

Well the point is, I never really paid attention to learn how to light a fire. And when it came to lighting firewood after several tries I was left with lots of smoke and just a little part of the firewood turned black.Grr!. After a lot of trial and errors we came up with a few steps to light the firewood and I thought I should share:

1. Never try to light one log- What was I thinking when I tried that, for almost 2 hours, trust me doesn’t work. You end up inhaling a lot of smoke.
2. Place two logs one above the other with fire starters in between- Yep this is the basic, and yeah confirm they aren't going to fall off, almost twice the burning upper log fell in my lap hmph!
3. Use candle to light the fire starter- Matchsticks aren't that useful so go with the candle and please don’t try pouring oil,aftershave, spraying deodorant or air freshener. Yup tried all that and doesn’t work. Don’t look at me like that, ok that's stupid I know but I was just reinventing the wheel, trying to light fire without reading or knowing much.
4. Blowing air helps- But again don’t stick your head in the fireplace and blow air on the firewood, gosh that’s crazy unless you want to find out how funny you look when your face is covered with black charcoal-ash. Use a book to fan some air into the firewood, it will catching roaring fire once you stop.

Finally don’t keep playing with the wood and fire all the time. Enjoy the warmth and fire, its amazing. Get a cup of hot tea, coffee, a good book and sit by the fireplace reading, listening to music or just chatting.

Twitching Eye

For past 2 days I have a twitch in my eye. Bizarre, isn't it? It's that annoying involuntary fluttering of eyelid. And it's annoying much. I have tried 10 different things trust me:

1. Reading a book with one eye closed, wish had that pirate eye patch- Doesn’t work; you end up with a watery eye and wouldn’t have understood a word of what you read.

2. Tried splashing cold (Extreme cold water) on the eye, numbing it to death (heck its minus 7 degrees here) and there I was trying to give my eye some shock treatment- Doesn’t work; your hand becomes numb, there is involuntary shivering of body added to the involuntary twitching of eyelid. And that stays for good 20 mins.

3. Extensively googled and read up on twitching eye and came across some very horrifying diseases of which I believe my symptoms match none- Yet again, completely useless; There was something about basal ganglion(the part of brain that's responsible for controlling muscles). I knew it had to do something with my brain, that one part of my body which insists on living independently. Some researcher in one of the sites I googled states it may be a hereditary problem. Thank god my Ma doesn't know this scientist. Ma believes depending on which eye twitches something bad or good would happen in future. How? Don't ask me and please don't dare ask her. Any who I absolutely can't remember which one is the good eye and which one is the bad eye twitch. They also mention that the eye twitch can be stress related too, heck yes, I had to watch 6 episodes of "Kyle XY" over the weekend which I couldn’t , wouldn't that be termed as stress?. The point I want to make here is- Don’t search for answers on the net, you won’t find any, rather you will end up reading tip on latest fashion, how to keep your skin glowing in winter and shopping deals at best.

4. Tried poking my finger into my eye when I wasn't aware: How, I wasn't aware? Don't ask me, like I said my brain works quite independently- This also doesn’t work, I ended up poking the wrong eye, don't know how. I was focusing too much on the eye-being-unaware-thing. The twitch fades and reappears with a new vengeance, so don’t try stabbing, poking and such. Any please please don’t try applying mascara. I managed to turn the eye black trying to do so. Ahem!

5. Eye drops some pages suggested- Now that's one thing I am scared of, last time I used it I was blinded for half a day. Forget it. You will have to visit a Doctor for prescription who will look at you as if you are a moron. No one goes to the doctor for an eye twitch. You may believe you have some horrible terrible disease with the symptom of an eye twitch, but the doctor will simply send you home.

So after a lot of pondering, I came up with my own theory. Genius aint i? The theory is-Distraction. Yep that's it. Find a really soft chocolate cup cake with a good amount of chocolate cream icing. Prepare your mind not to count the calories, think about how yummm it looks. As soon as I got my eye on the cup cake, the twitch disappeared he…he..he. I relished the cup cake and promised myself satisfying my guilt that I would stay away from sweets and ice creams for two days, ok may be a week, ok ok 12 days. Gosh!

Anywho if you guys know some awesome remedies for eye twitch do share!

I want one!

Can you think of a title for this one? I cant

Friday, wasn’t it a day of hair oiling back in India? I remember Ma telling me not to oil my hair on Saturday coz it was reserved for God Hanuman. There was something about him taking a oil bath on Saturdays and such. I don’t remember how that connected to not oiling my hair. Though I think she never strongly believed in it and hence wasn’t too pushy about not doing that. I also remember the long queue to the temple where people stood with oil and leaf mala to give Hanumanji oil bath. Often times the floor of the temple would be oily and slippery. I remember those little black things at the bottom of the oil vessel they handed at the store never actually fell on Hanumanji and how I always spent a few more minutes to ensure those always fell on Hanumanji. This annoyed most people behind me in the queue waiting their turn. Then came the part where you circled Hanumanji’s idol 7 times. Yes 7, not more, not less. So you keep count ok? There would be around 3 or 4 people circling Hanumanji at a time and each one reciting their own shloka, loudly enough for everyone to forget what they were reciting and start over again. Often times I either lost track of the sholka or the number of rounds completed. Unless Ma pulled me saying I started with her and we are done. Well the shloka reciting and round tracking wasn’t the only challenging part. Ensuring that your salwaar doesn’t get messy since the floor would be quite oily would be another one on the list of challenges. But the most and trust me when I say the most challenging part would be to- not slip and fall down. At one time I saw a women slip straight heading for a young college kid who also slipped dragging this other women to a dramatic fall. Me and my sis were behind them and gosh that scene was one funny picture. I don’t mean not to sympathize with them but people, people if you try walking at like some super speed, you have to carefully watch each step, don’t ya? Unless you know skating or something. The young college kid intelligently made his way straight out of the temple. Whereas the ladies ended up loudly blaming each other and the entire queue came to a halt. But even then going to temple on Saturdays was a ritual we never missed or at least tried not to.

Whenever Ma tagged along she found at least 20 people she would stop and talk to, grrrr. All the auntijis would then start the trickiest quiz. The quiz would involve some challenging questions which you try to answer with best either a yes or no. Each time the level growing tougher, question demanding more and more details. The aim was to collect as much information as possible, no harm intended. Question of the new stuff some neighbor purchased and information of how the 5th servant of some neighbour’s cousin from Vikroli quit would be provided without asking. Also there would be some critical evidence these auntijis would have such as how the women who fell, this wasn’t the first time she fell. Gosh now how does one manage to assimilate so much info I ask? Is there a stupid, stupider, stupidest kinda thing? Anywho this and lots of unwanted noise would then fall on my ears and I think my brain had tuned itself to filter this noise. But now that I think of it, the trips to temple were always fun. There would be nice vada prasad (the south Indian vada). Lots of people around, bells ringing when someone entered the temple, some dude who would ring the bell really loudly and people would look at him angrily and chant their stotra more loudly. The bhatji who seemed to be constantly in some kinda of hurry, managing his dhoti, reciting stotra and hinting people by mere looks and hand movement of where to keep the coconut, where to put the mala etc. And every now and then some dude would step to break a coconut into 2 halves and put coconut water on Hanumanji, thereby adding to the slippery floor.

Yet beyond all this, was the faith people carried with them. If you sat in the temple for a while, you would often see some youngster helping an old aunty (in her 70’s) who never missed her visit to the temple on Saturdays and never missed the 7 rounds around Hanumanji. Some stranger, a tenth grader would go around the temple distributing sweets coz he got admission in a great school. Just sitting there in the temple one could observe so much, isn’t it?

Bake a Cake

This morning there was this big packet of candies in our office kitchen. I saw it when I went to get some water and told myself I would have one, just one after lunch. After lunch I went to the kitchen and it was all gone. Now who can eat so many candies at once? Has someone hid it in their office? I was so annoyed hmph! Lesson learnt- When you see a candy, grab it and eat it. I am so ready for the weekend I tell ya. Just to sleep in a little, not worry about work. And even more ready for holidays. This month and next, wow it’s like 2 long weekends, one this month and one next. So my resolution (Call it early new year resolution) is to experiment one new recipe every week, preferably on a Thursday or a Friday. Thursday to just get into the mood of weekend or Friday to actually celebrate the weekend. While I experiment and try out the new recipe, Jas adds perfection by tasting (now that’s a risk, isn’t it?) and adding any spices needed. Like he says, cooking is no art, just a science. You get the recipe and follow it perfectly nothing should go wrong. Well ahem! So this Thursday we tried Chicken Marsala. The first time I tasted it at Cheesecake factory, I simply loved it. When I looked up some blogs and website, realized its one of the easiest recipes. Am comparing this with rigorous Indian cooking involving grating and grinding coconut and all. So well all I needed was Marsala wine and patience. Voila! Yumm! Don’t believe me, try searching Chicken Marsala and you will find tons of simple recipes. What? Did you think I was turning my blog to some recipe blog? But since you all are so nice and are here reading my blog, I’ll share the link. Go ahead, try it and enjoy. And if any of you know some cool recipe link, please share. One thing I really want to learn is how to bake a cake. In India, there isn’t a huge tradition of baking cakes. My mum never baked one. I never learnt to bake one. Well, she did make some yummy Diwali sweets and I dream to learn them one day. But well, never a cake. Now being a beginner I would like to try out some simple cake, like mix and put in oven types. But I go to the store and look at these tons of packets, there is a dilemma of choice. So many brands, so many options, what to choose, which one? Oops its 5.37 pm gotta go. All you nice people enjoy the weekend cook some nice food and share some cake baking tutorials :)

What do you want to be when you grow up?

And it’s another Friday, time for another post. I don’t know when Friday became the day to blog for me. I guess it’s the happy feeling of weekend that motivates me to blog. Everyone around seems so cheerful and happy, just glad that it’s a weekend. I don’t have any gossipy gossip to share this week, so pardon me if this post seems utterly random. This morning started with watching a baby hippo video and god it made me so happy, yeah that’s how crazy I am. It’s been raining for 2 days straight and I am jubilant about it, even made ginger tea the other day. Seems just like July in Mumbai. When it used to rain in Mumbai I would run to the balcony to remove all the clothes put outside to dry. In that one moment I would look at the sky and forget the dry clothes, put out my hand and try collecting rain drops in my palm. Until Ma would yell “This girl doesn’t do one thing told to her”. Then I would run taking clothes from balcony to living room, dropping them on the sofa, while Ma would look angrily at the floor coz my feet would have wet the living room too. And then sitting by the window in train when it rained, oh how cool was that? I loved the wind on my face. Here it’s too cold to open the window hmph!

This morning my colleagues son came in office. He was screaming “Dad I want to be a fire fighter”. That got me thinking of all that I wanted to be as a child:

1. Wanted to be a doctor: Well yeah, until I realized they cut open stomach and such. I couldn’t imagine blood oozing and well just being around sick people didn’t make it all that exciting. Also my little brain would have squished due to all the trauma of studying those books.
2. Architect: I don't know what I liked about that profession. I just liked the huge drawing boards and sketching images. Until I realized how much math goes into building a one storey building and knowledge of sand and such errrr well I wasn’t so fond of it all.
3. Clown: I just loved that one character at the circus and decided that or the lion trainer, that’s it. That’s what I want to be. Until I saw the movie “Mera naam joker” or “Ek hota Vidushak”. Though I think, deep down am still a clown but putting up the act, nope not in my capacity.
4. Pilot: Oh man having wings, always wanted that. It was cool in those days, when women pilots were few. But the fact that I won’t see much land made me depressed. Skies don’t have trees, mountains, rivers, waterfalls hmph! And moreover I don’t take the whole take-off and landing too well ahemm. So that was dumped too.
5. Soldier: I was the one in my class to sing the national athem as loudly as I could. Stories of soldiers motivated me. I considered their attire was cool. But guess dodging bullet needs some completely different set of skills. One, I suck at running and two I am not sure I could ever shoot a human or any living thing for that matter.

Guess I still have a little streak of all these professions in me. I always was the medicine kit person for my family and loved giving a crocin or a cough syrup to anyone who asked. I still can’t tolerate a frame which is slightly misaligned. I still like to crack ridiculous jokes and make people laugh. Flying kite still feels like freedom. And finally, I am still a patriot, will always be.

Any of you wanted to join some profession you didn’t?

Trick or Treat!!

Sounds of little footsteps and laughter can be heard in the corridor since morning. My back is to the door and everytime I turn to see who is giggling, no one seems to be there. Around 3 pm this happened repeatedly. Finally tried hiding by my office door and suddenly a fairy, pirate and rabbit ran across my office corridor giggling. I slowly stepped out and tried walking noiselessly in the direction they ran. Suddenly I was poked by a fake knife and its hmm what is this? “Trick or Treat” said a 3 yr old, and I think he was a shark. I wonder what’s a fake knife to do with his costume? I looked at his dad who was beaming with pride. I had to sit on my knees to talk to this shark. Seems he wanted a candy no matter what. I had none, so I had to go steal some from next door. As soon as I handed this kiddo candies his face beamed. Boy this little one had collected quite some candies. I walked back to my office and turned on some Shankar Mahadevan songs. Then came a puppet, he asked me what I was listening to and to turn up the volume. Surprisingly he liked Shankar’s “Taare Zaamen Par”. “Cool” he said and handed me a candy. Funny, sometimes how little things can surprise me, totally unexpected. Last year, Halloween had come and gone and I hadn’t noticed. This year it’s what can I say, it’s different. I walked over to Jas’s office and there were so many kids and parents. Parents looked tired and kids looked super energetic after eating all the candy I guess. I saw an alligator, several butterflies, robot, vampires, and tortoise (hmm he was too fast though), also saw a dog wearing a hotdog costume. It was super fun. They have decorated the entire buildings with creative halloween decoration, every office has a basket of candies sitting outside. Among others there were twins in Dalmatian costumes, they were absolutely identical, I guess had their parents not dressed one of them in blue and other in grey jeans, it would be impossible to guess who’s who. A rabbit got scared of a fake spider and burst into tears, I couldn't stop laughing watching that. Whereas a lion almost squished the fake spider. I wonder if costumes reflect people’s personalities, even kids for that matter. I saw a mechanic with tools, this little mechanic dropped a basket full of candies not coz he didn’t want the candies but rather he wanted to check how the chipped basket could be fixed. Dunno why the alligator was crying, I remembered “Magarmach ke aasu” hehehe I know mean isn’t it?

I wonder if I were to dress for Halloween what would I wear. Maybe leave my hair open, put lots of kajal in and around my eyes, put a big rather a huge red bindi on my forehead and carry a trishul. Howz that for a designer Halloween costume? O ya and I would wear a odissi style saree. Also, a rudrash mala around my neck and rudrash earrings. In fact nothing like a kathakali costume. Next time I go to india I got to get one. So what are you guys up to this week? Any Halloween plans?