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shahana dastidar
Friday, 11 September 2009
Ok, Enough of this
misty green warm nostalgic fuzzy feeling shit. The party's over. I don't like it anymore. Its been raining since day before yesterday night and I'm sick of it. Traffic jams and chaos on the roads. The weekend's here and I don't want to be indoors waiting for it to stop pouring.
I've learnt a new word today. From Singapore. Yes lah, its 'shiok'. The Mutton Rogan Josh I had yesterday was Damn Shiok!
It warmed the cockles of my heart
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Its been raining all day....
and the forest behind my house looks lovely - misty and green. Its called the Jahanpanah City Forest (!). It's interesting this concept of a 'City Forest'. From what I can make out there isn't much forestlike bio-diversity, most of the trees are local thorny Babul (Acacia) - nothing particularly pretty or interesting .....or useful......except for the much needed green cover it provides to Delhi.
I like working indoors when its raining outside. I'm reminded of when I was studying for my Xth Board Prelims in Jan '95 when it rained a lot and was freezing and I was snug in my huge purple Razai trying to memorize Sanskrit Shabd & Dhaatu Roops.
For the Shabd (noun) conjugation of Man (Nar), the first lines go
Nar(uh) Nar(auh) Nar(aaah)
Nar(um) Nar(oh) Nar(aan)
Nar(en) Nar(abhyam) Nar(ebhyee)
forgot the rest (there's another 4 or 5 lines of noun conjugation in Sanskrit)
Somehow rain in London never put me in any sort of similar mood....except a sort of generally disgruntled grey one. But even that mood got muted due to overuse. One can't really get dramatically and violently disgruntled every day.
My brother met Gautam Gambhir at work on Monday, played cricket with him, got his autograph ... and hasn't touched earth since. Unfortunately I've been out of the country so long, I can't recognise the newer people on the Indian cricket team including Gambhir. So while I've been supportive to him in his joy, I haven't been able to work up quite that level of enthusiasm as perhaps I'd have for Tendulkar or someone.
And as I take root and feel the tendrils curl up between my fingers and wind themselves around my laptop binding me to it forever, I work tap-tap-tapping into eternity....and feel everything vanish. Has cricket restarted? Is India playing somewhere? What's up with Arsenal? Does Afghanistan really have a new president? Did Samoa really switch from American left-hand-drive to Aussie right-hand-drive? Is a South-African pigeon carrying a data stick really 96% faster than South African ADSL broadband?
And most importantly,
Did I really fall so sick because I quit drinking vodka?
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Some recycled poetry....
from me. To explain my absence from the blog yet again.
one lung withered shrivelled grey
one lung a mucusy miasma
lovely weather in delhi, a perfect monsoony day
but of course i have the bloody asthma.......
I think its a bit more than asthma this time. It seems to have evolved out of flu and then mutated into something quite nasty. Anyway at least the fever's gone down, the headache's eased up. Now the only issue is the breathing thing. Or lack thereof.
Anyway I see my last post was about the Onam meal that I had. I discovered Kozhambu (the zh is pronounced as an 'r' rolling it out from the back of the mouth) is Tamil and not from Kerala. However there was a very spicy Imli (Tamarind) chutney that I pretended was the same and treated with equal love. There was Payasam which is a sweetened milk dessert. In fact there were two versions! One was with rice, sort of similar to the Arroz con Leche that I believe is common in Latin America. And the other one was with Vietnamese Jackfruit! Awesome
I love Jackfruit. I loved it ripe and sweet with sticky rice that we had in Bangkok and Penang. And I love it raw and cooked like in the Bengali style. But its one of those foods you know - people either love it or hate it. And when I say hate it, I mean it makes them feel like throwing up. Ripe Jackfruit (like its nefarious cousin, the Durian) has a unique smell that some people (like me) find ok and some other people (like my mother) find absolutely vile, repulsive and vomit-inducing. If you are intrigued, I suggest you rush out to your nearest oriental/ Chinese/ South-east Asian grocer and get a whiff of either Jackfruit or Durian.......and then we shall know which camp you belong to.
Incidentally, it is for this very reason, that carrying Durian on public transport is a fine-able offence in Singapore and I think they're trying to ban it in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur as well. If they haven't already.
There are ten million pictures of both the Durian and the Jackfruit on the web so I won't bother copying those pics here. My only gripe is that most of those photos show no human scale. A fully grown Jackfruit is HUGE. One needs both hands to carry it like a baby.
Yesterday being unable to sleep, I switched on the TV and watched a few minutes of a movie called
Scary Movie
Part 3 (?!)
with Pamela Anderson playing a schoolgirl (??!!)
Dubbed in Hindi (?????????????!)
Fascinating as it was, I had to switch it off after a bit because it was making my headache worse and I'd started convulsing and frothing at the mouth. But some day I will see it in its entirety. When I am healthy and whole and FULLY PREPARED for it.
Will now push off and take some medicine or something to kick-start the breathing process again. I last took a breath about 3.5 hours ago and it really is time for another one.
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My heart is broken....
Arsenal lost to ManU last Saturday.
But we were winning first. Before goalie Almunia made a mistake and let Rooney score.
And then Mr. Abou Diaby made an even bigger mistake - A SELF-GOAL! CATASTROPHE!
And Wenger got so mad later with a disqualified goal that he was made to leave the technical area.
And Arshavin tore something during the match and is injured now.
awful
BUT at least Arsenal lost because of Arsenal's mistakes and not because ManU was any good. These mistakes are permissible at the start of the season so stuff can be sorted for later.
I just wish they weren't happening against bloody ManU!
The week just started so badly. First this Arsenal thing. Then yesterday we discovered that my dog has a cancerous tumour that is inoperable. She's 15 years old, that is 105 human years old......just too fragile to operate upon. So we're basically going to just sit here and watch her suffer until she dies
:(
Its one bad news after another.
Anyway
For everyone who's celebrating - Happy Onam!!
Onam is the biggest festival in the state of Kerala - a Harvest festival and a celebration of the golden age of Mahabali, the mythical Asura King who comes up from Patala (the underworld) once a year at this time to revisit his kingdom in Kerala. Also the time for the famous Snake Boat race in Kerala.
(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.......again........ I really do need to start clicking)
I'm having a traditional Onam lunch at my friend's place. I guess on a banana leaf as is usual. Normally it involves huge amounts of aviyal coconut milk stew and pachadi (raita) and sambar and rasam and kozhambu (wait is that from kerala? or tamil?) and rice and chutney and mango pickle and paapad and steamed plantains and dessert - maybe payasam?
Watch this space....
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