Spatula
When the moon is close to the horizon, it appears larger than it actually is. This is known as the Moon Illusion.There is a similar trick that our eyes play when we look at our faces in the mirror. Who is that handsome man staring back at me, they seem to say. That hair, the eyes, the smile, Bollywood, sign this man up already. And then you look at yourself in a photo and you are shocked at the ghoul faced monstrosity you see.That receding hairline, that double chin, those eyes, partly shut, that gaping mouth, halfway through a word. To be fair, I have never had any presumptions about my appearance. It is what it is. I have what can be described as an approachable, familiar face.
There is a new series on Netflix, The Big Day. Indian weddings are supposed to be mental, I think it’s what the goal is, a participant in the documentary proclaims. The weddings portrayed in the series are lavish, extravagant affairs with the mega rich trying to outdo each other. One of the trademarks of the modern Indian wedding is that they are becoming very personal, a bride to be, proclaims. Each wedding has a personality of its own, she continues with no sense of irony. My own wedding, July 4th 1998, was relatively simple and elegant.
I was at a Lindt outlet store recently. The buckets of truffles, dark and white, hazelnut and pistachio, the pralines, the beautiful chocolate figurines, the Swiss Luxury Selection, the large, blue Champs-Elysses Box, the smell, that sweet, velvety, luxurious cocoa smell. Heaven. Growing up, the closest I came to this experience was the Cadbury’s Eclair. Wrapped in purple cellophane, it was a hard caramel candy that the advertisements claimed had a soft, gooey, center. More often…
There are certain delicacies that I have never quite appreciated. The durian, hailed by so many as the king of fruits makes me want to throw up. It smells like rotten eggs and has the texture of phlegm I just gurgled up. Anchovies, supposedly a perfect blend of smoky, salty and fishy, are just plain old nasty, slimy slivers of goop. And what’s with Blue Cheese? Why would someone intentionally want to bite into something that has so obviously gone bad. Which brings me to Paaya.
Tomorrow, Muslims celebrate Eid Al-Adah, also known more popularly in the subcontinent as Bakri Eid, very liberally and probably incorrectly translated as the Eid of the Goat. For people unfamiliar with this festival, this is not a celebration of the goat as the name might…
Growing up in Pune, we never had access to fresh fish. There was fish caught from the local rivers and lakes but to us snobby Konkanis, it tasted like mud, and surely no one wants to eat mud. The Konkan is an area along the western coast of India that runs roughly from the beaches just north of Bombay all the way down to Goa, a length of approximately 300 miles. Apparently the region also extends into Karnataka and Kerala but for most us growing up in and around Bombay, anyone south of Goa is a Madrasi, so … Konkanis also share a sense of superiority over their neighbors on the other side of the Western Ghats who they refer to collectively as Dhaknis, people from the Deccan plateau…
Every Sunday morning after watching Micky Mouse and Spiderman, I rode my bike to our local market. I haggled with the ladies selling produce under towering tamarind trees to buy onions and tomatoes and cilantro and green chillies. I then walked my bike to the butcher, Bhagwan, and ordered two kilos of goat meat, before heading back home, riding furiously to be in time for the next episode of Sherlock Holmes.
Later in the morning my uncle used to drop by and usually one or two of my dad’s close friends and together they had raucous, animated discussions on politics and religion and memories of their youth….
When my mother was still a toddler, her father built a small cottage facing the Arabian Sea in a sleepy little town called Murud. This is the house where my mom and her seven siblings grew up, and where I, as a kid, spent most of my summer holidays. Starting the morning with a dip in the ocean, gouging the creamy flesh from green coconuts for breakfast, feasting on fried fish and spicy shrimp curry for lunch, followed by a long siesta under the areca nut palms in the backyard and finally ending the day watching the sun set behind the Kasa sea fort in a vibrant and generous spread of pastels. Such wonderful memories.
My mom tells me that during the long monsoon months when the fisherman stayed home, and the village market was too wet to open …
It’s Eid today, and it’s a strange one. No family around, no friends around, no shalwar-kameez to wear, no deciding which jamaat to go to, no fighting over parking at the mosque, no embarrassment over going into ruku while everyone else is still raising hands, no oily samosas and halwa puri to buy after namaaz and no going to the bank to get five dollar bills for Eidi, no rush to get back home.
I’ve had the good fortune of celebrating Eid in Singapore, in Washington and in Toronto, in Miami and in Bombay, but the fondest memories are those from my childhood in Poona. Wearing freshly …
There is a special bond amongst cousins. We’ve known each other since we were kids and we continue to keep in touch as we get older. Someone gets married, someone has a baby, someone dies. Every few years the gang gets back together and after whatever ceremony or tradition has been completed, we lounge on sofas or lie on the floor, sipping chai and talk for hours. Sometimes we talk about politics, sometimes philosophy and religion, often music and movies, but the topic we bond over most is when we talk about bodily excrement in all states of matter, solid, liquid and gas, especially gas.
My daughter asked me if I had checked out her Christmas Wish List on Amazon. We don’t celebrate Christmas, I said. Yes, we do, she said. No we don’t I shouted back. And a few minutes later I was clicking through the list getting stuff she doesn’t need that I know I shouldn’t buy. Poor parenting, at its very worst.
I hardly see okra in any dishes served in the US. Maybe in southern cooking, in a gumbo or deep fried with batter, but it never does justice to the unique flavor and texture of the vegetable. Bhendi Masala, on the other hand, now that’s a dish worthy of this magnificent vegetable
The fruit must be firm and should have a light green color, just this side of yellow. My favorite way to eat them is by cutting it into bite sized pieces, sprinkling it with a bit of salt and chilli powder, a pinch of sugar and some lemon juice. I”ve grown up calling this peru ka raita. Sure, the purists reading this will be like, yo, raita is prepared with yoghurt, and what you have with biryani. Whatever. Biryani and yoghurt raita may be the food of kings, but this simple dish, full of flavors and memories, is worthy of any Michelin star restaurant.