Archive for the 'Good things' Category

Eat cake

Published on September 20, 2012 in Good things and You live, you learn. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I’ve always envied people who know how to bake. My boss’s wife makes this amazing home-made cakes, which he usually brings for us during his birthdays and they are always yummylicious. I, on the other hand once tried baking a cake 5 years back and accidentally set the oven to microwave instead of convection – a realization which took place only after I smelled the cake burning and was horrified to find the so-called chocolate cake take a shape that looked identical to dog shit. I still made my guests that day eat the central, unburnt portion of the “cake” and that was the last time those guests ate at my place ever since.

Of late, a colleague and expert master cake-baker recently inducted me into the world of pressure cooker baking, which I didn’t even know was possible. She makes these delicious sponge cake in her pressure cooker, which I find is way better than the commercial cakes you find in the market. She gave me the recipe and soon, I made my first eggy-smelling, centre-portion-undercooked cake but I didn’t lose heart and even after that disaster, I made four cakes in a row – each of which turned out to be better than the previous ones.

This one was a simple, sponge cake made in the pressure cooker, thanks to my microwave oven conking out for a long time now. I didn’t know that you could use the pressure cooker instead of an oven and thanks to another of my colleague lending me a separator and a baking dish, I could bake many cakes in a row.

 

The recipe for this sponge cake is pretty simple:

Beat 3 eggs (I am so lazy, I did this directly in a blender of the mixi), 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup refined oil, 1/4 cup melted butter and 1 tea spoon vanilla essence.

Sift 1 cup flour and add 1 teaspoon baking powder. Add this to the blender and let the mixi do your dirty work for a bit. Add milk if it gets too dry down there (milk is protein, not lubricant – sorry, this is due to too many “Finding Nemo 3D” ads I’ve seen on the internet these days)

Line your baking tin with oil or butter. Add the contents of your blender. Put the separator at the base of the pressure cooker and place your tin on top. DO NOT add water inside the pressure cooker although if you want to ignore this warning sign I saw everywhere on the internet, you can go ahead and tell me how things go.

Bake on high flame for 5 minutes, then lower the heat and bake for another 35 to 40 minutes. Turn off the gas (can you believe LPG cylinder is now going to cost Rs 750 in India! No wonder Mamata walked out of the UPA 2, I would have done the same :D ) and don’t open the lid for another ten minutes.

Do that usual toothpick/knife in the centre thing, although 45 minutes is waaayy too long enough to cook a lousy cake – and if it comes out clean, your cake is ready to eat – although you might want to let it cool down first, if you don’t want a burnt tongue to begin with.

This was the second chocolate cake I baked and although it looks like a brownie, it was pretty moist and yummy, if I say so myself:

I forgot to take a picture of the cake and had to make do with taking a photo of the cut pieces inside the tupperware jar. Thats why the depth in the photo, if you are perceptive enough ;) If you want to make a chocolate cake, my guru said that you have to reduce the flour to half a cup and add another half cup cocoa powder. This cake cooked sooner than the earlier one, and thats because of less flour, my guru again said.

The next cake I baked was a Marble Cake. Now, this was my favorite cake back in college days and although it didn’t taste nearly as perfect as the delicious Kerala bakery ones, I still feel happy with all the swirls, which is done simply by making figure 8′s with a knife.

So now that I became fairly confident in my ability to bake, at the very least an edible cake, I decided to try, what was originally a banana bread, which later turned out to be a banana pound cake of sorts. Either way, the crust was the best part and now I am looking forward to making other cakes, especially a rum soaked raisin cake of which I am told, takes at least a week’s time for the soaking to be done.

Now, these are no way, by far the best cakes you have seen on most blogs. But for me, I have come a long way from baking a dog-shit lookalike cake to edible, yummy home-made cakes. The next thing I want to learn is how to put the icing on the cake, of which I am sure my first few attempts will look like a real car accident. But here’s to learning from mistakes, of which at least, I am an expert.

My dear students

Published on September 5, 2012 in Good things, hopes & dreams, Life as it happens and Making it better. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Thank you all for your good wishes today on Teacher’s Day. Thank you for celebrating and acknowledging the role that we play in teaching you for these three short years, a time that gets over in the blink of an eye. Candidly speaking, I may not have always behaved my best with you – god only knows how many times I had to lecture you out of the classroom on random topics under the sun but it was done in the best of intentions. I only wanted you to not to make the same mistakes that I did when I was a student. It is so easy to get carried away by other things that you tend to lose sight of the important things in life.

As a student, it is not only your duty to make the best of facilities life has to offer you but also to glean as much knowledge from your teachers as you can so that you get the best education while your young minds are still fresh and capable of learning. Some may misconstrue this sense of push negatively but this is a small price to pay for setting you in the right direction, a realization which you may develop later on as you all grow older, just as I did.

As a teacher, it is not only my job to impart education but also to inculcate a sense of responsibility to your society in more ways than one. Discipline to yourself and the people around you contributes to your growing up into a mature adult and becoming a credit to your society. Punctuality, respect to elders, politeness, cleanliness, decency, growing a positive attitude and being helpful to one another goes a long way in developing your character as an individual.

Today, I remember a lot of  my students with whom I have been fortunate enough to interact with all these years and maybe leave a trace of impression for the better in their lives. I had a student who studied with us only for a year and besides being the class topper, he was fortunate enough to get a job in the Indian Navy and he now sails around the country but never fails to call me up whenever he visits home. When he left the college, his mother had come to collect his certificates and when we told her about how good a student her son was, that he was such an intelligent boy and we are sorry to lose him even though he was surely leaving us for better opportunities, she had tears in her eyes – this is a memory which I have not forgotten to this day.

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Happy birthday, dad

Published on August 14, 2012 in Good things and memoirs. Closed Tags: , .

Today was my dad’s birthday. He would have been 59 had he not left us for his home up above in the heavenly skies eight years back. My dad was born Youngden Norbu Dorjee in a remote village called Kewzing, South Sikkim, the eldest of eight children. He once told me that there had been another Youngden in his school so he chopped off his first name to “Young” and thats how he became – Young Norbu Dorjee, forever young at heart!

He finished his primary education in Kewzing’s government school where the teachers used to teach them their ABC’s like this: “A bhan” which means ”say A” in Nepali. So the entire primary students used to chant – “A bhan!”. This was followed by “B bhan” and the students on auto pilot chanted “B bhan!” You get the idea.

My late grandfather had been the mandal of the village. This translates to being the headman/ head honcho/ Big Boss of the village, give or take. My dad used to tell us stories about their old wooden house being burnt to the ground once during election time when the then chief minister didn’t take very kindly to their support of the opposition – you know, like those old pot-broilers of politically challenged Bollywood movies. Thankfully no one got hurt and the entire family shifted to a different location and constructed a new house in which my cousins and I spent many years of our childhood together. When I went back to attend a family gathering some years back, I was amazed to see the old house, which somehow seemed so big to me back then, was actually a modest two storied wooden building somehow remembered to be larger than life by all those childhood memories.

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Looking back

Published on August 14, 2011 in Good things and memoirs. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

 

A friend tagged me in this old school pic today in Facebook. This was probably taken way back in 1990, last day of school, class V – St. Thomas, Gangtok.  I’m in touch with a lot of my friends in this photo, thanks to Facebook. Unfortunately, I also dont remember some people in the picture and have no recollection of interacting with them. I think of them and hope they have done well in their lives. I wish them happiness and if we should ever meet again in the future, I hope we get to talk at least once and recall this wonderful moment of carefree childhood.

I see many friends in this picture whom I’ve lost touch with completely and even Facebook could not bring us together. I remember the brief moments when we interacted, said a few words, spent a few moments together and I now wonder where they are. I remember them fondly and wish them well. I hope to meet them again someday and recollect those simpler times when we were kids.

I remember my teachers in this photo and how two decades flit by in the blink of an eye. I dont know where they are but I want to thank them with all my heart for making me the person that I am today.

And to the rest of  my friends with whom I had the wonderful opportunity to spend those glorious years of childhood together AND have the privilege of strolling down memory lane, thanks to this pic, salüt!

Goodbyes are not forever, goodbyes are not the end. They simply mean we’ll miss you, until we meet again ~ Author Unknown.

Vacation – 2010

Published on January 22, 2011 in Good things, Lee, Life as it happens and Wanderlust. 14 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Auroville beach - December 2010

I love the beach. As I walked on the warm sands of Auroville beach, I realized that it took me 10 years to come back to the ocean. Imagine. How in the world did I ever let that happen? This does not bode well. Pencilling in “New year 2012 at Goa” immediately before I forget. Also waiting for Sidin Vadakut to reply once again to my email but I guess thats pushing it too far.

So back in August this year, I had been wondering where to spend my precious winter vacation. Precious because this was my first vacation post baby girl Lee as well as post M-Tech 1st semester, my brain had sufficiently stopped working and needed a kickstart in order to usher in the next semester. Oh yes, the M-tech thing. We go further back to May this year.

I was happily on my long extended maternity leave when a colleague suggested applying for further studies from July at SMIT, Majhitar. It all seemed impossible at that time, what with going back to studies after (gasp) 9 years and that too, with a baby and (gasp gasp) I still hadnt got a maid to help around the house. But like all good movies, everything started to fall back into place and before long, I gathered enough courage to leave my baby with the maid at home while I went about gallivanting around for stuff like work and studies.

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Among other things

Published on July 7, 2010 in Good things, Lee and Life as it happens. 19 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Another July, another humid summer. A new baby and an almost forgotten dog. 2010 has been a hectic year. And as a friend on Facebook reminded us, half the year is already over (insert as many exclamation marks as applicable here). I have been home since February and finally joined work this monday. The transition was painful . It still is since this is only my second day back to a dusty desk and a rickety chair, which was okay when I left, I know for sure.

It is so humid. It is so hot. On a plus side, I liked being back in the classroom after one whole semester. I even started teaching the very first day of college (roll eyes as applicable here again). As we all know the rules of teaching, no one takes the first class after a long vacation. At least thats how they did it back in my alma mater, Calicut. I thought it was AICTE approved a general rule or something.

The baby is now 5 months old today. She smiles and laughs and coos and aahs and cries at will and makes me want to quit my job and be a stay at home mom. Little Lee’s started to roll over these days although she lacks the necessary hand to leg coordination for crawling… so she just sprawls on her tummy and goes *waahh* for help. Once I even caught her dozing off to sleep on her own. Such independent streak already! The mommy in me, suddenly finding herself being redundant, couldnt help but wake her up and put her to sleep myself again.

Sigh. I could have gotten used to being on maternity leave for life.

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I (heart) Bhutan

Published on January 7, 2009 in Good things and Wanderlust. 18 Comments Tags: , , .

I had wanted to visit Bhutan for a long time and finally set off towards the Land of the Thunder Dragon this December 30th. The journey from Sikkim to the Bhutan border town of Phuntsholing takes about 7 hours by road. A long drive indeed and I believe I slept most of the way. So after traveling for what felt like eternity, we reached Phuntsholing at 3 pm. Now the difference between the two sides of the border is startling. Jaigaon, the last town of India is this bustling, clouds of dust-billowing-in-the-air, crowded place where cows rule. As you cross over to Bhutan (while the Bhutan police looks suspiciously at the back seat of your car – not their fault actually, cause we had piled our luggage in such a manner we appeared to be smuggling something across the border), you feel more clean and the slope uphill made me feel immediately at home.

chorten

Memorial Shrine, Thimpu

No major formality to enter the country, really; just drive through in your car and you’re in a foreign country! Easy as that. Once inside Bhutan, we hunted for a hotel to dump our baggage and in a hurry to eat, ended up choosing a not so great hotel although if we’d just circled the block, we’d have found much nicer hotels. I’d forgotten how it was to be a tourist.

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An award, an interview and a wedding

Published on December 11, 2008 in Good things. 14 Comments Tags: , .

Two things happened to me today. First one – I became the runner up in the Avant Garde Bloggies award for two categories, About Me and Interesting Tag Post. Yay! Thanks to all my readers who voted for me as well as others who didnt vote for me but that didnt matter cause I got second place anyways.

Second one is that Ms Ghazala Khan of pakspectator printed my interview today. I first thought she made a mistake in asking me for an interview. Its only when she printed it, that I realized it was for real! My first interview. I tried to answer as best as I could without goofing around too much. Do take a look.

Oh yeah, and I attended a wedding in the evening today. Drank a glass of red wine after ages. Didnt know anyone else present except for the groom and maybe five other people there. Discovered the bride to be such a sweetheart even though it was the groom who was the friend and that I was meeting her for the first time. Witnessed a lot of noisy kids playing ball right outside on the balcony. Honestly, I was tempted to inform them that it was a wedding not a picnic (even though those kids probably knew more people than me)

And here comes the interesting part. Met my best friend’s ex boyfriend at the wedding. Didnt nearly recognize him cause the last time I saw him, he had these strange dreadlocks where his hair was supposed to be and more importantly, he didnt seem to recognize me then. The moment I saw him today, I was determined to pretend not to recognize him and give him one of my famous cold shoulders (you should try it sometimes) The plan completely backfired when he waved at me first and gave me a smile which made me nod back at him in return and acknowledge his presence there, damn it!

Just got back home and am in the process of calling up my best friend and telling her all about her ex and how he was sitting there with a girl; I’m pretty much sure I saw one.

I think I’ve finally begun to appreciate the art of gossiping.

Have you voted yet?

Published on November 29, 2008 in Good things. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Now I dont believe in excessive propagation of thine own blog. But if I could nominate my own posts for these popular blogging awards, I can ask my faithful readers to vote for me as well.

Avant Garde Bloggies Awards is this really fun thing wherein you get to vote for your favourite posts in various categories. I had a lot of fun going through the posts that made it to the finals and believe you me, there are some seriously interesting bloggers flaunting their stuff.

I got nominated for two categories, Best “About Me” and Most Interesting Tag Post.

Did I tell you to vote for me already?

The prize for the best posts are these nice badges that one can put up in their blog. Which is why I for one cannot understand why this guy’s ranting about a judge being nominated over 20 times and all that jazz.

Its all in good fun and one should participate in good spirit, knowing that winning isnt everything.

Or is it? ;)

If you’re wondering which posts are nominated but are shy to ask, here’s my post for Best “About Me” – 28 things about me. This one is for Most Interesting Tag Post – The A to Z’s of me.

I should have asked you to vote a long time ago since the contest closes on 6th of December and the results will be out by the 11th of December. If I dont win, I’m blaming it all on my preference for procastination.

I had a great time reading some very cool posts. And I hope so will you.

My dad

Published on September 11, 2008 in Good things and memoirs. Closed Tags: , .

Me and my dad werent always best of friends. If anything else, we probably fought more as father and daughter than normal enemies would have in their lifetime. He had a terrible, terrible temper – the very same one that has been passed on to me, I’m afraid. People would literally be afraid to be near him whenever he used to be in one of his moods. Which was pretty often.

We once had a lousy argument regarding the small kid who was the servant’s sister (who used to stay with us). Something pissed him off and he went berserk. Thats when I sprang in defense of the little kid. One thing led to another and we yelled pretty much hard at one another. Before the rest of the family realized what had happened, I packed up my bags and stormed out of the house. I walked a while before I realized that I actually had nowhere to go. Then I went sobbing to my aunt’s house; thank god she took me in and I stayed with her for two days before we made peace and I could go back home.

He wasnt always all that bad though. He never lay a finger on me or my brother while growing up. Now, the kind of person I am – you’d want to do me bodily harm if you got the chance. In that sense, I am really my father’s daughter. He also gave me a lot of space as an individual. I remember he used to hand me my letters, whenever I used to get any, intact and unopened. On the contrary, my mum used to open them, read and then demand an explanation for each of the sentence the other person had written.

When I first left home to study in Kerala, he accompanied me and by the time we reached Calicut, I remember him whispering to me – Where on earth did you choose to study, my daughter! The distance eventually did us both good since we werent in each other’s faces to scream at one another any more. The love between us just grew more and more because distance indeed made both our hearts grow fonder.

When I decided to get married, he didnt approve of it because of the differences between our religion, caste and what not. Like an adamant brat, I went ahead and eloped because after all, youth does deem itself invincible. The first time me and my husband entered my house, my dad had tears in his eyes as he made us sip milk from a bowl with his own hands, as was the custom.

It has been two and a half years since he passed away. And I miss him terribly. There’s no one left to get mad at and no one to love either. I dont know why but I suddenly thought of him after a long time. Its ironic how you realize the value of the other person only when they’re not around.

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