Poha, with no oil

It is absolutely possible to make tasty poha without oil. This is an adaptation of my mother’s Sunday brunch recipe.

Slice an onion. Cook over low flame in a clay pot until soft. Add chopped potato of the size you prefer and sprinkle 1/4 tsp salt (to extract water from the vegetable). Mix a bit, cover the pot and let it be for a couple of minutes. Stir occasionally and add water as needed to avoid sticking to the pot. When potato is half-cooked, or whenever after five minutes of putting salt, add 1/4 tsp turmeric. Stir and continue to cook covered (reminder: stir occasionally). Once done, remove from fire. Repeat with onion and cauliflower, adding 1/2 cup chopped coriander and two chillies (cut as you like). In parallel, soak barnyard millet flakes (about two fistfuls) in water for 2-5 minutes, and then squeeze out the water and set it aside. Once the cauliflower is cooked, add back the cooked potatoes and the millet. Mix it gently over high flame for a minute or so, basically till it becomes hot. Serve in a bowl, after sprinkling juice of one lime.

Enjoy!

What about the morning coffee?

After years of thinking and feeling coffee is indispensable the first thing I wake up (other than my thyroid tablet), I discover it is not so. And I cannot get over the loss of needing to choose my coffee bean carefully (shade-grown, single estate, LOCAL). I have been having some random green tea instead, happily.

How is that even possible? Was it all a symptom of the tyranny of the clock? 

As the workload has dissipated in the last few weeks of the notice period, I have been sleeping better. Netflix binges continue but they start sooner and therefore I get fed up after the same amount of time but it is earlier in the night. The McDougall diet is being followed 95% of the time; which is actually not a diet, it is the way my mother fed us in my early years, except with no oil, which means I can eat even more. Not in a rush to prepare meals (I have refused to have a cook, I mean, we have retain some semblance of being human), I have been able to get fresh produce every other day instead of weekly; and I can cook two versions of something Man also wants to have. Which means we have one fight less in a day about how I don’t know how to cook masalas (well, masalas cook differently when using significantly less oil). My skin looks better (that cannot be a placebo effect) and I may have begun losing 1-2 lbs a month (slow but I am fully fed). I don’t get off a series of calls so even smoking has gone down to one. My nose is not stuffy 100% of the time.

An interesting side note: Yesterday, I had to suddenly wait up for a US-based person to respond because a team member screwed up and was on my email till 11pm, and lo and behold, I had binged on two sandwiches (filling was fine, the bread wasn’t) and a piece of chocolate.

I seem to be on my way to becoming my father. And I might just live to see the post-pandemic world.

Blossoms and Gangarams and Select

New book lovers in the city get to know quickly about Church Street. In the first visit itself, realisation dawns this could be heaven; there are too many stores, too little time (on the base price Church Street/Brigade Road parking ticket for sure). Select of course continues to be in my pilgrimage but it perhaps attracted a certain kind when I had walked in for the first time in 2003, let’s say, older (sad but true; I fit right in mentally, even when time was on my side).

Channelling my inner Marie Kondo, I had recently organised my bookshelf to make space for MORE and also to create order so I can actually find what I want at any point in time. And to my delight, there were 43 pieces of printed things I needed to get rid of (including Woody Allen’s Complete Prose, which I cannot bring myself to read now, let alone watch his movies).

I finally got to Blossoms today. Even BC (before Covid-19), I hadn’t been there for a while. When driving in, I found it earlier on the street than I was expecting to, and a news article about its new building flashed in my mind. Unsure whether it had relocated or expanded, I decided to unload the books there itself. It’s on the 3rd floor and helpful building staff helped me cart my books up (the lift doors were impatient with the number of transfers required to make it up in one go). With a sense of anticipation, which grips me at the entrance of any bookstore, I stepped into Heaven No. 1. After an hour, I left with a feeling of disappointment. The folks willing to help didn’t actually know much and did not leap with excitement when faced with a genre they were unfamiliar with. I realised it has become a Crossword during its decline. Of course, I still picked up a couple of books, including a find of the year! Prefaces, by George Bernard Shaw, likely the same copy I had gifted a man so many years ago (before realising he was not worth a 1st edition of a difficult to find book)! I had bought it the last time from Select. And when the non-affair had ended, I remember debating whether I wanted to be the person who asks for things back. To my utter horror, I wasn’t, but today, I feel vindicated. Good people do win. Ultimately. Because he must got the sense to sell it when moving out of the city (concocted story; but there couldn’t be TWO first editions floating around here.)

Gangaram’s is now right next door on this unfamiliar Church Street. Hoping to find Bril Ink there (it is a local family-run business, with acclaim in nutty fountain pen groups all over the world, but cannot be found here!), I clambered onto another lift. They stopped doing anything but books! And clearly the staff from the Blossoms (of yore? of imagination?) has moved to Gangaram’s. The man who ambled towards me informed me I could keep the books in my hand on the side table; he asked what I was looking for and took me to the right section (I blurted out yoga for some reason and I had no interest in more of that right now); woman at the billing counter smiled. Heaven No. 2! Books were organised even within a shelf and I could browse without getting cross-eyed and jangled nerves. Seven books and a couple of discussions and a promise to find me a book with better paper than the India market is seen worthy of, I pranced out.

I was hungry so didn’t make my way to Select. But then, I have been purchasing from it sporadically because of a couple of young whipper-snappers have made the effort to haul them into the century (i.e. IG and WhatsApp sales, anyone?) 

Changes everywhere. Who would have thought?

“He is older”

And so am I. When did that happen?

It feels just like yesterday that the promise of potential was everywhere I looked. I could change the world, become a corporate success Miss Sloane style, win a Booker or a Nobel, uplift a village into tinsel-town prosperity, be declared a hero, run 100 miles. 

What’s left after years of chasing money, dreams and then again money, is damage to the body and an exhaustion of the soul. And inspite of the productivity, self-improvement and wellness industries all around (the last by itself worth $ 4.2 trillion), exhorting one and all to stay on the wheel, all I want to do is run away to the classics and talk/debate with my friends, my family. Free from the tyranny of the clock. Realisation of mortality and fewer lucid years left in the account can allow shaving away, wrenching out, of what one doesn’t want. The cost benefit analysis gets clear and sharp as a diamond. 

I recently wondered whether I had spent too much in the pursuit of things that ultimately didn’t matter to me and whether I could have gotten here faster. And then I hear the sound of money and say no. The journey so far hasn’t been exactly bad either. In fact, it has been full of drama and the new and friends and love and laughter. 

Oh dear. I am indeed older.

Buying books like they will run out

Perhaps they will. But admittedly, there is no reason for me to believe it.

Anyways, the Five Books site had a log on mystery novels from Japan (I go weak at the knees on anything Japanese, no idea why). And two got added into the many I have ordered this month.

The Monjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo is a locked room mystery. Did you know there is such a thing? Like, a genre within genre? It felt like a nice Agatha Christie, with Kosuke Kindaichi as the eccentric detective. The back cover promised he is Japan’s most famous detective. Well, there does seem to be some promise to be a counter to the egg-shaped head and tisanes of Poirot. Though the extent of Western influence on someone like me is telling, as I never struggled to imagine the context of murders, the descriptions of houses, musical instruments, whatever. I had to Google a lot (well, not a LOT lot) while reading it (I gave up towards the end).

Exciting!

A Mexican lunch in an Indian home

I love Mexican food. Not that I know much about it other than tacos that I love making at home. But I do know tortillas are made from masa harina, because I make me own. Did you? No, right?

In my continued search of doing the least amount of work in creating delicious food, I stumbled upon a recipe, ostensibly from the country I must visit. And made my own desi version.

Mix plain cooked rice, corn and kidney beans. Add in chopped onion, tomatoes, coriander and green chillies. Squish a lime and add salt/pepper if you must. Use proportions you like (for example, there’s no such thing as too much coriander). 

Divine! And you can feel cool too, not having to travel in times not conducive to travel.

Corn seems to have originated in Mexico and made its way to India in the 15th or 16th century. Unfortunately the markets here in Bangalore seem to be flooded with sweet corn or then Act popcorn packets with mysterious ingredients. Which reminded me of bhutta in Delhi - fresh corn cooked over coals, with a half-cut nimbu used to spread the tangy masala all over. Where can I find that here?

So, now I have Mexico on my newly minted travel list. To smuggle back some purple/such corn seeds.

Losing weight

That’s all I thought about today. And yesterday.

Vehement agreements with many a Beatyourgenes podcast lead me to a lifelong membership of the Esteem Dynamics library. While tab-surfing from the library, I came across Chef AJ and the McDougall diet. Which lead me to buying the book promising weight loss (what doesn’t these days - a multi-billion dollar industry that must be linked to Big Food). And I have decided to give the Starch Solution a try.

It can’t be too bad. For it tells me to eat the way I did when growing up. Rice/roti, dal, sabzi. Except without oil. And no pausing potatoes, which increases the likelihood of its success for a Bihari gene pool. I am willing to go further back a generation, towards millets; it will not be much of a struggle, must admit. 

Ooh, maybe I can make fresh Naga thaalis daily - steamed rice, thin masoor dal, alu pithika, chilies chutney and oying. Man will also stop sulking, having to add only some pork or beef.

Here’s to Dr Lisle’s promise of not losing my mind.

Leaving the rat race

Finally, it is done. Or will be done. On 15 September 2020.

My head is full of plans. And my email app of invoices of books I have ordered out of fear of becoming incapable of spending without a monthly ka-ching. I even bought a freaking beautiful, hand-made fountain pen (who knew India had gems like Ranga Pens that are coveted around the world but unavailable here in retail) but that is a post for another day.

The first focus is a personal temple, i.e. my body, which is unrecognisable from five years ago, when I had rejoined the organised workforce. Next is my brain, which has become a showcase trophy for the neuroscience principle of “use it or lose it”. If I was a patient meeting Drs Shepherd and Grey, the scan would reveal emptiness and an episode would be devoted to me.

All in good time.