Cooking the uncooked!

My mom always had the constant fear of how this lazy girl will manage after marriage. "What will you cook and how will you, if you don't practice it from now??". I argued with her that cooking is not any rocket science... all the recipes are a click away in youtube...

Post marriage, life was easy with cooking (thanks to joint family).. I always had a guide to ask.. "Bhabhi, kitna pani?, kitna namak? Shall I switch off the stove now?".
And I was feeling.. "Look! How simple it was! You just need the steps.. and anyone can become chef!! :p"

The day soon came when I had to make food all by myself when both my Mother-in-law and Sis-in-law were away.  Woke up with the thought that will make rajma for tonight. Read newspaper leisurely. Took bread and butter,while munching it, watched the video on youtube on how to prepare rajma... "That was simpler than I thought", I thought. While going towards kitchen thought "Itni bhi kya jaldi hai... let me talk to sis". While talking to her, she told me rajma recipe without asking for it.. I said "yes I know.. I just saw it in youtube" with heights of over confidence. After the call, kept the soaked rajma in pressure cooker to boil. Kept on waiting for whistle. "What's wrong! Why the hell it is not giving whistle... anyways let me prepare the curry while it gets boiled". My curry was prepared, but the bloody cooker didn't give whistle. Somethings smelling wrong, I thought. House maid came at that moment and she helped me open the cooker..! "CRAP!" , its all burnt!!! :( tears were almost at the edge of the eyelids... "Rajma..." I sighed. Maid told me not to worry and rajma can be prepared without having the need to soak it overnight. Somehow, prepared rajma with assistance of the maid.... and that night thankfully everyone had hearty meal.

After more than a year now, I still am learning and now have realized that cooking and other works for that matter are not as easy as searching in google. Yes, cooking is not rocket science.. but needs practice.
Knowledge these days is click away in your mobiles... application is important. Without practice, knowledge goes useless.. and it is with practice and experience that you achieve things in life. So... my friends out there, who have the illusion that "they have good knowledge, have read many books, know about many things, are intellects, so on and so forth.." , Please take a pause! and understand that KNOWING is different from DOING , else you too will have the burnt rajmas to make you realise this. :) :p

The Indian Idle

Yes, who else it is, but me! And, what would a typical Indian Idle do? Yes, It's watching the Idiot Box - TV. ( Chatting, orkutting FB and Blogging on a parallel track)

The average Indian family is hooked to the TV shows which start from 7.30 PM and continue till 10.30 PM. After a long time, surfing the TV channels, I chose the below serials/ programs some of which I love to hate while watching.. ;)

1) Balika Vadhu - This half an hour program has less than one line of story. It begins with Anandi's cry and ends with the same. This serial was started with the motive to kinda eradicate child marriages in society. But, now it seems that the serial is encouraging it!! "Eeh! This should be banned", I say, every time I watch. 

2) Na aana iss des me LAADO - Eeh... The lesser I talk about it, the better. I change the channel, as soon as I see any of the character on TV. My mom insists "Laado aa raha hai, channel mat badlo". "Not again! Mom.. PLEASE! This serial is introducing cruelty in those SAASs who are not cruel... It shows the ways on how to be a BAD person... Don't watch this. So much grossness involved! Yak!" I start my lecture.... Mom says "Ok! I will watch the repeat telecast, with a sigh!"... SIGH!!!!

The list of daily soaps is unending, Bidaai, Behane, Sasuraal genda phool, Uttaran... etc, etc, etc. . Almost all serials have same plots. A cruel (saas) mother-in-law, a dutiful bahu (Bahu - Daughter in Law), another competing grey-shade bahu.. You can identify easily who is the villain in the story with the help of.. 1) Make-up and, 2)Back-ground music, when the person enters. Second marriages, illegal relationships, coming out from the mouth of death," "Pati is parmeshwar" (Husband is God) type dialogues" are so common in all these serials that its ODD to even see.

Now, coming to my favourite programs... 

1) Indian Idol - Music is something which has always attracted me. and, so has this program. The punch lines of the judges and the melodrama within too is interesting... Becomes irritating at times when unworthy candidates get more votes... I'm happy! Finally, Tia is out of Indian Idol 5. 

2) CID - I'm watching this serial since my childhood. I love to laugh at the comedy within this serial. The peculiar style of ACP Pradyuman with his waving right hand near his right portion of his head and a raised left eye-brow with the dialogue "Daya, pata lagao ki akhir chakkar kya hai!!!" or the only dialogue by Fredericks "Sir!!! Ye tho Marr gaya!!" is worth LOL. 

( Those who haven't seen CID, it is a series of detective stories, out of which 99% of the stories have the same ending - Inspector Abhijeet or Daya slaps the suspect and he agrees, "ahuhuhu" (that's a cry and not a laugh), "Han! maine hi khoon kiya.. Mujhe badla lena tha badla.. ahuhuhu")

3) Dance programs like boogie woogie, chak dhoom dhoom : small kids dancing look very cute and is worth watching. Again as I said above, Music attracts me...

4) India TV News channel : You can laugh out loud with the news in this channel. It always airs news with the content of "chamatkari dhongi baba" types... Now, this news channel has the capacity to show the oldest of the news as breaking news. Take Dhoni's marriage.. For 3 days, the channel was busy in investigating, 1) why he did not invite his fellow players. 2) where will he go for his honeymoon 3) with how many girls was he having an affair before his marriage and so on and so forth... "Are bhai! Give a break... let him live"

Ok Ok... Enough of these things, the list though is unending! I know, I have bored you enough for the day. 

I certify myself as the "Indian Idle" of this month, by watching TV at my best after 4 long years!! Thanks to those, who read my unworthy post. Wanna kill your time??? Read my post ...if you don't have TV by any chance... ;)

The Three Musketeers & A BAT !!!

It was 11.30 PM. I just came from office, had my dinner and sat before my favourite laptop. Ranju was reading some book. Nishu was roaming in the corridor with her mobile. The night was unusually silent. We were busy with our own works and we were not talking much, which is generally very rare, when we are awake. Our room's door was open.

Suddennly a bat came inside our room............ "AAAAAAA!!!! MUMMMYYYYYYYYYYY", my reflex action broke the silence of the room. I jumped from my bed to Ranju's bed and covered myself completely with a blanket. For a minute no one understood, what was happenning. "Are yaar, itna kyun darti hai, kuch nahi karega wo", said the brave army man's brave daughter - Ranju, after a while. Nishu was outside the room itself --"Itna kyun chilla rahe ho, kuch nahi hoga", she said, from outside, daring not to enter the room :). I was still covered in blanket. "Wo gaya ki nahi.... O God... O God... ", I said. I could hear my heartbeats as loud as i could hear the flaps of the flying bat. "Switch off the Fan.... It may get hurt", I cried from inside the blanket. The bat was flying continously inside the room changing its proportion of height. By now, Brave Ranju was also quite afraid. "Switch off the fan...", I said again, though, I was nearest to the switchboard.. Before Ranju could follow my words "KADAAAK" - a sound came and it was silent again. "O nooo, i think it is hurt", i said, slowly coming out from the blanket.. Nishu peeped in from the window. Happy to see that it is not there, she came inside... "Where's bat, by the way??" Nishu asked. "Its hurt... It should have fallen somewhere in the room. We have to find it.", said ranju thoughtfully. " Han, otherwise, the room will stink by tomorrow", continued Nishu. I said 'Yes' in agreement and we started searching for it. Nishu found it and said "Its on your handbag". "Whose? Mine.. Noo", I said. "I cannot go towards it. It's but still alive....", i said. Ranju was kind enough to take the bat out along with the handbag. Poor bat was badly hurt. Few drops of blood were there on my hand bag.

Finally, the ordeal was over. I took a breath of relief, and thanked Ranju.

After the whole episode, i just gave a thought -- What was that great reflex action for??? A small poor bat, lost its way and came inside our room. It was helpless.. What a timid person I'm.

I could have saved the life of bat, had i switched off the fan myself, coming out from fear!!! I was sad.

"Fear not for the future, weep not for the past", something inside me whispered... "I will try to follow, going forward", I said to myself.