Thoughts and other trivia...

Sunday, February 26, 2012

The Morning After

Although I’ve always loved the idea of cooking, the stuff I’ve been making for years hasn’t been much to write about...just the regular, boring, everyday stuff.

I’ve been without any domestic help for almost a year now and, so, when I’m in town, I cook on an almost-daily basis. Or, at least, three to four times a week. While a lot of it is still the regular stuff, now I’ve also started to make new dishes. Stuff that I’ve never had before. And, surprisingly, I’m turning out to be a pretty decent copycat cook! (Sadly, I’ll make it to the category of people who can kick up a great meal with whatever ingredients you give them. Or, the kind who don’t need recipes to cook.) Except for the two curd-based dishes that I made, one with lotus stem and one with arbi (or, colocassia , if you’re the snotty type), every other new dish I’ve tried has turned out beautifully. To be fair to myself though, even with these two dishes, the flavour was pretty good but what went wrong was that one turned out a little gooey and the other a bit chewy. Overall, I’ve been feeling a bit chuffed about the cooking.

But, all along, secretly, I’ve been worried about cooking pasta. Yeah, that’s silly, I know. But, the thing is, I haven’t made it for years and was not sure I’d be able to get it right. A few days ago, however, I bought myself a packet of pasta, spaghetti actually, even though I wasn’t fully sure that I’d have the courage to try it. So, for four days, as I dithered, the packet just sat on the shelf in the kitchen, in full view, giving me the glad eye. Eventually, I succumbed and decided to bite the bullet last night.

To go with the spaghetti, I decided on what some people call the greatest sauce in the world. Just reading the recipe used to make my mouth water! I loved the sheer simplicity of it and the hint of flavour it promised. There’s nothing much to it, really, if you decide not to drive yourself crazy wondering where in hell you’re going to get San Marzano tomatoes or the yellow onion from and, instead, use whatever is available. And, thankfully, the sauce turned out quite well. The pasta? Cooked al dente and coated beautifully with the sauce. Hell, I turned out a pretty darned decent plate of pasta! All that was missing was a bottle of red.

Still feeling smug about it, I was drinking my coffee this morning, talking to a friend and recounting the pleasurable conquest of the night. The chat went on for a bit, from this to that and then some. Finally, we hung up and I decided to make my breakfast. On days I plan to have boiled eggs, and today was one such day, I set them to boil as soon as I’ve finished making my morning coffee just so that they’re done by the time I’m ready for breakfast and that I don’t have to wait. So, as the lovely-looking Ramata Diakite was belting out an African tune in the background, I headed to the kitchen to fix my toasts, boiled eggs and tea. And, almost immediately, I sensed that something was wrong because I could smell something burning. My first reaction at such times, usually, is to think it’s an electrical problem and that a wire is burning. But, it wasn’t. What was burning, in fact and most embarrassingly so, were the eggs! I felt such shame. I mean, who burns eggs while boiling them?! The pan was burnt and smoking. The two eggs, of their own accord, had split and the top of one, somehow, had popped out of the pan and was resting on the counter. Oh, what utter shame even for a copycat chef!

Anyway, resisting this very strong and overpowering urge to immediately do away with all remaining traces of my latest humiliation, and muttering the choicest, I slowly peeled whatever was left to peel from whatever was left of the two eggs. I guess I belong to the if-you’ve-cooked-it-you-have-to-eat-it school of thought. So, still cursing, I made my tea and toasts and, finally, was ready to eat. Then, I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth – well, in a manner of speaking - and bit into the burnt eggs. And, you know what, shockingly, they tasted pretty damned good too!

Something to remember, then, this morning after the night before.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Square Peg

Like a lot of other stuff, this is something that I’ve written a few times in my head but that’s just about as far as I often get. Because, when I’m at it, things cause my mind, which is forever racing anyway, to drift into this raging stream of consciousness and get tossed around and, before I can even realise it, I’m off on a tangent. And, to tweak something I read on the wonderful Frank & Ernest comic strip over ten years ago, having wandered that far, my mind is way too weak to then scramble back on course. So, obviously, I never get down to writing it for real.

(Incidentally, this Demon of Tangents, who controls the Stream of Consciousness, is a little like the mythical Scylla and Charybdis – heed the call and you’ll be lost forever. But, Odysseus-like, I’ll try and resist.)

For someone who is otherwise largely practical, I have an almost bookish notion about relationships and friendships and responsibilities, etc. It’s a little silly, I know, especially because everything around us is changing so quickly that it’s getting hard to hold on to anything these days. I guess this also explains where my cynicism comes from. But, I’m digressing.

If you’ve watched enough films, read enough books and, generally, kept your eyes and ears open, chances are, you would have heard someone say that, sometimes, love is not enough. Last week, a friend wrote about it and then I heard it in a film and then I watched a woman say it to a man in a television series. And, like every other time, I wondered what it meant. Hell, I’ve wondered about it so much that I even started to write a full script about it two years ago!

I’ve also wondered how it comes about that, all of a sudden, everybody says this all the time. Today, as I read the Murakami lines - If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking - it all made some sort of sense. And, I don’t mean this in a condescending or superior sort of way.

That it doesn’t always work out, I know. Sure, things can go bad in relationships and between people. Of course, people can fall out of love and grow apart. I completely understand what it means to love someone enough to let them go because, in such an instance, it’s about putting the other person’s interests before one’s own. And, that’s good. But, I just don’t get this sometimes-love-is-not-enough business because, to me, it seems a case of trying to have it both ways. It’s what the sociologist called a compromise with an uncomfortable truth in another context in my film.

As far as I’m concerned, what brings people together keeps them together. If that is in place, everything else finds a way of working itself around it. Barring, of course, some really extenuating circumstances that may make it impossible. It’s when it begins to dry up, for either party, that the breach occurs. (Odd choice of words because, usually, it’s abundance that causes the breach.) :-)

To me, it’s really tragic that we’ve reached a stage where we seem to think that love is not enough. Because I really wonder, if love is not enough, what will ever be?

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Gullible's Travels

I guess it’s a sign of the times that spirituality and religion are also being pushed like products these days. Truly, nothing is sacred any longer and just about anything goes. Utter crap is being peddled in the name of knowledge and wisdom.

Usually, I try and not read the spirituality-related rubbish that appears in this newspaper every Sunday. Usually, I succeed. Occasionally, something catches my eye and I end up reading it. Some of it, at least. Unless, of course, it’s about a trip somewhere or if it's about an interesting place and suchlike. A few months ago, I read what has to be close to the top of the list of most offensive bullshit I’ve ever read. That it was about something as sensitive as child abuse made it worse and got me even more annoyed. The point that this half-wit was trying to make was about forgiveness, which is fine. No argument. But, when someone offers such puerile gibberish as “gratitude for the abuser” and “the blessings of childhood abuse” and that abuse is but “an opportunity to another fellow soul to improve karmically” as their rationale, it makes me want to wring their neck and not feel guilty about it. How dare these people!

Unfortunately, I ended up reading some similar nonsense this morning. This one’s about loneliness. Apparently, Loneliness Is Lovely. Whatever that means. “And depression is not an illness or disease,” according to GuruSpeak. Er, what? “It is a plateau given by Nature to know the true meaning and importance of detachment.” Really? “A human who does some soul searching, meditation and contemplation surfaces through these plateaus or base camps, due to his own will power (soul power) and gets a new life, new energy, and moves forward. However, whosoever, indulges in it, gets mentally ill-balanced, can also harm himself, which is sin, an insult to the internal powers of the human. Only the person who goes through depression and emerges a better human being can contribute towards humanity...” What effing nonsense! What does she mean by saying you can only contribute to society if you emerge a better human being after depression? Is depression some heinous crime, like rape or murder, after which you need to reform yourself? Depression is not a disease? Has she heard of clinical depression? Or, bi-polar disorder, where depression comes without a reason?

The problem is not so much that people have such stupid notions and superior attitudes but that they find platforms from which they’re able to pollute and corrupt others’ way of looking at things.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

In a Compromising Position

“Sex outside the marriage = infidelity is a simplistic definition” because “bedroom rules, say experts, have altered.” That’s the gist of an article in the Sunday supplement today.

But, this has been happening for the longest time and I’m not even talking about the keys-in-the-bowl dos. Spouses (read ‘wives’) have been known to look the other way and put up with their more adventurous partners for as long as one knows. A majority of them then learned to live with it for either the sake of the kids or the shame the scandal would bring to their extended families.

So, what’s changed? “The boundaries of sexual loyalty are being stretched to accommodate a few peccadilloes here and there,” says the article. But, wait! There’s a rider, says the good doctor, a psychiatrist. “The difference is in the humiliation. When your partner gets intimate with someone from your social circle, your self-esteem takes a beating.” Ah, the trick then is to sleep with someone your partner can’t/won’t know! Don’t you just love pop psychology!

What has changed, I think, is that we’ve learned how to put a spin on it, to push ‘compromise’ or acceptance as a solution. A lot of it, I think, has to do with the perpetuation of the ‘boys will be boys’ stereotype. “Acceptance of infidelity is the only way to look forward,” says the writer. And, what an awful way to live that is, say I.

I think it’s perfectly alright if people want to sleep around and have multiple partners. It’s entirely their business and no one else has a say in it. But, the way I see it, when one is in a committed relationship, married or otherwise, one has, sort of, forfeited that license. If you can’t find everything you need in one person, why commit?

Anyway, that’s why it’s so good to be a man - you don’t have to worry about being faithful! Er, let’s talk about sex, shall we?