Crackers

I remember Diwali as a kid. We never used to have enough crackers. It was always begging some kind adult for an extra ten rupees to go and buy another round of crackers. It is not like our folks never bothered to get us any. But we would run through them fairly rapidly. Sometimes even before Diwali officially began.

The fun began when the whole family got together. The main show when we were kids was ‘The Train’. We would have spent a whole afternoon lighting up snakes (that produced an ugly black coil of soot, accompanied by a disgusting smell and left burnt marks all over the floor). We would have run through the safer, more sedate ‘kuruvi vedis’. Then the adults would wake up; have their evening cuppa and The Train process would begin. A long thread would be tied from one end of the corridor to the other. One uncle would post himself at one end. Another would man the starting point. One would get a bucket of water, handy for maintenance work. Another would just pace around advising all three on how to do their jobs better. Our moms and aunts would usually watch the spectacle, just laughing aloud. Then The Train would be ready. Kids would be shooshed away to safe watching spots. The cracker would be lit at one end. Beating speeds of a Japanese Bullet train, it would whoosh on the thread to the other side. The naked eye could usually see only a trail of smoke and a slight sparkle here and there. We kids would remember to breathe again. One year, the train managed to burn an old mask made of coconut hair that was unfortunately hung in the passage way. I think it must have been the greatest adventure in my seven years of existence.

As I grew, and approached my cracker-bursting-prowess’s peak, there came a Diwali when a cousin and I lit crackers with one hand and flung it casually from his 6th floor balcony. Of course, my parents or relatives had no clue that we were doing this. Our hearts thumped from the fear of being scarred for life and of being discovered, the latter a more potent one. There was also the challenge of ensuring that the cracker burst after it left your hands but well before it hit some unsuspecting pedestrian on the road. The adrenalin rush and the arguments on how to ‘time’ your cracker…

After a while, I enjoyed bursting crackers with my younger cousins, but I was certainly not the enthusiast who begged everyone to come and start bursting crackers the minute the sun began to go down a bit.

Since then, it has been a steady downward slide. This Diwali, as also several previous ones, has been quite sedate as far as the explosives division is concerned. For tradition’s sake we had to get one packet of sparklers for the morning prayers. It lay quite forgotten after that.

Of course, I can now nobly join the activists who talk about the air and noise pollution created. Infact, I vividly remember mentally cursing some of the colony kids for bursting crackers during my post prandial siesta. But then, in the evening, when I saw them arguing with each other on ‘timing the cracker’ and rushing up to their parents for another round of crackers, I sheepishly let another new generation take my place.

Ten steps to catch a mouse

1. Realise that stupidly leaving the kitchen window open is the surefire way of turning the fruit basket atop fridge into a rodent hotspot. Curse self and close all possible outlets through which mouse can enter

2. Realise mouse is still entering and exiting at will. Do research on mousetraps and purchase cutting edge mousetrap (basically a piece of cardboard with super glue on it )

3. Worry about what happens if the mouse is actually caught in the mousetrap. Will it nibble off your hand while you pick up the trap and throw it away? Will you die of leptosorosis?

4. Buy Mortein Ratkill and place it atop the mousetrap along with a piece of banana. Order of events as envisaged theoretically – mouse will smell the banana and jump onto the mousetrap. It will struggle to free itself. After all that energy, it will feel hungry and start eating the Ratkill. Then it will die. In the morning, you can throw out the entire contraption alongwith the dead mouse. Order of events as occurred practically – mouse smells the banana and jumps onto the mousetrap. It eats the banana. Then eats the Ratkill. Then jumps off the mousetrap leaving two tiny footprints.

5. Scream out in frustration

6. Ask maid to pick up a traditional mousetrap. Hang pieces of apples, banana and carrot on the trap and watch it disappear everyday. Realise you are incapable of setting the spring gently. Blame it on the defective make of the trap. Meanwhile notice mouse has become fit and has got 20:20 vision from healthy diet.

7. Scream out in frustration.

8. Realise mouse has taken up residence in the depths of the old, battered sofa the landlord has given you. Purchase new mousetrap yourself after testing several in the shop.

9. Set the trap at night. Jam all doors with newspapers. Lock yourself into your bedroom against your new co-tenant and feel like Robert Neville, the protagonist of I am Legend battling against the vampires. Repeat process every day while mouse pitter patters around the house happily after carefully avoiding the mousetrap

10. Scream in frustration

And one fine day your maid calls you at work and announces that she caught the mouse with her bare hands and flung it out of your fifth floor window. Slobber into the phone emotionally and speak corny Bollywood dialogues like ‘Aapne tho sach much kamal kar diye’. (You worked miracles) Stop before telling ‘mein tho zindagi bar apaki abhari rahoongi’ (I will be indebted to you for the rest of your life). Heave a sigh of relief and try not to think that the sixth sense is highly overrated in the human vs mouse battle.

p.s. Looks like the city is fighting a losing battle against the rodent problem and there are still some brave men out there.

Chicken in White Wine Sauce

Key ingredients

Some of the 1.5 kg of chicken breast and legs in your freezer, leftover on account of enthusiastically over ordering when cooking Chicken Masala for the previous week’s dinner.

White wine – leftover from the bottle your friends got for the previous week’s dinner

Sour cream – substitute with yoghurt

Paprika – substitute with chilli flakes

Parsley – substitute with coriander leaves

Mushrooms – substitute with onions (all the time cursing your grocery store for not stocking mushrooms)

Method

Read your oven guide and familiarize yourself with the controls.

Grease baking pan with butter (substituted with ghee) and place defrosted chicken in it

Put pan in oven and turn it on.

Remove fruit basket, two hand towels, one notepad and one pen from top of oven when you realize oven is glowing red.

Prepare sauce by heating some ghee in your pan, frying the onions, adding curd, adding wine, adding parsley, upturning dish of paprika into sauce, picking out paprika pieces from sauce, giving up on the tiny pieces that have stuck to the other ingredients and finally adding a dash of honey to even out the taste.

Turn off oven. Turn chicken pieces. Add sauce. Turn on oven again.

Watch the oven lovingly as the chicken looks more and more cooked.

Turn off oven, serve chicken on bed of rice and eat.

Wince at slightly watery sauce but feel pleasantly mellow on account of the wine.

Thinking of B-School Days...

The morning began with a nostalgia-inducing newspaper article on going back to campus. Thoughts wandered back to the time when I was a gangly, wide-eyed new student on my B-School campus. While I cannot remember too much of the stuff I crammed into my head during the two years, there are some awesome memories that flash forward in my mind when I think of all good things on campus.

The buildings. Our campus was made of grey stone. Set amidst lots of trees and greenery, just looking at the massive edifice gave you a sense of purpose and history. When I saw the building for the first time during my group discussions and interview, suddenly I so desperately wanted to be a part of the group of people who wandered through these magnificent settings in their shorts and t-shirts, casually owning the place. When it was time to leave at the end of two years, I went around taking snaps of each of those buildings, feeling happy to have just been in such architecture.

The canteen. After eating school and college hostel stuff that qualified as food by a thin margin, food here seemed gloriously rich and tasty. I was shocked when I found out that a batchmate was forced to eat out everyday since he found the food here ‘unpalatable’. Sure the watery Maggie noodles served on Thursdays, may not have been entirely interesting. But boy, Desan, the ex-army canteen manager of ours, ensured that the chicken curries and rawa dosas were scrumptious.

The finance quizzes. No I am not a geek who gets her kicks out of drawing binomial trees. In the first term of corporate finance, we encountered our God-Corp Fin prof who was so funny that all the women had a crush on him and all the men wanted to be as effortlessly witty. His quizzes were full of puns, Bollywood stories and plenty of dry humour, all carefully built around some discounting problem to find IRR and NPV. Half my time used to go in chuckling at the questions, and the rest used to be spent in actually solving the problems. But not all fin quizzes are wired into my mind for pleasant reasons. I remember sitting in an open book, three-question Derivatives final that stretched for four hours. Everybody was watching everyone else watching everyone else. Eventually we all wrote something, submitted our papers and then spent years afterwards recounting our individual traumas.

The admin man. Every institute has a super-efficient admin guy who does work, unhindered by anything as namby-pamby as human emotions or personal biases. During exams, it was his job to ensure we began on time, got the correct quizzes and did not attempt anything as foolhardy as copying from each other. In one of the exams, my batchmate was solving a quiz by the tried and tasted method of tossing a coin. Admin man looked at everyone sternly and said ‘no exchanging of coins’. With a twinkle in his eye. I think that was the only time I saw him say something nearing a joke.

The campus shop. That supplied everything, including very very desi pizzas and tomato ketchup from red, plastic containers that must have had an entire ecosystem thriving on its edges.

Placements. The flashpoint to which the two years in campus are pretty much supposed to lead. Finding that your name is not on the list, whereas that of the batchmate ranked 20 places below is there. Hearing ‘November Rain’ blasting out from your friend’s room as she mulled over being rejected in yet another group discussion. Writing pages and pages of Statement of Purposes and polishing up your C.V. It was a stressed out, ugly time. In the course of a few hours, your entire two years on campus got translated into a brand name job and great starting pay. After all these years, most of us have realized perfect jobs do not translate to consulting or investment banking. Each of us has found happiness and/or success in different fields. If only, we had had the wisdom back then…

The B block. Whose 1st and 2nd floors were occupied by the girls. We thought we were too cool. We were sure we were funnier and cleverer than most people and when our juniors came, we passed on this message to them too. We made some of our best friends there and they continue to be so till day.

That feeling. That others gave you when you told them you were a student at a premier institution. People used to read about fancy starting pays on your campus and look at you with pride or envy (depending on whether they liked you or not). When your cousins told their friends where you were studying. When the world seemed to be full of possibilities, most of it involving being the CEO of Lehman Brothers/HLL someday. You were considered as one of the smartest and the best in the whole country.

I was too old by the time I came to B-School to give it the kind of absolute ‘perfection’ certificate that I gave my class twelve days. But it sure had its moments.

Timepass Poll

So the other day I was chatting with a friend about the James Blunt song, You are Beautiful.

(I have never been a fan of James Blunt. I always thought his voice sounded nasal and a bit shrill. Of late, though, I have started liking the You are Beautiful number. For those who have not heard the song, judge for yourself here. And for those who have not heard the song clearly, here are the lyrics. Finally, for those who would like a short synopsis of what this song is about – Male protagonist sees random gorgeous woman in a subway and meets her eye. And moans about how he will never see her again since they both are just strangers who shared a moment in a crowded sub)

I thought that if the random gorgeous woman had indeed turned around and given him her number, he would have just shrugged his shoulders and walked off. After all, men chasing women is a bit like a dog chasing a car. Once you reach the car, you are not entirely sure why you began the activity in the first place.

My friend (at this point I must add he is male) was shocked. He thought Blunt had indeed spotted his soulmate and when men meet their soulmates they just go for it.

And since we were so much at the opposite ends of the spectrum, I decided to conduct an absolutely unscientific poll with a sample of views collected from a cross section of my friends. So I (along with inputs from my friend) created this quick poll:

Do you think if the girl in the James Blunt song ‘You are beautiful’ actually turned around and gave her number, he would call her?

Option A - No way. He would lose interest now that the chase is over
Option B - Of course, today might be his lucky day

The poll was promptly mailed to about 30 friends.

A week later, this is what the responses look like

9 of the 12 women who responded voted for option A
5 of the 7 men who responded voted for option B

I am wondering now if all the women I know (myself included) are really this cynical…

I can only think of two possibilities are

Men are actually nice. Us women have become cynical
Men are deluded. They think they will call but won’t

My friend, on the other hand, thinks that women should be more liberal in giving out their numbers!

p.s. If anyone wants to see/participate in the poll, here are the links for men and women. It is the same question. But since I was too lazy to sign up for a proper free site that let me ask people multiple questions, just created one poll each for the demography I was looking at