Medu Wada..Successful at last

For a very long time I have been trying to make Medu Wada. I tried in various permutation and combination but was never able to get it right. The taste used to be good but not even once did I get the shape right. Finally this monsoon I got it perfect. So here I take the pleasure of sharing the recipe...sorry only the photographs.
The batter

Getting fried

The end product

13/7

Last Wednesday my son wanted to have pastries so I took him to the nearby cake shop. While we were enjoying our pastries I got a call from my husband. He was quite tensed and wanted to know where we were. He told me that a bomb blasted in Mumbai few minutes earlier and it is better for us to get back to home as soon as possible.
Again another terror attack on Mumbai. This is the third strike in last four years. I suddenly felt angry, sad, frightened and above all helpless. I asked son to finish his pastry fast. He is too small to even understand all this. When I came out of the shop a saw a plastic waste bag and a chill went down my spine. There could be a bomb in that plastic bag. That may explode anytime killing me and many others like me. I tried to board an auto but none of them were ready to go. It was raining, autos were refusing and phone lines were jammed. The same story that gets repeated after every bomb blast. Only the rains were a new addition this time.
When I reached home I saw my father strolling anxiously on the balcony. I started getting calls from my friends and relatives from all over the world. I spoke to many of them after a long time. At times only tragedies forces people to make calls. I was assuring all of them that we were fine but at the same time I was wondering how long can we stay safe. Next time it could be. This fear gripped me. My neighbour was stuck in the road for five hours.
The question now is Why do we suffer this everytime. And how long would we suffer?

My memories of Kuwait

For past couple of days am missing Kuwait like anything. I wish I could go back and enjoy the sunset at Scientific centre, or enjoy the showarma at cannary. I miss the lanes of old Souk and Shark. This is my pictorial recapitulation of my lovely city.

Day 3

I was awake till 12 am only to clean the mess created by my son. Today I woke up 2 hours past my scheduled time. I would like to congratulate myself because in spite of waking up late I was able to finish things within time. Yippieeeee.
Now let me come to the “Salman Khan” effect on my sonny. Sonny is a huge fan of Mr. Khan as he keeps on imitating Salman in every possible way. When my son was 1.5 years old, he could immitate the dance steps of the “hud hud dabanng” song with perfection. Now he copies the “dhinka chika” song. Imitating song and dance is fine but when it comes to the other aspects of life then it becomes quite annoying. For example my son just doesn’t want to put on his shirt because Mr. Khan never does so. He has also started considering me the villain of the Khan movies and bashes me up anytime he feels so.Honestly I am going through abusive days.

Day 2

Day 2

If you have kids it is near impossible to follow schedule. When you make a schedule you never consider the re-working part. Whereas, if you have kids, then the re-working bit would occupy most of the schedule. For example; in my schedule I thought of making the bed. Obviously I meant it to be done once but with my son around I had to make the bed at least 4 times. First I tidied it and soon after my son started jumping on the bed, so again I had to make it. This followed for atleast four times. Same thing happened with the living room floor. Once I cleared all his toys from the floor, within seconds he threw his toys all over again. So many times I had to bend that I can easily become the brand ambassador for some back pain relief cream.
After doing and re-doing I gave up on my schedule and decided to follow only as much as my son permits. My entire self is now a slave to him. The worst part began in the night. I was planning to go to bed early. Since evening I had a bad headache so I planned to sleep early, but as the saying goes, man proposes god disposes. Just when I was about to sleep my son started crying. Not only was he crying, he just became so violent. He started hitting, biting and beating us. He was crying inconsolably. We were just not able to figure out what had happened to him. Finally we decided to take him to the hospital. The entire way he was crying but the moment we entered the hospital he was as calm as a lake in spring.
Later on we realized that more than any physical pain he was emotionally upset. The entire evening I and hubby were busy watching television so sonny must have felt ignored. Typically single child’s problem. Anyways today I did not even try to follow any schedule. Did not even bother to cook breakfast. phewwww

Day 1

Today was the first day of my schedule. Well, I would say, I was partially successful. Today I ‘almost’ woke up quite early in the morning; I snoozed my alarm for about 5 times and finally woke up 45 minutes behind my schedule. Yesterday night my neighbour's daughter was locked out and she was waiting for her parents at my place. Her parents came home at around 11:30pm and we went to bed after 12 am. Therefore I was not able to sleep the required eights hours.
After waking up I definitely took the lime juice. The meditation part was only for 30 seconds, I got too bored to take it further. I was just about to leave for my brisk walking when hubby dear woke up and declared he wants to take the privilege of going for a walk. Husband’s logic is ‘Why would a person like me need a walk..It is only for the privileged class who go to office and not for the working class homemakers’. I once again “sacrificed” and stayed back home for my sleeping son.
Next, I concentrated on preparing the breakfast, when, “pyaaaaaaaa” son woke up. He came crying to the kitchen and demanded that I carry him. He said “Ma kule” He cannot yet pronounce the ‘o’ and all his “o’ are replaced with ‘e’ or ‘u’. Therefore ‘kole’ is ‘kule’, ‘boshe’ is ‘bushe’ and ‘potty’ is ‘petty’. After getting on my lap he declared ‘ma, petty” and so I rushed him to the loo. This sudden urgent job displaced me further from my schedule.
At last after overcoming few hurdles, breakfast was ready, lunch was packed, bed was made, and room was cleaned (cleaned and re-cleaned, as every time I was cleaning son was messing it up). It was time to drop sonny to school. After dropping him I decided to enjoy some ‘Me-time’ and went to a bookstore(my favourite place on earth). I was just leafing through the pages of Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke when I got a frantic call from my neighbor. He said that my door was not opening. My maid had come to work and she was not able to open the door as it was jammed. I bid goodbye to Ghosh and his new book and came home immediately. In front of my door, I saw: my well built neighbor, his petite wife and my maid all were clinging to the door and trying in different way to push it open. I also joined them, but I knew that if my ‘huge’ neighbor was unable to open it “ami to kon chaar”. Finally carpenter was called. He opened the door in a fraction of a second. Thank god! Atleast I didn’t have to stay stranded in front of my door for the rest of the day. All along this door episode I was cursing my hubby. It was his negligence that we were stuck. He knew about this problem long before but never bothered to fix it.
Anyways Day 1 of my journey was quite eventful. looking forward to day 2.

Organiser

Finally I have prepared a schedule for myself. Something that is practical and achievable.
Wake up
Drink lime juice with warm water
Yoga and mediatation
brisk walking
prepare tea
prepare son's morning milk
prepare husband's lunch to be packed
prepare breakfast
serve breakfast
make bed
clean the house. first the entire house then one scheduled room for day
give son a bath
take bath
get son ready for school
drop him to school
prepare son's lunch
listen to music
cleaning/ bank work/ newspaper reading
pick up son from school
lunch time
put son to sleep
blog time
rest
evening tea
evening snack for son
take him down to play
serve dinner
post dinner cleaning
drink milk
personal beauty care
sleeeep time zzzzzzzzzzz

Things to do

After becomg a full time home maker I often used to miss my working days. I used to miss my office cubicle, my office PC, the coffee machines, the cafeterias, the board rooms. It is something I still miss but at the same time I always look at the glass as half full. So now I know that I can do few things that would have been impossible to do had I been working. The most important one is spending time with my two and a half year old son. I enjoy giving him a bath, dropping him to his playgroup, attending his parent teacher meetings, taking him for his annual day rehearsals. I also enjoy time with my father. The other few things that I can do is sleep in the afternoon (he he he).
All said and done I often feel that I am not exploiting my time at home fully. I am falling prey to laziness and therefore it is time I should start doing something meaningful and creative and enjoyable with my time instead of grumbling.
Here I have prepared a To-do-list for myself.
I should blog on a regular basis
I should take out more time to read
I should listen to good music
I should exercise
I should pursue my dancing
I should tend to my garden
I should cook better meals
I should clean the house
I should watch more movies
I should organise myself
For now I think this is enough. Let me see what else I can do. First thing I will have to chalk out a plan for this. Will do that in my next blog. That should become a guideline for all the other lazybones like me.

Curry Leaf

I brought some ripe curry seeds from my Kolkata home. After coming home i started drying those seeds. My trusted aide U had advised me to dry the seeds before planting. I diligently started drying them. Due to the monsoon drying them was little difficult. Being the impatient one that I am, I stopped drying them as soon as I ran out of patience.I soaked the half dried seeds overnight and the following day planted them in a pot. Now I am waiting for the seeds to germinate. It has been only one day and am already feeling impatient. Oh god please give me some patience.
watch this space for the later reports on the growth of curry leaves in my kitchen garden.

The Gardener

"Jakhon pratham dhoreche koli amar mallika(curry patar) bone"
Recently I have started taking interest in growing plants. On my recent visit to Kolkata I found that the backyard of my Kolkata home was full of weeds and unwanted plants. So one day I along with my trusted aide U started cleaning the backyard. It took an entire evening to de-weed the backyard.
Once the cleaning was done there was not much to do apart from planting few seeds. We started with gourd followed by green chillies and curry leaves. The result was awesome, within a week small sprouts of chillies grew and the gourd also sprawled quite fast. I was really happy.
My mother was an ardent gardener but I was never. Maybe slowly with age I am gaining interest in things that require patience. Often I look at myself and feel that slowly I am becoming like my mother. Nowadays I look like her and also feel like her. Maybe I understand her more now than I had ever before. Only if she had been alive to see the new 'me'.The guava tree that my ma had planted still stands in our Kolkata backyard only the planter is far away. Trees and plants give you a sense of stability that none other could give. So here starts my new avataar of a gardener. lets see how long it lasts.