Why I love rain.

Because it washes everything away. Dust, filth, pollutants, SPM, negativity.

Because the green never looks so fluorescent.

Because before the lightening crashes, the swirling energy of 'all hell about to break loose' makes it look like the atmosphere is holding its breath.

Because in quenching the parched earth, its coming signifies fulfilled hopes and wishes.

Because of the smell of the earth.

Because when it begins to rain, EVERYTHING exposed is in disarray for a moment, showing how nature is still all powerful.

Because it's a whiff of a breath of mountain freshness.

Because of the way Delhi's sandstone monuments, the wisely planned Islamic greens and the gray colour of the sky just form an amazing colour palette.

Because there is no traffic on the roads and I can race with the wind.

Because it's romantic. It's always been romantic. To be rain kissed. I've never been rain kissed. Have you?

Because there is a certain kind of music I only play when it rains.

Because I like the wind in my hair.

Because my parents never stopped me dancing in the rain as a child.

Because of the way the water trickles down from the edges of window chhajjas.

Because a sudden change in the energy of the atmosphere charges me up and wipes my own slate clean, regardless of how the day went, giving me the courage to not give a fuck.

Because when you let go, when you forget your problems, your inhibitions, your fears, your clothes, your hair, your kajal, and step out to be one with nature as the heavens pour and rejoice, you are truly, truly... liberated.

Moment

Even a person lacking the most basic exposure to the philosophies of life and the world would have heard, paused and pondered about 'living life in the moment.'

To shut your mind off, and put all your senses, full blast, into absorbing everything around you in the greatest possible detail, along with what you feel as a reaction, without the influence of what can be or what could have been, is a superhuman task.

The saddest part of it all, infact is that the more we grow up, mature, age, the more we lose this remarkable ability, having been tempered by life's ups and downs to regret, fear and procrastinate.

The truth, although, is very simple.

It's the moments that we do manage to 'live in' that we hold within us forever.

Cut to May 2004.

A little-known, rocky, raging, typical Himalayan river, the Tons. I'm in a raft with my Dad, my sister, my brother and the rafting camp coordinator, Nalin Uncle.

The setting: Virgin pine forests around us, the roaring blue Tons, the atmosphere thunderously holding its monsoony breath as we go screaming past rapid after rapid, body surfing in the calm stretches of the river, the still-innocent 13 year old me scared of crocs biting my behind, underwater.

As we approach the next stretch of rapids, with my stomach in my mouth because they're getting tougher and tougher, I see my 5 year old brother holding on to the rope ring line in the front of the raft.

We go blasting down the next stretch, and he squeals with the thrill as his legs go flying in the air, hands still holding onto the line for dear life.

I smile.

There's a song in my head.

'Chale jaise hawayein' from the movie Main hoon na.  We'd bought the cassette (yes, those) right before heading outta home and had been singing along with all the songs as we'd driven up to the rafting camp in this little heaven, a small place called Mori, 2 days ago.

Suddenly, more rapids.

Crazy rapids.

My brother sticks his paddle into the river, it jams between 2 rocks and snags underwater.

My brother:

"Oh! Usne pakda!"

Nalin uncle and Dad roar with laughter at his childish fear of 'things lurking underwater'.

Screaming and bouncing, we cross the last rapid, into the calm stretch flowing into our camp.

The river diverges and I break into a song as our raft approaches meadows and I see mom waving at us from in front of our tent.

"Chalein jaise hawayein sanan sanan"

My sister joins me and we take one last jump in the river, the cool monsoon wind in our faces, hell be damned.

..........

I surface.

From my moment. It's a secret place in my head that makes me happy no matter what I do, or where I am.

Just like millions of other moments locked away in the recesses of my memory, accessible to me and only me at my own will.

Untampered, unviolated, vials of happiness.

I think I'm incapable of generating the same, of even comparable intensity, anymore. Maturity has taken its toll. I'm human after all.

I'm lucky. Extremely so.

Because mostly, as we perceive it, the world is a hostile place.

But there're still some things that are sacred.

Some instances at which you say,

"This, I keep."

And those, I kept.

Thus, I’ve lived.

No So(a)p Saga This!

I jumped onto my couch and flipped on the TV, bringing to life a bazillion liquid crystals, all whirring to display, collectively, a frame out of a further billion frames, to help me pass a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I checked my usual list of channels: Star World, AXN, Zee Cafe and the groupies of that category; HBO and Star movies (with a fleeting glance at the 'i' of some cooler sounding movies in MGM, etc), jumping thereon to the News channels with a customary stop at CNN IBN, CNN and BBC in that order, and then on to Discovery/ Nat Geo/ Fox History to check for interesting things.

Meh.

My channel scan complete, with nothing holding my attention for more than 2.3 nanoseconds, I glided over to a channel I wouldn't be caught dead watching, but can admit to having seen by 'accident'. Ha! Ohkay. Now. So... ahem... yes, I found myself watching a daily soap on 'Colors', (I won't STILL say which one, but that maybe because I ended up watching more than one :P).

Settling on a bunch of cushions, I watched for a long time, having some idea of the various storylines and plots, courtesy my grandparents and mum, without whose respective 'companies', my dinner is incomplete. But what does it matter, the story never changes drastically, and remains generally on the same page for most soaps, give or take a few twists and turns.

As I sat and was sucked into this world of heavy jewellery, complex relationships and kanjivarams, I realized how the very kernel of the daily soap feeds off the desire of the average Indian (yes honey, if you're not signing movie contracts or cricket sponsorship deals on a Sunday afternoon, then you ARE an average Indian) for a stable 'umbrella', along with all the compounded complexities that come with 'joint families' and community living.

It's quite cool, given the current trend towards 'nuclearizing' the modern family (which by the way, is a damn awesome sitcom on Star World, and totally NOT about 'hum do humaare do'), that soap-makers still gift-wrap family values and togetherness and present it to the increasingly restless Indian. It's a dreamy getaway for more than half of India, post office hours, where family values still work; and relationships stand the test of time. And it IS a very feel-good feeling. Not so much for me, because I tend to see beyond what's on the screen, but still.

I actually connect with that train of thought, because I've grown up in an umbrella family.

And thank heavens for that. I have more cousins, chachas, tayas, buas, maasis, maamis than I can count, and definitely more than I can love, but I still adore each one of them all the same. Each a character, each making my life interesting on a daily basis.

Because growing up in a large group of people is always such a tussle, one learns to be accommodating, adaptive and flexible along the way. You may have vested interests, but you have a keen sense of judgement and an eye for the 'greater good'.

Given, there may be 10 opinions where there should be none (oooh woh ladka theek nahee hai...), but you grow up a warmer, socially adept and broad minded person.

Things I and Saas-Bahu sagas agree on:

1. There is nothing like family when you're neck deep in trouble.

2. There is nothing like a marriage in a huge family. Oh my GOD, I live the years in between them just hoping and praying for the next one to come sooner.

3. There are always, always ALWAYS things you won't tell your best friends, things you won't tell your siblings, things you won't tell your parents, but WILL tell your cousins. Muhahaha!

4. You get money when they visit you. You get money on general festivals. You get money on all the brother-sister festivals. On your birthdays, exam results, and on every randomly spontaneous dance you do at a family party (if you do it well, that is. No Dadaji waves big notes around your head if you're not impressive and you didn't invite atleast one of the 3rd Gen on the Floor)

5. When one of the babies of the family takes a liking to you, there isn't a joy purer.

6. Sharing clothes, hand-me-downs, sharing jewellery, books, shot-glasses; it's ALL part of the package. And we ALL do it, no matter how well off we are.

7. Family vacations abroad!

Secret: Everyone detests a train of Indians descending upon Point A, in XYZ city in *#* country.

Bigger Secret: We don't care! We love it, and if you let go of your pretensions, you can join in the fun too! And people have. We've made an entire ship of people want to click pictures with us. :P

8. There's always someone to go to the movies with ;)

9. You ALWAYS get permission when you're with cousins.

10. Nothing is inappropriate. And you can ONLY bitch about family to cousins :P

And a bazillion other points. Three of my closest cousins actually went back to their 'home country' (bleh, Internet Security 101), 2 days ago. And I couldn't shake that sinking feeling. I hate it. I probably wont see them for another 1 or 2 years, unless someone gets married really soon.

And I do want to practice co-ordinated Bhangra moves with those guys for a wedding. So badly.

And I want to spend endless nights 'stealing from the kitchen' and talking about random things, holed up in a blanket, looking like a preposterous little golliwog (I can, mind you, with my hair, for those of you who've seen me)

Air-guitaring. Tickle-bombs. Sour-punk.

Stale jokes. Bad jokes.

And random pokes.

And pillowfights. And drunken nights.

*Self-contented Sigh*

I love my family :) . They may suck at various degenerative levels.

But they rock my world!! \m/

The Red Light Man

Sitting in that auto with my mother and sister on either side of me, I spotted him today, the red light man. He was holding this wooden board with those obnoxious little wobbly flowers that everyone seems to love to perch on their dashboards nowadays. And then he passed out of my line of vision.

I had just found my portkey to time travel. I flew back to a time some twelve years ago, when school was about silly games like ‘lock- and-key’ and ‘ghost-in-the-graveyard’, and children running out of grey metal gates towards the waiting cool of an air conditioned car. I plonked myself in the front seat and turned on the radio, 102.6 FM, the only one we had back then. At the Ashram red light, my face lit up as I saw the nice, knobbly old man selling magazines. Like always, he came right up to our window and made faces at me. I laughed, rolled down my window and shook his hand, and told him that I was going home from school. Then the lights changed and I waved my byes to him.

Dissolve. That memory and the picture dissolved.

Cut to seven years later. For whatever reasons, time, etc, I hadn’t seen the red light man in many years. A little part of me, at the odd time, fearing the worst, prayed for him, and with all my heart I wished him luck and happiness. Then one day, at the Ashram red light again, I saw him. My heart jumped, an initial yelp of joy. But by then, my mind had undergone a certain mental conditioning, as the initial yelp was muffled under observation, apprehension and hesitation.
How old he had grown, his jaw stuck out, the teeth were missing. My heart went out to him. He was selling water bottles, from car to car, in the blistering heat. I half wanted him to come to my window and half not, not knowing how I would react. It had been so long, I felt a sense of having betrayed him (and my childish innocence) and moved on.

He stopped at my window.
I looked at him, with a deadpan expression, trying to silence the little girl who wanted to scream, “it’s me! From back then! Do you remember?”
Our eyes met over my clenched jaw, he held my gaze for a fleeting moment and I thought I saw a flicker of recognition. My lips almost turned upward and I was on the verge of flashing him a beaming smile, when he turned away.

He turned and went to the next car. My heart sank.

Why in that fleeting moment, did I feel that he waited for me to meet him halfway? Why was I so reserved? Because he was a man at a red light and I was a young girl in a car? I felt a deep sense of shame, an innate repulsion for myself.

Today, I sat in the auto, and saw him again... feeble and bent with age, yet resilient, selling his wares from car to car, a life force that refused to give up. And I felt nothing except respect for this man. No desire to try to appeal to his memory, nothing. I asked my sister if she remembered him, (I don’t even know his name); she said she was surprised because she was thinking about him too.

Perhaps he was like this with all the children he met at red lights. Perhaps they’d openly recognize him till date. Not like me.

Would he remember me? Perhaps not. And why should he? I was nothing and am nothing special.

But I will remember him. Him in the sponsored T-shirt of whichever company was paying him. He who embraced the harshness of life and entertained little children.

That knobbly faced smile that knew no boundaries.

The Red Light Man who made faces at an uncorrupted me.

Evolve

I was sitting on my couch, watching TV, flipping through the channels aimlessly, mindlessly. Finally stopped on a news channel. A very unclear video...probably from the VGA camera of a bystander's mobile phone, was showing the Taliban gun down a couple in Pakistan.

The Taliban gunned down a couple for wanting to be together.

I was mortified.
What has gone wrong with the world?
Are we so steeped in our mindset towards 'religion' that we fail to recognize the basis of it all?
The most basic emotion? The emotion that ideally drives religion?The emotion that drives humanity?
Love?

Religion has made sadists of men. God is no longer the focus of religion. Everything but Him, unfortunately is. A few wise men, ages ago, thought of a common good, a common ideal. They meant no harm, and charted their own courses towards Him. Soon their knowledge attracted followers, and soon there were sects. Of course those Wise men couldn't live forever. And there were no heirs to THAT kind of 'knowledge' without dispute. So, the sects developed. People, too scared to shun the common ideal, started choosing. And then they had children. And their children had children. All the while, down generations and generations of men, religion was tweaked to suit one's own needs and desires. Advice became rules. And still more rules came into play. And people kept choosing. Not knowing, that a few more generations down the line, things will start happening.The very first Wise Men would turn in their graves, knowing that their ideal of the common good, was so mercilessly cut up; and today, stands defeated by human foolishness.

We're killing each other. Because of how different our respective 'wise men' were from each other. But weren't they supposed to be? They were human too. Their respective 'religions' have taken on their characteristics. And the common good? It still reverbrates in the hearts of those very first souls that seeked truth and God.

Love God. Love humans. Love life.
It's a beautiful world.

Candid Can-do

Haha... I amuse myself with absurd titles.

So basically a lot has changed since I last ‘blogged’. I’ve travelled a bit, lost some, won some, given up on my old goals, found out that planning is NOT better than dreaming, and I think I’ve grown up. Maybe gone back to being a child by letting go of the lines and boundaries I drew around myself. It’s a nice place to be actually, where I am now. I’m happy.

I credit myself with this absolutely creepy (but nice) ability of waking up one random morning with a fresh, clean slate, having pushed that refresh button and cleaned up the desktop of my life. Changing my frame of mind is like changing the wallpaper of my desktop: it sits there in the background quietly watching everything that goes on, but at a very basic level dictates the mood of the desktop. One morning, poof, new background, new rules, and the game has changed yet AGAIN.

There are certain experiences that one needs to go through, good or bad, just to know what it is to have been through them. This world is one crazy roller coaster; I’m bound in my seat and gagged by my apprehension. But I’m strapped in nevertheless. My mind is a perfect globule of gravity defying liquid, ready to be messed with. A buzzing live-wire, I AM ‘Potential Energy’, holding my breath, watching... waiting for my moment of kinetic release.

I sit at the precipice of a teacup called life, ready to take the plunge and drown if I must.

I’m not scared.
Are YOU?

Dumpling Delight

When you're scanning through Masterchef recipes, and you're really really not doing much with your life at that point, you don't mind going for technique intensive recipes, as long as you have all the ingredients, or, they are within walkable distance of your house. You actually kinda enjoy it.

And so I woke up early today in the morning, dropped off my brother for his cricket practice at school, and popped the lid of my laptop open to the Masterchef recipes page. Since my judging panel is composed of just my one demanding and fussy but awesome sister, I ran my list of cook-able recipes by her and lo and behold she chose:

GREEN TEA CHICKEN DUMPLINGS WITH CHILLI OIL, ORANGE, AND GINGER VINEGAR

No kidding. Once you've gotten over the name, I'll get down to explaining how I gave up on sleep and rest to make these beauties. Most of the morning and all afternoon!

Let me say this to people who make perfect dumplings first: R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

There is no dearth of things that can go wrong.

By now I'm almost perfect at kneading any kind of dough on demand so the green tea dough was cheesecake (pun so not intended). The stuffing was an entirely different story. I had to mince my chicken myself: wash it, boil it, rip strips off the bone and shred it in the grinder. Learning experience! Post that, the stuffing came together really well.

The chilli oil and ginger and orange vinegar were intriguing: I didn't know you could do that! I was so proud when I smelled the delicious and so very appetizing aroma of my chilli oil post-infusion.

Now the parts where the little disasters started happening.

Disaster no. 1: I HATE actually physically rolling the dough to paper thinness and stuffing it.

I had to make 24 little circles rolled to paper thinness and spoon fine stuffing into it. Can you imagine the patience required for that?

So I got lazy and took a leisurely break in the middle and watched some TV, to the super-annoyed looks of the kitchen staff. :P

Disaster no. 2 : The recipe required me to golden-brown the dumplings before steaming them in a fry-pan. I went a wee bit-overboard on the golden browning and for some reason I now had 4 little fried dumplings (did them in batches THANKFULLY). Then I tried steaming them for damage control (also just to adhere to the recipe) and now the fried bits actually peeled off and stuck to the pan. I had some yummy-ugly looking stuff right there.

Yowzer.

I was displaying all signs of distress and abandoning ship when one of the staff was like hey, this happens, just think clearly and do what you think is best.

So we formed a party of 3, with one person making little dough balls of appropriate size, the other rolling them to paper thinness, and a third spooning in the stuffing and sealing the dumpling.

To my joy, what had lingered all morning, was done in 20 minutes :D

Now for the actual cooking. I pretty much said: ohkay screw the pan, bring me a pot of hot water, a metal strainer mesh and a big pot-lid.

I threw the dumplings into the mesh hung over boiling water, and sealed their fate with the lid.

35 minutes later, they were done.

To my surprise (not so much actually, now that I think about it), my last minute gamble had worked. The dumplings looked tender and pretty and nothing seemed to have exploded under the lid(yes those are my culinary fears).

So I pulled out a glass dish, set the dumplings about beautifully, poured the orange and ginger vinegar around them, leaving pretty long strips of ginger on top of each dumpling.

Then I spooned the bulky part of the chilli oil onto each dumpling.

The combination of both sauces unleashed some beautiful smells and I went about proudly serving the dumplings to family. :)

I feel like cooking dessert tomorrow.

Hmmm... Masterchef into thy hands, I commend my spirit.

*raises toast*

To Green Tea Chicken Dumplings with .... oh bah whatever.

:P

Taking on Masterchef

In architecture school, you pretty much HAVE to stay up entire nights working on your design, most nights of the week, especially in third year. More often than not, what you end up slaving upon throughout the night is an execution of design ideas: drafting, drawing, rendering, formatting, model making et al.

Well, beyond the designing stage, it's basically not mentally engaging, which means I can have the television running in the background. And thank God I do. Because I discovered shows I know I wouldn't ever have thought twice about during the day. Also, God bless the 1:00 am re-run of Masterchef Australia; it has changed the way I look at food.

:)

Cooking has always been an art, but true application of culinary genius, in preparation AND presentation never hit me till about 2 months ago, when this whole Masterchef ordeal started.

From a pinch of ground rosemary, to a careless dash of liquidy meringue, by jove I was hooked.

Never did cooking look so creative, never did I see endless possibility in ingredients and their various permutations and combinations. Ordinary food became boring and looked lovelessly cooked, as I gazed longingly at the forms and colours of food swimming in front of my eyes.

A year or so ago, I saw 'Julie and Julia' with the amazing Meryl Streep playing the amazing-er Julia Child. Basically it's about a young woman (Amy Adams as 'Julie') who takes on recipes from Julia Child's cookbook on French cooking and blogs about her progress through 524 recipes in a record 365 days.

First off, I have no such intentions, OR inclinations. But I DO want to cook for the sheer joy of it.

So the semester has ended, and I need to indulge my creative side, AND my sister (a victim of the CBSE 12th Board Exams).

So yesterday, I tried my hand at my first Masterchef recipe (click to go to the recipe):

HOT SALAMI PIZZA

Let me state right at the beginning that I know what most Pizza chains in the world do wrong in their pizza: the base.

I've been to Naples, the birthplace of pizza, and TRUST me the base is supposed to be more like naan than the insanely thick oven-browned bread that we are used to.

So there I sat, on the kitchen floor, kneading pizza base dough, throwing in much more than just flour (the base has it's own flavour), then rolling it out to 3-4 mm thick circular elastic awesomeness. I did try the chef pizza base hand-spin, but I sucked :P

Everything else, from the tomato-base sauce to the grated mozzarella progressed smoothly.

Some things in the cooking technique changed, obviously, like I didn't have a ceramic tile to cook my pizza on, so I used my limited baking knowledge to butter and flour steel plates to cook my pizza in. And I switched parsley with basil, well, just because it's my favourite food ingredient :P

'Complete' is a good word for how I felt when I pulled those plates out of the oven.

'Happy' is a good word for how my sister felt when I 'plated up' and put the pizza in front of her.

'Proud' is a good word for how my grandmother felt.

I wanted to click a picture, but my parents have run off on a vacation with my camera. Sorry!

AND...

Thank you Masterchef! Partners in crime, you and I ;)

An Architect

View Ar. Peter Zumthor and Ar. Romi Khosla here.

Theory of Design Project.

Madrid, for Theory of Settlements

The Evolution of Madrid, Spain, by Amri Chadha, SPA Delhi, A/2044/2008, for Theory of Settlements, 5th Semester, 2010. Click HERE.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B8TpBgr9CENWOGYwODVkZTYtOWQyOC00MzA0LWIyMGQtYjgyNzMxNDhjM2E2&hl=en