Travel Memoirs

It is ok to climb high even if you could only do it once
Reach the destination... although you are the last one
Observe the world in a way you never did before ...
laugh with people you never spoke with ever ...
Ask for help... accept the pain ... aspire to be better ... dream 
Truth is fierce ... Self reflection scary ...
Our weakness does not define our soul...
Our falls are only momentary ... how we rise ...legendary...
With every travel ... learn so much more..
on the road ...life reloads ...
Priorities are transient ... matter erodes
Passion ... Philosophy ...Misery ...
Companion .... ethereal hope
We are all walking alone ... stars shining.. seemingly close...
Illusion of freedom ... glory of goodness ... reality of cost
such is our world ... beautiful .. brave ...battle lost ...

---- Road Trip Kentucky, Tennessee & North Carolina

 Making new friends ... Losing old ones ... Memories .. Some etched for lifetime ... Some erased for ever .... Traveling is fanciful thing to have in your profile ... It reads well ... Perfect ego escalator ...I am a traveller ... Something that sets you apart from the usual herd of regular people ... If only you knew the ache ... It hurts so much ... It hurts to go back ... It hurts to find it difficult to be regular .. You crave to be happy in your day job & wish to not wish so much to be some where ... It hurts when your most desired of the bucket list is incomplete .. But you smile away .. It hurts to be humiliated & laughed at for being silly .. To always hope strangers will say yes ... And they don't .. It hurts when friends say yes & then say no ... Every travel diary teaches so much more about our own selves .. Wonder if we really want to know so much ...see so much .. The need to see more increases so much more ... It hurts so much ... It's so beautiful ... It feels so real .. To hurt so much .. So much truth .. Such rawness ...so much love .. With just life ... world .... people

---- 2016 New Year Week San Francisco & Toronto

Love

Yes.. my favorite music station is love songs
Yes .. I love talking about relationships
Yes.. My whole world is about my emotions & love
Yes .. nothing else really matters but the feeling of being loved
Yes.. I work full time & I have money & success & happening social life .. I still crave love
Yes .. I am demanding and dominant & still I wish to be compliant in Love
Yes.. It is silly.. but such is the beauty of love
Yes.. Its starts with I love you
Yes.. Its true... So what if you don't believe in "I DO" ..
Yes.. Every sentence you read so far has 'love'
Yes.. I am not making much sense... perhaps I am in Love ..

End of Food Journal & food fondness as well .... end of a lot many things...

So yes, I thought I would go on cooking forever and was very very excited for the first 2 months of my new life in US...away from India. My shiny new vessels, my own grocery shopping and picking up the choicest of proteins & colorful veggies.

It has come to a very peaceful & silent death. I did not even realize what happened or when.  Last I cooked was 5 days back... some daal.. and I eat it bit by bit .... not a care in the world of what it tastes like .... I have been out dining so frequently past few days, meat loafs and bacon beef sliders and shrimps ... my university dining is indeed very good at least for a red meat crazy Indian like me... but none of it has made it to my FB wall. Seriously find the facebook "delete profile" option very tempting these days.

These days... what has happened in these days. Work has increased yes, and I enjoy the work yes. Weather has improved a lot ..true. i found good music place... evenings and weekends are pleasant... no dearth of me time no more... its all me now... Perspectives have changed a lot. I am not a person who should stay away from family. I have not done it in 28 years. This should have been reason enough to realize that perhaps this was not such a great idea.

We do get told, beware of what you wish for wishes do come true and it is not as you want it to be or the best for you. Such wise words are never accepted. I wished for Bidesh. I fought for it. Slogged so hard for this life. To what do I owe this life.... Coming home to empty walls. Skype conversations.

This too shall pass. I will soon have my family here. Soon be happy for having people who would become my life. I cant stop wanting from life. I get one thing, I need the next. Yes, I am happy as long as I am out of my home. But when I am back... there is no home.

There are no more conversations. No more laughs or worries or tragedies. No more late night bike rides. No more of so many things. There is no me. There is no home. I dont know what I come back to. Welcome to the united states of America. A land of dreams ... i dont dream no more... 

Food Journal # 2 ... The Lows & Highs of Life in Kitchen

Lows are painfully tormenting to eat. With few weeks of kitchen stunts, confidence becomes the nemesis. What struck me I know not while i delved into making two of my most dreadful meals... I commend myself on finishing those in its entirety ... for the love of food...nothing edible goes into trash ... but ...the highs are what keeps me going :)

1. March 7th Meethi Roti ...

Well... this one wasn't so bad in taste as it was in labor ... what started as puran poli ended up being one big dough of everything... sauteed lentils with jaggery & ghee (both arrived from India with lots of love), refined flour and milk ... didn't ever have the patience of rolling and always made happy shapes..between my palms.. & roasted..sometimes burnt cookies..sometimes... weird tasting sweet breads...however...my meethi roti which my polite room mates too dared eating at times.. 

2. My mood on the March 11 ..

sometimes... when u r like crazy hungry... its best 2 get a burger or a bagel... as fast track mad cooking sucks! here is what you should not do... u should NOT ... saute cumin, garlic, chilies, tomatoes, banana chips (yea i know ...went crazy for a bit) .. and definitely not add water, rice flakes & wheat cereals to this already sad mess...but incase u are afflicted with the same madness that bit me a while ago...atleast make a reasonably small quantity and not like a full pot which will torment me for days now... grrr .

3. Salvation 2 minutes Kheer ... March 12

Saving grace from last night's disaster kitchen episode ... 

I so want to conceal this recipe and pretend to be this genius of "Kheer" maker, for those who do not know what this wonderful dish is... defining a kheer is difficult as it has considerable number of variations ...also called "Payasam or Payesh" ...this is a dessert made by condensing milk and adding aromatics to it along with natural sweeteners like jaggery or honey .. can be made like a porridge by addition of rice/vermicelli/tapioca beads or more... My 2 minute kheer recipe ... is ...heat some milk till it boils and add a pack of "Haldiram's Soan papdi" :) 

Awesomeness in 2 minutes ...

4. Made chicken ...  March 15

So ... the first time I made chicken (fatafatti chickener thang - previous blog ) ... my FB post's length irritated Akshay (hates reading ...alas!) & he promised me 1000 likes if i just wrote 2 words "made chicken" .. 

it's a lot of effort for just 2 words... heat mustard oil.. add crushed green cardamoms, cinnamon stick & bay leafs ... chopped onions and chicken (marinated in mustard oil, yogurt, garlic paste, tandoori masala, red chili crushed, lashn cha tikkhat*, coriander powder & salt for over an hour) .... add crushed tomatoes & diced potatoes, sugar and salt and reduce until chicken is cooked in its own juices... add water and kasturi methi ... bring the gravy to boil and serve with steamed rice ... :D

*lashn cha tikkha .. spicy masala from the hinterlands of maharashtra ... dessicated coconut, red chilies, garlic and some jaggery/sugar ... brings love to the meals..can be had as a chutney or added to recipes for that extra flavor..

5. Deem Kosha .... March 17

St. Patrick's Day... wish i had an Irish guy...drinking and dancing whole nite... my day went well... Deem Kosha is... simple bengali egg curry...

make a paste of onions, tomatoes & chillies. In the pan, heat mustard oil (i will miss my Tej shosher tel when it gets over) ... add crushed green cardamoms, cinnamon stick & bay leafs and cumin seeds. Next, crush ginger and garlic and add it along with the paste. Reduce the masala, add diced potatoes, salt & sugar, add boiled eggs and finish with fresh dhone pata (cilantro leaves) ... 

Happy meals.. to me.. 

Food Journal # 1 ... A Bong Surviving in US

7 weeks later, Unites States of America is finally settling in. I am home away from home. Should be no surprises that it took food to get me resolved. Food should be designated as a religion. It would be the best of all religions. I love food and I always knew this.  Well, now I love cooking too. What more, I love cooking for others. So, past few weeks have been very very tasty....

I commit myself to my first ever 'Food Journal' - perhaps infrequent, but a dedicated delicious series of write ups for all my culinary stunts to amuse my dearly awaited great grand children, should they care to know me more.

Prologue - 

What started as chips & milk whole day routines, extending to occasional maggi noodle days & rare mishap inedible cooking of dahi kadi and soggy rice has now been happily amended to delicious full course meals. 

I have few new people who don't mind being guineas to my efforts and thankfully none of them have yet been seriously ill or offended yet. 

So here goes, my beginning as a Cuisinier Délicieux 

7 Feb, 2015. Rajmah! ( mother of all red kidney beans)

This is my first ... overnite soaked beans boiled along with tomatoes, cinnamon sticks, whole cardamom, cloves, salt & sugar. Toss garlic, green chilies, onion, tomatoes, turmeric, cumin powder, salt & sugar. Add the beans & crush them. Sprinkle fresh cilantro, dollops of butter .. serve with bread/rice ...mix with yogurt.... have it your style!

14 Feb, 2015. Fatafatti Chickener Thang! (Spicy Chicken in Thick Green Gravy)  

My favorite! 5 chicken drums (leg pieces), cleaned & de-skinned, marinate over night with lemon juice, salt, little mustard oil, paste of garlic,chopped fresh green chillies, fresh coriander/cilantro leaves (dhone pata), fresh curd/plain yogurt & chicken tandoori masala... next day, saute garlic, green chillies, onion, tomatoes and lots of dhone pata in mustard oil, add the marinated chicken & cook until its completely boiled. Add water if needed. I had to add a bit. & Voila! crazy good meal ready. Serve with rice or just love eating it as is!

17 Feb, 2015.  Palak Daal (Lentils with Spinach)

So this evening.. I had the option of going home & again getting into that inescapable chore of cooking meals... or get into the exciting & power packed university gym ... doing zumba & yoga ... free sessions smile emoticon ... i feel so fit, refreshed & healthy now... my palak daal is so delicious tongue emoticon... spinach & lentils make gr8 combination... boil yellow lentils (any daal would do), with spinach & green chiilies... in d next pan... heat mustard oil...add jeera (cumin seeds), crushed garlic, chopped onions & saute well... add crushed tomatoes, turmeric & red chilli powder, salt & SUGAR .. cook until oil seeps & add the boiled lentil (daal) to the pan... add some water ... boil and ensure the tomato onion masala is blended well with the daal... & taa di da di daa.... its done! quite exhausting my work out has been.

24 Feb, 2015. Cabbage Manchurian

so .. after 24 hrs of mind prep & 2 hrs of actual physical labor... my cabbage manchurian is ...very simple.. grin emoticon 1 whole cabbage... cut in large pieces & boiled, drain the water (you can use the water later as vegetable stock for other recipes). Mash the cabbage with hand keeping it coarse & add 2 eggs, 1 full bulb of garlic (lots of garlic) finely chopped, 5-6 chopped green chillies, some refined flour (for binding) & salt as needed. Make small balls & deep fry till golden brown crust. Inside remains tender. In a different pan, make the gravy... heat oil & add finely chopped garlic, large chunks of onion, fresh cilantro leaves, soy sauce, tomato ketchup & chilli sauce (i used green chilli chutney)...add sugar & salt..saute & add little water... keep the gravy consistency thick...when the gravy simmers...add the fried cabbage balls & needless to say... Spettacolare!! smile emoticon Note: Addition of minced boiled meat/shrimps to the cabbage also possible.

1 March, 2015. Powerpack 5 minute Breakfast

Special day beginnings. Burnt garlic & sausages, with onions, spinach & fried eggs...all tossed in the pan.. sprinkle cheese... happy start to my sunday!

6 March 2015. Happy Holi Meal...

Moong daal & cauliflower seasoned with fried chillies, cumin & mustard seeds. Adding love to it with a very generous helping of butter.  Pahadi chicken ..marinate chicken with lots of cilantro, garlic, green chilies, yogurt, ground garam masala, mustard oil, salt & turmeric, deep fry with onions & tomatoes... Mix veg of beans, sweet corn and carrots tossed in noodles with basic spices & mash potatoes seasoned with mustard oil, green chilies, cilantro & onions (which should have been fried but never mind)  ... Happy servings of plain rice ..plus very happy conversations.. the bong adda!

Only because I had good people around me to share my meals, did my food really taste good.. with love .. for food... for the love of cooking!

Bon Apetite Mon Ami...

Bidesh

Just noticed the date of my last blog, 15th of December 2013.

I have been pretty busy. It takes a lot of work to get to the United States of America. Especially when there are like umteen jhols that need sorting.

From biotech to software testing and TCS days, to celebrity dazzled book launches & talk shows, tele series and FMCG brandings ... along with all the insane travelling and job switches...

I am back to biotech. school days... dancing...cooking...laughing...sometimes studying...& best of it... Unemployed!

In all, I had 6 jobs in India between 2009 and 2014. I guess the common denominator for all of them would be bosses who loved me a lot followed by doleful anguish for ditching them & quitting, damaging them always with the devilry I so love. Followed by the oh so ominous - ethics - speech!

To my beloved bosses, where is that so called "ethics" when you trim my pitiful pay checks for lateness by margin of minutes blaming the idiotic "digital time attendance recorder" & how is it that the idiotic recorder always fails to notice the out time & the illustrious "ethics" reciprocate efforts with silly appreciation emails worth dung followed by lament of bad economy.

So in essence, I have no regrets. Loved all my jobs. Loved every bit in India, till I realized, I could be a pain else where too. ;) Why be so selfishly racist and restrict the privileges of my heightened sense of labor laws to only my country men given that the world is ever in need of trouble makers.

Entropy you see, chaos is needed. And Chaos it has been, this across oceans journey. Securing bank loans, gathering marksheets & recommendations, swanking SOPs & CVs, forms & payments, tax -finance documentations, it is a whirlwind ride. I did it all. Wow! factor would be GRE math, or rather practicing math after 10 years. Joe - A toast to my teacher!

Battle of emotions.. trepidation of university rejection ... shock of acceptance ...dreadful visa interview and the horrific delay - administrative processing 221 G.

Gist of it all, after cancellation of best british airways tickets scheduled on 2015 January 12 and dejected postponing of my most anticipated travel to a 9 month late date in september, my F1 visa finally arrived 4 days before the last date of US entry mentioned in immigration document.

Yes, I did leave my country in 3 days time. Family shopping, friends packing, some very very important friends missing, barely spoken good byes and Bidesh!

Lufthansa got me to the land of dreams & for me, freedom on the evening of 18th January, 36 hours before my university start date. My welcome to this new country has been cold. Literally, with the first snow fall of the season, minus 20 degrees Celsius & ice sheets 2 feet high, 2015 a new year...new life!!

People earn what they deserve...

Recent turn of events has imposed this line of thought upon me in a mannerism I find revolting. 'People earn what they deserve'. No. This statement is evidence of epitome stupidity.

Fighting with people out & out demanding better living conditions does not suffice. Cribbing about the lost virtues of humanity & being a socialist zealot is all seemingly a facade. Losing people around myself, being told to come back to reality, such redundant speeches.

Escaping won't do good no more. It is indeed naive though that there still exists a school of thought that people earn what they deserve. People don't.

I am in Kolkata. I still see people pulling hand rickshaws. Just today, for again the nth time, felt guilty of my weight. I paid him double, still no escaping the fact 100 rs. for bearing me cannot be enough. Could I have paid more? yes. Did I? No.

Why? Just not sure. Not sure how much would be enough. My limited money was dear to me. He was less important than me. Just then, came flashing back, a remark which brought me crashing to the ground reality of the people in position of power, of affluence. People like me, we still somewhere believe, that people earn what they deserve.

Such utter rubbish. No one earns what they deserve. People earn what they possible can by suffocating their morale, killing their sense of empathy and  the ache of guilt knowing full well what they earn is unjust.  I cannot earn 10 times more than my janitor, no matter what. He does a more important job of keeping my toilet disease free & therefore me healthy. What the hell do I do? Push papers so some one somewhere can push some more papers & some corporate can sell some more fancy waste & con some more idiots.

Dil se, pyaar mohhabat se, do i really believe we would not survive the 21st century minus McDs & Dominoes.

I did nothing past 5 years, absolutely nothing credible to give me the sum I earned. Pushing papers, only coz. my father could afford fancy schools. What I don't get however is this, Why does something so obvious, so plebeian bother me at all. It is a very known fact.

Wealth is unequally distributed, we know that. Within the same realm of this vintage city, I have witnessed families of the raj era, politicians with their so called 'love money' from their patrons, 14 hr dog day slaves who get told on paper that their line of duty is from 9 - 5, yet get idiotic smart phones, fancy pant laptops & other devices to hook them 24X7, plus credit cards & greasy secretaries & ofcourse the ever charming boss, who inspires the slave. We have businesses run by the Sahib with the labor of the refugees, we have workshops fuelled by the mistries whose toil gets blurred beneath the smog of union politics.

It is fine to really splurge if you can. I love wearing my diamond nose pin. It is tiny, but it is my pride & ofcourse a luxury which I can do well without & pay my house help a bit more.

So why the hell I am trying to prove I am a cut above the rest, when I too am the same sleaze bag. Perhaps, all I am trying to say is that, it is ok to be bad. Just admit it. About time I give up preaching what needs to be done to make this world a better place to live. It is hopeless for I cant manage the standards myself. But no one earns what they deserve. No one deserves 100 rs. for dragging 70Kgs for full length of an hour.  This I admit & pray people realize & stop being so smug about their pay checks.

Despite all of it, my gurer shondesh & multitude of machh continues. Nor will I lessen my food intake, nor will I lose weight, plus I will still ride rickshaws & pay them abysmally low. Likewise, corporates will chase high end realty, Porsche & Lamborghini will still be sold and minimum wage rate figure will keep declining and working hours will steadily increase. 12 hrs just not enough if my  father ain't Richie rich.

People dont earn what they deserve. People earn what they can scavenge. It is a dog fight.  A toss of a dice which puts you in a rickshaw dragging line, a B school, a politicians lineage or a kendriya vidyalay with god fearing parenting efforts.

Need a definition of human beings. It just seems too blurred with so many contending species.

I see skies of blue..... clouds of white
Bright blessed days....dark sacred nights
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world. ;D