The Comfort Food List.

Comfortfood: n. that which makes life worth living. Alternative description: Like therapy, only cheaper.
Even though it has generally been jumbled together into a hetreogenous mass by the public, to the discerning eye, there are actually several categories of comfortfood.

The not-another-Monday category: which primarily consists of fried eggs (sunny side up), also known as dim'er poach,largely considered to be one of the most happymaking breakfasts in the world. Especially the oozing out of the gooey yolk to be wiped off the plate (messily, I might add) with scraps of bread. And preferably with streaky bacon, fried to perfection.
Also, leftovers. I don't know why, but leftovers are somehow, intensely comforting: especially goodfood left over from last night's party.

The no-one-loves-me category: You know, the days when you're stuck at home, procrastinating, and feeling, let's admit it, lonely. It also works well if you're on your way to recovery from sudden bouts of emo-poetry writing, or from those morbid moments when you think about dying alone fifty years down the line, still playing Farmville on your laptop. Ideal for this category is chicken soup(no, not the book, you're trying to recover, remember?) which is possibly the next best thing to your Granny baking (okay, buying) cookies for you. Also, in this category is the Thukpa, with prawns and vegetables, which, surprisingly enough, is healthy as well as being as comforting as a warm quilt on a winter's night. In fact, don't bother about the particulars, anything hot and soupy will do at a time like this: even soupy maggie with peas and boiled egg-slices.

The if-i'm-fat-already-might-as-well-enjoy-it category: also known as I-couldn't-care-less. Largely consists of cheese, in various forms and sizes. An omlette with cheese dripping out of the thin layer of egg, a cheese burst pizza, with liquid cheese tricking down your chin, cheese and crackers, with a sprinkling of spices on top or even cheese right out of a can. Heaven couldn't be very much better.

The instant-pick-me-up: Fried chicken. Thin slices delicately glazed to perfection with honey and sesame seeds or huge, meaty chunks deep fried in crispy batter. Home-made, with onion rings,dipped in vinegar and coriander chutney. Or shreds of chicken, lighty fried, tossed in with the rice. Life is simple and oily again.

The this-is-an-emergency category: to be used in dire cases of depression caused by inability to fit into old pair of trousers or shortly after attending a family reunion/Valentine's day celebrations alone. Two words: ice cream. Straight from the tub. With chocolate syrup, nuts and wafer. And with warm cake on the side, with strawberry jam. Feels like a hug.

And even though coffee is not really comfort food, it's the best way to unwind after a long, not-so-hard-after-all, day. When in doubt, drink coffee, is what I always say.

Film festival.

In the mornings, we greedily stuff ourselves with whatever is on display - Turkish, German, Spanish, Italian,French:like a woman on a diet face-to-face with chocolate cake after months. In the afternoons, a classic, with that delectable sense of complacency it brings.And in coffee-littered evenings, there are trysts with short, new ventures, long conversations and rides back home on crowded evening buses.

The Representation of the Self. Or, Is That What You Look Like?

If you have ever wondered what you would look like if you were a hugely popular,sardonic cartoon and yellow: now you know.
Speaking of which, avatars* are strange beings. They're supposed to be representations of yourself but they are actually what you think is a representation of yourself. You possibly had the idea that you had great hair, an attractive smile and a personality so interesting that it borders on overwhelming, but it turns out that other people think your hair's just about okay, your smile's either sleazy or vaguely dumb and your personality is not so overwhelming after all, merely annoying in the way a mosquito is when one's trying to take a nap.That's why 'realistic' representations of yourself is the stuff of fantasies. After all, it's hard enough living with the stub nose or the balding hair without having to ruin a perfectly good cartoon with it too. (And after all this is cyberspace where lying isn't really lying. It's a tweaking of the truth. And you're not really balding.Not yet, anyway.)

Ah, well. Vicarious living. For all it's worth. And yes, I believe you if you say you look like that. Really I do.


*For those who have lived under a rock and/or never had a yahoo id in their lives, here's what the word means. My apologies if I have underestimated you.

Fall.

It's that time of the year again. When everything is just-right. Mellow and inviting.
Autumn in the city is associated in my head with new books. Bouts of frantic movie-watching and scattered art exhibitions.The nip in the air which makes you reach out for morning blankets. Sports days. Old love. Frequent trips to New Market for paisley-printed scarves in end-of-season sales. Crisp afternoon sunshine. Dimly-lit evenings with steaming cups of coffee. Long walks in the city through paths of fallen leaves that crunch under your feet like glass. The beginnings of cake season. The smell of naphthalene as old, winter clothes are retrieved from backs of closets. Birthday treats. General end-of-term laziness. Glue, glitter and squabbles over paint for school art projects. Nostalgia.

Question.

Every year we have a fair near our house during the Diwali weeks (pre, during, post) and every year I listen to a medley of assorted advertisements for miracle drugs,cheap utensils and household requirements(ranging from the safety pin to the all-purpose bucket) interspersed with bursts of shanai playing or the occasional bad singing/recitation (with the constant 'hello, hello, mic testing, 1,2,3...' in between)that is broadcast 'live' from the para'r pujo mondop with the help of a loudspeaker right outside our window.
It surprises me how every year people throng the fair to play the same games (which is mostly designed to never let you win and gives you a completely useless trinket as a prize if on an off chance, you do win), eat the same food (the over-spiced popcorn,the soggy telebhaja and the chicken roll that spills over with blood-red sauce) and buy the same stuff (the glass bangles that the shopkeeper assures you will never break, or at least not till the fair is over, the trick playing-card set at the 'magic' shop at the end of the lane and possibly a fish from the local dealer who provides free fish food if you buy the aquarium as well). Perhaps there's something innately attractive about a fair that makes even the most ordinary things seem nicer(read: worth buying), somehow more enjoyable. Possibly it's an aftermath of the festive season: what's left of the communal spirit of the pujos.Maybe it's just all the pretty lights.
Whatever it is, the fair is a hit. Every single year.

Interval.

I don't know why, but travel writing never comes naturally to me.
Not that all other kinds come in bursts of 'spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion' , but travel writing, for me, needs much more tending to than others.
Maybe because my travelogue inevitably begins to resemble either a longhand memorandum of facts, names, kilometres and careful lists of places of interest, or an inspired description that is so vague that it's difficult to recognize whether the place is a tropical paradise or a temperate ... er, hell. I envy those gifted people who can fill entire books(not to mention a mere blogpost or two) with beautiful descriptions of the place and anecdotes of the people with just the right amount of interesting snippets of history and topography thrown cleverly in (so that you know that you aren't reading a highly flowery novel, but not so much that you begin to be reminded of school.)

However, since I'm not one of those people,I have to be content with fragments of memory, fleeting images sketched by a rather wobbly hand:
Standing at a tiny, godforsaken airport surrounded by desert mountains topped with snow, the wind rushing through rugged, barren rocks, carving and moulding them on its way, giant cloud-shadows on cold, silvery, sand dunes, dinghy alleys flanked by roughly made stone houses with pigeons cooing on their broken parapets, shady nooks opening into tiny,Tibetan markets that sell quaint curios and rainbow coloured shawls, open-air bakeries that smell of freshly baked croissants, golden-pink clouds rolling in on an endless range of purple mountains at twilight.

The pre-vacation trailer.

And we're off.

Uh, well, not yet.
But we will be. At least, I hope so.
I'm dying to go on this vacation.Not literally, of course. I don't think corpses/ghosts/undead etc are much bent on travelling, they seem to be more attached to a particular place. But that's just Pratchettspeak, I have no way of verifying it.Anyway, I was speaking metaphorically.
More such inimitable rhetoric coming your way shortly.

Watch this space.

See you later, alligator.

Au revoir.

*insert other farewell cliches*

P.S. If you can't remember the cartoon who used the second catchphrase in every episode on Old School CN, you're probably too young to read my blog. Come back in a year or two, or as soon as you can find the said cartoon on Wiki. But remember, I've stopped awarding Brownie points since last September.

Foodpost.

I've been watching numerous cooking-related shows this past week, from Nigella Lawson and Rachel Allen to Curtis Stone and Jamie Oliver. There's something incredibly relaxing to watch these beautiful culinary masterpieces being made and know that the water won't boil over, the fish won't burn, the cake won't be soggy , the eggs won't slip and fall and that everything will magically be clean afterwards. (Like knowing that the hero won't die. Even after being attacked by twenty goons with revolvers.)
Not that I'd attempt to cook any of it.Ever.

Anyway.

While we're on the subject, gourmet food is all very well, but I think it's street food that defines a city. There are so many tiny niches of goodfood in the city that so very few people know of. Come to think of it, isn't it impossible to get a real taste of any city unless you know someone who's lived all his life there, carefully sifting the good from the bad, the ugly and the overpriced? Someone who'll show you all those pockets of flavour which are tucked away in dinghy alleyways, behind unprepossessing government offices or staid middle-class homes, invisible except for the initiated.

That tiny restaurant which you have to reach through narrow, disgusting lanes laced with fresh filth and gutters, but whose steaming tibetan food is well worth the trouble. The garage-turned-cafe that serves great sandwiches or plays great music. The grocery store that doubles up as a stall selling the most amazing pakoras, after five, when the afternoon business is done. The tiny one-room eatery in the very heart of the city that makes the best kebabs and firnis. The makeshift tea-shop with long wooden benches and a view of the park, that is ideal for evening cups of milky, sugary chai.

Evenings in the city smells of fresh coriander and tamarind sauce, mingled with the overpowering smell of hastily scrambled eggs frying in oil. Heady, intoxicating flavours that hit you like a big yellow bus. And leaves you blissfully content.

P.s. And because a little (or lot) of self-indulgent publicity never hurt anyone: click.

Harry Potter six: (un)review.

Yes, I know. Everybody told me to not watch it. But there's an almost-masochistic impulse in me that compels me to watch movies which I'm warned against. Sometimes, I find them rather well-made, no matter what other people say. This is not one of those times.(On the bright side, I have something to write about. Easy-to-chew subjects are so incredibly difficult to come by these days.)

I swear I wasn't expecting the book when I went to watch the film. (Hell, I'm not even close to those people who know the middle name of that random teenage wizard who appeared on the second line of the fourth page of chapter 16 in book five to say "Snape wants you in his office" and then diappeared into nothingness. In fact, I haven't re-read the books in ages.)
But what disappointed me in the film was the indecision. On the director's part. On whether to make it a teenage-angst ridden romance with undertones of darkness, or a chilling, suspense thriller (complete with zombies and creepy stalkers... er, brothers) with the romance as a part of the plot. Result: it's neither.

The saddest part is of course the end, which (I must admit, even though Rowling can sometimes be a tad too melodramatic for me) was quite beautiful in the book: what with the tragic hero (come on, you seriously didn't think that Snape would still be the Bad Guy in the end, did you?) having to put his duty and honour before his personal anguish and kill his mentor, who heartbreakingly says: "Severus, please...". In the movie however, the whole thing is as matter-of-fact and as mundane as Professor D. asking for a nice cup o' tea, and Snape obliging (that is, if the tea was green and acid-y and shot out from a wand.)

And I hesitate to even mention the sheer waste that was Greyback and the cardboard cutout of a protagonist that was Harry (reminds me a leetle bit of smell-the-fart acting, if you know what I mean.)

The only redeeming factor in the movie was of course, Tom Felton (a.k.a. the silver lining) whose sheer hotness was emphasized by the dapper black suits he wore throughout the movie.

Analyzing Alice in...Alipore?

Not that I live in Alipore. I just wanted the title to sound beautifully enticing (like this), but as usual, it ended up sounding erm...what's the euphemism for stupid, again?
If you want to ruin a good book, analyze it. This,of course, is the oldest maxim in the world (formulated,no doubt, by some long suffering student of literature), but to analyze something as deliciously nonsensical and random as Alice... it breaks my poor heart. Of course, mostly because paper submission looms like the Queen of Hearts over my head, ready to "off" it any moment now.
This is a perfect instance where background music in real life comes in extremely handy. Now, if reality was better organised, it would have pages flipping, the clock turning (or quick successions of day and night, whichever is cheaper), me looking diligent, poring over (at least, pretending to) a few books and shuffling some papers; all with an appropriate, easy-to-follow-and-sing-along song about 'working harder and touching the sky' or something on those lines ("Sprouting wings" or "Never give up" would do too) playing out in the background (slowly at first, then rising climactically when I finish my hard work) and voila:
the work would be done, the paper submitted and/or presented and I would already be beaming at the camera as the last fading(preferably bass) notes of said song die away in the distance.

The problem with reality is it never ever learns from art. It would do itself a lot of good if it did, once in a while.

The computer is impersonal again.

After almost a month of being virus-ravaged, my old faithful Local disk(C:) bade me a reluctant farewell last week. Now, I have a shiny new C: and latest virus detecting software, media player, Downloader and suchlike: in other words an almost whole new computer which is cold and quite unfriendly.
Not that my old computer and I were the best of friends (in fact, now that I think about it, we hated each other with a vengeance) but we knew each other, so to speak. It bore its overburdened desktop (with an infinite number of shortcuts, favourite songs and old,unused folders) with apparent equanimity, and I bore its ridiculously slow booting with infinite patience (No, really.) Most importantly, we knew each other's tricks. (One of its favourite was to freeze at the end of around seven pages of careful typing in MS Word. After the first few times, I realized it couldn't be a coincidence every time and eventually got the upper hand by frantically clicking the 'Save' button after every new comma. You live and learn.)
This new one, on the other hand, is impersonal and supercilious, with such an air of squeaky-cleanness about it that I feel slightly intimidated. Especially because my folders are messy, cluttered and disorganised. (I have moved them to another drive for safe measure, in case it ever decides to clean them up on its own). And to top it all, its sound device isn't working, so I can't even play songs to break the ice a little. We just sit there in absolute silence and have what is generally termed as a cordial, working relationship.

Sigh.

The Toothbrush Survey, revisited.

Once upon a time my friend and I conducted a toothbrush survey, which (if I lay aside all those important and complicated sub-issues it raised as to the nature of psychological responses to colour and its socio-cultural ties to gender) raised the simple and most fundamental of questions:

"What is the colour of your toothbrush?"

And while the most obvious answers were blue and red ( people seem to have a curious fascination of one of these colours when it comes to toothbrushes), there were some interesting anomalies (like the Yellow Polka Dotted Variety or the Dino Toothbrush) .The entire process also raised several mind-boggling questions like "Are red toothbrushes primarily used by girls?" or "How far does the colour of your toothbrush depend on the colour of your towel?" (and whether you are insane enough to match them) or "Does the Walrus really like oysters?"

Unfortunately, the Great Judean Toothbrush survey, like all good things in life, fizzled out due to lack of resources and complicated pie-charts.

But I'm curious: what are your thoughts on the matter? Or, if you are incapable of thinking, what is the colour of your toothbrush?
P.S. Of course,I'm allowing anonymous comments for this post, so if you do have a Powerpuff Girls/ Star Trek toothbrush, this is where you can own up.
Fearlessly.

Not again.

My writing skills are comparable to bad plumbing. The pipes get clogged(mostly by reality shows, overeating and oversleeping) and have to be cleaned out so frequently that the entire process has ceased to be even remotely amusing.


And the plumber always promises to come but never turns up.

Time management.

Now that I've managed to get the uncomfortable things (read:reality) out of the way, at least for the time being, I don't know where to start. There are so many things that I need to do: some favourite things which have been regretfully set aside for a brighter day (like catching up on my reading, taking the camera out for walks more often, mending my broken relationship with my sketchpads) and some less than favourite things that have been conveniently postponed for tomorrow (like re-organizing, decision making, de-cluttering, exercising).

Mornings are for writing. For slowly, very slowly dragging myself out of that ignorant abyss of tech-retardation and properly exploring photo editing. For learning to make dainty little low-fat lemon and strawberry tarts to go with my well-balanced nutritional breakfast(*All together now, breakfast is the most important meal of the day*) of fruits and wholewheat bread. (Oh well...I can dream, right?)

Afternoons are for discovery. For oldforgotten paint brushes, crayons and pencils. For messy art projects which take infinite patience and serve no purpose whatsoever after they are done. For movie-watching.And remembering old songs.

Evenings are for reading. For countless cups of coffee. For rain. And for those ridiculously relaxing sessions of mindless TV-watching with a plate of something deep-fried and cheesy.

I hope I don't waste time doing something remotely constructive.

Then and Now.

This article is about the changes in writing styles. For the VH1 not-so-good show try Then and Now(disambiguation).

It's perhaps interesting to note how often a writing style takes in external(read: current book you're reading) influences and moulds itself accordingly. More often than not it's like one of those giant chameleon-like creatures in movie adaptions of StephenKing novels which can take the shape of the first person it comes in contact with.
Take this creature at ten, for instance, when it was littered with descriptions of camping, secret societies, and heather (inevitable remnants of Enid Blyton) and of course with at least one character called Dick (okay, I was ten, so let's not read too much into that) or Peter.
Then a couple of years later came what I mentally call the Era of the Ellipses when every other sentence (or phrase or paragraph) ended in those three tiny dots to make it sound sufficiently mysterious... (For instance a poem would be somewhat like: The sun filtered through... the busy streets of May... I wondered where the roads went...past the city's grime and grey...)

And then of course comes college which changes your writing forever. Take for instance this paragraph:
"I love the summer rain. The sudden gusts of wind throw the leaves around in the street.The rain dances off the asbestos roof of the house across the street, making that familiar pitter-patter which I call rainsound in my head. A bunch of schoolgirls rush down the street giggling madly; an old, tattered umbrella pirouettes away in the wind with an elderly man running frantically behind it, trying to catch up."

A simple enough description.
Now observe closely:
*pulls out the box of Oldest Tricks in the Book*

"Sweet summer rain. The scent of wet grass in the air. Restlessness lingering in the wind.
My soul has sprouted wings.
I hear sounds of broken laughter. The dust envelopes its shattered pieces.
The rain sings alone. A sad, lonely song which pierces the evening.
And after the rain, all that is left is a tattered umbrella lost in the streets."

Observe the pregnant pauses and the attempted use of Conceit. Realize that this is part of a common vocabulary now, the same way every other essay used to start with "It was a dark and stormy night" in sixth grade.
Nowadays the poet doesn't say,he emphasizes, instructs, reinstates, believes.
The author does not merely write well but "uses the narrative structure to uncover the structure of the narrator's unconsciousness".

Don't get the wrong ideas.I'm not trying to be sarcastic here. All I'm saying is that all these recent complaints of writing no longer being honest, of being a mode of alienation of the self rather than an expression of it...(Ah, how perfectly glib!) is nothing new.
Was writing ever completely honest, completely free from others' influences, whether at seven or seventy?

P.S.My friend has also discussed something on the same lines at her blog.