The Alwaye house

I find myself unable to concentrate, watching the news wondering when some camera for some news agency will show me my grand aunt's home in Kerala, and how high the flood waters reached there.

I am in the U.S. We do not stay in touch on Whatsapp. I know they evacuated early because she needs oxygen 16 hours a day. They have an aging German shepherd. What became of him I wonder. In the living room there used to be cassettes of Hindi movie soundtracks from the 90s. My uncle remains a devoted fan of Raveena Tandon. I loved taking a different tape up each night, when we visited, and listening to them while lying on the raised, spare bed, with the windows open. I have an almost paralyzing fear of spiders, and every bathroom in this house had at least one. I suppose they got washed away in the flood.

In the space below the stairs my grand aunt had a little puja room- she would do some hocus pocus things with incense every evening. It never took long and the house always smelt nice afterwards. No one else in the house participated, or was ever required to.

As a child the drive way held the greatest fascination. It was filled with smooth little stones, which must have been brought in from some river bed somewhere. I spent ages selecting the smoothest and prettiest stones, as on every trip I was allowed to take a few back with me to Bangalore. The residents of the house wouldn't have minded letting me go with handfuls, but my grandmother knew I couldn't resist collecting stones, and that if allowed I would have been incredibly greedy.

Jyothi chechi's fridge was the second most exciting thing. She stored her nail polish in the door, and I was allowed to examine all the colours. More often than not there was a strand of jasmine flowers, woven together for the hair, sitting about getting disgusting, as the person it was intended for forgot it and moved on with life. The smell of fridge-aged jasmine will always take me back to being six again. Also they had a Sodastream. This was a big thing in the 90s. No one I knew in Bangalore had that. And there was always Orange crush. 

I am sad that the place of my best childhood memories is gone. Even if the house is structurally sound after the last week, it will need extensive repairs, and will lose its lovely, shabby cosiness.

I hope my grand aunt will be ok.

Sometimes I wonder if I am losing myself.I have not cooked sambar in almost a year.

Bad life decisions

stayed up late to watch An Officer and a Gentleman.
Yea.
I don't know why either.
It was terrible, and I regret everything.

Week 5

29 January - 4 February

Viewing
Turner and Hooch. Which was surprisingly fun. Also a good section of the movie has Tom Hanks slithering around in extremely abbreviated underwear. I approved. Also while I watched the movie Higgs watched me. And I have some great photos.

Nobel. This I enjoyed, though it could have been much better.

Party Down. Now why haven't I seen this before. Never mind. It is delightful now. Lizzy Caplan forever.

Reading
Nothing of note. Need to do better next week.

Week 4: January 23- 28

Viewing
1. Schindler's List
Watched this in many parts. Found the end rather cloying. But Ben Kingsley was wonderful. And the music was lovely. 

2. Suite Française
I enjoyed this very much. The movie does justice to the book I think. Must go watch everything with Michelle Williams. 

3. Loins of Punjab Presents
For the fourth time, and Tanya's first time. This is still one of the funniest things, and I love it so much. 

4. Playing for Time
 Hmm. I don't know about plays that get turned into movies, but Vanessa Redgrave was excellent.

5. Turner and Hooch
I enjoyed this very much. Also Higgs watched me almost the whole time that I watched it, so I have several excellent photos. Also Tom Hanks does a lot of leaping about in his underwear, on account of which I highly recommend this movie.

Reading
1. Cat King of Havana- Tom Crosshill
A sent me this for my kindle and I loved it. I started a series of salsa lessons last week, and had no idea this book was all about learning salsa when I started it. What fun. And such a great primer on how young people can learn to talk about places and things that they do not understand. Shall look for more things by this author. 

Week 3

January 16-22

Viewing
1. The Godfather II
Thank you Netflix.

2. The Godfather III
I didn't think Sofia Coppola was terrible. Does that mean I have bad taste? Also the pasta scene was far too sexy for an encounter between first cousins, but I guess that was the point. I may or may not have watched that more than once.

3. Spotlight
Well worth the watch. Also topical.

4. Alias Grace
I watched this and realised how little of the tv I usually watch has women narrating themselves, and narrating almost without end. I loved it. Also I enjoy an unreliable narrator very much, when there isn't Inception-style dickery.
Also contrast this murder-mystery with the sexism of at least half the European stuff on Netflix. It is possible to write a sexy murder mystery while talking reasonably about women and their bodies. I suppose Atwood would be the object lesson in this.
And the menacing quilt-making was lovely. I nearly took out my long-abandoned embroidery project.
Some Canadian tv shows are so incredibly boring. And others, maybe it's only the period ones, like this one, and Anne with an E, are delightful.

5. Aiyyaa
I'm surprised this got made but it was delightful. How nice to see a woman get exactly what she wants.

Reading
1. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness- Arundhati Roy
I need to be able to speak more Urdu. This was lovely. I suspect many people found the sections on Kashmir to be too long drawn out, but I thought it was perfect. Also there is always a cement kangaroo dustbin in a Roy book.

Week 2

Jan 8-15

Viewing
1. La Trêve- The Break.
This had promise for a while but women are hysterical in the end. This is not a spoiler. It is a feature of a lot of French-language viewing.

2. The Dark (Minimal spoilers below- nothing that you won't cover by episode 3)
Admittedly I only sat through the whole season because of the music, and because I was playing bridge while doing so. I cannot say I enjoyed this much. It was like Stranger Things but without any joy, or historical context- no interest in the post-war context of 1953, or Germany of the 80's. Also women don't get to go through the wormhole and try to fix things- the boys get the adventure, and agency. Women get angry and hit people out of turn, lie and sabotage things, or withdraw emotionally, by and large, I imagine this is because the men in town are dicks, and about half of them have this massive time-traveling secret which they aren't sharing.

3. Strictly Ballroom
Goofy Australian fun. Interesting for Spaniards to be the impoverished immigrants. I guess that was the 90's.

4. The Godfather
Went to see this on the big screen, and was happy I did. Had not watched it in one go from beginning to end before. Had forgotten the horrible domestic violence, plate-breaking scene. Also spent the whole movie thinking 'that Dustin Hoffman looks a bit odd'.

5. Salsa shine videos- too many to count.

Week 1

Week 1
Jan 1-7

Viewing
1. La Mante (predictable but acceptable)
2. Some episodes of Dr WHO season 10 (Not terrible)
3. High Road to China  (Sexist, racist, shouty garbage but there are planes and Tom Selleck in a leather jacket)
4. Glacé (also predictable, less acceptable)

Reading
1. Association of Small Bombs
I would read Karan Mahajan's next book. The book made me miss Delhi. 

Top of the Lake- Season 2: A Few Thoughts

I just watched the second season of Top of the Lake and loved it.

One review I found online said that Jane Campion's 'signposting of feminist issues' was 'heavy-handed'. I found it to be no such thing. If one tv series is able to centre the bodies of women and their experiences it's but a drop in the ocean of paeans to the resilience and wonder of the male form.

Things I did find to be true about Top of the Lake.

1. Elizabeth Moss is spectacular. And her chemistry with Gwendolyn Christie is off the charts.  Christie's character was written with a great deal of care. I suppose it must ever be a subject of discussion how large her body is, and this show dealt with that extremely well.

2. On the subject of motherhood- in a show with several mothers talking about motherhood, and grappling with it, it is the fathers that do a stellar job, and keep the house together. Pyke seemed something of a fantasy to me. Look I didn't even look up the actor's name, because this character is a unicorn. We all want him. Or someone like him. The coroner, too, to a lesser degree: the safe dad figure, who offers comfort and snacks. In this show it is the men who always bring the food.

3. Puss. For anyone who has been with an older man, this relationship is the thing your mother agonized about. The lure of an older individual who wields authority is something I imagine many of us have felt, and Campion takes it to its brutal ugly extreme in the relationship between Mary and Puss.

4. This show has some great action scenes. There's one in the middle, with Moss fighting, where I found myself roaring alongside her. It is a violent show, but most of the physical violence remains off screen.

5. Talking about race and inequality appears to be the reserve of the villains, or the misguided on the show. I'm still thinking this through. The obviously horrendous power dynamic between S. Asian women, and their white male and female Australian exploiters wasn't picked apart with as much care as the relationships between parents and children, and male and female sexual partners. In a show with a lot of carefully treated women the brown women were still ciphers for white desire. Given that Campion was able to do so very much more with her women than most, it would have been nice to see her do as well by the brown folk in her writing as well.

The Book of Gold Leaves and a small rant

I just finished reading Mirza Waheed's The Book of Gold Leaves (no points for a forgettable, pointless title).

I read The Collaborator earlier in the year and thought it was lovely. This was also. I spent four days in Srinagar one summer some years ago, and I wished it could have been longer. I also spent a couple of days in Kargil. Just enough to have developed a taste for Tabak Maas (ribs), not long enough to have made friends or gotten to know the place.

The odd review had white women, reading this as art of a book club, no doubt, complaining that there wasn't enough explanation of the context, or that the names were all too similar for them to keep track. I didn't think either of these were pertinent. 1. Use Google. 2. Literally every second white person is named Jack or John or Jason. Somehow the rest of the world is managing to keep up. Don't be so fucking lazy. As if anyone really uses that gigantic list of names at the beginning of War and Peace. You blunder through until you learn who is who, or you give up half way and miss out on one of the loveliest books written.

There were just enough references to food in The Book of Gold Leaves to keep me hooked. It was a very moving description of people trying to live their lives in a really complicated situation. I want to find more books set in Kashmir, and a decent history of the area. I hope I can go back some time, and travel more in the region. The Himalayas are really incredibly beautiful. 

That Thing You Do

Someone reminded me on Twitter that That Thing you Do is 21 years old today.

When I was in the 7th std my best friend at the time had a sleepover to which the entire class was invited. Of the 25 people maybe 15 showed up. Her older brother disappeared into his room to avoid us, too impossibly cool to hang out. Her mum ordered in pizza- it might have been U.S Pizza, Dominos wasn't there then, and Pizza Hut hadn't reached Koramangala yet either. She put out biscuits and and Pepsi and left us to ourselves for a bit.

After we had eaten she moved us to their drawing room and put on a tape of That Thing You Do. Most of us were going to sleep in that room, and mattresses were on the floor. I remember sitting in front of a not very big screen, falling asleep on the shoulder of a boy, A, who had just joined the school that year, thinking being next to him was rather nice. My other best friend V was on the other side, he was sweet on N, our host. This did not keep us from all being really close. V drowned in the school lake a year after high school finished. He hadn't liked college much and returned to school often, taking up all kinds of conservation projects. Such a waste. We're not a very close-knit batch but we all miss him. I miss him.

I still see A occasionally. He's done a drug too many and is mostly unreachable at this point- no trace of the rather sweet boy who joined our class in middle school. He's still usually the tallest person in the room, and rather the most attractive.

N moved to the U.S. after the 10th standard. Her father had died some years before and her mother wanted to set up somewhere new. We met last year, after 15 years. Her American husband and my American husband were also there. It was very nice.

Butter Pecan Layer Cake

For Thanksgiving I decided to make a Pecan Pie, but then I found this recipe online, and decided to make a Butter Pecan cake. The original recipe is here- I've made a few changes, and I split the work over three days, so here is my version. It is the most elaborate, and definitely the tastiest cake I've made in a long time. It ages well. One day after being assembled it still tastes great. 

The plan below is how I should have broken the work up. What I did was make the icing and cake the second day, and assemble on the third. The icing suffers a little from being refrigerated- you might have to beat it a second time to bring the texture back, and this is a nuisance. It was still delicious, but I wouldn't make the icing a day ahead again. This is also the most time and labour intensive step.

Day 1
Brown Butter
Bourbon Caramel Sauce
Day 2
Cake
Day 3
Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing
Assembly



Best Butter Pecan Layer Cake. 
12 generous slices, 16 reasonable slices.

Day 1:
Brown Butter

4 sticks of unsalted butter (each stick is 8 tbsp)

Melt the butter in a sauce pan over low-medium heat. Stir frequently with a silicon spatula. The butter will foam quite a bit. Scrape the sides and bottom, as you stir, to keep the butter browning evenly. It took me about 25 min of near constant stirring to have the butter change colour.
As turns brown pour the butter out, along with all the milk solids, into a heatproof dish. I put it into a glass jar with a wide mouth. Let it cool a bit and put it into the fridge for later use.
Put the butter out about an hour before you start making the cake or the icing- it will need time to come to room temp before it can be used.

Bourbon Caramel Sauce
1 cup white granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 stick (4 tbsp) unsalted butter at room temperature
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 tbsp bourbon
1 pinch of salt

Put the sugar and water in a large saucepan over medium heat.
Gently swirl the pan to combine- do not stir. Crystals might form on the sides. Ignore them.

Simmer till the mix turns brown- took me about 25 min at medium-low heat. It burns easily, so will need constant vigilance at this stage.
Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the butter- make sure the butter is not too cold or the mix will seize.
Add the cream and stir.
Add the bourbon and the salt.
Put the pan back on the heat and simmer for a few minutes while stirring.
My caramel was full of lumps so I had to strain it into a jar- after this is both looked and tasted great. Set this aside to cool, then refrigerate.



Day 2: Brown Butter Pecan Cake
3 tbsp unsalted butter
2 cups finely chopped pecans
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 of the brown butter, softened
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 egg yolks (keep the whites)
3 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (1 1/4 cup 2% milk with 2 tsp of vinegar left to sit for about 10 min)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Melt the 3 tbsp of butter in a pan or skillet at medium heat. Add the chopped pecans (2 cups).
Stir frequently, till browned. Took me about 7 min.
Take them off the heat, and set aside for adding to the batter later.
Butter 3 8-inch cake tins, line with parchment paper, butter the paper, dust with flour and set aside. I suspect 2 9-inch tins would also work well, and result in a cake that is easier to cut, though less impressive to look at.
Make the buttermilk, if not using store bought, by putting vinegar into 2% milk and setting this aside for some minutes before use.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
Use an electric stand mixer with the paddle attachment to combine the brown butter, oil, white sugar and brown sugar till pale and smooth (about 7 min). Mix in the eggs and egg yolks one at a time, adding the vanilla with the last egg.
Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on low speed just until combined, then add in 1/2 of the buttermilk and mix just until combined. Repeat alternating flour and buttermilk, ending with the final 1/3 of the flour.
Fold in the pecans till evenly mixed through.
Divide batter evenly among the 3 prepared baking pans.
Bake for 25 – 30 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean. It took me 32 min.
Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack while in the pan.

Run a knife around edges of the pans to ensure the cakes are loosened, and invert them onto the racks to cool completely.
When the cakes are cool level the tops. I had to do this for just one of them- the other two came out pretty flat.
If making the cakes some time or days before assembling them, brush them with 2 tbsp simple syrup each (1/3 cup sugar heated with 1/3 cup water till the sugar dissolves) before storing. 
I put each cake on a separate dinner plate, brushed it with syrup, and then wrapped it up in plastic for the next day. They sat out on the counter overnight and came to no harm. It was about 62F/17C in the house.



Day: 3
Brown Butter Swiss Meringue Buttercream

6 large egg whites (you can use 2 from yesterday)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark-brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (16 tbsp) unsalted butter, room temperature
the remaining 1/2 of the brown butter softened
3 tsp vanilla extract

Dip a paper towel in a tiny bit of vinegar and wipe the bowl of an electric mixer with this to remove any trace of grease.
Make a double boiler by placing the mixer bowl over a saucepan of boiling water. The bowl isn't supposed to touch the water but it after about 20 minutes of stirring I let the bowl get into the water a bit in an effort to speed things up.
Place the egg whites, sugars, and salt into the bowl and whisk gently but continuously. Keep whisking till the mix reaches between between 150 and 160 degrees F (took me about 35 min). I started by placing the mixing bowl on a baking rack that I arranged over the saucepan. When this seemed to be too slow I inverted a small glass bowl in the saucepan and rested the mixing bowl on that, to get closer to the boiling water.
Attach the bowl to your mixer and use the whisk attachment to whip the egg whites on high speed until thick, glossy peaks form and the bowl no longer feels warm to the touch. It will take about 5 min for the mix to look glossy, and about 15-20 min till the bowl cools.
When cool switch to the paddle attachment and reduce the speed to medium-low. Add both butters, about 2 tablespoons at a time, beating after each addition. The meringue will deflate slightly as butter is added, don’t worry. Once all the butter is added, beat until the icing is smooth and silky. This took me about 5 minutes.
Add the vanilla and beat on low just until combined.

Notes

I made the icing a day before making the cake, and had to refrigerate it. This meant that the next day I had to take the icing out a couple of hours before assembling the cake, wait for it to warm up, put it back into the mixing bowl, and beat it again to get a nice glossy look to it. It never looked as nice as it did on the first day.

I tampered with the ratio of sugar, using a quarter cup of white and 1 3/4 cups of brown. This changed the structure of the icing a bit, and made it a bit looser. It tasted great but didn't look as shiny, or hold the layers up quite as firmly as an icing with more white sugar might have done.

Assembly:
Put the first layer down on a plate or cake stand. Top with about 1/4 of the icing. Place the next layer on top and cover with another 1/4 of icing. Add the top layer and fill any gaps that there might be on the sides.
Cover the top and sides with a very thin layer of icing and put the cake in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This crumb coat will make it easier to finish icing the cake tidily, with fewer stray crumbs.
Pull the caramel sauce out- I had to microwave mine to melt it, and then put it out in the cold to get it to a cooler temperature.
Cover the top and sides with the remaining icing, trying for as smooth a surface as possible.
Make sure the caramel is cool before you pour it over the top, or it will melt into the icing. Top the cake with the caramel sauce working outwards from the centre. It should make its way to drizzling down the sides without any help from you.

Toast 1/2 cup of whole pecans in a little butter, till brown, about 5 min, to top the cake.

Some pointers for survival.

I am going to write the South Indian girl's guide to living with a white boy (or girl? I don't know enough about living with white girls). Based purely on anecdotal evidence.

Here are a few things. 

1. They will try to put their big feet on everything- on tables you might eat off, on you, on the nice chair you do your best to keep clean. This might even be with shoes on. Or even worse their mum will do this. And to keep things pleasant you will have to swallow that shriek of outrage and gently maneuver them out of that position.Or suffer.

2. You will have to be polite when the mother of your relatively aware white boy wants to put on a safety pin in solidarity with People of Colour. I understand white people are anguished about Trump as well, and maybe everyone in your church is wearing a pin, but  church full of white people, with one token Indian named Bob is part of the problem. I will make this a while chapter- things the white mum or your white boy may say or do. How to navigate without losing your mind, the goodwill of this nice older lady, or making your white boy feel terrible for being the progeny of old white people. My take is he can't help it. Just as I cannot stop my nearly 70 yr old Indian father from saying racist things without meaning to. All I can hope for is that he doesn't vote for Modi again .

3. Food- there will be an entire chapter about food.
How to turn his endless bottles of salsa into the tamatar-pyaaz component of your sabji or chicken curry.
How not to turn purple when your nice Southern boy suggests putting a ham hock, or some sausage in with your lentils to give it some fat.
How not to cry inside when he takes your biryani, puts cheese on it, wraps it in a corn tortilla, and eats it with chipotle sauce.
How not to murder someone when they look at the paneer you made, all on your own, from glorious full fat milk, from American cows as big as Indian cars, and say "It's just like Tofu right?" NO IT BLOODY WELL ISN'T. Just like how not all white people are the same....
There will also be some ranting about pound cake and it's incomprehensible popularity.

4. You will have to train them into getting used to you stealing their towel occasionally. Actually I don't think a lot of other people do this. This is not a brown girl thing, it might just be me.
Also- housekeeping and gardening. I grew up with grandparents who were enthusiastic gardeners but I have never encountered anything like the suburban American's passion for lawn maintenance. Just seems mad. 

5. A relative that you encounter only at family gatherings, like Thanksgiving and Christmas which are coming up, might ask you if Indians pay income tax. Yes. And we have had the concept since before this country was called America. Next?

Apple cake

German apple cake- Apfelküchen

This is perfect for days on which you do not feel like shopping for specific ingredients. Chances are everything you need is already in the pantry.

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 tsp almond extract (optional)
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract 
• 2-3 apples (I used Gala), peeled, cored and cut into slices
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease or spray a 9" tart or cake pan. 
In a small bowl whisk the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a stand mixer, or with a handheld mixer, cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy- about 2-3 min.
Prep the apples.
Add the eggs, one by one, and mix.
Add the vanilla extract, and almond extract if using.
Turn the mixer to low, and slowly add the dry ingredients. Mix slowly till well incorporated.
Transfer the batter to the prepped pan. It will be sticky, and will need smoothing out with a spatula.
Arrange the apples on top.
Mix the last 1/3 cup of sugar with cinnamon in a small bowl and sprinkle it on top of the apples.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, or till a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Notes
It might look as if the top is browning too fast but do not cover the top. A few dark bits are better than the whole thing going soggy.
If in doubt about whether it is done take it out after 40 min- it will continue to cook a little longer in the pan.
I'm not sure what makes this cake German but that's what the recipe said so I'll go along.

Source: Eva Bakes
Be careful if you hit that link. You'll get a great food blog but also unending Republican ads about how a vote for Clinton would be a vote against Modi's government (if only we were so lucky).

Suburban living

One of the houses down the road has sprouted a Trump yard sign in their lawn.

This is a thing Americans do. They are devoted to the growth and upkeep of grass- lawn care is rigidly enforced by most housing associations, and people will make snide remarks about your unkempt grass if you don't keep it perfectly manicured. I'm always trying to talk my white American husband into leaving our grass overgrown because who are these people to tell us how to keep our garden?? He has been too deeply programmed to feel shame over this, and cannot be talked into this tiny subversive act of letting our lawn be. I find it ridiculous that in this land where people are always banging on about freedom, social programming is so strong that the opprobrium one would face for long grass is greater than that directed at convicted rapists, or known paedophiles. 

Anyway- the Trump sign. I've walked past it every day for the last month or so, and usually our little beagle has pooped on the walk, so I'm often carrying a nicely tied plastic bag of shit. I want very much, every time I pass the sign, to leave the bag by the sign. I fear getting caught though, and I also fear that the residents of the house might bring out a gun.

Stray thoughts and something of a rant.

I woke up to something about Gloria Steinem on my Facebook feed. Gloria Steinem, famous feminist writer, who said girls were with Bernie because that's were the boys were. Following which Madeline Albright joined in to also wag her finger at young women who might not vote for Hillary, saying they would go to hell for not standing with a woman. Hillary Clinton- who is most certainly not standing by a lot of women by continuing to be associated with Bill Clinton- notorious harasser of women.

I want to see her stand by women like Monica Lewinsky, barely out of school when the President of the United States coerced her into being a little silly. Someone whose life has become public fodder in the worst way, and probably will be infamous till she dies. How on earth are you supposed to survive this? How are you supposed to beat off the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful person in the world? Shouldn't we be protecting young, and older women, from this kind of predator instead of parading him about for his political value. Stand alone, without him, and tell me again about your feminism. I would listen.

Today there is a massive strike across India. I am excited about this because we need to stand together and fight. We have the numbers, if only we could collect somehow and exercise them. I'm not at home, and despite the questionable ways in which nearly every union functions, I think unions are terribly important. We need checks and balances to the system. Our government can't be allowed to run away with every sector of our economy and just hand it to a small group of industrialists. Why on earth does the BJP want to privatise the railways? At least with the Congress their economic policies were outlined in terms of classical neoliberal theory. The BJP don't seem to bother with trying to rationalise anything- cows and Bharat Mata ki Jai is all. 

It also made me annoyed that so many of my Indian friends appeared to be complaining about being unable to get to work. Think a little bit about why people are striking. Join them. Show some solidarity with people less better off that you at your amazing arts collective, or great IT job. A higher minimum wage will help a lot of people out, and you want people to eventually have enough money to buy the nonsense that you are selling right? Many more were out at brunch (which is probably why Nandan Nilekani lost that election in Bangalore- people who might have voted for him seized the opportunity of the election to go on a 3 day weekend break instead). I saw pictures of people at the Oberoi, enjoying high tea, celebrating the bund; the incongruity of which might render you speechless so here I am to point the finger for you. I like high tea, and the Oberoi too, no actually I have never been at the Oberoi though I imagine it is nice, but there is a time and place.

Thoughts- some but not all related to Father's Day

It is Father's day and my Facebook feed is a stream of people putting up sepia tinted pictures of their fathers.

I cannot relate. I love my father, and I wish I could see him more often, but I am unable to channel all of this on Father's Day.

At the moment I am trying to get him to send me the phone number of my grandaunt so I can call and check on her. He is in Bangalore and I am in the U.S- the time difference matters and if he doesn't get on this within the next ten minutes or so I will have missed my window to make this call for yet another day. He is in the middle of dealing with his own mother, who has Alzheimer's and has of late been hitting the young girl we have hired to help care for her. I doubt my father can relate to the way we think of Mother's Day. Loving and caring for his mother have changed him, just as her illness has changed her.

 Every day we try to hold on a little bit more to the memory of who she used to be, so that we can handle who she has become now. Doing that hurts too, because things are so different, and we wonder how we became this way. Old age is horrible. Let no one say otherwise.

On Father's Day I think to myself, I hope I can be as present for my parents as they were for their own. I am all the way across the world, and have a decade or so to make it possible for them to live here, or convince myself that life would be better if I moved back.

What this means is that in my father's best years, and my mother's, which are now, I will be far far away. We are missing out on having fun with each other but there isn't a way in the world you could get me to move back to Bangalore at this point. I am so happy to have grown up there, but it now it makes me sad. Landing there and not being at the little airport near Indiranagar makes me sad. The long long road back to Koramangala makes me sad, as does the visible evidence of the corruption linked to the new airport. The air is impossible to breathe, and I feel the grime coating me- settling on me as I settle into the city. All the bisibelebhath and lunch thalis in the world cannot make up for the loss of the city I grew up in.

Landing in Delhi or Mumbai do not have the same effect. No matter how unbearably hot, or noisy Delhi is it will always have my heart. Delhi was ever uncomfortable- you just accept it and move on. Mumbai I have no feelings for- so landing there or not landing there have no meaning to me. Bangalore was my home, and I am having trouble accepting that it has changed so much, and become so very unlivable.

Skinny Broccoli Gratin

Makes 2 generous serves.
280 calories per portion.

Béchamel
Garlic- 1 small clove
Shallot- 1
Nutmeg- one small pinch
Mustard powder- optional- I used this because I saw the Colman's sitting in the pantry looking neglected
Milk- 1 cup, 240 ml- I used skim
Butter- 1 tbsp
Flour- 2 tbsp
Cooking spray, or a couple of drops of oil

Bake
Broccoli- 4 cups frozen, 400-450 gms
Onion- 1 or 2
Mozzarella- 28 gms

Salt and Pepper to taste.

• Heat up a small saucepan and put in a few drops of oil. 
• Put in the chopped shallot, and 2-3 min later the chopped garlic. 
• Keep on heat till you can smell the garlic cook. 
• Put in the butter and lower the temperature to keep it from burning.
• Add the flour and cook till it stops smelling raw- 4-5 min. 
• Add the milk mixing as you go. I did it in two rounds and settled in for a lot of stirring, but you can be more elegant about this and add the milk little by little. 
• Add the nutmeg, mustard powder and some salt. 
• Keep stirring, seek out the lumps and eliminate them. 
• This should thicken in 5-10 minutes, over medium heat. 
• Add water if needed and bring to a boil. 
• Add salt and pepper as needed and take off the heat. I made sure there was enough sauce to cover the vegetables that I had put out in a glass baking dish. 

• I used frozen broccoli- which I steamed for 2-3 minutes before setting aside. 
• Mix the chopped onion with the broccoli, and a little salt before putting into a glass baking dish. 
• Cover with the béchamel and bake for 20 minutes at 400F. 
• Pull the dish out, add the mozzarella to the top and bake for another 15 min at 400F.

If the cheese seems too meagre you could increase the quantity, or add some flaked almonds to the topping.  I ate the almonds before they could get to the dish, so had none to put on, and it worked fine anyway.
I ate this over some plain pasta, but can see it going very well with warm bread.

Kale Palak Paneer

Some weeks ago we bought a bag of kale, thinking that we too should get with the times. Kale is terrifying, and I don't know too many ways to make it palatable, having failed more than once. Using it in Palak Paneer worked out well and here is the recipe.

Spinach leaves- I used 1 cup of frozen spinach to one handful of fresh kale- 2-3 cups
Kale- take it off those awful stems2-3 cups
Ginger- by eye- approx as much as the garlic
Garlic-not crazy amounts
Green Chili- I like lots
Cream- I add this tbsp by tbsp, and find myself adding 4-6 before I am happy.
Onion- who has time to cut more than one?
Tomato-chopped fine
Cashew nuts- one small fistful
Paneer- as much as you have. I'd use at least 400 gm
Coriander Powder
Amchur
Garam Masala
Anardana
Cumin
Oil
Milk- one cup (maybe)

Heat the oil.
Add Cumin.
Add the Onion- cook till soft.
Add the chopped Ginger and Garlic- cook till this stops smelling raw.
Add all the spices except for the Amchur and cook roast off.
Add the Tomato, Green Chili, Spinach, Kale and Cashew nuts. Add some milk to help things along.
Cook all of this till the Kale is softened and the Spinach cooked. This should take 10-15 minutes. Make sure it doesn't get too dry by adding milk.
Turn down the heat and transfer to your food processor in batches to blend. Kale has a very odd texture, and I did my best to get rid of this by pulverising it.
Add a little bit of oil to another pan, heat up, and brown the cubed Paneer. (Don't do this if you like the Paneer to stay soft)
Add the Amchur, Cream and Paneer to the pan, with the kale-palak mix, and bring to a boil.
Keep adding Cream and Salt till happy.
Finish by stirring in some Amchur.

I have no measurements for the spices. Just go with your gut, and be generous with the Amchur. It fixes everything. As does Cream.

Micro snakes

"It is like micro snakes, all trying to crawl up my nose and into my brain."
Says J about my hair.

It is so humid here that it feels like we could open the balcony door and just swim off into the sky.

Don't blame the hair. It is just trying to deal with summer, like all the rest of us.