Becoming Food Aware

With Covid pandemic causing havoc all over the world, most of the people are spending most of their times indoor. While staying at home might have reduced traveller posts, pub check ins, social outing, internet traffic is balanced out by the amateur chef posts. From instagram to whatsapp, thousands of recipes are shared across and culinary skills of house wives (the default chef of an Indian household) have been razor-sharped. The man in the house is also enticed to go into kitchen, because content creation is need of an hour and apart from old travelogues, home cooked recipes are the only viable option at his disposal.

But this is good progress, as a society we are facing a grave danger, but if you are someone who is not offended by finding the positives in such difficult times, I might want to indulge you with a thought that Covid crisis have made Indian kitchens more inclusive.

Indian kitchens, which were the sole responsibility of women of the house, are finally infiltrated by Men. The bachelors who were getting food with a click, started experiencing the efforts behind that click, metaphorically and literally. The entitled men in the house had no other job worthy, so they ended up coming to Kitchen to help or to learn. The creators on social media platforms were forced to join kitchens, for the hunger of contents, if not literal. These students of kitchen were arrogant at first, delusional as well. "How much time does it require to prepare a well cooked Pasta?" While all the culnary arts were available freely on youtube, instagram etc, Indian kitchens were getting messy. These students were ransaking the sacred place, some kitchens had dusts of Aata on the floor, while other fumed with burnt papads. Blood was spilled while cutting the onions and skins were torched during kadhai lifting. They deserved it, they were never food aware all these days. Their hunger journey was always one way where they would either call food (via Zomato, Swiggy) or go to food in pubs, restaurants, darshinis (Bengaluru reference..never mind). But this time the journey was different, it was supposed to be a collaboration, which needed hand holding. The mothers, wifes, grand mothers were silently watching this struggle, but they were resolute. This was a pilgrimedge where every one is responsible for his/her own journey. Some were successful, other are still struggling.

But this is a journey of removing the bias. For ages, the bias of woman or housewife or cook cooking food for rest of the family had taken everyone away from kitchen. The mere fact that family union in movies is symbolized over the dining table says the same reality that we are together for consuming food. Covid crisis have bought these families together in kitchen, preparing food together, like the ancient times, like how animals eat their food in families, like the times where gender roles had not purged cooking responsibilities unwisely.

Picture is not green yet but shades are coming. When teenager Raju's mom calls him to kitchen and asks for "Masoor daal" and when Raju could identify "Masoor daal", in the shelf containing numerous other Daals, his Mom secretly shades the tear of joy.

This is what I call as a first step towards becoming food aware!

A visit to Somnath

There was a time in my childhood I would remember my GrandMa cribbing about not being able to complete Char Dham, Asht Vinayaka, Bara Jyotirlinga etc. I had tough time remembering all of them but once, I along with family went on Ashta Vinayaka darshan and Ganapati being my favourite God, I passionately by-hearted the temple places. Also during that trip, we visited Grishneshwar, a great temple of Ganapati's father and my counter for Jyotirlinga got initiated. Later during my college days, I had a chance to visit Omkareshwar. The temple on the hill, beside the giant Narmada river felt so auspicious that I felt humbled having incremented my Jyotirlinga visit count. Next time I heard about any other Jyotirlinga was during the floods in KedarNath. The temple which is considered to be one of the toughest pilgrimage proved its fame thus. But my counter has been quite static.

Recently fate played its turn and bought me to so called First Jyotirlinga. Again, I remember my grandmas talking to each other would always say that you would be able to take Darshan only if the God wants you to. I would always skeptically neglect the conversation, judging their innocence and faith system. But this yogayog was very unplanned and made me wonder whether there was some real argument in their statements then? Monday being a day of Shiva had an auspicious importance. When I saw the temple from the parking area, it was such a beautiful sight. The morning breeze of a typical seashore ran over my face. I could even taste a salty air. There were sea waves splashing on the rocky beach and beside lay the abode of Shiva in the yellow bricked structure having a huge base and its top soaring high in the sky. As the sun was rising from the opposite side, the first rays of sunlight were striking the saffron flag which was waving proudly on the top of the temple which had a golden peak. The gold was glittering in the bright sunlight contrasting the pale blue sky beyond it. It was such a powerful moment that I felt very grateful and proud of being a Hindu.

There I realized the importance of this temple, it is the first Jyotirlinga among-st the 12 sacred Jyotirlingas, but moreover it is the first Hindu shrine on the East most side of Indian Continent. I mean if anyone is coming through Sea route to India, this temple is the first point where the stranger will be introduced to Hindu Religion and culture. There also lies a pillar which has a Sanskrit engraving which says that a straight line from this point will take you to South Pole without any land in between. This temple, in past, represented the prosperity of Indian Society. That's why Muhammad Ghazni raided the temple again and again and destroyed the temple and Linga. The current temple is not the original one but is the replication of original by Sardar Vallab-bhai Patel. He took it very seriously to rebuild the temple to boost the moral of the then Indian society which was under British rule. Even though the temple was not inaugurated before his demise, his contributions are aptly acknowledged by building his statue in the premises. Still the dry history do not at any point reduce the awe in my mind when I was entering the temple. The inner hall of a temple was crowded in people in the wee hours. Yet the crowd was not excessive and I could rome around admiring the art work on the walls and roof. The Gabhara had a huge Shiva Linga decorated with flowers, gandhakshata, garlands and ornaments. And as the hands of clock hit 7.30 in the morning, the drummers started beating the drums and along with the whole worshipers started chanting the Aarti. I was also reciting the punch line in the Aarti and would murmur the stanzas. People were clapping their hands rhythmically complementing the drum-tone. I felt humbled at the feet of Lord Shiva whose life had been such a fascinating tale. With a gratitude in my eyes, I perform pradakshina to the deity and visited the small temples in the backyard.

While returning back to our car, I turned back once again and folded my hands to the almighty Shiva. Just like every other devotee, I came empty handed and returned with traquility in my mind and handful of laddus as a prasad.

Pink

So finally I watched 'Pink'. I know its too late to talk about the movie, because everything that could be said about movie has already been said, but like I said, I am very bad with keeping myself within trending things.

PLOT
The movie is based on a very sensitive topic. Whether girl had given a consent or not? With such topic, lot of metropolitan crowd could relate to story by someway or other. So, I had the hunch that it will be hit. But with such topic, comes the responsibility of handling it carefully. The director Anniruddha Roy Choudhary is good Bengali director and he did very good job with the whole film. What I particularly liked is a screenplay! Shoojit Sircar, Chaudhary and Ritesh Shah did the fantastic job of knitting the whole story. The movie starts at the end of a event which changes the life of all the characters. Audience at the start craves to find out what must have exactly happened, but through the narration and characters' conversations, we get to know about the 'Incident' in bits and pieces. As the story progresses, audience realize that movie now focuses on the aftermath than the actual Incident. At the end of the movie, when justice is served and credit starts rolling, audience is satisfied and happy, they show the actual 'Incident'. I find that screenplay technique extremely impressive. The last scene in the credit ends exactly where the movie begins. I love such editing styles. It resembles somewhat with the brilliant and legendary screenplay of movie 'Memento'. I know Nolantards will get hurt with this comparison but I am bit excited with such similarity of story telling.

The film-makers took lot of efforts to make sure that scenes look as real time, as they could be. Whether it be a cacophony of lawyers outside the Court or the coldness in Police Station. Even the scene where Police comes to the apartment of girls and people checking out from balcony looked very similar to how it all happens in real life. The court room drama was too good. The dialogues by Lawyers were carefully and wittily written. The whole court room was shown as realistic as it could be. It is not just a plot but all these things that make Pink a very appealing movie.

Only thing I did not understand was the significance of Deepak Sehgal's side story and its impact on his character building. I found the whole part quite diverting.

CAST and CHARACTER
The protagonist is played by Tapsee Pannu. I have never heard of her, but a quick googling shows that she had been in industry for quite some time now and is more active in south India. She did a good job portraying a metro girl who is Smart, bold and independent. She performed very good, specially in two scenes, one in court room monologue and other scene where she get a threatening call and she retaliates boldly and then suddenly feels fear and runs for home.

Other good cast is Kirti Kulhari who portrays Falak. She has a small side story for her character building and did a fantastic job. I had seen her previously in shaitan and I feel she is very underrated actress in Bollywood.

The movie is driven actually by Mr. Bacchan. Again at this age he shows us the tremendous talent in his acting. His character is given a mysterious touch by adding a abruptly stopped career and a dying wife. Adding to that his breathing mask, first half engulfs him in a mysterious sidetrack. His performance in court room is very charming. Even though the dialogues are witty, the actor adds icing on the cake through his dialogue delivery.

If the hero is grand, villian must also be equally grand. Specially when court room drama are concerned. Remember the court room drama in Damini where the great 'Amrish Puri' destroys the whole decency out of arguments. Piyush Mishra does exactly that job for the court room battle here. With his blinking eyes and mocking tone, he attacks the girls and agitates them. Even with a small time on screen, he contributes tremendously to the movie.

MUSIC
The music and background score by Shantanu Moitra and team adds the flavours of helplessness, depression, of hope throughout the scenes in movie and effective binds audience with the story. The poem by Tanveer Ghazi named 'Tu khud ki Khoj me nikal', narrated by Amitabh Bacchan when credit roles at the end of movie is also one masterpiece which people may have missed if they have hurried off the hall early. Do listen to it once.

Ok, now after all this postmortem of a movie, let me also share you an anecdote. As I was sitting on cushion seats of all the last row of PVR hall on a saturday evening, after spending a fourtune of money and ruining my monthly budget, I was looking forward to enjoy the courtroom drama in the Dolby digital 7.1 and what not high fundu technology offered by PVR, I was disturbed continously by the wailing noises of children across the length and breadth of a theatre. Every now and then infants where crying their hearts out. Small kids started playing at the empty space which was apparently just behind my back. I had to focus a lot of Mr.Bachhan's dialogues than the innocent and stupid questions of the kids to their parents. I would here plead to all the parents to keep your children either at home or have them tranquilized (just kidding! First option is the only option), because the next time I can afford a movie ticket in PVR will take almost a month time. Yes, I am talking about the payday. All service industry slaves must have understood that reference as it is the only day when a slave becomes a king.

Adios.

Introspecting a signature

It was year 2005. A narrow lane from the Tower Garden main road was congested. It had two wheelers parked on both sides of the road. The dead end of lane was pointing to back side of an apartment occupied by Marwadis. The building had faded its original color long back and black patches due to rain water were visible all over the wall. A boy started walking from the lane entrance. Carefully avoiding the obstacles of handles of vehicles and their respective mirrors, boy reaches the end of lane. Turning right, he finds a typical old building having a commercial ground floor and residential floors above. Boy feels a level of excitement in his own breath. As he enters the office cum shop, he is surprised to see so many people inside the room which felt practically unoccupied from the outside. He looks around for a familiar face when a man behind the table waves towards him. Recognizing the acquaintance, boy moves towards the table and pushes the document in his hand across the table. The man behind the table puts on the glasses hanging across his neck, inspects the document with his typical frowning expression and finally nods his approval. Boy standing nervously starts playing with the cap of the Reynolds pen hiding in his pant pocket. The man bends and pulls a form from the drawer and calls the boy across a table. Pointing his index figure to the empty box in the form, man instructs something to the boy. Boy knows that time has come for the world to know his true identity. Like a sword, swiftly he pulls the pen from the pocket. His jaw muscles stretch as he opens the cap and in one swift motion his pen touches the paper. He has always thought about this moment during his lonely hours and rehearsed it but today things were not working the way he wanted, or may be they were. It was just that so much time, the boy has waited that he had become skeptical. The boy was me and it was time for my first signature on PAN card, a first official document.

Few days back, I was sitting with a big form of around 15 pages. It was for opening a bank account and each of those pages have approximately 2 blank boxes to sign. After finishing half of the pages, I stretched my fingers and remembered that day when I signed on PAN card form. Later each document got referred to PAN and I had to maintain the same signature. The signature at this right moment I was regretting. This was not the case initially. Somewhere I had read an article about how a signature is mapped to a personality. The tricks like if it is bent and ends on higher angle meant some ambitiousness, the line below the sign means firmness and stuff like that. So, I tried to incorporate all those qualities which I wanted, in my signature. But it evolved with time. Here I was sitting nervously when Bank staff had warned me that no two signatures should look different. Looking at last 14 signs, I could see different shades of my personalities in each one of them. I also wondered how does Celebrities give so many autographs. The troubles of stardom are truly underestimated. As the staff was sneaking behind me for each different signature, I was loosing confidence. I would take a deep breath and would start the signature smoothly but at one point my tip would always get toppled. It was a 'y' alphabet which would go down for leg of a 'y' and would come back soaring up. It was supposed to be show a confident nature and ironically I would lose my smoothness at that exact location. 'Some day I am gonna bring that smoothness back in my signature', I thought while messing up another one.

Introvert or a mute?

"Your blogs feels like being copied from somewhere", casually my wife said these words when I was in a dire need of some motivation for writing. "Why?", I asked while removing this insulting dart from my heart. "Because you hardly speak the kind of stuff you write. It's quite unbelievable for someone to understand that you, whose choice of words is either 'hmm..' or 'Is it?' can have such a diversified vocabulary", my wife said, again casually. I was fuming up with her judgmental attack but then I calmed myself down and thought about her opinion and strangely it started making some tiny sense. It really is a challenge for someone who is not outspoken not to be judged like this.

In my mind, I started going back in time to find a battle of words which I had encountered recently. Last three days, I had been at home. Leave battle, I could hardly find a discussion around 1000 words long. It was 3 days back when I had been into civilization and had a day out with friend but then I could hardly remember any distinct discussion. 'What a waste of a fellow,' I entered into self critisism mode. With social networking, the emotional or otherwise outburst mostly end up with a status in Facebook or Whatsapp. So real conversations are becoming rare and rare. No I am not talking about whole human race. All these observations are strictly related to me. Am I reaching a level where my introvert tag is now replaced with 'mute'. I shudder with this thought and posts this blog before I approach nearest human, which being my wife is a perfect candidate as it was she who made that accusation (or did she not?), to have some vocal interaction.

Game of Thrones and addiction

What are the basic qualifies of any Fiction?
1) Intriguing story line
2) Characters with which you can relate. It can be a single character or traits in different characters.
3) justified timeline of the events
4) details about locations plotted succinctly from reality.

Recently after watching the seasons of game of thrones, I found all above mentioned qualities in the epic. The plot is so complex yet so well defined. The story starts in the middle of something, unlike other fictions. Let me keep Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings as the comparable epics (as I have read those alone.) The story starts when a rebellion is finished and new king sits on the iron throne. Lot of important things have happened and lot of them are happening when the story starts. Lot of characters have died and few of them have fled away. First impression I had when I started watching the show was just the sheer quantity of characters. It is overwhelming to remember the name of all of them, but as you get engrossed in the story, you choose few of them to be near and dear ones and detaste few others. This is the point where writer has done half of his job. Now as the story progresses, you eagerly wait to know what happens to them and writer make you dance your wishes from here to there. The minute details of geography and corresponding culture are written carefully. From north beyond wall to Red Sand, from iron gates to city of Meeren, from Dorne to Vale, areas are described beautifully. Each region has a strong fort, let it be Winterfell, Casterly Rock, Moat Cailin, Red Keep or Dreadfort. The different lands and their houses gave the impression that all of it was actual real some years back. How the small actions of less important characters impact drastically is shown very beautifully inside the story. Once you start biding on the characters, writer will crush down your hopes ruthlessly by killing the characters in most gross, unexpected ways. Many vulnerable characters still take a breath. May be having numerous characters help readers stick to multiple of them, hoping some might see the end.

Today is the era of Game of Thrones, reading it after 10 years may be fun but will not be as exciting as it is today. The online fan following of the fiction is biggest I have ever known. The speculations, the flaws, the hints which they discuss online on different forums is equally interesting. These online debates are the actual reason for me to decide to read the fiction some day.

Also, unlike any other fiction, this epic has reached a tedious complicated situation. The season 6 is about to release in April but the counter part of the book is yet to release. I am currently following the show but I can feel the pain of fans who are following both show and book. The author while confessing the delay assured that spoilers will be avoided in show. But this should not make show much digressed from the book. Nonetheless, I had been watching, rather rewatching season 4 from last few days and was so much into the show that I hardly used to care what is happening in my real life. I will not exaggerate if I say I stopped thinking about sleep, food, hygiene, office in these few days. If a person is so much involved in such imaginary world, I would say either the fiction so exceptionally good that it can't be missed or the person is insane. I have no doubt about my sanity.
What do you think?

Cast Away

Many of us have seen the classic movie Cast Away, a story of a man surviving the plane crash and living alone on an island, facing all the challenges of medieval human existence, going crazy over the cacophony of loneliness, brilliantly in acted by Tom Hanks. Generally, it is his survival that is more appreciated by audience, but I had always found the scenes from where he is saved as more profound. His confusion as to how to face his wife? Dinning along with friends yet unable to get rid of the loneliness, the scene where he turns on and off lighter and remember his own struggles to lit fire on the island, sleeping on the floor instead of the luxurious bed were brilliantly scripted and shot. The whole sequence when he goes to Kelly's house in the night, the inability of both of them to express the overwhelming emotions were the masterpieces of acting from both Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt. The scene where he leaves the house in car and that moment, her realization of loosing him again was intense.

The last but one scene in the movie where chuck explains to his friend, the camera angle moves around 270 degrees and Tom hanks delivered the dialogue in one shot. What a talented actor he is. The perfect pauses in between, the eyes caring the emotions of hopelessness to that of hope. He truly entered into the character. What process these actors must be following to get such a performance I wonder. I am not a critic but the sheer brilliance of all above scenes from the movie were genuine pleasures to watch. Unexpectedly I found that movie running on the TV today evening and made my day. Below is that dialogue which was a sheer masterpiece of scripting. 

Chuck Noland: We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and... knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had... lost her. 'cos I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?

Wait now till I find other such scenes from my other favourite movies, unexpectedly on TV, and I shall write them all.