thaumaturgist

With daily German classes for the last one month my frequency of blogging has gone down drastically. Everyday I must forget the magic of one language to learn the tricks of another. Yes, it is very difficult to stop myself from thinking in English which in turn is limiting my imagination. My German class is like a giant experiment with Mundane Realism, the goal of course is to figure out how much we end up learning. I actually have the perfect analogy of the process of learning a language. It's like losing weight. When you start you lose some weight drastically and then you reach the plateau where you have to go a long way if you want to progress further, you need patience and perseverance, you will get frustrated but you have to keep at it. Learning a language is very similar, initially you learn a bunch of words and grammar that you fling around every now and then in markets and coffee shops then you reach that same plateau when you realise you have stopped learning anything mean...

People have different things they find cool, live-in relationships, computer hackers, fight club, catch 22, Playstation 3--- to me the very definition of cool is New York city I have spent exactly 3 days of my 25 years in New York city. Once when I was 15 and once when I was 24. I remember one of our Value Education classes in 10th std. where our teacher told us to talk about our five dream destinations. I remember jotting down NYC as one of the places. I don't remember what had me started in the first place, I only remember my writing it down on a piece of paper completely oblivious of the fact that my dream was about to be realized in a few months. Sometimes good things come of bad deeds-- My mom and I were flown to my uncle's after the final exams. He took us on a trip from Niagara to DC to Orlando. On the way we stopped at my mom's close friend's house in Princeton, NJ. I was feeling awful for being so close to New york and yet not having the chance to see it. My un...

I liked pujo because I like getting gifts, especially nice clothes. I remember a couple of pandal hopping experiences as a kid, that were all-night affairs. I don’t remember particularly enjoying them because pandal decoration and lightworks were elusive topics, I never liked crowded places and used to get very sleepy. We used to make a customary trip to an old neighbourhood, where my grandmother was staying at the time, every Ashtami. We stood in long queues for bhog lunches, which I remember enjoying- not the wait but the lunch :) Slowly that was also cancelled out as my grandmother had started living with us or it was too much of a trouble driving all the way to north Calcutta on a pujo -day. To be frank, I think we started not identifying with the people living there and a lot of the people we knew had either passed away or moved to a different place. I also remember one year we drove to Puri. That was a very enjoyable trip and the Oriya protimas were amusingly cute ...

We were very young almost 13 years ago when Hira-da joined as our driver. He was assigned to dad by Hyderabad Industries ltd. when he joined that company. Soon he became the best driver we had had. He knew roads and by-lanes and gullies in every part of calcutta. We discovered that he even had a photographic memory. He remembered someone's house we went to months ago and we only had to tell him ,"hirada, do you remember that place we went to the other day? you know in so and so area?... yes yes she is my aunt, yes, please take us there." We could sit in the car looking out the window, not worried about giving direction because we knew we didn't have to. With time he became more than our driver, he was trusted to help our grandparents in case we went on vacation. When ma left for the US, he had to take over a lot of her duties, like paying bills, helping the grannies with their bank work or taking them to relative's places. When dad was away at work he even had to ...

It has been raining since Saturday here, in Dresden. It's cold and shivery and very windy. Sitting by the window I can only think of one thing. The Dementors. The cold, grey and dismal atmosphere makes me think of dementors who have devoured the happiness out of the city. I am sure that J.K.Rowling 'conjured' up the character on one such dismal rainy period in London. It does get you rather depressed . But then another thought flashed across my mind. On such a rainy day if I saw a girl in a Canary Yellow rain-coat wearing a bright pink lipstick walking down the sidewalk next to my house with a click-clack of her heels it would look rather cheery, wouldn't it? But no, people here wear only blacks and browns and beige and more blacks and hardly any lipstick. When the Sahibs say that they found India extremely colourful I cannot agree more. People wear all sorts of colours in India, not just in the form of clothes but hoardings and buildings and cars. The Apartment buildin...

Till a few weeks back I had lost faith in the entire species of Books. I was an avid reader. As my close ones know I read hoardings to 'shingarar thonga' but of late I was not coming across a single book that held my attention. I started reading 'The Lost Flamingos of Bombay' by Siddharth Shanghvi and I gave up on it's fantastic randomness, I had loved his first book. I started reading 'The Time traveler's wife' by Audrey Niffenegger and it just confused me to hell so I had to stop. I even tried reading 'Eclipse' by Stephanie Meyer, needless to say I couldn't cope with it either. I was losing faith, the only ones I could still go on reading were Agatha Christies. My book rack which does not have many books is full of half and some quarter read books and a living proof of my failures in reading- anyone at this point would think me just plain 'slow'. Believe me, I have been debating that for a while now myself. But wait, let's not j...

Walking has been one of the most fundamental and profound things of my life. As it is, to all who have the great fortune of being able to walk as a means to get from one place to another, I also consider it to be much more than just that, a means of transportation, it's my way of living life. At the age of 10 when I finally started travelling home from school without an escort, I discovered that the stretch from the metro station to my home could be reached by walking in 35 minutes, even if I ended up spending my bus fare of Rs 2 on the roasted peas! At the time my ability to walk not only took me home but also made it possible for me to enjoy those unhygienic and very spicy roasted peas! I have risen early to go for morning walks with my dad- I was the only one to accompany him to those at Victoria and later by the Lake. I would chatter away while walking, dad quietly listening while we walked. The sun not having quite risen yet and the mist over the lake would have cast an eerin...

Often we have heard the above quotation by Mark Twain but seldom have we come across the subject of it... " Age is an issue of mind over matter, if you don't mind, it doesn't matter." In july I turned 25 and since then I have been slightly abashed about it, my age, that is. I have always been at ease about growing older, in fact, I have always looked forward to it. Being the youngest in the family I have looked forward to being taken seriously so age has never been an issue but suddenly I see there are film-stars, artists and authors who are younger than I am. Asudden, my husband has colleagues who are '85 borns. This had me searching for Kajol's age when she made DDLJ- would you believe it, she was 21? 4 yrs younger than I am right now? OMG! I am ancient- is what is going through my mind- right now there is a particular Shia LaBeouf who is famous and younger- or younger and famous! whatever!. After these particular nerve wracking thoughts I got on my crosstr...

We all know that Rome wasn't built in a day and therefore it is fair to say that it cannot be seen in one either. The truth is you need many many days to feel Rome. We were there for about 4 days last weekend and we merely skimmed through the city. Every street, every by-lane emanate the history and culture. Although very crowded with tourists all year round it is easy to get lost in the aura of the city, you can sit in a corner of a piazza and forget that there are teeming millions around you, just absorb the fact that it is the exact same place which was the mainspring of western civilization. Our hotel was tucked away in a quiet green area. 15 mins away from the bustle of the city. Everyday after filling ourselves up with the amazing coffee and cornettos we would go on our expeditions. Map in hand, camera slung over the shoulder we would be ready to explore. The first view of the Colosseum was awe inspiring, cars whizzing past a monument built when no one knew there could exist ...

This is following my previous blog. This is to confirm that I had loadsa fun with my friend and her bf! They brought a really good Merlot and enjoyed what I had cooked. With a promise of an invitation to their place for some authentic spanish food the evening ended on a positive note. I also requested her to get me some Spanish saffron since she is going home next week. You know what is better? For two years I have been sharing my husband's friends and I finally have my own friend in Dresden! What a comforting thought that is!

So tonight I had to scrounge my refrigerator for possible dinner items. You know it is the end of the week and the pantry does lurk towards emptiness, not that I have a pantry and I would love to but that topic would take on an entire post of it's own, I suppose. Anyway, so I found tomatoes, one eggplant, some mushrooms, potatoes and onions. Yes that is vegan and I had to use these before they met their end through rotting. So I made and eggplant and potato curry-sorta-thing and some wild mushroom pilaf (thanks to anjum anand's book I own) Ingredients (Eggplant Curry): 1. One eggplants cubed(small) 2. One large potato cubed(small) 3. One medium onion finely chopped 4. One large clove of garlic chopped 5 Onion seeds 1 tsp 6. 1 tsp cumin pwd, 2 tsp coriander pwd and half teaspoon turmeric pwd 7. One large tomato chopped In 2 tbsps of cooking oil temper the onion seeds. Then fry the onions till golden brown and then add garlic. Add the seasonings, tomatoes and cook till oil oozes ...

I have been thinking of topics to write about for a long while, but nothing is coming to me. I am groping for words to keep myself afloat in the blog world! My English skills have been going from bad to worse mostly because I haven't read many good books lately, also the use of the language has been dwindling. I am seriously at a loss for words lately, I happened to use 'precisement' in stead of 'precision' with a friend which was sadly shameful! But as it seems that precisement is actually french for precisely, with accents of course. Whatever! The fact of the matter is I am quite cross with myself for not doing anything about it. So, on that note I want to start a discussion about randomness. You must have heard people say that life is a grand plan of the master above. I do not agree. There is absolutely nothing orchestrated about life, in a word it is the most random thing there is. We very often try to plan and manipulate situations and actions but most of us fa...

Back after 6 weeks or so I suppose.. hmmm... well what can one say-- use your imagination? Been very busy shifting houses (with just the idea of it- did not do the real work); made efforts to collect my Masters degree but all in vain; really did try my hand at decorating new 'in-law' house, even got to choose the drapes (isn't that exactly why one should move to a new unfurnished house?); ate all the food I missed for so long, made mom spend hours in the kitchen! Well a lot happened really- A broke his toe (don't ask me how, I still don't get it), met some friends after a long time, experienced Delhi heat after ages, celebrated our 2nd anniversary at Someplace Else (just us two, peanuts and beer) and watched movies. Oh! Indian movie theatres are sooooo goood. Why don't they make them like that here? Anyway, enough of what I did. It's 38 degrees here in Dresden and they do not believe in air-conditioning, so they pick up any thing to fan themselves with. I l...

4.5 hours to go before we wake up to do a quick check of packed baggage and put in last minute items like toothbrush, make-up, etc. We got back from Zurich late Friday night, so things have been slightly hectic. Zurich was hot and not-so-exciting! I am on no. 4 in my Tiffany-spotting (inspired by breakfast at Tiffany's)also for the first time I saw Louis Vuitton bags carried by regular people, 3 on the same day. The city is a strange mix of German, French and Italian cultures. They are as curt as the Germans, as lavish as the French and as crooked as the Italians! They say 'guten tag' when you walk in, 'Merci' when you pay the bill and 'Ciao' when you leave! Now I shall decode these greetings to you- the first being 'whatever', second one is 'thanks for spending all that shit load of money on crap' and the third one means 'you're such a fool you don't even realize you have been ripped off' Looking at how expensive the city is ...

One day, a year and a half ago, I was sitting in my living room watching CNN. There was a feature about this book called Twilight written by some Stephanie Meyer on TV. They were just talking about the craze surrounding the book that is about a normal high school girl falling in love with a vampire and also that a movie is now being made based on this book. I didn't really care about it at the time, but the name stuck in my head. A few days later when I was scouring the 'fremdsprache'(foreign language) corner of the book store for some English books I came across Twilight. I thought to myself, "if it has become so famous it must be quite a thrilling book so why not pick it up"? I had no idea what I was getting myself into. To be very honest, it was a very poor piece of literature. The characters are unnatural, of course, how can vampires be natural? But there was something, something that makes you want to find out what happens at the end. It's like an old fas...

If the reader is one of my parents- stop right here!!! Wine rejuvenates the part of your brain that is involved in the artistic capabilities, in my case blogging, of course, if it can be considered artistic in any way. After two glasses of alcohol, usually, I can be quite embarrassing but the good thing is that the listeners never remind me of that fact, usually they are pretty drunk themselves as well. I am quite sure you have noticed the missing or too much of punctuations by now, I am usually quite cautious about not letting you know 'bout my spelling mistakes… backspace, type, backspace, type, backspace… aaargh!!! Most of the times, in one of these wine parties I am the sole woman in a group of 5 or 6 men, 1 being my husband, 1 a Russian, the others I am not too sure about… oh! I definitely fake French kiss one, oh you naughty minds---not that kind of French kiss but on both cheeks kind of French greeting kiss!!! By now you must be wondering what this...

I have to say I am quite frustrated with the grocery stores in Dresden. I have not found any green chillies and coriander leaves for 3 weeks now. Because of that I had to improvise on my simple fish curry and to my surprise it turned out really awesome. It's basically a cross between kalia and jeerer jhol . Here's what I did. I lightly dusted the fish pieces with turmeric and salt and kept aside for a while. Cut 2 medium potatoes , long and thick, then fried till lightly browned on all sides. Then I fried the fish pieces. In the same oil I put some kalo jeera/kalonji /onion seeds , after the tempering I added 1 medium onion finely chopped. I put two pinches of turmeric powder , 1 tsp chilli powder , 2 tsps cumin pwder and 1 tsp coriander powder after the onion was well browned. At this stage I added a fine paste made out of 1 large tomato and 4 dry red chillies/ shukhno lonka . Add salt. Fry it till you see little bits of oil oozing out unless, of course, you are not...

I am a big-city girl. I hail from Calcutta, it is the 3rd largest city in India with a population of 15 million. In spite of that Calcutta has a small town feel to it when I compare it with the national capital, New Delhi and the commercial capital Mumbai. In Calcutta, aunties stop you on the street to ask you what you were doing at the auto-stand at 7:30 p.m, in your uniform when you should be home and you meekly reply that you are just on your way home from the tuition and when a cyclist bangs on to you and knocks you down, the dadas, dadus and aunties rain down on him. But oh so big Delhi had me whimpering like a child, never mind I was 18. The devil may care attitude and I-don't-give-a-damn sort of people made me feel insignificant and lonely. The new born adult learns to hold her own fighting through all the injustices of being felt up, duped by the auto-wallahs and the lewd commenter... the young ones grow older, come of age, some become ruthless and unsympathetic towards pe...

I met her for the first time at Dipankar Basu's tuitions right before the ICSE exams. Hardly did I know we'd end up in the same school for 11th and 12th... and then stranger still I landed up at her place for geography lessons from her mother. She had many cats and a dog at her place. Nandini Mashi would quote Bonolota Sen while stroking the newest kitten Sajani picked up at some street. It would trample over our G.C.Leongs and atlas'. I always looked forward to evenings spent doing a bit of geography and learning much more than that. Today she tagged me in one of her notes on Facebook and I just had to had to had to share this with my handful of readers. Bengalis beware, you might just need a tissue at hand. Here it goes: Kal-Boisakhi

This one is dedicated to Kolkata Knight Riders and Dada. The team having played its last match of the league though did not qualify for the semi-finals they did manage to leave with their heads held high, and I applaud them for it. Also the week saw Tharoor (forced)resign, not a very good thing for Indian politics in my opinion but then we all have to accept the realities of our politics and country. Anyway all the sad news apart, Anirban had to stay back at work for a longer time today due to some disaster management project coming up last minute and I had to fend for myself. Last week A brought home plump red tomatoes which looked gorgeous and I didn't feel like chopping them, left on my own I thought of making Stuffed Tomatoes the indian way, Bharwaan Tamatar in a creamy gravy, this being the first time I am quite proud of the way it has turned out. What you need: 4 Large tomatoes- beheaded and emptied 2 large potatoes- boiled and peeled a handful of mushrooms- chopped fine and/...

I have been MIA for a while, I have no excuses for this really just that I have been watching the IPL and chanting 'go dada go' only to be disappointed almost every time. Yesterday's loss for KKR has me back on blogging again. SO... we now own a new DSLR camera which is my newest plaything, during the Easter weekend we went to this castle and park to do some photography. Here are some of those pics. hope you enjoy.

As children when parents went out we abandoned our propreity. We stopped studying and picked up the TV remote or the telephone. We had the music on full blast, it was party time and had long chats with friends over the phone, quickly hanging up as we sensed the parents coming home; picking up the abandoned text book and pretending to concentrate. Or perhaps quickly switching off the TV and pretending to be in deep slumber. Parents were pretty clever too, they would touch the TV to see if it was warm, evidently it had been running. They wouldn't really scold but all that evasiveness was quite fun. Tonight the husband is not home, but it isn't half as much fun... hmmm whatever!! p.s. ahh just remembered there are a coupla bottles of beer in the fridge--go dig!

I watched An Education today, a period, coming of age, drama which recently had quite an Oscar buzz about it. Set in the 1960s London, it tells the story of a teenage school girl(Jenny) from a conservative background and how she discovers the of essence of life and love. And it makes the viewers look at the theme of education from different perspectives. Pushed by her parents to do well in school so she can be accepted to a college in Oxford University, she meets an older man(David) unexpectedly one day who introduces her to the finer things of life; jazz, cafes, art, music and Paris. Her parents are taken in by David and loosens up in their ways with Jenny. Her grades slowly slip and finally she does not take her school final exams but in stead decides to marry David. One evening on their wat to a restaurant Jenny discovers a shocking truth about David which turns her life upside down. She blames her parents for not stopping her, she says "You are my father again, are you? What w...

The best thing about good movies are that no matter how many times you watch them there's always something new that you had not noticed the previous times. It's like peeling an onion only much more pleasant. This time it's The Bridges of Madison County : Robert and Francesca discuss Yates and a while later Francesca goes and pastes a note on the side of the bridge, I could never read what was written on the note because it fades away to quickly. This time I paused to read it, it had a quote from The Song of Wandering Aengus. Aengus is an Irish Mythic character and "probably a god of love, youth and poetic inspiration" and Robert Kincaid is of Irish descent. I think there was a connection made with that poetry and the story of Kincaid. He is an old man and finally found the woman he has dreamt of all his life, tired of all the wandering a being a "citizen of the world" he wants to settle down with this woman but he can't have her. It's a beautif...

Never in my worst nightmares have I ever imagined writing anything titled "Benimadhab Benimadhab". Bengalis who listen to modern bengali music must have already guessed what this could be about but I have a story to share. Didibhai used to listen to a lot of music, especially the radio back in the late 1990s. So naturally I had to listen to a lot of music she liked. She was the one to introduce me to all kinds of music that I associate my memories with. I never quite liked the bengali songs she would listen to. Anjan Dutta and Suman and Nachiketa, the cult music of the time. I was too young to appreciate it, I never understood what they were singing about. Today I can appreciate them even if they aren't my preferred choice of music and I believe not my didibhai's either. It has been more than a decade since Lopamudra's famous song Benimadhab aired for the first time on FM. Didibhai bought the cassette but I failed to understand why such a funny old-fashioned name ...

Last weekend Anirban mentioned ad nauseum that he was going to make egg chicken rolls with the Chilli Tortilla wraps we picked up from one of the aisles at the grocery store. Fed up of his nagging I took upon the project as I was doubtful of his culinary dexterity. While drawing up a plan in my head of how to go about making this dish as I hadn't in a really long time I triggered my memory of hoti kati roll on Park Street. The juicy chicken tikka pieces wrapped in crispy paranthas smothered with strange sauces and mustard melted in my mouth... mmmm... just the thought of it made me crazy hungry so late Sunday afternoon we went to the kitchen together arguing about what to and what not to put in the chicken... finally I did shut my husband up. But now he has started the nagging again!!! Think I have to make it this week too! Here's the recipe! Egg chicken roll - makes 4 wraps Tortilla wraps or home made flour paranthas-4 (I used chili tortilla) boneless chicken -400 gms (thigh p...

Finally the post about our trip to Paris... I have been waiting for months to write this one, but now that it's time I really can't begin to talk about it and I am worried that if I start I wouldn't be able to stop. It was jut 5 days we spent there over the new years but it feels like we were living there for ages. Memory is starting to fade and I don't want to delve too deep in fear of an overwhelming crave to go back. After much praying to Caillech (goddess of weather) we reached Paris safely albeit with a delay of 3 hours. Very tired after a day spent at stations and airports we started our journey to the hotel from the Airport. A train to a particular metro stop and then hop on another line to reach the hotel stop. Old matchbox carriages, too many stairs at the stations, quite dirty too but one look at the Eiffel tower all lit up in the evening (from the train) one can forget all the inconveniences. I just stared wonder struck, am I really in paris? am I seeing this...