Cooking...Crab-style

All women can cook. And cook well.

At least, that is what most people take for granted here, this being a country of major stereotypes and gender typecasting. That's not to say that women in India have not progressed out of the kitchen and into the workplace, and have not made a mark in the world and build a space for themselves in a society dominated by the male psyche.

That's not it at all.

What it is, is that this crab never really progressed from the workplace into the kitchen. And cannot cook. Not well at all.

My forays into the kitchen (usually on account of ill-fated enthusiasm) have ended in feasts of:

1. Aloo a la Crème (Potato paste with garnish)
2. Carrot Morukolumbu (Sweet carrot chunks in gravy of yoghurt and coconut milk, tempered with dried red chillies)
3. Khichda (Spicy Steamed Rice and Lentil paste - one portion feeds family of ten)
4. Pasta Indienne (Fettuccine dressed in white sauce, made of milk and Maggi-style masala tastemaker)

And yet, am preparing for yet-another charge of the light brigade when I dish up dinner for 8 this weekend. Methinks Peas Pulao, Mutton Curry and Kashmiri Dum Aloo. And maybe, keeping the general good of mankind in mind, I just may use actual recipes. From actual cook books, this time

Ah, the tenacious spirit of the Crab...May I marry a man who can cook. And cook well.

Testing Flickr - Volume Two

Testing Flickr - Volume Two,
originally uploaded by Taz Snow.

Testing out the posting by email option here...this time with his

majesty, Charlie 'Stupid' Brown! Love this crazy dog...!

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

At the risk of having a brick thrown at my head for using this blog to share an email forward, I am going to just that...this commencement address by Steve Jobs hit a chord somewhere in me, and I just have to share it:

"Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

’You’ve got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much. "

Testing Flickr

Mom-Dad-TigerHillDarjeeling-1980,
originally uploaded by Taz Snow.

Testing out Flickr's photo posting tools...hope this works better than Picasa!

For those who have never met them, this be my mom and dad, way back in 1980...wot a couple, I say! :o)

Carpe Jugulum

I finally read a Vampire - sorry, Vampyre! - book that did not turn my blood to ice and did not leave me rigid with fear. Thus far any mild wave in the direction of elongated canines, and related gore, Buffy inclusive, has typically left me sleepless (atleast till I drop off out of sheer exhausion...fear just has to wait till I wake up!), shaky and apt not to look too closely at mirrors. Never know whose reflection I will not see in there!

But Terry Pratchett gives Vampyres a whole new spin...I don't know how he managed it, what with all the usual aspects of vampyre lore and then some. But I not only managed to get through the book with both my jugular and sanity intact, I also got through two nights of sleeping next to the window (one, in an empty house, all on my ownsome!), and actually woke up fighting fit! And no, that was not because I turned into a bloodsucker over night! For someone who can't even have Bram Stoker kept in visible range, this is a spine-strengthener of huge proportions! Don't get me wrong...this is not to say the book isn't good; it is so good I intend to go back and read it again.

All I can say is...Carpe Pratchett! And when next I meet a Vampyre, I may just offer it a nice cup of tea!

Flat Fret

Do you sometimes get the feeling that you are not quite sure if you are coming or going? Do you sometimes worry about meeting yourself in the midst of all the coming and going?! I sure do! Atleast, these days!

I am going mildly crazy (hah!), racing against time, getting things in place for the housewarming at my parents' flat tomorrow. Its Murphy's Law all over again! Between the electrician and the carpenter and the painter, and all the things they are wonderful at getting wrong, I am edging closer and closer to meltdown.

Work at office is but a brief break from chronic marble-loss...in another couple of hours, I am going to be back at the flat, courting disaster all over again. This is a totally different side to the Great Game!

Wish me luck...

The Story of Creation - Book of the Foodies!

I have to thank Vee for sending this out today; it came as a very welcome chocolate swirly topping on a day filled with numbers, numbers and oh, so many more numbers! So am sharing this here, for all you Foodies out there...

"In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and populated the Earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, green and yellow and red vegetables of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.Then using God's great gifts, Satan created Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Krispy Creme Donuts. And Satan said, "You want chocolate with that?" And Man said, "Yes!" and Woman said, "and as long as you're at it, add some sprinkles." And they gained 10 pounds. And Satan smiled.

And God created the healthful yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat, and sugar from the cane and combined them. And Woman went from size 6 to size 14. So God said, "Try my fresh green salad." And Satan presented Thousand-Island Dressing, buttery croutons and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said, "I have sent you heart healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them." And Satan brought forth deep fried fish and chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter. And Man gained more weight and his cholesterol went through the roof.

God then created a light, fluffy white cake, named it "Angel Food Cake," and said, "It is good." Satan then created chocolate cake and named it "Devil's Food."

God then brought forth running shoes so that His children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan gave cable TV with a remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering blue light and gained pounds.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with nutrition. And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center into chips and deep-fried them. And Man gained pounds.

God then gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite. And Satan created McDonald's and its 99-cent double cheeseburger Then said, "You want fries with that?" And Man replied, "Yes! And super size them!" And Satan said, "It is good." And Man went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery. Then Satan created HMO's. "

Lunchtime Lament

I don't know about you, but come lunchtime, I absolutely detest having to eat on my own. Absolutely. Detest. As in Hate. As in Won't Do It. And Will Stay Hungry, even!

I have to have someone to go to lunch with...and not random strangers who share my table, mind you. This has to be a friend, or collegue, or customer, or partner, or even my dog! And a book will just not cut the mustard, here.

This written-in-rock stance, funnily enough, does not apply to breakfast, elevenses, teatime grub, dinner, and midnight snacks. Those I breeze through on my own. Prefer to be alone, even, sometimes. Catch up on all that reading or make those phone calls that need to get out of the way.

But lunch is another matter. Why? Search me! That's just the way it is :o(

Lazy Sunday

After a really long time I spent yesterday doing almost absolutely nothing. Watching movies, sleeping, reading, more movies, more sleeping....A Totally Lazy Sunday. The best kind there is.

Unplugged and Unfettered

You look so calm and serene, said a colleague of mine yesterday, commenting on the total peace with which I was going about my day.

I smiled. For I had found the secret to serenity in today's world.

No, I had not graced any 'Art of Living' courses held by multiple 'Shris' nor had I attained religious enlightenment. And I certainly hadn't sold any Ferraris.

All I had done was something totally in character, for me, as anyone who knows me will agree. I had locked my keys in my room. Keys inside, Lock outside. And that wasn't even the best part! Said keys were in my purse. Along with my wallet. And Cellphone.

There...I've just let the cat out of the bag! Or cellphone, in my case.

My life has become so dependent on that shrill piece of plastic, without my noticing, that I HAVE TO BE constantly connected. What if my mom calls? What if my boss has to reach me? How will that delivery boy get here, if he can't call me?! What if my friends can't find me?! I have rarely stirred without carrying my 'phone...exception only being when I am in the washroom. I even awake-arise to the screaming of my 'phone alarm!

To have this keystone (millstone?) suddenly disappear, actually gave me a feeling of relief so profound, I never realised how completely sick I have actually become of being online and reachable. I could go where I wanted, when I wanted, and anyone who wanted to speak to me just HAD TO WAIT till I got around to calling them. If at all. If this doesn't loosen the fetters on the soul, I don't know what does (No Vee...chocolate doesn't even come close!)

Don't just take my word for it...go lose your cellphone for a day, and see if you don't feel a few years younger! **

I had my moment of peace yesterday and, though I am back online today, I am turning over a whole new leaf! My soul no longer dances to the tunes of a cellphone. Hah!

**DISCLAIMER: Not to be attempted if you are one of those poor things who have sold their souls to the Mobility Devil. This writer is not responsible for any consequences arising from such a situation!

'Revenge of the Lightsabers' or 'Slap her, she's Mad'

Okay, have just been out in Cyberspace courting disaster. Allow me a moment to stop and catch my breath...and make sure my lightsaber is near at hand.

Before you start wondering, you should know that I have just been telling Axe and Arun what I really thought of 'Revenge of the Sith'. And in a seemingly traitorous move to the Dark side of the Force, I have just told them that the movie.....sucked.

Hold! Don't you be slapping me or flashing that lightsaber! Hear me out.....

I have always been totally taken in by Star Wars, and more so with the concept of the Jedi and the battle against the Dark Side. So it's a complete given that the Faustian fall of Anakin Skywalker has me watching with wide eyes and bated breath. Not to mention trying to find out how Luke and Leia came to be separated though they be twins. And not to mention wanting to know why Yoda and Obiwan were in exile, and how the Jedi were *wiped out*. All of that totally has me hooked and well reeled in.

In theory.

In terms of actually seeing all this played out on the widescreen, I have to say that George Lucas fell short...way short. For someone who grew up with the original trilogy and has the character cast burned across her brain (or something like it!), the character portrayals in 'Revenge of the Sith' (and indeed parts 1 and 2) leave much to be desired. Or as I would put it, require 'willing suspension of disbelief'. I could imagine the anguish that drove Anakin, or the sense of betrayal that Obiwan felt, or the feeling of failure that overcame Yoda. But what I knew to be happening, and what I was being shown just did not come together the way it did in the originals. The movie just...lacked soul.

For me. Star Wars will always be parts 4,5 & 6. And I think I am going to always regret seeing parts 1,2 & 3. I would have been better off having my brother tell me the story...as he does most of the time.

Sigh.

Defenestration of Physics

I come back to what seems to be turning into my favorite conversation piece - the state of water supply, and pipes, at Basecamp Rooftop. Today, be prepared to be baffled and to have all those hard-learned concepts of Physics go flying out the window.

Why? Because only at Basecamp Rooftop can you open the hotwater tap, and have scalding water come jetting out of the adjecent cold water outlet. On Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the week the hot water actually flows out of the designated tap.

I kid you not! It all depends on the mood swings of the geyser, see ; it switches outlet pipes faster than most women switch footwear, or boyfriends. So folks who've been wondering about those splatter shaped burn-marks on my hand, know that they come from playing a losing game of Russian Roulette with a capricous set of pipes and taps.

I should seriously consider bathing in sand. Or milk. Or driving through a car-wash in a convertible.

Traffic Police.VS.Toddlers

Here's a novel idea - let's battle increasing traffic congestion in the city by cracking down on schools. It's so simple, even a moron could make it work! Maybe that's why we have morons working it.

How's that, again?

Let me start at the best place possible...the beginning. In response to growing congestion on the roads at the heart of the city, and in a bid to free space on our roads, the City Traffic Police and the State Government have brought about an order to private schools in the city to change their timing and transport rules, and to set up no-parking zones around the school. The sum total of which is "Take a bus to school, or pay a fine". Which same means that a penalty will be slapped on parents who violate said rule, and actually commit the crime of dropping their darlings to school, in a car.

The leading light of public transport, the BMTC, is offering exclusive school buses, at subsidised rates, and schools are expected to leverage this to ensure a system of transport is provided to the students. It is extremely illuminating that only 10 out of the 350 private schools have even given this offer time of day. One might add that this is the same BMTC that manages the City Bus Transport system, which is demonstrably ill-connected, under-resourced and one of the millstones around the neck of infrastructure improvement.

Oh, I am all for increased use of Public Transport Systems - it is a way forward that is lit by the successes of many cities around the world that continue to provide for their public. But I draw the line at this. The traffic police have no standing to tell Schools how to function. Not beyond the advisory level. And certainly not when no motion has even been made to address the true issues at the heart of the matter. Issues such as a lack of efficient public transport systems in the city and suburbs, increase in the number of private cars on the road and a total absence of car-pools, uncontrolled and unplanned growth of business areas across the city...I could go on and on!

Why target schools and the children? How practical is to ban cars near schools and to fine parents? Is it fair to expect parents to put a toddler fresh in kindergarten, who is terrified of leaving home, on a bus that most adults choose not to board? No doubt this does not necessarily apply to the older children. But what about those areas, nestled in the folds of the city where buses do not venture? How do those children get to school?

Why not start with the huge office complexes in the city? Where every employee drives his or her vehicle to work? Why not look at the booming malls and multiplexes, which have such a paucity of parking space it stopped being funny even before they were inaugurated? Forget paucity, some of these places haven't even planned for parking - they expect people to park on the roads. The same narrow roads that the traffic police are try to decongest. One ofcourse must not omit to mention the deep city planning that takes place when such complexes are sanctioned....right at the junction of main arterial roads. Where all incoming and outgoing traffic effectively sidelines thoroughfare.

It seems to me that both the Police and the Government are losing sight of the core realities and are playing at solving the infrastructure issues of the city. It isn't easy to manage a city of this size - penalizing the citizens, especially the younger ones, is no way to solve the problem. This latest idea is a fix, at best, and a bad one at that.

In this case of Traffic Police versus the Toddlers, it will be the City that loses.