Requeim for a Masala Pappad

Masala papad isn't necessarily someone would associate with invoking happy memories. I mean it's not like it's in the same category as my mum's cooking (and dad's special!), which never fails me to put in a happy place. But the reason masala papad brings a special smile to my face is that invokes a particular happy time in my life when I was dating my girlfriend in Mumbai.

Some evenings, when the air had cooled and the evenings weren't as sultry, we would walk from our office to the local Sukh Sagar (aptly named now that I think about it) "Family A/C" restaurant for a bite. Having seated ourselves at a cozy table and thumbed through the worn and badly spelled menu, we would invariably order a masala papad as an appetizer.

Now I should point out that I had never had masala papad in my life before I met her but having it at Sukh Sagar became a ritual with us. It was a fine masala pappad, no doubt with a perfect balance of crunchiness of the pappad, the spice of the masala chaat, and the earthy sweetness of the onions and tomatoes. But more than that I would like to think that I just enjoyed eating it because she loved it and brought a special twinkle to her eyes when she ate it.

And so we would munch on the pappad, talk about things that couple in love usually do and generally have nary a care in the world. It was our own private world in Sukh Sagar, amidst all the clanking of cutlery and loud talking waiters.

Many months later, I married the girl who introduced me to masala pappad.Since then, many moons have come and gone and our lives have changed in subtle ways, but I never fail to be transported back in space and time to Sukh Sagar whenever I see "Masala Pappad" in a restaurant's menu. And it never fails to bring a smile to my face when my wife orders masala pappad for us to share. Just like old times! Some things never change.

Death by chocolate

The other day I tried my hand at making (as opposed to merely eating) one of my favourite puddings, the deliciously named Bolo de Bolacha Maria. The recipe sounds easy enough. Take some egg yolk, butter, sugar, coffe and cocoa powder, whisk it together and layer the resulting chocolate cream on Marie biscuits stacked one top of each other to eventually end up with something like this:

It's simplicity itself and it would take a special kind of idiot to mess up something like that. Yes? Enter moi.

For starters, I couldn't find Marie biscuits in the local store so I bought Diget biscuits, because I thought they were perfect substitutes for Marie biscuits. I mean they are both round in shape and they both have something to do with being healthy or something. Good enough for me!

Secondly, I didn't bother buying milk 'cos the recipe I had didn't mention it and I was super confident that I would get the consistency of the chocolate cream right with mere butter and egg yolk. My wife did mention that I should mix some milk in, but what does she know eh? I mean, the recipe is from a website about recipes for godsake! She doesn't have any recipes on a website.

At this point I was pretty chuffed with myself for having thought all of this through clearly and saving some money on the milk in the bargain. Splendid! I was doing so well so far.

After quickly gulping down a glass of beer to get the creative juices flowing, I quickly put together the egg yolks (after a quick check with my wife on how to separate the eggs 'cos creativity can only get you so far), sugar, butter and other bits and pieces and briskly set about to whisk up a rich, chocolaty, coagulated mass of dark nightmare that stuck to the bowl like a limpet mine. Wait. What?

A quick check in the recipe book confirmed that I hadn't missed anything but the alien in my bowl looked like it hadn't just come from another planet but an entirely different universe altogether. Thankfully, the beer I had downed had set my senses on a keen edge and my brain was ticking like a furious time bomb. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

What I needed was a way to make the tarry blob of cocoa a little less tarry. Some more butter and egg yolk perhaps? I really couldn't see a fault in the logic and so after a dash of more of the same, I ended up with a slightly larger tarry blob of cocoa.

There was nothing to it but to use what I had to layer the Marie - sorry, Diget - biscuits. First brew some strong black coffee. Then dunk the biscuits in the coffee (after cooling it down a bit) before stacking them on a plate. Cooling down the coffee would take a while I suppose. Hmm.. why not apply elementary physics that I had learned in my glorious academic days to get around this? See, the thing to remember is that if you dip the biscuit in the hot coffee and pull it out really really fast, there wouldn't be enough time for the coffee to transfer heat to the biscuit. So you will still get coffee soaked biscuits but in one fourth the time! Einstein couldn't have reasoned it better.

Right. Enough thinking. Brew some strong black coffee. Now the important bit: quickly ninja-dunk biscuit in the coffee and ...wait, where's the biscuit gone? Ah, there it is, half submerged in the coffee cup like a cotton ball. Maybe I wasn't ninja-fast enough. Let's try another biscuit.... Oh look, now I have two soggy biscuits in the coffee cup. I knew the physics they taught us in school was all for nothing. Meh.

It turns out that Diget biscuits have this property called "crumbliness" that makes them fall apart at the slightest hint of heat and touch. So it wasn't my physics entirely at fault. Anyway, after putting the coffee in the fridge for a few mins, I was ready to continue.

The next step is to layer the chocolate as you stack up the biscuits on the plate. Unfortunately, applying the blobby mass of cocoa to the biscuits, without making them crumble completely, wasn't an easy task but thanks to my mad skillz with a butter knife, fork and a spoon (not to mention plenty of swear words), I somehow managed to bring it altogether just like some of clever contestants do on MasterChef.

And so ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bolo de Bolacha Diget!

It's a great feeling when something comes together just the way you had imagined it, isn't it?

PS: The photo doesn't do it justice. No, really. Honest. That was the best of the lot.

More than words

People say I write well. I find that ironic, and at times confusing.

You see, I actually find it very, very difficult to write anything meaningful or deep. It's not for lack of ideas, but like good ol' Snoopy who can't seem to get past the lines "It was a dark and stormy night...", I struggle to transfer my ideas to paper (or e-paper if you will) after the first couple of sentences.

I'm good at writing frivolous, comical, conversational style sentences, but every time I try my hand at something deeper and more philosophical, the ideas seem to stop flowing down to my fingers. My brain, having already revisited each sentence half a dozen times for clarity, style and grammar corrections, simply looses focus and the original thought is soon replaced by a distant shadow of an idea that once was. For example, this paragraph alone has taken me 15 minutes to write and I have re-written the last two sentences three times, and I'm still not sure if I'm getting my point across.

And therein lies my problem. Somehow, my neural network seems to spend far too much time trying to write well when in fact it should be simply... writing!

Having said that, I have now spent a good 20 minutes writing, erasing and re-writing this very paragraph. I don't even remember anymore the point I was going to make next except that it was more utter rubbish and me waffling on about something or the other.

See what I mean?

Let's see... what point am I trying to make? Ah yes. The point I'm trying to make is that it appears that - yes, writing is as much as about writing from the heart as it is about the mind. But I'll be damned if I can figure out how I can get the two going at the same time.

So, gentle readers (yes, all two of you), please bear with me if I don't write anything that is insightful or thought provoking on my blog. Because, it turns out, that's not my style. Not my cuppa tea. No siree! I'll just leave that to people like Arundhati Roy, who seem to have institutionalised the process. Thank you very much.


In fact, I think I'll stop now.

No, actually I'm quite sure.

Yes, really. 

Good. Finally, something that both my heart and mind agree on.

And a moment not too soon, one suspects... bleh.

Why India needs Anna.... but probably doesn't deserve him.

Over the last week India has witnessed gentle but telling protests on the streets over the Anti-Corruption Bill that's been introduced by the government. And it's been led by a frail septuagenarian by the name of Anna Hazare. A man who, until a few weeks ago, was a largely unknown entity (freedom fighter? what's that?) in the political consciousness of millions of ordinary Indians, but is probably now known to as many.

It's quite interesting to see that for as many millions of people rooting for his "movement" (it's too early to call it a revolution), there are just as many doubters and critics who believe that India doesn't need a movement and it certainly doesn't need a 76 year old Gandhian to rid the nation of corruption. That it's a just a silly side-show that's not worth the price of admission.

Then there are some who argue with the logic that charity begins at home, so it's enough to stop the common practice of bribing corrupt officials to get a job done. No movement or protests required whatsoever! Ha! If only it were so simple.

For one thing, they fail to address the reason why people pay bribes. It's not because they want to, it's because it's the only way to get things done in the system, most of the times. The house you are living in right now, for instance. No doubt you paid the builder a "deposit", a euphemism for black money, which the builder claims he needs to pay off various people in the government machinery to get the building alloted. Technically, you haven't paid a bribe, but indirectly you have. Need to get a ration card/passport but don't satisfy every single of the dozen odd arbitrary conditions? Prepare to pay up. What alternative do you have? Tell the authorities? Aha! But who? You see, the bureaucratic system isn't designed to make it any easier to not pay. Au contraire! Pay or die, in a manner of speaking.

Which brings us to this bill. No, it's not going to solve all our corruption problems. Let's not be so naive! To truly solve corruption, the government needs to change the bureaucratic system to make it easier for everyone to get the things they want. If all it takes is a few documents and a quick visit to the local office to get a job sorted out, without paying anybody, do you really think people will resort to bribes? If you think so, you need to remember that most things in nature prefer the path of least resistance. I mean, look around you. Aren't you surrounded by things that make it easier for you to live? Survive? Entertain? People inevitably take the path that leads to least suffering. Jesus and Gandhi were exceptions.

A strong anti-corruption bill will do a couple of things: 1) Make people think twice about accepting and paying bribes. 2) Create an autonomous authority to which people can report problems. Currently, only a couple of states have a strong independent Anti-Corruption Bureau. However, as events in Karnataka have illustrated, they are ill-equipped when it comes to taking on the government itself on corruption cases. Surely, that's a start? A start worth fighting for?

Hopefully, the government will also take steps to rehaul the system itself. To make people accountable. To make things less bothersome and painful for ordinary people who just want to get along with their lives. I mean, that's what we all want, right? The bill is a start, nothing more. Both critics and supporters need to understand this. There are other battles ahead, but if we all can't agree on this single first step, I fear we won't be getting very far!

So, I don't understand the negativity surrounding the recent protests. Just because people are rallying to a call, and have found a leader to follow, and are active about it on social networks (Facebook seems to be a dirty word these days), doesn't make the essence of the matter any less relevant or important. Let's not miss the woods for the trees. Such opportunities don't come often, and leaders like Anna are a rare dying breed. If we don't rally now, we never will!

Tales from Korea: Part 2

Korean cuisine is an acquired taste. Even if you are a strict non-vegetarian. I realised this within my first two days of stay here. I can eat almost any non-vegetarian food, so long as it doesn't have more than 4 legs, doesn't belong to the invertebrate family in general, and the arthropod family in particular and is, more importantly, well and truly dead before arrival on my plate. Even better if it's actually cooked.


Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with eating wiggly, squishy things (they are all par for the course I suppose), but I have my nitpicks. Thankfully, there are other things to like about Korean food. For one, it's quite healthy. Plenty of vegetables in their diet. Indeed, the national food of Korea is a dish called Khimchi, which is made from fermented cabbage (or radish). It has quite a strong aroma and take some getting used to. I still haven't.

Eating in a Korean joint is quite a social experience. For one, you don't get any plates to eat from; only chopsticks. Although they will give you a fork and spoon if you ask nicely. Secondly, raw meat is cooked right there on the table and eaten fresh from the hotplate. Not an ideal experience for strict vegetarians, admittedly. A good thing then that I'm not, eh? Meat is not usually spiced, but is to be eaten with salt or with the vegetables. It's not as bad as it sounds. No, really. Interestingly, each joint specialises in a single kind of meat. So you may eat at a joint which serves only chicken or pork or beef or fish or octopus. But not a combination of them together. It's easy enough to figure out what kind of meat you'll be served at a joint by merely looking up the cute animal caricature they have on the signboard outside the shop. So you may find a pig winking at you or a cow giving you a thumbs up, in anticipation its glorious martyrdom that involves you devouring it, no doubt.

The one thing you won't ever find in a Korean joint is "spicy" food. Oh sure, they may have dishes labelled "spicy" (pizza places included) but make no mistake, this isn't spicy as we know it. Not by a long mile. In fact, Koreans seem to like their food on the milder side. Too mild in some cases. I mean, I couldn't find salted butter in the local store - only sweet butter. That could also be because I can't decipher the labels, none of which are in English. But judging by the fact that I couldn't find packaged curd either - they prefer sweet yogurt - I'm guessing salted butter is simply not an option.

There are a few Indian joints scattered about, luckily. I say "Indian" joints but most of them seem to be run by Pakistanis or Nepalis. Not that it really matters. Because as well know, when it comes to food, there are no barriers. More so when it involves hot spicy curry with freshly baked naans, IMHO. Amen.

Tales from Korea 1

So here I am sat in front of my Macbook in Suwon, South Korea, wondering how to relate my experiences so far of the last one month that I have been here. There's always something to write about when you're a stranger in a strange land and S. Korea is as strange as they come, especially for someone who's never before stepped out of the chaos that is India and experienced the culture of another land.

I must admit my geography is a bit atrocious and it wasn't until I had reached S. Korea that I actually looked it up on the map and was quite surprised to discover that it's nowhere close to where I had originally pictured it to be. Come to think of it, even Japan isn't where I had pictured it to be. No wonder I'm so bad at directions! Well, it's a bit NE of India with Japan towards the south and China to the North (beyond N. Korea obviously).

Due to this geographic location its culture has been heavily influenced by both Japan and China. Because it was repeatedly invaded by Japan in the past, S. Koreans (and Koreans in general presumably) aren't particularly fond of the island nation, a fact that I was somewhat surprised to hear. Indeed, it's this rivalry that has given birth to a fierce competition between the two in terms of economic and technological progress. Is it any wonder that some of the top technology companies are from S. Korea?

Speaking of tech companies, three of the biggest companies in S. Korea seem to be Samsung, Hyundai and LG. I didn't realise just how big a deal they were until I reached here. They seem to make all kinds of gadgets and machines and on a scale that is awe inspiring. For instance, did you know that Samsung makes high-end cars?

Well I didn't and imagine my astonishment to discover large sleek Samsung cars flitting about on the expansive and truly beautiful city roads. As it turns out it's actually Renault Samsung that makes these cars. Samsung apparently is the Apple/MS monopolistic equivalent in S. Korea and manufactures a whole lot of things. However, is the king of the road here. Almost every other car is a Hyundai, and some of the larger vehicles and heavy machinery is nearly a Hyundai everytime I have seen them. And they make elevators too.


All work and a bit of play

Koreans work like crazy! Office timings are usually 9 to 6 but almost everyone works 12 hours a day. Many of them (like ours) work Saturdays too! It's a wonder then that they find time for leisure like sauna (jimjibang) and sports like table tennis and football. I asked one of my Korean colleagues as to why everyone works such long hours and the answer was "to become rich and successful". Looking at the high standard of living that Koreans seem to enjoy, I do believe he was being quite serious about it. Remember the adage, "Work smart not work hard"? It looks like the Koreans don't subscribe to it.

Mind you, of late the government and some companies seem to have done their bit to reduce work timing and ease pressure but many companies still follow the old ways. Apparently if you aren't working long hours, you aren't working at all and might soon come under the scanner of high brow management types who don't look too kindly at slackers.

For instance, one of the high end companies I spoke about earlier not only encourages employees to work long hours, it also expects them to work on Sundays and late at nights in order to meet project deadlines with no overtime pay. This shouldn't be shocking if you've worked for an Indian company before but considering S. Korea is a developed nation, it does come as a mild shock. To be fair, compensation for good work is quite regular and there are some perks involved in working for such companies.

As you may or may not have heard, the PC game Starcraft is quite popular here. How popular? Well it has a dedicated TV channel which regularly shows Starcraft gaming tournaments (of which there are a lot) and whatnots. Near my place in Suwon there are a number of shops with the word "PC" on their shop signs. They are internet parlors that apart from providing regular web browsing also cater to the popular pastime of multiplayer gaming. As you can imagine, Starcraft multiplayer is the norm although of late MMO games have become the rage.

S. Korea is quite fond of the Internet. To prove this, they have the highest transfer speeds on the planet and almost every nook and cranny has WiFi connectivity. Some of it isn't even secured. I should know because I'm using someone else's unsecured WiFi connection at the moment to make this long winded blog post!

I suppose that's as good a cue as any to put this particular post to an end. More on life in Korea coming up in a few days. Don't hold your breath though!

Lamb Curry with Potatoes and Rice

My cousin Kiran cooks a mean lamb curry that goes brilliantly with rice. Back when some of us cousins used to live in Bangalore, Kiran used to cook this for lunch to go with a heapful of rice and to be washed down with some chilled beer. Heaven!

So here then is his recipe in his own words:

"Heat oil in pan/kadai... Throw in the cloves and cinnamon... Added chopped onions... Fry for some time.. Add red chilli (whole) ... Fry again... Once the onions turn brown add tomatoes (chopped)... Stir till the entire masala moves as a whole.... add turmeric and chilli powder... more chilli if you want it spicy... fry for a couple of minutes... Then add curd (thick), a few spoons... fry for some time and then add salt to taste... Fry for some more time and then add the lamb and chopped potatoes.... Cook for some time... add some water.... bring it a boil and pressure cook it.... About two long and three short whistles should do.... The lamb is done propelry if the meat leaves the bone easily... Once satisfied, garnish with chopped corriander leaves..."