The Puttu Experiment

At home , I was always a lazy girl and would spend all my time sleeping or reading and kitchen was place I came down only when mom would call me to come and get my food. All my mom's talks of other girls of my age knowing cooking and housework usually got transmitted straight over my head , hit the thick walls of the dining room , got lost in the deafening noise of the TV and died. Getting a job in a company that had a canteen and moving in with friends in Bangalore did precious little to improve my house-wifely skills. It didn't help , that I continued to stay with friends for almost a year after my wedding , before flying to America to start my family life.

To cut a long story short, my culinary skills included  just a little more than Maggi , tea and coffee.And I was stuck in a place where maids/cooks/Indian restaurants were not an option and my 2 helplines (Mom and mother in law) were half way across the globe.With frequent telephone calls to India and continuous reference to cookery blogs , we managed to survive. Then one day , my husband came with a packet of Double horse Puttu podi.

"Let us have some puttu this weekend ". He said.
I had never made puttu in my life and told him in so  many words that it was probably good to have some back up plan. But hubby dear was insistent. "It is really simple and easy. How many times have I seen

my mom make it.You just put a few drops of water in the puttu powder , put it in the kudam (vessel for steaming puttu) and steam it."



Saturday came and we woke up somewhere close to 11:00 AM and I followed his instructions one by one

1)Took one glass of putto powder.
2)Sprinkled water on it.
3)Added water in a pressure cooker and closed it with the puttu kudam as its weight.

(5 Min's of steam and the puttu should be ready. I thought happily).

After 5 Min's , I opened the vessel, and scraped a bit off the top to taste . It tasted just like heated rice powder.I decided to give it a benefit of the doubt and kept it back on stove on for 5 more minutes.

Result: super heater rice powder.

Puttu we hoped to make.
[Image is not mine. Copied from Google]

I woke up my husband who was still sleeping in anticipation of waking up to a sumptuous breakfast.

What my puttu looked like

[Image is not mine. Copied from Google]

What did you burn today?, he asked seeing my face. "Nothing , but the puttu isn't cooking,". He consented to wake up , but even with his expert supervision, the puttu stubbornly refused to cook and we just got rice flour with higher and higher temperatures.



It was too late in the night by Indian time and our cooking helplines were all unavailable and in bed.Finally hunger overtook our patience and we settled for the ever easy fall back option of bread /omelet.Later when I called home , every one had a hearty laugh at us .The reason  our puttu never got cooked was because neither I nor my husband knew that puttu powder needs to be mixed with water to reach a certain consistency before it can ever get cooked.

Lessons Learnt: The correct amount of water is one of the most important ingredients to good cooking.

 Anyway, after years of burnt vessels , hot , salty,salt less  edible , inedible and partially edible substances , now I am able to cook food that is usually palatable and occasionally tasty enough to get that random compliment.

 P.S : This post is intended to make lazy bums (like me) feel better. Rest assured.Knowing cooking beforehand doesn't really matter. You are bound to learn it in time, anyway and it will certainly give you a few moments like these to laugh out loud. :)

déjà vu

A kaleidoscope of vibrant colors

Of a thousand scattered pieces

Arranging and re-arranging every second

Into a million beautiful patterns

Like a child,  I watch,mesmerized

By the ever-changing beauty of change

I stand detached as the scattered  

Pieces regroup into patterns strange

I turn the tube in  part hope, part fear

My hands force locked in continuous motion

Turn after turn I move in awe

Driven by the quest for an elusive perfection.

The pieces move again and scatter

Shining in the reflective play of light

To take the exact same place

As they had done once before

A thousand little pieces

In the exact intricate same way

A snapshot from distant memory

That time forgot to take away

It could be a betrayal of the eyes

Lost I stare without a clue

Or was this strange bewilderment

That what they call a déjà vu?

To Kill or To Keep

After reading Red Handed's vehement support of abortion , which she has explained with so much poise, I somehow felt that it had hit one nail on the head , but failed to touch the broader issue at hand.  This and some of the comments posted by readers , prompted me to think and I decided to answer to Red's PS and post my views here.

1) Abortion is probably the only reasonable path of action if either the foetus is not healthy or if the mother's health is in danger or in case of rape. I do not think many people disagree on that.

2)Abortion is also the path of least resistance for an unmarried girl who becomes pregnant  because of the harassment from the society that she will have to face if she had decided to raise the child on her own.

3)While I do agree with couples who decide to abort , when even after the best of  precautions taken, the girl still gets pregnant, I believe that while it is entirely possible , the probability of it happening is very low.(Come on guys and Gals, the egg is available only 24 hrs in a month).Neither  do I agree with the way abortion is becoming increasingly used as a method of contraception.(What if I get pregnant, We can always have an abortion na..).

4)Many people commented that they support abortion because it prevents unwanted and unloved babies from being born and it was actually a good thing to abort such babies anyway. Who are we to decide if that is what is good for the baby? Think for a moment , If Virgin Mary had decided to abort Jesus ,Christ? Or if Steve Jobs' parents had aborted him instead of giving him up for adoption ?

5) A lot of people said at the same time , that they supported all but gender based abortions. If the above point is valid(Which I question in the first place), how can this scenario be different? A prostitute aborts her girl child because she wants the kid to escape from the life that is awaiting her.A woman who has been harassed all her life by her in laws decides to abort a girl child so that her daughter does not have to go through the same ignominious life that she faced.

6) A lot of people seemed to think that the fetus is not a baby before 20 weeks. That is absolutely not true.The baby is very much alive at 12 weeks, I saw my son's ultrasound scan at 12 weeks and the baby had everything including an attitude.

What I wanted to convey is that doing it for the good of the baby is utter tosh. If you make this decision you are doing it for yourself.  You are just reiterating that your life is important to you and you are as any being in this universe , bound to even take a life , when your life or right to live is threatened. Ultimately it is a choice that you have to make for yourself  and love or hate yourself for it. Which is why I hope and pray I never have to take such a decision in my lifetime.


P.S : Red Handed is an amazing writer and I am a big fan and this post is not meant to insult her in any way. Just my personal opinions in the matter.

Tale of the Missing Erasers

It was a long time ago. Children in class 1 wrote in notebooks with pencils and used erasers to when they wanted to erase what they had written. Children of the rich and famous flaunted magnetic pencil boxes and pen pencils and pencil sharpeners and erasers of various shapes and colors. The rest of the mortals used normal HB pencils and plain white erasers. The primary school block was originally a house that was converted into a school and resembled an old tharavadu complete with a pond that had its entry blocked from students.

[From Google]

This is the story of a little girl who belonged to that class. The girl wrote ABCD with her pencil and erased stuff with her rubber and took  her pencils and  erasers home every day.Somewhere after mid August, strange things began to happen. The girl started losing her pencils and erasers. Every day, when she opened her pencil box at home , there would be either a pencil or a rubber missing. Her parents asked her many times, but she refused to divulge any information on the missing items. Parents, coaxed, bribed , screamed and tried every trick they knew, but the girl wouldn't say anything. Soon, they started cutting pencils and erasers into 4 and sending only one piece with her so as to make them last longer.But invariably the items disappeared at the end of the day.

The parents began to suspect that she was giving her things to some one else  in school. Then one day , her uncle gave her a shiny new eraser. As the parents were thinking of excuses to keep the eraser away from her pencil box so that she wouldn't lose it, the girl herself came forward and asked her parents to keep the eraser for safe keeping. To her surprised mom and dad , she said, I don't want to take it to school,  Param will make me throw it into the pond"." Why do you have to do what he says. Does he bully you?" asked her concerned parents. "No Amma, But you know , Param, he is a terrorist, you saw him at the independence day programme na. He says he has a gun and when he says, all of us have to put our pencils and erasers into the pond."

Thus the mystery was solved. Param was living his fancy dress role as a Punjabi separatist and terrorizing the girls. Things were all back to normal after a small chit chat with the class teacher and param's parents.



Time moved on.The little girl grew up , remained more or less stupid and writes blogs now. The terrorist grew up and became a chartered accountant and even took an internship at the little girl's dad's office and needless to say , people  who know the story make full use of it to make fun of them when they get the chance.

P.S : Obviously , people who are reading this , must know it is my story and I recently added the terrorist as a facebook friend. :P



[From Google]



Residential Reptile

Overheard in a metro transit bus.


Passenger : It is getting colder isn't it.
Bus Driver : Yeah.. the winter is sure coming up..
Passenger : There was a power outage yesterday at our place.
Bus Driver  Really? That must have been terrible. How long was it out?
Passenger : Oh a couple of hours . It was OK, except my python was getting real cold .
Me (Thinking) :(This is one of those snake eating guys, I wouldn't have guessed! Poor guy must have had a real cold dinner because of the power cut.).
Passenger : You see , the cage heater stopped working.
Me (Thinking) :It is a real live DISCOVERY CHANNEL  TYPE PYTHON. Living in a house(eeeeeeeks) as a pet, may be he calls it Pythagoras or something.


Bus Driver : Interesting. So you have a python for a pet? What did you do then?
Passenger : Oh.I really wanted to get a cat. But my room mate was allergic to cats. So I got a python.
It is a sweet thing. Beleive me..


(At that point , I made a mental note to check with my apartment for the list of pets that they allowed to make sure that anything of the reptilian variety was  off the list.Also never to leave the apartment door open in case of a power outage if at all one happened at our place.)

P.S : Long break from blogging since I'm still getting used to my new glasses( I do soo hate wearing them)  .

In the Path of Thorns (Posted in Darlings of Venus)

When this month's discussion topic was announced  and Maithili implored all of us to come out with our experience,I was sure that there would not be many entries.But was shocked beyond belief to read the revelations from my friends at DOV and after reading what each of them shared , my respect for these amazing ladies have increased a hundred fold.

An age old saying in my language goes like this "immaterial of whether a leaf falls on a thorn or the thorn falls on a leaf,the leaf gets damaged ". And from the moment a girl child is born ,these cliched lines are oft repeated to the parents and the girl alike.That being said,every girl at some point gets her share of prickly sex repressed male thorns.

Being in a close knit family with grand parents,uncles , aunts and cousins living almost on the same compound to look after me and by God's grace, I haven't had to encounter such bastards in my life.But just as a leaf on a rose bush cannot escape grazing through the thorns to fly in the wind, I too have fleeting memories of nameless and faceless parasites that refuse to go away that must be the part of memories of even the most ordinary Indian girl.

1)The hairy hand that made into my purple frock when I was standing in queue for darshan at one of the most famous temples in Kerala and how I with all my might pushed it back and somehow exchanged position with a fat old lady in front of me.

2)The pointed fingers that kept poking me through the gap between the seat and the back rest in the TNSRTC bus while the teacher was taking me and a friend for a science camp in Tamil Nadu. the frustration when the teacher asked us to ignore the constant pokes and the my friend's fiery outburst at the guy which finally resulted in him moving to a different seat.

3)The numerous times I have had to ask my friends (guys) or cousins to exchange seats with me at a movie theater because some dark hands were trying to grope me in the safe darkness of the movie hall.

4)The lecherous eyes of the random guy who stopped me mid road to ask if I wear clothes when I take bath (!!!!).

5)Those decently dressed men in the heavily crowded trains and buses , whose only aim in life is to bump on to you with each movement the vehicle makes and then look back with a false smile as if it was an accident.

6)The showmen who post themselves at strategic locations near girls hostels and embarrass the girls by showing off their strategic body areas.

7)The hands that always try to find their way towards a girl when you are sleeping in a second class sleeper compartment and how you always remembered to sleep with your feet in the direction of the corridor and keep them covered under a blanket.

8)The fake sleeping guy who tries to fall asleep on your shoulders as if by some horrible quirk of  fate you did not get a lady's seat in one of those overpriced overnight Volvo buses.

With time and experience , I learned that this was the way of life and there was nothing much a woman could do to avoid such people completely (unless of course I wanted to shut myself off in a nunnery, which after some second thoughts involving Sister Abhaya might not be that safe either )

But some of my favorite weapons that helped me are an umbrella and a safety pin. Of course having a fierce look helps and some martial arts would be amazing.

Here are a few small tips to stay safe in daily life , which I used to follow

1)The open umbrella is a savior while walking through crowded foot paths , in that it gives you a  little space and a much needed weapon from guys whose only intent is to bump you and touch your breast.

2) A closed umbrella is a good weapon to use against auto  or taxi drivers if you feel they are planning something for you. (Have always been told this , but haven't had to use it personally).

3)Safety pin is a good weapon to be used when the perpetrator is hiding in a crowded or dark place, like a bus or movie theater.I have successfully used it on the guy who tried to poke me in
the movie theater .(3 pricks and 20 min later that guy left the theater). Compass or other sharp instruments can be used too but for the difficulty of carrying it around.

4)Having one or more trusted people of the stronger sex , unfortunately is one of the most fool proof ways to keep yourself safe.