Author: anuchenji

The person in front of me is looking a particularly sickly pea-green. The area around her mouth is white and she seems to be in real agony. I quickly step aside so that I won’t be at the receiving end of whatever she does next. She steps to the side right along with me and we are facing each other again. I look at her in mute agony – how am I going to talk to her – she probably does not know English… She looks right back at me with the same agony. Then I look again – she looks Indian and probably can understand me. She too looks back at me with a faintly puzzled expression…

It’s a mirror!

And the woman who looks like she’s going to throw up is me! I run to the side of the boat so I won’t throw up on myself!

The sea stares back at me – glassy calm – the bluest sea in the world – the Mediterranean. One of the crew strolls up and greets me – “Lovely calm sea, ma’am. Beautiful weather for sailing!”

Oh yeah? Then why is my stomach feeling like it wants to uproot itself from my middle and throw itself overboard? There are two more right next to me on the deck  – all green faces staring down at the famous blue of the Mediterranean – my two daughters – we are not good sailors!

We are on a cruise in the Mediterranean – the very first time I have been on a boat on the sea – and right now, it feels like it should be the very last time too! The ship’s doc comes to the rescue with pills and in a few hours of lying down in our cabin staring at walls which move, we are all feeling better. The blue beckons and we go to the deck quite happily.

Car sickness, reading-in-a-moving-car sickness (for some reason I can read in a train but not a car!), flight sickness, mountain road sickness, anything that can churn my stomach does… and I love traveling! 

But there are solutions – in the form of little pills which make your sickness go away – I am a single-person significant market segment for all of these pharma manufacturers – I really think they should give me a discount!

I am so well after the first few hours that I am ready to face dinner – in a really beautiful restaurant on board… and surprisingly find an amazingly large array of vegetarian dishes.

Sickness is forgotten. The blue black of the nighttime Mediterranean, the lights and music, softspoken people, superb and all-new-to-me veggie dishes – what more could I ask for? I determine to be a good sailor!

Here’s a really simple cold salad from that on-board menu…

EGYPTIAN LEMON AND POTATO SALAD

• 1 kg red potatoes (I use regular or baby potatoes in India). Scrub well – do not peel.
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley (sometimes substitute with fresh dill or mint or a combo of both)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Boil potatoes. Cool and slice into fingers. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Chill and serve.

Don’t forget those pills now!

“Waaanh… I want to go home… “ sobs a two-year old who normally never cries! Even injections do not produce too much of a reaction from her. But on this occassion, she’s really upset.

And so, trying to get her to finish our job (really not painful, I assure you!) for another five minutes, I couldn’t bear the very real distress in her voice and face any more and whisk her off… from the parlour where we’d gone for her first haircut!

With a head full of fat sausage curls, I really didn’t want to get her gorgeous hair cut at all but… it was summer and as much as I could do to keep her cool… or so I thought! It being a first haircut at the parlour for her, she had no clue what to expect. The ladies at the saloon made a fuss over her, bringing her sweets and a glass of juice – all of which she lapped up quite happily!

Then came business. She watched a little apprehensively as they tied an apron around her neck and her arms and hands disappeared from view. Stuck them out from under the apron to make sure they were not making away with her fingers! Slightly reassured, she sat back and watched interestedly.

The lady sprays water on her hair – this seems to be getting to be fun!

Combs it out. Uh-oh, not fun any more – only my mom is allowed to comb my hair, doesn’t this lady know even that? Forehead wrinkles in disapproval.

She spies a pair of scissors in the mirror. Are we going to do some paper- cutting?

The scissors approaches her hair. Closes on it. Some part of me is being cut off! And it is falling on the floor! What else will they cut off next?

Lungs fill. Lungs are emptied – at full volume and a roar of disapproval emanates.

We try to pacify her. The roaring subsides into sobs as more hair is cut. The mom can’t take the sobs any more.

Stop! We’re leaving.

“But, ma’am… we’ve cut only one side!”

“Never mind that. I’ll finish the job at home!” I say and take her off.

At home, we create a hair-cutting space – on her little stool with newspapers spread all around and working very quietly as I tell her stories and how cool she’ll feel after the haircut – like her head is airconditioned, I finish the other half! Not the most professional of cuts but thankful that curls are very forgiving to unseasoned hairdressers!

The very next time we go to the parlour – having primed her ahead… she is good as gold and enjoys the attention!

Me, my nerves need a cooler after that first haircut!

Here’s a ‘cooler’ curry – made with a most unusual ingredient…

WATERMELON RIND CURRY

• Watermelon rind – peel and cut into 1 cm chunks – 2 cups
• Onion – chopped  – 1
• Tomato – chopped  – 1
• Coriander powder – 1/2 tsp
• Cumin powder – 1/2 tsp
• Chili powder – 1/4 tsp
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Asafoetida – 1 pinch
• Amchur – 1/2 tsp
• Garam masala – just a pinch
• Milk – 1/3 cup.
• Salt
• Ghee – 1 tbsp
• Chopped coriander to garnish

Heat ghee in a pan. Add the onion and fry.

Add all the masalas and fry for a few seconds.

Add tomatoes and stir till tender.

Add the watermelon and salt and cover and cook till almost done.

Add the milk and continue to simmer till watermelon is cooked. The milk might curdle – that’s fine. If you’re vegan, omit milk altogether.

Switch off. Serve with hot rice and papads.

P.S.: I forgot to take a photo after the curry was cooked – only halfway through the process – the colour deepens!

“Now flap your arms and walk around the room.”

Done.

“Now raise your arms above your head and make a buzzing noise like a bee as you go around the rom once more.”

A kindergarten class in progress you think? You’re waay off!

Hubby, being a pretty good singer and having been pushed by wife who cannot sing into restarting a band  in his midlife, has decided  to go in for voice training classes to… limber up. He casts around and finds a visiting teacher. A French-Canadian lady who’s here for a few months and starts off lessons. So she asks him during the first session about whether his family sings too. He can’t hide the facts (what if she says bring your wife along and we can all sing together?!!) and so says no, my wife thinks she’s the worst singer in the world!

The teacher’s teacherly pride is aroused – she announces, “There is no one in the world who cannot sing – ask her to come and I will train her !”

Husband comes back and relates this conversation to me. I am thrilled -obviously she’s a very wise woman who knows something that I have secretly suspected all along – that inside me is an MS Subbalakshmi just waiting to be discovered!

And so, next morning, we get ready half an hour earlier than we need to – music lessons are serious stuff, after all! And then begins this thing about walking around a room humming, flapping one’s wings, buzzing and so on. I love drama so I’m quite happy to add a twirl or two and pirouette as we flap and prance around the room – a class of two people – husband and me! Hubby not so happy as he’s a bit self-conscious – not at all proper for a corporate type to be jumping around like a frog and buzzing like a bee! But he puts up with it.

We do this for a while and then she says, now sing a note. And takes off on a “laaaaaaaaaaaa… ”

Husband takes a deep breath and is about to start his “laaa… ” but I am quicker on the uptake and go “laaa… aaa… aaa… splutter… ahem… laa” obviously hitting the wrong note!

Teacher and husband are stunned into silence. But I have my eyes closed in concentration and so take a deep breath to continue “LAAAA… aaa… AAA… “ and can’t see their faces – frozen in shock! After a while, it sinks in that it’s only my voice and that there’s supposed to be two voices. So I open the blinkers and grin at them happily. I have done my first vocal exercise!

The class stutters to a halt after that – the teacher feeling a bit faint (in the heat, she says!)

We go home and i am FULL of my class to anyone who will listen. Two days later, I am ready – again bright and early for the next class. We get a message saying the teacher is unwell and class is cancelled.

A week later, we get news she has moved… to Beijing! And thence back to Canada!

Too bad – she missed a chance to create another MS!

Corny story – you say? Every word is as it actually happened!

Like this corny delicacy from the centre of India – Madhya Pradesh’s famous…

BHUTTE KA KHEES

• Frozen corn – 1/2 kg. (the original called for grating fresh corn but I am cooking in Madras in the summer – so frozen corn it shall be!
• Green chilies – 3-4 – minced
• Ginger – 1″ piece – grated
• Jeera/cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida/hing– 1 generous pinch
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Milk – 1 cup
• Salt
• Pepper – 1/4 tsp (optional)
• Ghee – 1 tbsp

TO GARNISH

• Grated fresh coconut – 2 tbsp
• Chopped coriander – 2 tbsp
• Juice of 1 lemon

Instead of grating the ginger and micning green chilies, one short cut i use all the time is pulse them together along with the jeera in the small mixer jar.

Pulse half the frozen corn also separately in another jar and set aside.

Heat the ghee in a saucepan and add the jeera-cumin-green chili mixture. Add the asafoetida and turmeric.

Add the ground corn and the whole corn kernels. Add the milk, salt and pepper and cook without a lid on a low flame, stirring occassionally till corn is tender. You may need to add a little water if it becomes too dry.

Take off, let it cool a little, sprinkle over the coconut and coriander and lemon juice.

Remember to serve with a smile – who knows when your talents in the singing line may be discovered and you might just be serving a Rehman!

“Let’s see who finishes their juice first,” challenges my brother Arvind. At four years, he’s just a year older than me and we haven’t yet grown to the stage where I get smarter than him!

Being very young and very gullible, I promptly glug my juice down.

I’ve related in an earlier episode my epic capacity for stretching out every meal to an at least two hour session and sometimes more… the one exception to this was any kind of juice – bottled non-fizzy drinks were good but home made lime “juth” as we called it, was the best and we could between us polish off several large jugfuls!

That we were supposed to put it inside us was understood but that large quantities invariably ended up all around us and outside of our stomachs was a fallout from being given juice in very large jugs which we couldn’t handle but were happy to drink out of – the more the juice, the sweeter the juice, the merrier and stickier the kids!

And so back to my brother’s challenge – who’ll finish their juice faster. Invariably I’d end up forgetting what had happened the previous time and proceed to glug down the juice at a tremendous speed and proudly announce that I was DONE! Upon which, my brother would promptly turn around and jeer, “naana naana naanaa… (or something like that!); YOUR juice is over; I’VE still got mine!” and proceed to slowly drink it right in front of my eyes, relishing every drop!

My jaw would drop, I would stare at his glass, still gloriously almost full, my chin would begin to tremble and the fat drops would gather and no, no gentle tears rolling down, rather full-fledged lungs gathering to bawl out loudly, lustily and long!! The bawling would have its effect – one or both of the parents would come charging in, berating him for teasing a smaller sibling! But, and it was a very important but, he would have had his moment in the sun and when you are three or four years old, that moment is all that matters, right?!

It took me all of three or four years to catch on to this game and then, of course, he moved on to another one… and three or four years later… you get the drift?

Those moments in the sun may be important but just now, in miserably hot and humid Chennai, the moments are far too many to handle and have me searching out old and forgotten recipes which involve little or no cooking… remembered one of these and adapted it to tonight’s dinner – a no-cook poha (beaten rice) dish from Maharashtra called…

DADAPE POHE

• Thin poha – 4 cups (red poha or thick poha won’t do)
• Chopped onions – 1 cup
• Grated coconut – 1 cup
• Grated mango – 1/4 cup
• Grated carrot – 1
• Chopped cucumber – 1
• Minced green chilies – 2-3
• Chopped mint and / or coriander – 3 tbsp
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Sugar – 1.5 tsp
• Salt
• Jeera powder – 1/2 tsp

Mix everything together and season with 1 tsp mustard seeds, a large pinch of asafoetida and 2 tbsp of curry leaves in 2 tbsp of oil.

Let everything rest for about ten minutes – the poha is softened by the juices in the vegetables and coconut. All you need is a bowl of yogurt or even better – several glasses of majjiga (buttermilk) or, best of all, a large jug of fresh lime juice – be sure to get it all in your tummy!

(The original recipe calls for only onions and coconut but I like my veggies!)