The Audacity of Hope

...is what a caller into Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC today, termed the decision by the Nobel Prize Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barak Obama. Personally, I think the decision is premature and may even hamper the President's efforts to implement some very difficult decisions. For example, I do not think that President Obama can possibly be expected to resolve the Afghan situation without enlarging the military effort. That's hardly peaceful, as future critics of the Nobel Committee's decisions will justifiably point out, but right now peacemongering will not gain anyone the upper hand militarily on the bad guys. Otherwise, it will be back to public executions at Kabul's stadium. Poor President Obama. From gung-ho politician he has been kicked upstairs, unwilling, horrified, bemused, into the statesman-saint club of unpopular (but incredibly decent) presidents and vice-presidents.

Diary of a Brown Suburban Wife - Where is it?

Globalization has led many people to leave the lands of their birth and settle in other lands - of opportunity, adventure, etc. Predictably, this transmigration has led to that other global phenomenon - the inter cultural and interracial marriage. Yours truly is one such statistic. Enter the Internet and blogging and there is now a wider audience that has a collective window into such marriages as they unfold and develop.

Since I come from India, my interest in Indian bloggers has kept pace with the expansion of that pool. I have noticed that there are many women of western origin (mostly, but not always, white) who blog fairly extensively about their intercultural partnerships. Some of these women live in India, some live in the west with their Indian spouses. But certainly these women feel that their marriages are blog-worthy material, with the pushes and pulls of in-laws and cultural expectations, etc. I think there should be a separate category of blogs, anyway, for Indian in-laws, given the intricate dynamics of that relationship (I can't even imagine the confusion that the entry of a foreign daughter-in-law must create in the network of desi in-law relationships).

Given that there are a fair number of Indian women who are also in intercultural marriages, why is it that so few blog about their experiences? It's not as if we don't have the same learning curves, similar experiences about differences in food, lifestyles, family expectations, etc. So where is the diary of the brown American housewife? Or the desiAmerican? Why is the minutiae of the mixed marriage not considered blogworthy by the desi participant in the partnership?

Not having polled anybody, my answer can only be tentative and personal. I don't blog about my marriage because - intercultural or not - it is mine, personal, private. Whatever K. and I go through, whatever I think of the objective setting of my marriage (and believe me, a mixed marriage in Fairfield County is infinitely easier than one located in rural Kansas), all those things have to play themselves out off-line. And while my blog risks being bland at times, given the self-imposed restrictions on subject matters, it does not touch on my personal life except to provide context for something, my outlook in life, my politics, etc. This does not mean that I don't thorougly enjoy the blogs by the women writing about their desi experience. I do read them, sometimes sympathize, sometimes laugh, sometimes shake my head.

Desi bloggers out there, those of you in mixed marriages, what are your reasons for blogging or not blogging about your relationship?

Happy Birthday, India

Aug 15 - India's 62nd Independence Day, the 63rd year of independence begins. I no longer live there but I do think of the country often as my parents and close friends still live there. Contrary to what one would think, most of my generation did not leave India and the majority of my school and college friends still live there (they do travel extensively, though).

I am so glad, though, that I came here in the 1990s and not before. When I came to the United States, my identity as Indian had already been solidified. The India I grew up in was a simple place of often brutal contrasts, but I felt no embarrassment about it as Tunku Varadarajan may have done (I don't know his bio, so I don't know if he was raised in India or overseas). This was because my generation of Indians felt *Indian*, not reluctant members of an uneasy coalition of different ethnicities and religions, as perhaps the earlier emigrants did. Some of this sense of comfortableness may have come about through the inevitable process of nation-building but I like to think that at least part of this new self-confidence came from a thorough overhaul of the education system.

When I try to dredge up the memories of my school years and of the subjects I liked (English, History), I remember a vague disjuncture in the curriculum right around the age of 7. There are memories of something called Radiant Reader, with glossy pages and colors, full of stories about devotion and pluckiness in a land far away called England. There was the story of Greyfriars Bobby, the dog who stood guard over his dead master's grave until his own death. And then there was Grace Darling, the heroine of the Longstone Lighthouse who risked her own life in a maritime rescue in 1838. There was also George Macdonald's poem, "Baby". All nice, unobjectionable texts, but limited in both their geography and their themes. And very Victorian.

Fast forward to Class X (tenth grade to my American readers). The national curriculum had been overhauled and to my delight, I was reading extracts from the South African author Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country (available at Google Books) and short stories by H. H. Munro "Saki" who took apart Edwardian society as well as poems by the Indian Nissim Ezekiel and the American Odgen Nash. The pages of the books had deteriorated from glossy to full-blown socialist shabby. But I can never say that I found the subject matter boring, at least not in the CBSE English syllabus. Similarly in the Hindi curriculum, the new syllabus taught us a range of Hindi literature - the verses of the mystic poets Meerabai and Kabir and Surdas (which of us has not made jokes about "Meera key pad", punning on "pad" which in different contexts means either "verse" or "fart"), the poetry of the modernists like Harivansh Rai Bacchan and the prose of romantics like Mahadevi Verma.

Exposure at an early age to a wide variety of literary styles and approaches helped shape me and those of my friends who shared my interests into confident *Indians*, neither western wannabes nor chest-thumping traditionalists. We just were...Indian. And because we carried this serenity to our new lives in the west, I like to think that we adjusted well here too. We are neither compliant "model minorities" nor defiantly segregationist (well, most of us, anyway). We love the west and love the east, without being rootless in any context. We are the new globalists, anchored and optimistic without being pollyanna-ish about the country we left behind, nor disdaining where we are right now.

Recently, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has put many of its textbooks online. I am delighted to see that Indian students of CBSE curriculum are still being exposed to some interesting literature from around the world. How many American students have read poems by the Australian Robin Klein or extracts from the Scottish naturalist Gavin Maxwell and his otter, Mijbil, or even poems by the American John Berryman? Truth be told, I did not know John Berryman or Robin Klein till I read recently the Class X NCERT English textbook online. Even if most of the students reading these texts take up engineering or science later, the few who wish to remain in the humanities have, through these sort of readers, a solid grounding in literature both varied, interesing and challenging.

So happy Independence Day, India. 1947 was not only a day of political freedom but it was also the first day in the process of crafting a new Indian.

Electronic Distractions

Facebook has definitely cut into my e-time (i.e. time left over after daily life, etc. for internet browsing, bloghopping, emailing, blogging, etc.). Blogging now suddenly feels middle-aged, as opposed to Facebook where large numbers of pathetic, loser middle-aged facebookers try desperately to reach out to old girlfriends, etc, and to flirt clumsily in ridiculous efforts to capture lost opportunities.



Still, blogging retains a place in my e-life. For example, I can discuss in depth here - and only here - things that I think have been central to the formation of me-as-a-person. Bringing it up in conversation would make people smile politely, make them say "that's interesting" and then have them move on to other topics like the price of cabbages or the latest piece of gossip.



I haven't tried Twitter yet. Part of me thinks - what's with all that tweeting? The other part thinks - why, that's so cool! It would be ideal for all the trivial things that catch my attention and that aren't worth the time blogging about, or facebooking. Things like this, that prove just how much I procrastinate. Twitter could become my e-procrastination log. I'm thinking about it....

The Right Thing to Do

David Letterman was right to apologize to Sarah Palin for the crude joke he cracked about her daughter. I don't care if Gov. Palin makes an exhibition of her family, I don't care if her daughter makes an exhibition of herself, I don't care if Sarah Palin as never apologized for the bile she spewed throughout the election campaign. There is no excuse for making young children (and an 18-year old is barely an adult) the target of lewd jokes. Come on, Letterman, there's lots of other material out there.

Pakistan On Edge

Far more than the hysterical hand-wringing of the western press on the future of Pakistan, I trust the judgement of this Pakistani scientist. It is reasoned, calm, cool, unflinchingly critical of the criminal elite of the Pakistan, and has a more realistic assessment of the short-term future of the Pakistani state. I am not one of those who is much enamored of the mess that is Pakistan, but I am relieved to find someone who can both articulate the problems of that country and can outline political scenarios that don't involve missing nuclear weapons and marauding jihadis swooping down from the hills into Lahore and Amritsar.

"You Sound Like a Girl" ----Grrrl!

I crack down on anyone who makes sexist remarks around me (unless they are senior citizens - you know, old dog, new tricks, etc.). But as my son gets older, I am finding it harder and harder to counter the kind of casual sexism that prevails in age groups as young as eight- or nine-year old boys. On a playdate, recently, as I did the mommy thing and popped corn and cut strawberries, I suddenly heard this cry, "You sound like a girl!" Aaargh! I almost dropped the knife and rushed out to reprimand the boys. What is wrong with sounding like a girl, eh? Don't your mothers and sisters sound like girls? Then, instead, I decided to talk to them while they ate their snacks, but as they played, the other mother came by and in the general conversation, the little episode was forgotten. And I know that somewhere in my son's brain there has been planted the lesson that girl=bad, inferior, laughable, silly. I need to be a more vigilant mommy.

Take That, Creepy Dinner Guest

In November, came the Barack wave. And now the progressive, and hopefully practical (for how effective can progressivism be without practicality?), center-left is back in India and in the USA. And we can breathe again, I hope.

About 14-15 years ago, the son of one of my father's colleagues contacted me in Chicago - you know, the Indian network - and invited me to dinner at his uncle's house in suburban Oakbrook. His uncle and aunt were wealthy physicians, very nice and hospitable people, and I attended a dinner party at their wonderful, elegant house. Great food, great drinks, a bunch of local Indians and one visting creep from Delhi.

Said creep was in the United States, visiting family (all of them solid supporters of the Hindutva parties), and was working the dinner party, talking tough about Muslims and "culture" and the need to stand tall and proud with one's "Hindu-ness", etc. And this when the shame of December 1992 was still a fresh wound. Of course, he was scoping the joint for potential big donors to his party. And of course, I, being younger and more ardent than my middle-aged hosts, argued with him then and there, to show him that not every one at the party was so easy to brainwash (actually, I don't think anyone there was getting brainwashed, they were just being polite to the visitor from desh).

The next ten years were highly frustating ones for people like me, your average liberal, constitutional democrat (with a small 'l' and a small 'd'), as creeps sprang up like mushrooms in the manure that was the Indian polity. It was as if the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and then of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 had so shaken up politics in India that things fell apart and the center could not hold. Looking back, I think I know how 1960s-era Americans felt, when assassinations roiled their world and eliminated public figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The world suddenly seemed endlessly unstable and unpredictable. Only the brazen, the thick-skinned and the absolutely thuggish, could survive and thrive in the 1990s and early 2000s. The good ones kept their heads down and tried to keep going, one foot in front of the other.

It didn't help that during the 1990s America saw the rise of similar manure-y politics as in India (oh, Ken Starr, in how many ways do I despise thy sanctimonious ways?). My friends and I spent our time gnashing our teeth, shaking our heads, arguing with individual rightwing creeps at individual parties, and trying to make feeble jokes at the expense of our Hindutva or Christian fanatic or Muslim fundoo opponents. And we also got good at weathering new shocks, whether from Gujarat or from Baghdad.

But now, our days of mourning are over. Take that, creepy dinner guest and go down to your dark, manure-filled hole with all the other mushrooms.

No More Jobs for the Boys

Oh no! I guess this means that there are going to be fewer jobs for the Minute Men. Recession sucks, doesn't it?

Japanese Maple Watch-Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day! May you have a beautiful day full of flowers and sunshine and your favorite drink and may your child/ren always be within hugging distance (I know, Maa, I know that it's not so for you, but I do send hugs your way telepathically).

Who Wants to be a Toff?

Just finished reading Sarah Lyall's book, The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British. Overall, what stayed with me were the characteristics she outlines of the British upper class, a status that everybody else in Britain aspires to reach, including the "aspirational middle class" so despised by the toffs. Here is what I understood: in order to be a member of the aristocratic upper class in Britain, one has to eat some very bad food and drink a lot of very good alcohol (no doubt to wash down the execrable food). Lyall writes about going for a picnic with an aristocrat of long lineage who served his guests canned soup, bad ham and white bread sandwiches, swilled down with good wine. Given these criteria, here is a list of peoples and nations who will never be upper class Englishmen or Englishwomen, and some who might be eligible:

1. Indians. No way, will the people who eat fragrant biryanis, pulaos, chutneys, dosas, sambhar, curries, spiced dals and fresh yogurt, ever belong to the world of mediocre food. Besides, Indian alcohol sucks. Except for Old Monk rum, when hidden inside a chilled glass of Coca Cola.
2. The French. They are disqualified on two counts. First, the wines of France are ambrosial. Second, why would any Frenchman or Frenchwoman in his or her right mind ever give up Confit de Canard, Coquilles Saint-Jacques and Pommes Duchesse in order to eat Wonderbread and canned soup? No, no, the food and the drink is too good to qualify them for the English aristocracy.
3. Italians, Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese. See last sentence in previous paragraph.
4. South Americans. The alcohol probably sucks (I don't know, have only drunk Chilean wines which are pretty good) but the food is great. So sorry, amigos and amigas, you can't join the bad food club of the English upper classes.
5. Chinese, East Asians in general. Again, no alcohol, but the food - oh my God! So, no entry to them either.
6. Americans. Inspite of the best efforts of McDonald's and Burger King, a people that can invent things like Buffalo Chicken wings and gumbo, and peach cobbler and smothered pork chops, are barred from the English upper classes. Well, maybe the North East with their love of boiled dinners might qualify, except that their clam chowder might prevent them from enjoying full membership benefits.

So what does that leave us? I'm going to offend a lot of people here and offer up for full membership of the English aristocracy, based on the criteria of bad food and lots of alcohol - the Germans.* Any others who might qualify?

*I say this with great sadness. The nation of bratwurst and frankfurters, the land of bad food, how could that be?! Well, it was the boiled cabbage that decided it, for me.

Shubho Noboborsho and Happy Baisakhi

In honor of the Bengali New Year and the Punjabi Baisakhi, we went to eat at the Indian restaurant Bangalore in Fairfield. I was looking forward to this as I felt that finally M. was big enough to sit through a meal at a restaurant and so we could all enjoy our dinner at leisure. The restaurant is a pleasant place, the food is very good, but the service was very disappointingly hit-or-miss. Now this is not a hole-in-the-wall place so one is definitely expecting better than for one's dinner to arrive in fits and starts with long gaps between dishes. The waiters were quite sweet and very polite and you knew it wasn't their fault that the cooks were not producing the dishes in a timely way. But we all ate in a staggered way and needless to say, by the time my Rava Masala Dosa arrived, the kids were quite done and then it was all over for me. It was back to the bad old snarfing-down-my food ritual to the chorus of "can we go home now?" "are you done?" "I'm full" "I'm tired." Hmmm....maybe we will try this going out to eat business in two more years.

In the City

Yesterday was Girls' Day Out in New York City which actually turned into Girls' Day and Night Out as we strolled from pleasant place to pleasant place until we finally headed for dinner. I am always amazed when I head into New York - it is so urban that rightfully the place should be setting one's teeth on edge, but it always ends up dazzling its visitors. It is, I think, the pulsating liveliness, combined with the sheer magnificence of the city's buildings - the highrises with their gleaming windows, the gorgeousness that is Grand Central Terminal, the stateliness of New York Public Library - that consistently wins one over. See, I told you that I am always amazed. This despite the heaps of garbage bags waiting to be picked up and the taxis driving like maniacs and darting in and out of lanes.

There are also so many young people there. I wonder how they manage to survive in one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world. Are they visiting like me or are they residents? Like the young man in the worn down Converse sneakers and faded corduroy pants riding the M-1 bus, blue eyes looking off into the middle distance like everybody else's eyes on crowded public transport. Or the woman with the bleached hair and the shocking orange tights worn under her short-short shorts. Or the teenager with the heavily embellished leather jacket. What a place to people-watch, this city. Not as pretty as Paris or as soft, but edgy and stylish and strong and just so, so diverse. As I walked I heard heavily-accented voices say things like, "In Italy, we..." or "In England, this..."

We headed down first to the little three-table Kati Roll Company on MacDougal St. that sells the most delicous kati rolls. I ordered a chicken and unda roll and we all shared an achari paneer roll. Then, we headed down to the lovely little organic Priti Spa, which sadly is being sold and will disappear, hopefully to be resurrected soon. I bought an organic nail polish for the sandal season coming up so soon. And got myself a much-needed pedicure from the efficient and pleasant Nadia who, I hope, will land on her feet.

More walking landed us first in NoLita for window shopping and then in Soho, browsing at Sur La Table, followed by a stop at Marie Belle where we lingered over iced cardomom chocolate (moi), guava tea (U.) and mocha European style (R.). Despite the snacks, the long walks had more than whetted our appetites for dinner at Grand Sichuan International (we went to the branch off 23rd St.). It was early enough that we only had a ten minute wait (otherwise on Friday nights, expect far longer wait times). I have heard mixed reviews about the service but one goes to these places for the food, not for the personableness or lack of it of the waitstaff. We ordered the pork soup dumplings, the excellent spicy Au Zhi (sp?) fresh chicken (poultry is slaughtered the same day as it is cooked, or so they claim), the so-so whole braised tilapia in hot bean sauce (not worth ordering a second time) and the really good beans with pork (we asked for more beans, less pork, which was an excellent idea as otherwise it would have been way too salty). Grand Sichuan is hearty eating, not fine dining, but it totally hit the spot.

As I took the 10:22 PM Metro North back to Fairfield County, I reflected on the day and came to this conclusion: life isn't half bad when you have kati rolls and organic spas and good chocolate and plentiful Chinese, a train ride away from the quiet backyards of suburbia.

A Revolution

We're living through a revolution. And nobody has any idea what to do. So we carry on with our everyday routines, the commutes to work, the school drop-offs, the soccer games on the weekend. What else is one to do? We are in uncharted waters here. I drive to my part-time gig and as I drive down the much-diminished (thank God!) traffic on I-95, I think to myself: "This is what a revolution looks like, this is what a revolution looks like." It looks like empty retail space, less inventory in the stores, fewer cars on the highways. Social peace hangs by the thin thread of cheap gasoline prices. If that thread breaks this summer (or, worse, this winter), what will happen?

"I'm in the Bathroom!"

Guess, that excuse won't cut it in these hotels. See, I could never go for these sort of places, with their exposed bathrooms. You mean, I can't get away for even those blessed ten minutes now?!!!

Chronicles of an Accidental Gourmet: The Imperfect Italian

Despite my bad introduction to Italian cuisine via White Hen Pantry Pizza, I have developed an affectionate relationship with Italian food over the years. In lieu of pizza I developed a strong bond with the pasta family. My favorite pasta dish was the shrimp fettucine at Rudi Fazuli's, a wonderful Italian restaurant that was a ten minute walk from our Chicago home in the Lakeview area. We used to eat there once in a while only, because the food was so good that you had to waddle out of the restaurant, stuffed to the gills. Then, other people got to know about this great little restaurant and Rudi Fazuli's moved down to the ritzy Lincoln Park neighborhood where I know not whether it still lives and thrives. Anyway, the awesome experience with Rudi Fazuli's convinced me not to give up on Italian food, that like all cuisines, it was about the cook, the spices and the location.
After I had children, I was really glad that I had given Italian cuisine a second chance, because what khichdi (a separate post on that later) is to Indian children, well, pasta is to American children. Pasta and meatballs, in particular. Not being a beefeater for cultural reasons, I have created my own version of Italian meatballs, using ground turkey. I call these my Imperfect Italian Meatballs because try as I might, they refuse to keep the cheese inside them (or maybe I'm just too lazy to get them perfect). Here is what you need:



1 lb ground turkey (not turkey breast)
1 small or medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium zucchini, grated
1/4 cup feta cheese
2 tablespoons olive oil plus one more for oiling the cookie sheet
1 tablespoon Montreal Steak Seasoning
Zest of one lemon
Juice of one lemon
Fresh mozarella balls in water or oil (use small balls of cheese or chop large into smaller pieces)
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley or 1 tbsp dried parsley

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line cookie sheet or baking tray with aluminum foil (that's aluminium to Indians). Grease covered sheet with 1 tablespoon olive oil. In a large mixing bowl, combine ground turkey, chopped onion, garlic, grated zucchini, feta cheese, 2 tablespoons olive oil, Montreal Steak Seasoning, lemon zest, lemon juice and parsley. You shouldn't need salt after all the feta cheese and steak seasoning, but if you do, well go ahead and add a pinch. Mix well, but go easy on the meat. Roll a piece of mixture between your hands to make a small ball. Make a dent on the top. Insert a small mozarella ball. Cover dent with more mixture and roll to smooth it. Place meatball on prepared cookie sheet. Repeat till you have about 12-14 meatballs. Put the sheet into hot oven for 40 minutes. Check at 30 minutes for doneness as oven temperatures vary. You can also mix some chopped assorted vegetables (red peppers, zucchini, carrots, etc) with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast alongside meatballs as a side dish.

While meatballs are cooking, put water into pot to boil. Prepare linguini according to package directions. Drain, put spaghetti back into dish and coat with a splash of olive oil if desired. Open and heat your favorite prepared marinara sauce (what? You think I'm going to make everything from scratch?). My choice: Trader Joe's marinara.

When done, meatballs are golden brown and deliciously imperfect because some will have mozarella oozing out of them. Here is what they look like:

A Right Step

The announcement this morning that the White House had rejected the restructuring plan submitted by the automakers is, in my opinion, a good move. Again, I am not a trained economist but it doesn't take much training to know that there was a lot of wasteful practice in Detroit - does everyone really need to buy a new car every three years, especially if said car is clunky, fuel-inefficient and not an object of any particular beauty? An orderly - and I can't overemphasize 'orderly' - dismantling is the right thing to do.

Japanese Maple Watch - Monday, March 30, 2009

Spring Has Sprung!

Unlike my husband, I'm not much of a gardener. Oh, I love flowers and fruit trees and all the rest of that, but only to admire. When presented with a wonderful garden, I am never moved to wondering - "How do I get my garden to look like that?" Instead, I think, "Drat! Wish I had a nice glass of wine so that I could sit here amongst these beautiful flowers, in a comfy chair, with a nice book." But when the first buds and blossoms of springtime appear, even I am moved to write about them. My absolute favorite garden being in the whole yard is our mature Japanese Maple tree (yes, I consider it a being, with a benevolent personality all its own). It shades the backyard in summer and turns an awesome blood red in the fall. In fact, it is the last tree in our yard to shed its leaves. When the backyard is full of crimson leaves, I know that it's time to really put away the Halloween decorations and get out the heavy winter coats and the gloves. There are some buds on it now, and I am really excited.

Back Off!

Yes, it was wrong to give them taxpayer subsidized bonuses. Yes, it was wrong of them to have accepted the bonuses. But enough with the intimidation and the harassment!It is just plain wrong. These people have kids and families and I cannot fathom the anger that threatens the physical safety of children and dependents. So back off, ye self-righteous wrathful - go use the court system. That's what it is there for. Sheesh!

Signs of the Times

If there was a symbol of the roaring 1990s, it was the notice one saw in so many business windows: "Now Hiring." Today, the sign of our times is the ominous one seen on so many office buildings: "Now Leasing."

Close Them Down, Mr. Geithner

Dear Mr. Geithner, I am not a trained economist, but I feel bad seeing you and your buddies flailing around, trying to come to grips with this slippery, ugly beast that is the financial meltdown. So, here is my admittedly non-specialist solution to the problem: Close them down, Mr. Geithner. Close down AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, any company that is bleeding money and is supposedly "too big to fail" and needs large infusions of our taxpayer money. You cannot reinflate a collapsing bubble. So shut them all down. Just go about it in an orderly, systematic way so that panic does not ensue - see I am not one of those nasty libertarians who want death by free-market, I did say "orderly" and "systematic". You are a clever man, Mr. Geithner, and your friends are smart people too. I'm sure you'll be able to work out the details of the downsizing between all of you. Sometimes home remedies are the best.

Keeping Down with the Joneses

Frugality is all the rage these days. For many people, though, thrift is just another fashion statement, yet another accessory that one wears in order to impress. In today's Washington Post, Kelly Marages had a scathing commentary on this bizarre trend that glamorizes the economic downturn. I liked her observations on the evaporation of common sense:

We've been told to go shopping in our closets. Cute -- but what does it mean? That I should take a shirt and pair it with some pants or a skirt that I haven't already matched it to? Call me crazy, but isn't that just called getting dressed? Or does it mean I should -- heavens, no! -- re-wear an outfit that I've worn before?

All of this recessionista business is, I think, just showing off by other means. I have nothing against any kind of lifestyle as long as it is genuine. I love being around people who are full of joie de vivre, who eat, drink and are merry. Seeking pleasure because one enjoys the good things of life is fine as long as the pleasure-seeking is to satisfy one's own desire for enjoyment, gluttony, happiness, whatever. In fact, one does not have to be wealthy to live life large (although money does help). It is repulsive, however, to observe people pursuing pleasure in order to show off their fine clothes and their money to others. The same principle applies to simplicity. If you like things simple, that's great. I'm all for whatever brings you peace of mind (I'm a die-hard "value shopper" myself). But the minute people start bragging about how "simple" they are - why then, frugality is just another way to show off one's superiority and to be snobby and judgmental about other people.

Happy Holi

It's a gray, wet, cold day here in Fairfield County, Connecticut. It's Holi and I am dry and not dyed in a rainbow hue. People in India have had a lot of fun today, celebrating Holi, the festival of colors, while here I hide under layers of woolies and carry an umbrella when I go out on errands. Holi was the one holiday that I found both enjoyable and very disconcerting when I lived in India. It was a world turned upside down where grown-ups behaved like children, running around throwing water balloons at each other and at us. There was lunch at the club and as many cokes as your little mouth could gulp down, before you had to go home to be hosed down.

When I moved to Delhi as a college student, I found Holi far less attractive as the rowdies on the streets - testoterone-charged young men looking for women to grope under the excuse of Holi revelry - were out in strength at this time. The best way to enjoy Holi is in a small circle of friends and family - known faces - with whom you can spend a fun and sometimes, er...a pleasantly-buzzed morning and afternoon.

Chronicles of an Accidental Gourmet: Chapter 1, The Graduate Student

I am a really good home cook. As in mmm-mmm good (yeah, I'm modest about it). I think that I am just as good as Clara with her Depression-era cooking, bless her wise old soul. The reason I am so proud of my cooking ability is because this is the one talent I developed entirely on my own. Cooking is my very own expertise, learned not at my mother's or anyone else's elbow, but in the dark and dismal days of young adulthood when the future seemed full of boiled eggs and slices of execrable White Hen Pantry pizza. Now you know why pizza is not my favorite food (see previous post). The fact that I taught myself to cook, all on my own, gave me enormous self-confidence. I knew that I could take care of myself, once I learned how to peel, chop and saute an onion. So to those of you afraid to turn the stove on - be brave, it is indeed possible to save yourself and your bank balance by wielding a knife.

My abiding memory of my last day before I left for the United States as a twenty-something was that of my mother pacing up and down my room as I packed, muttering darkly over and over in a maddening way, "You are going to starve there. How will you survive? You can't cook!" For the first couple of months in Chicago, I almost conceded that she was right - I was going to starve. I could cook nothing more than boiled eggs. Other sustenance was slices of pizza from the White Hen Pantry half a block from the dorm. I was desperate for fresh food that tasted good and did not cost a fortune. I couldn't duck into a restaurant - I was on a limited student stipend and it would not cover eating out on a daily basis. Something had to be done, and quick!

Then, my brother - my big brother, who still watches out for me - came to my rescue. In those long-forgotten days before the internet, when the only electronic communication was email, he sent me a file called "The Graduate Student's Guide to Indian Recipes", available here and here, in abridged form. From Mahadevan Ramesh via Sanjiv Singh, I learned basic things like how to chop onions. And in this way, an army of invisible teachers, graduate students like me, whom I will probably never meet, came to my culinary rescue. I learned how to chop an onion, peel potatoes, dice carrots, make my favorite aloo-gobi. I made friends with other graduate students and often we ate together, feasting like kings and queens on our spiced and flavorful creations. So thank you, Sanjiv Singh, thank you Mahadevan Ramesh, thank you Somesh Rao. Here is my favorite recipe from "The Graduate Student's Guide...": Aloo Gobi. It was the first dish I made that was successful and well-received by friends. It does require a trip to the Indian grocery store to stock up on spices. Somesh, if you ever stumble across this blog, thank you for your help, thank you for stepping in for my mother, and here are my variations on your wonderful recipe:


Ingredients:------------
1 Large cauliflower
3 Medium sized potatoes
1/2 large Onion sliced thinly in long slices
1 tsp Mustard seeds
2 or 3 pods Cardamom
1 tsp Coriander [My Variation - grind the coriander]
1 tsp Cumin seeds
1/2 tsp Turmeric
1 Bayleaf
3 Cloves
3 tblsp Vegetable Oil

Method:

-------Start boiling the potatoes in a saucepan. Let them boil for at least 15minutes. After they are done, turn off the heat and let them stand inthe water. [My Variation: Dice Potatoes into small cubes, skip boiling]

Cut the cauliflower into small bite sized pieces (roughly 1" cubes),throwing away most of the stem pieces. Wash and drain in a collander.

While the potatoes are cooking, heat the oil in a wide skillet until itis very hot. Add the mustard seeds and wait until they start popping. Add bay leaves, cardamom and cloves. Mix around for a while and then add onions. Wait until the onion starts to turn before adding the rest of the spices (except for turmeric).
[My variation: Add diced potatoes after the onions start to turn and saute with onions and spices for 10-15 mins, till half-cooked]

Put the cauliflower in the skillet and fry in the oil and spices for 2minutes. While the cauliflower is frying, cut up the potatoes into bitesized pieces and add to the skillet. [I skipped the boiling potatoes step]

Add turmeric and stir. Continue stirring the vegetables under medium heat for another couple ofminutes. [ My variation: cook cauliflowers and potaotes together for about 5-6 minutes]

Add 1/2 cup of water and reduce heat to low. Cover skilletand let cook for 5 minutes. Check tenderness of vegetables. If they are still too hard, add another1/4 cup of water and cover again for 5 minutes. Salt to taste and serve. [You can push the whole spices to the side of your plate, if you don't like chomping down on cardamom or cloves. Garnish with cilantro leaves - optional]

Family Outings, Recession-Style

There are still eating joints in this very expensive part of the country where two kids and two adults can eat for less than $30. Unfortunately, they are all restaurant chains. But in these recession-hit times, they are still a fun family outing.

1. La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill, 580 Post Road, Fairfield. Their Baja Fish Taco Platters are my personal favorite and their choice of toppings and salsas are awesome. Seating is iffy and parking even more so, but the food more than makes up for the inconvenience.
2. Panera Bread, 1063 Boston Post Road, Darien and 596, Westport Avenue, Norwalk. If the grown-ups choose the half salad/sandwich-soup combo and the kids choose a kids' meal, everybody gets to eat good, fresh food at very reasonable prices. My pick when I want to spend quality time one-on-one with either of the kids.
3. Any McDonald's. Least healthy and least expensive of all the choices. Still, these days at least you can choose a salad (I like their Southwestern salad, they no longer serve my previous favorite, the Asian salad) and well, nothing stops a kid complaining than a mouthful of French fries.

I don't like pizza much - except for one memorable pizza in the south of France many years ago - so I didn't include any pizzerias (my kids on the other hand would eat pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I allowed it). I would love to hear of more choices for family dining in Fairfield County.

The Truth...

...will set you free. That, I believe is what the recent dismal financial numbers are all about. Today, the unemployment figures revealed a record jump in joblessness. It's awful but finally, everybody - companies, so-called financial experts, talking heads, politicians - has stopped lying, fudging numbers, kicking the ball down the road for someone else to pick up. Now watch as more of the ugly truth comes out. The markets will respond - positively or negatively, I don't know - but finally, we are all being told the truth about just how bad things are in the economy. And we will find a way to cope, to deal with it, and to roll up our sleeves and do whatever it takes to keep a roof over our heads and our children fed and clothed. In order to do so, though, we need to keep being told the truth. It's a hard thing to do, this truth-telling thing, and requires more courage than I fear some administration officials possess, but it is the absolutely non-negotiable first step to recovery.

Unbelievable!

Sometimes, the human spirit - its power, its sheer will to endure, to shine through - leaves one speechless... While the following clip has no subtitles (unfortunately, as the exchanges between the dancer and the judges have their own beauty), most viewers will understand what this piece is all about.

The Incredible Shrinking Breakfast...

...or another story about the recession. We were in Washington D.C. this past weekend and stayed at the Doubletree Guest Suites near the Mall. Pleasant place, nothing fancy but great when you're traveling with kids. We arrived on Friday and the next morning, as is the norm, went downstairs in search of the continental breakfast that hotels of this genre usually provide. It was a small spread of muffins, danishes, some cereal, tea and coffee. Not disappointed, we helped ourselves before heading out on the museum rounds. The meal just seemed to be a smaller version of the continental breakfast we have had before on numerous other road trips - perhaps an urban-sized version? But the hotel foyer was small here and we had to dance around other breakfasting guests as we filled our cups and plates. One of the other guests sighed and told me that he stayed at the hotel very often. Upto last year, they had had a much bigger spread laid out in a bigger room, with more items such as boiled eggs and toast. "And there was breakfast everyday," he sighed. "Now it's just this and it's only on weekend mornings."

Need for More "Pub Bharo" Campaigns

What is it with these damn fool people? Just weeks after women in Mangalore were assaulted for not wearing Indian clothes, a woman in Delhi is turned away from a disco for wearing Indian clothes, and not western clothes. Honestly, what is going on? Women in India need to do another "pub bharo" campaign to protest against this dishonoring of the sari, the dress that women of our grandmothers' generation wore when they fought for freedom, the dress in which Indira Gandhi ruled for 17 years a huge country of every religion imaginable, the dress in which police officers and constables maintain law and order, the dress in which farming women plant their crops. I have seen my mother and her friends dance the foxtrot in their elegant chiffon and silk saris. Thousands of Indian women dance in saris at weddings. Now, suddenly, it's not good enough for a tuppeny-ha'penny discotheque? Bah!

The Geography of Recession

The one-mile stretch between Bed, Bath and Beyond on the Post Road in Norwalk, and Route 33 had 11 signs advertising commercial rental space availability. And that was just on the driver's side of the road.

Government Slogans I like - "Pub Bharo"

Recently, young women in Mangalore and decent people everywhere were aghast at an incident of moral policing, Taliban style, in Mangalore, Karnataka. Young women enjoying an afternoon with friends were roughed up and assaulted by self-appointed goons claiming to protect public morality. The response has been uneven on the part of the state government, but I like the call to action launched by the Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development, Renuka Chowdhury. This is in no way a call for a slide into mass alcoholism, rather an assertion that everyone - man and woman - has a right to socialize fearlessly. And this free socializing of men and women is really what angers the goons of the Sri Ram Sena, not the alcohol. Down with the moral police!

The Recession...

...is everywhere. The downtown area of my town is busy as ever, but behind the bustle, stores had been vanishing quietly, something that had escaped my notice. The main row of buildings is as crowded as ever, but in the rear, only shells of stores remain. Small businesses have vanished, the instruments of their trade - manicure and pedicure stations, empty, velvet jewelry holders in a window - remain like dusty skeletons. Some tell me that the bigger players too are in trouble but are holding on. We shall see.

Yesterday, I stopped by the post office. It was a quick errand and, like a fool, I left my handbag on the front seat of my car outside. As I returned, a passerby - tall, lean, furrowed brow - peered in at it, with unusually longing eyes. I cursed my stupidity. Those accumulated survival skills, developed while growing up in India and then honed to razor sharp edge by 7 years of living in Chicago, have been softened and blurred by eight years of surburban life. I need to revive those instincts.

The Best Way...

...to witness an historic presidential inauguration is in a warm sun-splashed family room sitting beside loving husband/partner/friend while eating a celebratory Inauguration brunch of fried eggs and sausages washed down with Darjeeling tea (OK, OK, you can have coffee if you absolutely must).

Getting to Know the Neighbors

"It's hard to appreciate the beauty of a place when you doubt its very validity."

------Nadeem Aslam, The Wasted Vigil (New York and London: Random House, 2008), 242.

I'm currently reading a bunch of Pakistani authors. I finished reading Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist early last year, followed it up with Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes (a biting satire that builds its plot around the 1988 death of the dictator General Zia ul-Haq), and rounded it off with Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil (OK, the last is about Afghanistan but Pakistan is ever-present in the narrative).

All three of the novels I read are attractive for different reasons. Their authors are ironic but (thankfully) not arch. They all explore the most pressing issues of the time - religious fanaticism, terrorism and the cult of the military in Pakistan. If I had to choose a favorite, I would (reluctantly, for they are all good) pick Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil. His portrayal of Afghanistan and Pakistan is profoundly disturbing (the stoning to death of women, the amputation of hands as punishment, the gruesome game of buzkashi with a Russian soldier) but his prose is elegant and haunting despite its density. I am looking forward to reading his other novel, Maps for Lost Lovers.

Growing up in India, I never knew any Pakistanis. Oh, I thought of them often but not in a very admiring way. In any case, as the daughter of an army officer a social relationship with a Pakistani, unless officially sanctioned, would have been tantamount to treason. Things did not change even when I left the shelter of my parents' home. There were no Pakistani exchange students at Lady Shri Ram College or at JNU. The only good to come out of Pakistan was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or so we believed. Later, when I moved to the United States for graduate studies, there were Pakistani students but we moved in different orbits, oblivious of each other.

This lack of socializing between Indians and Pakistanis even on the more neutral turf of American campuses can only partly be attributed to religious differences. The main obstacle to getting to know more Pakistanis was a straightforward class difference. The vast majority of Indians coming to the United States are from very middle class families. This is not middle class in the two-cars-and-three-color-televisions American sense. The Indian middle class is the old fashioned frugal, heavy-on-education-light-on-designer-clothes-and-sports-cars kind of middle class. Many (although not all) Pakistani students in the United States are from the upper middle or upper classes (as is the protagonist of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, for example). They tend to socialize with the frat pack and the beautiful people (as does the main character in The Reluctant Fundamentalist), unlike the geeky, poverty stricken Indian students, counting out their pennies at Walgreen's and wondering if they can get enough money together to buy a used Toyota Camry.

So, to cut a long story short, I knew no Pakistanis socially even on the campus of my American university where there were more Pakistanis than in all the schools and neighborhoods of India. I still don't know any Pakistanis here in Fairfield County, Connecticut, although I know there are many who live here. I am now getting to know my neighbors through literature. Here too, it seems one step removed. I don't read the Urdu script, the language of Pakistan and the medium through which much of its culture is transmitted. But, through these three novels written in English, I have some sort of a window into the world of its people. I still can't claim that I am enamored of Pakistan's militarized politics or its very unapologetically feudal social structure (this is not to say that India is the beacon of egalitarianism but feudalism is at least questioned politically, if not socially). But now I have a better appreciation of the talent of Pakistan's people and the nation's ability to endure and to create good literature, comedy and satire, even in the midst of a rising tide of fundamentalism and political turbulence.

New Year's Resolution

This year I will read Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy right through to the very end. I've been trying to read it for three years and always give up - mainly because I run out of library renewals. Hmmm...perhaps my resolution should be to buy the book?