PPP in a pickle!

When the leaves of the mango tree in our frontyard turn that exquisite brown-green and the yard is covered with rustly dead leaves , I sigh: I know it is pp time again... No , not pillpopper time but pickles and preserves time.My aunt was a great pickler and preserver and March would always see the beginning of frenetic activity. Pickle jars would be cleaned and dried, plastic sheets washed...

First to make their appearance would be the curd rice accompaniment- the vad mangai.Vadumangais alas, were not available in Hyderabad and were imported via obliging relatives.The best vadus I have ever tasted were from Kutralam, my aunt's 'maika'.. where the vadus ,she assured us ,were from special trees. The vadus could not fall to the ground and were collected in nets tied under the trees. The vadus were just a single bite size , a lovely lime-green and absolutely yummy with curd rice ,the staple food of Tambrams. Remember this famous song.
Next in line would be an assortment of light pickles.....thokkus redolent with the flavours of methi powder, hing and gingelly oil, Ennai mangai with the right blend of salt, pungency and tang , morabbas with an exquisite sweet-sour taste....
Then simultaneously we would be into the vatrals and vadams. In the scorching heat of April , my aunt would create huge mounds of dough speckled with green chillies and seasoned with hing, with a liberal spray of lime juice. All the under 16s ( only girls mind you, no women's lib here) were sent scurrying to the terrace to get the arena ready for the great fat indian vadam spectacle. The sun would be a fierce orange blob and I would immediately start on a migraine.. but my aunt would be unfazed. If I had a headache .she would be having a worse one, and would tie a towel like a bandit queen around her head and carry on.I believed for a long time that my aunt was the reincarnation of some spartan general who would have willingly let the weaklings die ,believing in the survival of the fittest.
Suddenly May would be upon us, and it would be Avakkai time again. Avagai, the queen of mango pickles.Everything had to be right for this queen.. Previously all the spices would be made at home, but fortunately now we get everything readymade. The time had to be just right. The agni nakshatram had to be over but the thunder showers with hailstones shouldn't have ruined the mangoes. The mangoes which fell due to hailstorms were considered unfit for pickling, much like fallen women! My aunt would drag us to the market and haggle endlessly. We were the official tasters to check if the mangoes were sour enough. One bite and the tang would make our dendrites tingle.We would arrive home withe cut mangoes , half dead from the heat, but there was more work to be done. The mango pieces had to be wiped, the salt and chilli powder mixed.. Atlast it would be over. Three days later we would have a taste of the Avagai.. and it would be "If there is a heaven on earth, it is this ,it is this!'
Then I had made a resolution . I would never ever torture myself to make vatrals and vadams, But fate willed otherwise. But that is another story.

When my workaholic hyperactive aunt had a crippling stroke when she was 78, I wondered how she would cope with a sedentary life. But true survivor that she was , she switched to watching mega soaps and dispensing free advice to all and sundry.Now that is what I call a true survivor.

PS: The red monstrosity guarding the vadaam is thanks to my older daughter.For those who fail to recognise it , let me enlighten you here. It is the big bad wolf (Of red riding hood fame) in Grandma's clothing.

The Murabba recipe

2 Cups grated raw mango , Grated
2 Cups Sugar
a pinch of salt
4 sticks cinnamon
2 Tbsp chilli powder

Remove excess water from the grated mango , add sugar , cinnamon and chilli powder
Spread thinly on a plate
Cover with a muslin cloth
Leave it out in the sun for 2-3 days (bring it in each night :D) until the Murabba becomes syrupy
Store in air tight containers

family and friends

Recently I was teaching one of my students civics and explaining what a family and community meant. Here is what the textbook said: the immediate group in which you live is your family. A group of families either living in the same area or having some common links or interests is called a community.
That really got me thinking. Families are getting ultra nuclear nowadays. People get euphoric over the old system of joint families and lament their extinction. But let me be brutally frank.I lived in a joint family and the first day of my nuclear family life I went bonkers. I could cook what I wanted, I could get up whenever I wanted( I kept getting up at five AM being a creature of habit nevertheless) Ooh what joy! But the flipside is that children have deleted the word adjustment from their vocabulary.They don't want to be "nice" to cousins they don't like.."not in the same wavelength"They would rather be with friends who have similar tastes.They don't want to like what they get but get what they like.
Liking what one gets is good. You can love a person unconditionally . You might dislike umpteen things about them but still love them.
Recently I recently read an article about a community of bikers who call themselves First Sunday Riders,all of whom love bikes and riding unchartered territories.When you share a common interest it is a wonderful bonding. When I go to Sai Mandir on Thursdays ,
I feel a bonding with the people there ...we are all devotees of Sri Saibaba . How much a common interest or religion or even a common sorrow or happiness unites people!
i must be getting old. I am getting more and more mushy and by Toutatis where is my old cynical self?

Here a tag there a tag

I have been tagged , rather unfairly, I should say,as I cannot run.
Anyway here goes.
There are 3 rules.
Rule 1. The rules must be mentioned in the beginning of the tag.
Rule 2 You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
Rule 3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag.
My parents didn't give me a middle name for the simple reason they didn't give me my first name either.I was an unwanted second daughter who grew up into an aggressive middle child. My second cousin twenty times removed grabbed the opportunity and named me.She later had three daughters of her own and gave them even uglier names.
The name I would like as my middle name is Nidhi (treasure,..not an unwanted second daughter)
N for neurotic (gene presented by mater)
I for insecure( if your parents allowed your second cousin to name you you would be too)
D for depressed( ditto same reason as above)
H for haughty or hoi polloi as occasion demands.
I for inimitable (one of a kind)
By the way, I had to discard quite a few impressive words. N could have been narcissistic but I couldnt be both insecure and that could I? I could have been an iconoclast, ignoramus, immunologist, or even a hexagon. ok let it go.
Now like I said earlier , I am too old to play tag , so I need volunteers. Bye.

subhadra.haha!

Everywhere I go now I see huge billboards saying "Subhadra footpath" exhorting the pedestrians not to jaywalk, but to use the new improved footpaths. "Subhadra" !They must be joking. I have a torn ligament to prove that they aren't. Everytime I walk on these footpaths, I walk like a bashful bride, head bent down, searching for pitfalls. We live on a main road, on which a flyover was constructed recently.The flyover is like they remarked about the laser when it was discovered(quite wrongly as it turned out) the solution in search of a problem. A narrow service road runs alongside the flyover,( with a narrower footpath, which is not even a foot wide) on which all the buses ply at breakneck speeds

The educational institution on this road contributes to the hazards the pedestrians face. It has built an ugly portico which has further reduced the size of the footpath. It has leaky drainpipes which leak out effluents of unknown origin on to the footpath, which collect in puddles on the footpath. In addition they have two large spouts on the terrace which suddenly come to life and drench unsuspecting pedestrians. Get on the road and you hear a sudden blare and see a huge bus bearing down on you..and you either have a heart attack or get run over by the bus.
, What are the other options .... walk through the ground and get hit by a cricket ball or shouted at by an irate coach..No , I prefer the Subhadra footpath, thank you.

of pills and placebos

Ha! what did my offspring say about pills and placebos? Just check out this article in the TOI
dated August 3,2007. the article says" People who expected to get pain relief from a treatment showed a greater release of dopamine in the part of the brain called the nucleus accumbeus.... In turn they were more likely ... to report pain relief even though they all received only a placebo"
Ha ha, all ye unbelievers,what do you have to say? ..I clearly remember all your snide remarks about pillpopping and placebos.
On a more serious note, so many times, I wonder if there is a God above, or is it all just fiction?
Despite all the karma theory, of which my father was a strong proponent, why do the good suffer, sometimes throughout life, while the wicked flourish like the green bay tree?
But I am still a strong believer.I need Him with an unimaginable thirst and hunger.
I can rant at Him and He will forgive me.
I can weep unashamedly in front of Him , He will wipe away my tears with a calm smile
I can do a hundred wrong things ,He will forgive me.
Only He can give me unconditional love.
He is the true mother. I need someone who is nonjudgmental-above all the pettinesses of life.
I need Him ,hence I am a believer.

I just need Him...
He is the ultimate Placebo. .....

Walk into my closet said the spider to the fly ..

As I took my morning walk , that fateful day, my step was jaunty, my mood was euphoric. We had shifted, the movers had come and gone , no major breakages, the kitchen was already set up,all was well ,God was in his Heaven..
Now I always plan out my day during the walk. so too this day.Today was allotted for sorting out the clothes....that is Alto's. Since I had travelled wisely this time, mine took just under 25 minutes.
She had already told me to leave the winter clothing alone ..that could be unpacked when winter came and spring was far behind." Hallelujah '! sang my heart "that is 50% less work".
Came nine'oclock an assortment of suitcases, cardboard cartons, and bags appeared as if my magic. "amma, "said my daughter," there are some more wrapped around the glass jars" and blithely departed for work.
I took a deep breath, took a valium and started.First I separated the formals and then subdivided as Indian and western ..that was easy.Then I started on the skirts. that was when the nightmare started. They started from ankle-length and went higher and hi..gher until I could bear it no more. I sorted them out on the basis of length and labelled them in ascending
order. That was the math teacher resurfacing. Thank goodness they stopped a little above the knee.
Then the mindboggling trousers and shorts for every imaginable occasion... even one for doing sudoku in.Then I stared ....and restared. the garment I was folding had looked quite innocuous. It was a pair of shorts.. or was it? It was a shorts in the front but was like a skirt behind.How do I classify this? In my world of maths, black was black and white was white no 'tween shades of gray.I called up Alto..I could feel the fear in her voice" Has she burnt the house down?"I explained" Amma , that is called a skort!" she said. Skort! My God!
By evening it was all sorted out.. Everything I couldn't sort out I put under 'miscellaneous'.
You would think my daughter would be grateful. Not so. Come six'oclock I hear a shout from above..no not an" Ashariri"-- that was my ungrateful daughter -' Amma, where on earth is my black hand embroidered skirt ?' I rushed upstairs, and conducted a mini orientation course on where everything was. Then I asked my daughter' Dont you think it was much easier and better when you had just 6 sets of salwar suits and the seventh set made you feel like you were in seventh heaven' 'No' said my unrepentant Americanised materialistic daughter, surveying her overflowing closet, 'this is my seventh heaven' !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been tagged!

Help! I have been tagged!
I have not eight but eighty things to say about myself, but do I want people to know these ? THAT is the question.
1. I suffer from acrophobia.I HATE rollercoasters, giantwheels all the things normal people love to ride in.
2. I love the word phobia. It sounds high funda..Instead of saying that I am ... scared of spiders I can say I suffer from Arthropodophobia.by the way my biology is little rusty..spiders are arthropods ..right.?
3.I dont have a single sports gene. I am bad at any sport or game....I am surprised that my husband who loves sports (he even watches re-re-re -reruns of all matches)hasnt divorced me.
4. I hate cooking. I frankly dont know from where my daughter got her love of cooking from . My motherinlaw never cooked nor did her motherinlaw.I cook because I love compliments and love oneupmanship.Go to 8 for further details.
5.I sing like an ass , I'm usually a zillion notes off-key

6.I love irritating my husband , a skill honed over the years. He is a hoarder,I am a thrower-out of things. Just today I cleaned his room thoroughly, I am waiting anxiously for the repercussions.Anyway, that is three months away.I dont think he's going to divorce me because

-- It is very difficult to get cooks
--He loves old things.. and I am practically an antique now.
--Alimony is too expensive and we cannot afford lawyers.
7.I keep my kitchen either spiffy clean or drop dead dirty
8.I'm terribly insecure , it takes about 3 compliments a day (I dont mind even repeated compliments)to keep me stable and reasonably sane

Now is the million dollar question , I do not KNOW 8 people , maybe not even 8 visitors! So please save me from ignominy and take up my tag , dear..dearest reader !(I hope you love compliments just as I do!)

Ahem (*Brandishes her cane*) , here are the rules
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
4. If you fail to do this within eight hours, you will not reach Third Series or attain your most precious goals for at least two more lifetimes. (what does it mean?)