Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 146

If eM can bake, you can bake too! (plus all the recipes I love) PART ONE

Baking is an exact science.

I mean, I read somewhere that cooking is an art and baking is science, and I guess that makes sense, because while I'm not one of life's feeders, I get excited only briefly by fresh ingredients and rarely use them all, leaving several vegetables to shrivel at the bottom of my veggie drawer, there's something about baking that appeals to me.

I loved my chemistry set when I was young. Is that still a popular present? It should be. My chemistry set was magic, I could make pink paper blue and make things fizz up and create invisible ink. Baking is a bit like that--it's all "add baking powder to make this rise" and "brown sugar makes your cookies crunchy while powdered white sugar makes it dense and cake-like." Your ingredients react with each other a lot, in the same way a science experiment does. There's only one pot or pan into which you pour everything and let the oven make its magic. It's amazing.

My mum had bought me a Bajaj OTG, a pretty small one, but still functional, back when I still lived in Bandra. I used it, but not a lot. I wasn't great at lining stuff up so they cooked perfectly, and the oven was always somewhat tempramental, so I wound up with stuff undercooked in the middle or too burnt around the edges. I didn't pursue it a lot.

It was only about two years ago, when I first moved into this house, the one I live in now, that I blew the dust off it and decided to get started in earnest. I had a chocolate chip cookie craving, and I had a free afternoon, so I ran down to the shop, got all my ingredients and made a batch. I kept one eye on the oven so that my cookies wouldn't overcook, and when they turned out WELL, not just ok, I put three or four in some aluminium foil and carried it to a party I was going to later, as a little host present. To my surprise and delight, I wasn't the only one who thought they were good (beauty is in the eye of the beholder, tastiness is on the tongue of the baker), and my cookies were a great success. "Do more!" people said, and I did, I whipped up cookie after cookie: Sriracha and peanut butter acquired legendary status and at home, the Good Thing and I grew addicted to oatmeal and apple.

I had no measuring cups (still don't), so the ingredients are somewhat eyeballed.

Also, this is all The Old Oven, which means you can do this with slightly faulty equipment. I was going to put my new cool oven and all the stuff I've made in THAT, but this was turning out to be a monster post, so that's for next time

Sriracha and Peanut Butter Cookies (Adapted with Indian ingredients) I should really try these again
From The Sugar Pixie
Two sticks of Amul Butter 1½ cups Crunchy Peanut Butter (or Sunbutter if allergic to peanuts) (I used Fun & Food's version, they have two: crunchy and smooth.)1 cup Sugar1 cup Brown Sugar (packed)¼ c Sriracha (available at INA market)2 Eggs1 tsp Vanilla extract2¾ to 3 cups All-Purpose Flour (finished dough should be soft, but not sticky)1 teaspoon Baking Powder½ teaspoon Salt1½ teaspoons baking sodaGranulated sugar for dipping dough balls into.InstructionsCream together butter, peanut butter and sugars.Slowly add in sriracha, eggs and vanilla. Beat until combined.In another bowl mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.Gently mix flour into peanut butter mixture until well combined. Place batter into refrigerator for 1 hour to chill.Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.Roll dough into approx 1" sized balls or use a Medium sized cookie scoop/Size 40 - 1½tbs portion. Dip the top of dough ball into granulated sugar and place onto cookie sheet.Flatten each ball with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern. Bake for 8-10 minutes or just until the cookies begin to brown. Do NOT over-bake!Cool on wire racks and enjoy!
Oatmeal and Apple Cookies with Cinammon
Breakfast of SUGAR HIGH champions  
From Betty Crocker
3 sticks butter or margarine, softened1cup granulated sugar1/2cup packed brown sugar1teaspoon vanilla2eggs1 3/4cups maida1teaspoon baking soda (I just pretty much always use baking powder, it's easier to find)1 1/2teaspoons ground cinnamon1/2teaspoon salt2cups old-fashioned or quick-cooking oats (I like Baggry's for this)1medium apple, peeled and shredded (about 1 cup shredded) (Um, no need to shred, just chop fine)




Heat oven to 375°F. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray.  (PRO TIP: for cookies, I use foil over the cookie sheet, which has the advantage of keeping the bottom both crisp AND soft, instead of overdone. No need to grease it, just peel cookies off.) In large bowl, beat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar with electric mixer on medium speed until creamy. Beat in vanilla and eggs, scraping sides occasionally, until blended. In medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Gradually beat flour mixture into sugar mixture. Stir in oats and apple. Onto cookie sheet, drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart.Bake about 10 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 15 minutes. I didn't make cakes much. I mean, I tried, but they never turned out all that well.  I made a carrot cake which was nice-ish, but still tasted too wet (I shoulda squeezed the juice out before baking it) and a banana cake which I took to several pot lucks and always came home to an empty box. (Also what we used to stimulate Bruno's appetite when he got sick.)  Also I made cinammon rolls which need to RISE with YEAST, so you feel like a super baker, but then you freeze a whole bunch and just bake whenever you need them with coffee, which = LIFE OF LUXURY. It takes so little to feel posh.    Bruno's Lifesaving Banana Cake Can't find the original recipe, but here's something very similar. It's SUPER low fat, except the sugar, so eat guilt free!   1 cup (240 ml) mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)1 teaspoon baking soda1/2 cup (120 ml) low-fat plain yogurt or any dahi you have in the house1/4 cup (60 ml) canola, vegetable, or corn oil (I used Sunflower with no change in results. You could also use olive oil if you want that extra flavour)3/4cup (165 grams) light brownsugar1 large egg or 2 large (60 grams) egg whites (screw the egg whites, just use the whole egg, unless you have cats who will eat the yolk for you.)1 teaspoon purevanillaextract1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour1/2 cup (65 grams) whole wheat flour1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon1 teaspoon baking powder1/4 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place the rack in the center of the oven. Spray an 8 x 4 inch (20 x 10 cm) loaf pan with a nonstick vegetable cooking spray.In a large bowl, mix the mashed bananas with the baking soda and yogurt. Allow to sit while you prepare the rest of the batter.Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, egg or egg whites, and vanilla.In another large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, ground cinnamon and salt.Then combine the banana mixture with the oil mixture and then add to the flour mixture. Stir just until all the ingredients are moistened. Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for about 45 -55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean.Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.Makes one loaf (about 12 slices). You can also make this in a cake pan for larger parties and cut it up smaller. I've done both.


Super Cinammon Rolls That You Can Totally Stick In The Freezer and Pull Out Later To Look Like Martha Stewart From Paula Deen  1/4 -ounce package yeast (You can buy powdered yeast in India now. It's super cheap and lasts a long time.)
 1/2 cup warm water 
1/2 cup scalded milk (Please. Regular milk will also do.)
 1/4 cup sugar 
1/3 cup butter or shortening
 1 teaspoon salt
 1 egg 
3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour 
Filling: 
1/2 cup melted butter, plus more for pan
 3/4 cup sugar, plus more for pan 
 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon 
3/4 cup raisins, walnuts, or pecans, optional (Eh. I couldn't be bothered.) Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and set aside. In a large bowl mix milk, sugar, melted butter, salt and egg. Add 2 cups of flour and mix until smooth. Add yeast mixture. Mix in remaining flour until dough is easy to handle. Knead dough on lightly floured surface for 5 to 10 minutes. Place in well-greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size, usually 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

When doubled in size, punch down dough. Roll out on a floured surface into a 15 by 9-inch rectangle. Spread melted butter all over dough. Mix sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over buttered dough. Sprinkle with walnuts, pecans, or raisins if desired. Beginning at the 15-inch side, role up dough and pinch edge together to seal. Cut into 12 to 15 slices.

Coat the bottom of baking pan with butter and sprinkle with sugar. Place cinnamon roll slices close together in the pan and let rise  until dough is doubled, about 45 minutes. Bake for about 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

 
 

How do you solve a problem like Modi? (& his Twitter followers)

Our prime minister is the master of social media. Don’t just take my word for it—he’s been lauded as a “social media genius” all across the world. Every single word that he types into his phone and sends—or does he get an aide to type it for him?—is viral gold, the stuff media marketers would kill for.
In several ways, this is an excellent thing---instead of waiting for dreary news reports from his press office, we get instant 140-character updates on what he’s thinking, his foreign policy and even sometimes his trending hashtags. (And it goes without saying that whatever hashtag the PM sends out into the world will trend.) We get to travel with Modi as he jaunts around the world, shaking people’s hands, examining old artifacts, we get to join him in wishing the Indian cricket team good luck, we get to watch him pushing a broom half heartedly across a street, his face as delighted as Harry Potter’s during his first game of Quidditch. Modi has his own personal account and an official one, and he uses both quite regularly, but the tweets differ.
For example the latest tweet on the @PMOIndia handle said: “PM extends his deepest condolences to the families of the deceased & prays for the speedy recovery of the injured. [who died in the Khandwa region].” While the handle @narendramodi said blithely, “Am rather late but here's wishing all doctors & CAs on Doctor's Day & CA Day respectively. Both have key role to play in societal wellbeing.” The second tweet sounds like it could be your dad, or uncle or someone, his tone is that of a benign person that you already know and perhaps that is what makes him so popular with 13.4 million followers on his personal account, a number that a story in WSJ pointed out was “more than Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,who has 6.3 million followers. Pope Francis has 6 million followers in English and nearly 9 million for his Spanish account.”
Of course, the WSJ story also took into account that India is a large country, with many digitally savvy people, but the official PMO account is second only to Barack Obama’s. And it’s not surprising.
“In a four-room “digital operations center” inside the headquarters of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, 20 young men and women tap away at keyboards on desks cluttered with backpacks and bicycle helmets. Hashtags are scrawled on a giant whiteboard,” the story said, going on to add, “Another important job: studying online sentiment. Indu Shekhar, 35 years old, spends his days tracking how netizens are reacting to Mr. Modi’s initiatives and speeches.”
If you are at all on the internet, then you will have seen the #SelfieWithDaughter campaign. Inspired by a Haryana village that held a contest to increase awareness around the girl child, Modi and his team decided to take it nation-wide. In many ways, it was a good idea: sweet photos of people with their kids rolled in and it turned into a sort of love fest of daddys with daughters. It was nice—until it wasn’t. I dunno, which user do you think we should abuse next?

If you have such a large Twitter following and social media footprint, then you’ve got to be ready for some criticism as well. AIPWA secretary and general women’s right activist Kavita Krishnan tweeted a reference to Modi’s former “snoopgate” story (about how he allegedly had a young woman stalked.) It was one tweet, and it could have been lost in the shuffle, but there are also an army of Modi Trolls (who one hopes are not officially affialiated with his social media team) who seem to scour the internet for any reference of their hero and brutally lash out at anyone who dares to criticise with both abuses and, in some cases, threats. Krishnan’s tweet went about as viral as the campaign, and the discourse turned from loving your daughter to hating on anyone who hated Modi.
Which is the problem with being a presence in and of yourself. If a PM is so popular as a personality, not just as a world leader, this is somewhat to the detriment of his causes. Gentle political discourse, the normal flow of people agreeing or disagreeing with him, is all derailed because he is built up to be greater than great, hero to the people and so on and so forth.
Meanwhile I hope the trolls don’t overthrow something that could be used in several fantastic ways to further democracy. 
(A version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)

In which I become a full on crunchy granola hippy and switch to a menstrual cup

"A young girl tender as a flower" HOLY WOW THAT'S SOME COPYIt looked sort of weird.
The pink silicone cup came in a slightly torn envelope, sitting in a cloth pouch. No doubt some curious courier man en route had tried to fiddle with it, maybe to filch the interesting feeling contents. However, he probably dropped it like a hot potato if he even glimpsed the text on pamphlet that came with it.
She Cup: “Let Womanhood Bloom Without Gloom.”
More and more I’ve been getting glimpses of our future on this planet, and it’s not so much sci-fi and aliens as it is the grim garbage dump depicted by Pixar’s Wall-E. And it’s not entirely preventable because there are more people on the planet now than there ever have been and this is just going to grow. But, what we can do is make that garbage dump grow a little less faster.
I began thinking of menstrual cups idly when an acquaintance came over for dinner a few years ago and went on about it. She said she loved hers, it was easy to use, especially when travelling through the villages of India where there aren’t friendly local chemists to restock you and disposal is hard. She was the first one to put the image in my mind of a child rooting through a garbage dump and picking up a used tampon. Which is a disgusting picture, but sadly too true.
The thinking woman needs to think about her period. I was reading a Yahoo article the other day that really brought the stats home to me. Called “Why are we pretending there isn’t a growing mountainof menstrual waste we need to deal with?” by Nidhi Jamwal, the article cites some shocking statistics. 9000 tons of menstrual waste every year! This is clogging up drains, filling up landfills and worse: being incinerated which releases toxic gases into the atmosphere. And still because it’s such a taboo (as I have addressed in a previous column), no one discusses the environmental damage out loud.
The article mentions reusable cloth pads as an alternative, but not the cup. The pads didn’t appeal to me at all, and I’m not sure they’d appeal to a modern young woman. All that washing! All that walking around with blood in your underwear all day! It doesn’t sound very appealing. But with the cup, you remove it, dump the contents in the toilet (maybe twice a day with heavy flow?), wash and re-insert. It couldn’t be easier.
Actually, I’m surprised we aren’t being marketed more period stuff. It’s the one thing advertisers can say are “just for girls!” They could pink it up as much as they liked. They could put cartoons on them like Hello Kitty or pretty flowers and girls might Instagram their pads just to show off their designs. And in this space, there’d be room for more companies with healthy alternatives. I mean, since food has already become such an organic space, why not the other things that we put into our bodies—arguably into the most tender parts of us?
So, I decided to take one for the team and ordered a menstrual cup online. The most accessible one seemed to be the She Cup, a bit cumbersome for those used to a smooth e-commerce experience, but delivery was fast after I made the transfer. Now all I had to do was use it.
I folded the silicon cup in my hand until it was a c-shape. Even folded, it looked rather intimidating and foreign, not something you’d be easy about putting into your body. But the accompanying instructions told me to “do it fast” and soon I’d be a pro, they promised. I took a deep breath and tried—and it wasn’t that bad. Granted I’ve been a tampon user for some time, so I’m used to the idea, but there’s a difference between an innocuous small tube and a bulky looking cup, which always looks bulky, no matter how much you fold it. Surprisingly, as soon as I had inserted it, it was just as the instructions promised: I couldn’t feel a thing. The She Cup holds about 12 ml of liquid—which seems like a lot—so you only have to empty it on very heavy days or once a day. I’m so used to pads and tampons I just wrote “change it” instead of “empty it.”
One last thing I did for the environment: as soon as my parcel came, I put it up on Instagram. Now two of my friends have ordered it already, and a few more are contemplating it. “It’s an absolute game changer,” promised one of my Instagram followers. I hope so. Think of all the money I’ll save—not to mention the trees! 
UPDATE: So I used the She Cup all through my last period. The first time removing it was a bit like that shower scene in Psycho, blood everywhere. I was rather agile about it *self back pat* so most of it ended up inside the toilet bowl and not everywhere else, but there was still a little clean up. Also, it helps that in my loo, the sink is right next to the pot, so I could just reach over. That was slightly tricky, and you've got to be okay with blood on your fingers (washable!).
By day three, I was an old pro. I even managed to rinse it out right over the pot instead of leaning over to the sink. What was also fascinating (for me) was watching how the blood changed as my cycle finished. From the torrential gush of days one and two, to a more lady like cup of deep burgundy to finally just a few droplets every day. It was quite cool learning what my body did and what my body produced, something I never thought of all these TWENTY ONE!!! years. 

When I was done I washed it with the accompanying soap strips, boiled it in a saucepan to sterilise as recommended and left it there till the water cooled down. Then I popped it back into its cloth pouch. For the squeamish, it's best to sit with your legs really far apart, breathe out a few times to relax and then try and insert it.
Also, there's Silky Cup available on Amazon for easier ecommerce/cheaper.  
(a version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)

Fans of Cats & the Facebook group as a bonding exercise

A few months ago, a friend of mine who also has a cat was looking for a good vet in her neighbourhood to get him spayed. I would have—and did—offer my excellent vet, but she wanted to stay closer to home so transporting him around wouldn’t be such an issue. (Have you ever driven in a car with a cat? It defines Einstein’s theory of relativity. Even a short two kilometer drive feels like it’s been going on for three hours.)

Asking on Facebook seemed to be the best idea, but all the animal activist groups I belonged to were all dogs all the time. Now, I have nothing against dogs. Perfectly fine animals in their own way—and very nice pets if you’re looking for children who will never grow up and never be able to fetch you a nice cold vodka tonic should you need one. What a difference from the rest of the world where cats are not only the most popular household pet there is, but also have forums devoted to each particular disease they can get. I decided then to start my own Facebook group for people like my friend and I and call it Fans Of Cats, Delhi. The first question? Who is the best cat vet in the city?
Since that time, Fans of Cats has grown. Not very significantly, I still know more dog owners than cat ones, and still, in my own particular group of friends, know more people without furry friends than ones who have made the commitment, but the 65 member strong group has a lively discussion almost every morning on everything from how to cook chicken and fish the best possible way for cats (they can’t digest carbohydrates very well, so you have to make sure they’re getting the right amount of vitamins from chicken, that makers of dry cat food already add to it) to kitten adoptions, to people looking for pet sitters while they are away on holiday. I myself use it as an invaluable resource, collating information from cat owners across the city to help with behavioral problems, messed up medical exams and more. With three cats, I find myself both offering and asking for advice more regularly on this forum than I do anywhere else on Facebook.
The Facebook group is not a beautiful thing, like say, the Facebook page. In terms of design, it stays strictly old school: a picture on top, a description on the side bar, and rotating posts by group members. However, it is the easiest way to see and search for information in this age of almost too much information. The Facebook group Eat Treat, for example, a community of foodies that writes reviews and talks about food, recently received funding to the tune of $350,000 to turn the community-based group into a fully fledged website. The website called Eattreatonline (a bit of a mouthful, no pun intended) will offer vaguely food, fashion, home chefs and other such trendy things.
But perhaps because the Facebook group is so unbeautiful, advertisers are not jumping on it as much as they should be. And they really should. Your average popular group usually has tens of thousands of very engaged, very active members, more than you can say about the most well-liked Facebook page, where users can “like” the content but may not contribute to the active discussion. Occasionally, a savvy group creator will turn this around to their advantage, at another food group called Gourmet Planet, for instance, the founding member organizes meals at fancy restaurants where members can pay a fixed sum for a prix fixe menu. Or, in another group meant for real estate in Goa, the moderator earns a commission on each house rented out through the group. It’s a clever way to be, because it doesn’t require you to actually do any extra work, seeing as your community will do that for you. If you get lucky, and popular enough, you can use it for good.
Meanwhile, on Fans of Cats I’m feeling happy because a first time kitten owner has just posted an update. He had been feeding his kitten milk and she was listless and weak. The group told him cats are lactose intolerant, and to shift her to another diet with more protein. His kitty is now bright eyed and bushy tailed, leaping in the garden, and “it’s all thanks to some of the members of Fans of Cats,” he said.
That’s almost worth $350,000, I think. 
Gratuitous Lord Squishington photo. ("We're still getting the paper???")

(A version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com)

Twitter rant: why does it matter that a drunk driver was a woman?

A set of tweets I did last week on the drunk driving of Jhanvi Gadkar. 


I didn't like the way the media was reporting it at all, so I wrote down a list of things I thought were relevant or not.

The way the wind is blowing in this drunk driving case is pissing me off, so I have a few thoughts.— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

1) Drunk driving is stupid, & that should be the focus of it.— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

2) Not relevant: women who drink “whiskey for fun” (Why else would you drink whiskey?)— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

3) Not relevant: where she went, who she saw. A drunk is a drunk is a drunk.— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

4) Not relevant: the make of her car. Fools drive all sorts.— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

5) Relevant: is the media going to come down harder on her for going easier on other powerful drunk drivers?— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

6) Relevant: are there going to be checks in place where they matter (before someone leaves a bar, for instance)?— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

7) Relevant: is it always going to be easier to bribe your way out of shit & how can we make that the harder option?— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

9) Not relevant: what kind of person she is, who she works for, what she does in her spare time.— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

10) Not relevant: her gender.— Meenakshi Madhavan (@reddymadhavan) June 12, 2015

Maggi and the food-loving children of the 90s

Maggi. There’s a word that hasn’t been part of my vocabulary since I left college,

and is now all of a sudden all anyone can talk about. By “Maggi” we mean Maggi

noodles, the pale yellow ones with their distinct Maggi-ness, not the oats or atta

imposters that came in later. Maggi was never more than a junk food, even

though the advertisers tried hard to make it some kind of nutritious home meal.

“Dress it up,” they begged, “Put frozen peas and carrots in it! It’s all your child

needs.” Rubbish. 
Yum, I love lead.


Maggi in my home was such a junk food, it was a special treat. I remember when

I lived in one of those housing societies where everyone’s kitchen was in the

same place, and if you walk through a certain vent, you could smell everyone’s

dinner cooking. This was the 90s, the height of the Maggi explosion in India,

when everyone sang along to the happy mother in Maggi ads who said, “Two

minutes!” when her kids clamoured for food, and banged their forks on their

empty bowls. I smelt Maggi wafting out of at least four windows. “It smells like

home,” I told my mother wistfully, a story she does not fail to trot out now with

great indignation. “Here I was making sure you had healthy, balanced, tasty

meals, and there you were craving Maggi!” she says now. Of course, now that I

live alone, I would love to have my mother’s home-cooking any day over some

over-preserved instant noodles, but there’s kids for you. 

The same really happy, really healthy looking kids toured all the food on

television in those days. There was a kid who boing-boinged out of bed when he

smelt sunflower oil on the stove, his mother making puris, and such was his

delight that he did a cartwheel right there, yay, sunflower oil! There were the

kids who drank Complan without complaining (a pun the copywriters should

have used back then, if you ask me), going so far as to boast about it, while an

undiagnosed lactose intolerance made me gaze gloomily into my glass every

evening, the milk brown with Bournvita or whatever, and already forming a skin.

I envied them as I envied the children shouting about “doodh, doodh, doodh!”

Then, there was the little girl who had a whole pitcher of Rasna, the lucky thing,

and who tilted her head to the right and said, “I love you Rasna” with such a glow

of health on her face that I wanted her life immediately. I wanted all of their lives.

But none so much as the Maggi kids, who demanded a snack and were given

something their mother was so pleased to serve them, so healthy, she told us, so

easy to make!

Of course, as the years went by, we realized that “two minutes” was that

standard Indian lie. More like two-minutes-ish. I grew suspicious of food that

was that easy to make. Just add water served me well through exams and late

night sleepovers at friends houses. I don’t think I ever ate as much Maggi as I did

in college, when we were discovering the joys of a midnight snack after drinking.

Maggi, made the way my friend did it with loads of chilli garlic paste and cheese,

was perhaps the opposite of the way the Maggi Mother intended, but it was

much, much tastier.

But even I, nostalgic in spots, child of 90s, haven’t picked up a packet of the

instant noodles in years. I eat them in extreme weather conditions on mountain

tops somewhere, where the starch and the warm and the feel of it are comforting

and soothing. On a pass in Ladakh. On a ski trail in Gulmarg. But after two days

up in Gulmarg, my body longed for something not so instant, so I got boiled eggs

instead, halved and stuffed with masala, and just as warming, if not more than

Maggi. In Ladakh, I veered for the chocolate section, great for altitude sickness,

and probably still not as bad for you as Maggi, it turns out.

Why the furor then on social media? Why the sadness? It came as a great

surprise to me. Surely people aren’t still eating Maggi as a regular thing, not

when we have access to so many other good instant foods out there? (MTR’s

range of home-cooked food comes to mind.) It must be the memories. We’re

conditioned to think old is good, and Maggi has somehow entered our

consciousness—this Swedish brand—as quintessentially Indian.

It was fun while the party lasted though. And I’m glad we’re getting more

stringent food checks. The last time I saw someone buy Maggi was ironically my

mother, who now that she lives alone at home has taken to eating it as a “guilty

pleasure” in her own flat. Meanwhile, I who longed for it so much, whip up three

course meals made out of organic materials.
(A version of this appeared as my column on mydigitalfc.com.)
(More Maggi? I wrote an article for Scroll on books that came out in the same era)

Kids these days

There’s a little kid who seems to live on the stairwell of my apartments. He’s not the only little kid; across from me is a four-year-old and below me, in the house where his mother is employed, are two others. But this little kid is unique because unlike the others, who occasionally nod at me and say hello before being ushered indoors by their parents, this kid will ring my bell a lot and when I open it, he’ll look at me with big hopeful eyes and say, “Didi can I get you anything from the market?”

It gets irritating, especially when he wakes you up from a sound nap, or when you were right in the middle of that perfect sentence and there’s this child, demanding your attention. You just want to shout at him to go away. But he has big, hopeful eyes and a rare smile that lights up his whole face when he chooses to use it. And I can’t help thinking how many people must have already shouted at this kid, destroyed some hope or another and how many more he will have to face and let me not add to that list.

But the problem is, I have no errands for the boy to run. I manage to pick up groceries the night before (once in a rare while, I might ask him to get me some milk, but not enough to warrant the daily doorbell ringing), I have everything I need: a maid who cleans and cooks and a guy to clean my car. Also, I want to be politically correct about this — I want him to go to school and do normal childhood things (what do they do these days? Cricket?) rather than worry about money and what little tips he can earn from this door-to-door soliciting. In my building, it is only us and one more flat downstairs that don’t have full-time help and we don’t have anything for him to do. He is not a beggar, I can’t just hand him money and be done with it, but at the same time, I don’t feel right sending a child out to do my work for me.

I wish I could say the same about the local shop, that periodically uses a young boy (about 12) to cycle around the neighbourhood dropping off groceries. Or even the employers of my little kid’s mother, who use him in a pinch when they need to. Sometimes I’ll go to a fancy mall and there’ll be this kid — obviously not one of the family by the way she’s dressed and behaved — looking after another kid. Sometimes I’ll be surprised by a child when I go to a friend’s house and a young person brings me a glass of water.

I was thinking about this kid and the others in the same state as him while reading the recent news about India’s child labour laws. The boy in my building goes to school, but often he’s rung my bell during school hours — hiding from his mother —so that he can earn a little extra. What can I tell him? No, go to school, you’ll earn some more money when you’re grown? What is the point of future money when the present is so urgent and pressing? At the same time, I’m fully in agreement with the fact that kids should be kids: get an education, play, frolic, be kids for as long as they can, because adulthood and all its pressures will knock on their door sooner or later. But how do you argue with cold hard cash available right in front of you? I suspect the issue is knottier than what we can see on the surface.

Domestic help is the biggest employer of child labour in big cities, as far as I can tell. Little children sent from their villages to big cities, where they live alongside other more fortunate children and learn to work in a home. Their impoverished parents are happy to have one less mouth to feed and one more earning member for their family. Tell them about school and they’d likely tell you that they can’t afford it. In a country where every mouth is a liability, you want your liabilities to be off your plate and earning you money as fast as they can manage it.

The only way we can fix this is by going to the root of the problem. Help the people with the children so that their children don’t have to. And I suspect this will take more than just an amendment of a law.

(A version of this appeared as my column in mydigitalfc.com)

Some thoughts on Salman Khan, drunk driving & rich people

Drunk driving in India is a peculiar thing. For one thing, it usually happens to the rich: it’s someone flush with daddy’s cash taking their new toy out for a spin, or someone deciding that that getting home in five minutes is more important than following traffic rules. I’m not speaking of the truck drivers who take drugs along the way to keep themselves awake. That’s a different kind of under the influence altogether. But as far as I can tell, if you crash your car because you’ve had one too many shots, you’re usually rich and have been brought up in a life without consequences.

The very first drunk driving incident that registered on my radar has probably gone off yours a long time ago. It involved a young man called Sanjeev Nanda, a BMW and mowing through six people including cops, back in 1999. Once he had killed them, he hurriedly drove his car to a friend’s house and had the bonnet and bumper cleaned of blood. Nanda captured everyone’s imagination —even in that long-ago pre-Twitter age — and most newspapers reported the anger and hatred people had for that Rich Person Entitlement he carried with him, almost waving it before him like a flag. The car was a BMW (strike one), he killed policemen on duty (strike two), he had a friend’s servant wash off the car (strike three), that friend lived in Golf Links, Delhi’s poshest neighbourhood (ding ding ding, you’re out!) If Nanda had turned himself in, if Nanda had maybe gone to the cops and paid them off, if, if, if, who knows, maybe we wouldn’t even have heard that story.

I’ve been thinking of Sanjeev Nanda since the Salman Khan verdict came out. I’ve never understood the blind hero worship of Salman Khan — he’s muscle-y, yes, but he’s not that talented an actor, he’s known (publicly!) to have beaten up his ex-girlfriends, some of them Bollywood’s most loved leading ladies, his reputation as a thug exceeds his reputation for fine cinema, and yet, “the fraternity” as I suppose we must call the opportunistic, much made up stars of Bollywood were behind him to a letter. “One mistake should not define a life,” one of them definitely said. But in this case, one mistake was a big, huge mistake. It’s not “one mistake” when you kill someone, it’s a choice you made to take someone else’s life. And by driving drunk, you’re indicating exactly that: I don’t care very much for my life, and your life is laughable. Plus the better designed the car, the less likely it is that the driver will be injured in all this. No, it’ll be the humans he chooses to mow over like they’re characters in a video game, plowing on till there’s blood everywhere and screams, and yet, the people you work with, the people you work for will still defend you, still call you the greatest human being since Mahatma Gandhi, and am I missing something here?

On the other hand, if Salman Khan’s car had bumped yours, loyal fan, would you still think he was amazing or would you be ready to go, an iron rod in your hand?

It was entirely his fault for driving drunk and people who argue that other people shouldn’t have been sleeping on the footpaths anyway, are barking up an idiotic — not to mention elitist — tree. As someone familiar with Mumbai, you’d know there are people everywhere. If not asleep, what if it was someone taking their dog for a walk? Or someone who couldn’t sleep going for a stroll? It’s not unheard of in Mumbai for people to be out at all hours of the night, and it’s not their job to mind the footpath for any crazy drivers who might decide to run all over it.

If I sound angrier than I normally do, it’s because I am. In two years at college, I lost two people (one a very dear friend) to drunk driving. One was because of one of those above mentioned truck drivers, plowing through city streets and into a car full of people. The other was a passenger in a drunk driving incident. Such a waste and a loss to all of us, and how we mourn them still. All because people like Salman Khan and Sanjeev Nanda think the world is theirs without consequences. Lock them up, put them away. Make it impossible to drive a car when you’re over the limit.

Maybe if you’re one of his supporters, you’ll think a little more about his crime now.

(A version of this came out in mydigitalfc.com)

Mingling Singles: Attending A World Alike Party

A few weekends ago, I went to a singles mixer.

Not because I'm single--I am eternally grateful in the words of When Harry Met Sally to "never be out there again" but because it was run by a friend, and because I was curious and they were like, "Hey, can you come and write about it?" I live for new experiences.

A World Alike is an upmarket event company a "curated network of well-educated singles" that puts together like-minded singles across Delhi (and coming soon to Bombay!) in fun situations. The event I attended was at Pan Asian, and they had a psychic tarot reader and drinks and music.
Pretty Pan Asian party room

To be honest, given my allergy to a certain kind of Delhi person, I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy it. {You know the kind of Dallyite I mean. They're entitled, they live off Daddy's bucks, in Daddy's house and they don't seem to have any ambition beyond their next good time. People like that make me seriously itchy.} But, thanks to the vetting system they had in place here, I actually met a bunch of really interesting people. (My friend does intense interviews to make sure each member is a proper fit.) 

"The point is not to meet the love of your life," my friend and co-runner, Devina Badhwar assured me, but I did a very unscientific poll, where I spoke to some of the people standing next to me and asked if they were hoping to meet their person. "YES" said the ladies, "NO" said the gentlemen. So there's that. (Later my data got a bit mixed when the ladies said no and the gents said yes, but hey!) From which I surmised that there are always people looking for their next big date, and there are always people looking for a good time. Neither of which is a bad thing. I like dates. I like good times.

But what struck me most was the atmosphere. It felt like an upgraded house party. People shifted from group to group chatting, and if I were ever alone in a corner (as I get sometimes when I get the Shys) someone would wander over to me and ask me about myself. It was nice. It's definitely something this city needs. Imagine if AWA had existed when I moved back to Delhi four years ago, looking for new friends. It would've been awesome.

WHEE NEW BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!!
Listen, it's really hard to make new friends--especially in a city like Delhi, especially when you're in your 30s and everyone around you seems to be all about marriage and babies--sometimes you'd just like to kick back with a few people who are in the same place as you, thinking about your career, hoping to meet someone, yes, but not making that the entire focus of your life.

It's a really good thing they're doing--and if I were single myself, I'd join and go to a bunch of their parties. Sometimes you've gotta do things for yourself. That's the biggest lesson I learned when I was single: doing new things opens up the door for others.

As for the tarot reader? She predicted I will never be rich, but I will hit Big Fame by the end of next year, so, um, watch this space?
Terrible photo of me and the lovely Devina

My feminism: a spoken word rant

My feminism is not your fashion accessory.
My feminism is not your catch-all statement to the press where you try to please everybody but wind up pleasing nobody.
My feminism is my great-grandmother who hid on a roof to keep from being married at 13.
My feminism is my grandmother who was a grandmother when she was my age.
My feminism is my other great-grandmother who was a Sanskrit scholar and very admired.
My feminism is that I bear her unwieldy name.
My feminism is not scary, because it has nothing to do with you, it is my own personal and political view and why am I threatening you?
My feminism is short and feisty, and mostly soft-spoken.
My feminism will burn you with a cigarette if you attack it.
My feminism is tired of seeing you use it to sell things all the time.
My feminism is up and down and quiet and loud but it never goes away.
My feminism is really puzzled how you can't see equal rights for women as a basic human right.
My feminism is inclusive, I want to fight for me and I want to fight for people who are not me.
My feminism is surprised that your feminism is only about you.

(Inspired by seeing this truly aggravating Chanel clutch that says Feminist but Feminine. Seriously, fuck off Chanel.)