Ritu Lalit's Blog, page 11

Poem to stuffed paranthas

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw said: “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”  It has been over four months since I shifted to a paleo diet.  No this is not an announcement of my going off the diet.  I don’t want to, it has made me healthier than I felt before the kids came.  No, it is not that.

I figure that if I can’t have piping hot Aloo Paranthas with melted butter swimming on the top of it, I can do the next best thing, I can write a poem on it.

P.S. This is the closest I will ever come to writing a love poem

ODE TO ALOO PARANTHA

 

Oh parantha

Soft  parantha

Golden wheat

Crisply fried

You smell so sweet

Hiding in your heart

Tangy and spiced

Potato filling

I want to bite

Melted butter

On  your crown

In its smooth taste

I want to drown

Oh parantha

Soft parantha

Wintery treat

How I wish

I could eat

 

Disclaimer 1 : Such longings assault the senses during lunch time in office when the nostrils are assailed by fragrance of paranthas being heated and ingested by others

Disclaimer 2 : No paranthas were killed, harmed or eaten during the making of this poem

 

Writing a novel Part 1. Plotting a story

To me plotting a story is the hardest part of writing.  We live in the age of information overload.  Every story has been written before, every idea has been tried in some corner of the world, in some other age.  If not, I’ll bet something similar has been tried.  So, how does one engage a reader?

Readers have become hard to please too.

If we have nailed the plot, we have a story to tell.  Of course, then finding the right voice to tell the story in becomes the next big thing … but that comes later.

The plot is the foundation on which the novel rests.  As I am fond of mythology, I re-visit my favorites, Mahabharata and Ramayana.  The Bible too.  These tales have lasted centuries.  They are the best.

Story 1

A worried man in chains paces up and down a dungeon.  It is raining outside, he can hear the thunder and see flashes of lightning.  His wife is in labour.  Her cries are drowned by the thunder.  A boy is born.  Miraculously, the chains break.  Unfettered he picks up the infant, walks out of the dungeon whose doors open magically.  He ‘walks’ through the river to the other side where he swaps his child with the new born daughter of another man and returns.  The evil king awakens and hears about the birth, goes to the dungeon and kills the girl.

If I wrote this, I’d be booed.  Yes this story about Krishna’s birth has lasted centuries.  Why?

The trick is in the layering.

As a child, my Naani told me this tale.  She was an awesome narrator.  She would bring out a photo or a tiny baby Krishna figurine.  She would then sit down and narrate the story, ending with a resounding chant of Jai Sri Krishna.  It was fascinating.  We kids would yell, Jai Sri Krishna and not delve deeper.  As I grew up, I found out more.  Devki was the evil king Kamsa’s sister.  The throne was the bone of contention.  Krishna actually killed Kamsa, gave the throne to his father Vasudev.   There is more, Nand and Vasudev were brothers.  So this is a family affair.  I can imagine high level plotting that went on behind the scenes between the two brothers.  I can imagine dungeon keepers being bribed, keys being thrown into the dungeon to unlock the chains, boats being ferried to Nand’s village.  Children being exchanged.  Sad the girl had to die … but patriarchy being what it is …

Maybe once Vasudev was King, he found ways to compensate his brother and sister-in-law in myriad ways.

So the characters drive the plot.  There are motivations which can be understood easily.

GREED, REVENGE, FAMILY.

The same layering shows its magic in the war between Pandavas and Kauravas.  Krishna was not an interfering busy body.  Kunti was Vasudev’s sister.  Again it was a family affair.  Krishna helped out his aunt and cousins who had suffered for ages in a hostile court after Pandu died.  They had been exiled, there were unsuccessful attempts to kill them.

REVENGE, PRIDE, FAMILY

But the motivations have to be implied, not spelt out.  Which means the characters have to be rooted in a social milieu.  On the surface there are events, there is action.  Character motivation should come naturally.  If we explain it, we lessen the impact.  When a character behaves in a certain way, the reader should just nod and murmur, ‘Of course!’

A young man goes missing …  He is the main lead of the story.  Now, there are several ways in which one can tell this story.

Give him a temper.  Get him into a fight just before he goes missing.

Now let us begin to give this layers.  Layers can add 3 chapters to the story.

He is about 26, has a boring job and is frustrated.  So that we evoke reader’s sympathy, give him idealism, not too much, but a bit.

We have effectively described 80 per cent of today’s youth.

Add another layer, he is the youngest in a family and has two sisters, unmarried.

Warning bells : Cliche!

The thing about cliches is that they work.  Sad but true.  So throw in another layer to distract the reader from such an obvious cliche.  He gets into a fight with the rich and powerful.

Too simplistic!  It is David and Goliath.

Add another layer.  His opponent is barely twenty and is actually a sweet boy, just pampered.

So where is this going?

We have a fight between a frustrated young man and the son of a rich man.  Have this in a parking lot outside a pub at night, throw in a gun and bullets.  Throw in a bystander who gets shot.  Get in chaos, ambulances, cops, witnesses, and in the middle of all this the young man goes missing.

Very plausible.

Give them both a back story each.

We have added the bystander.

What if the bystander is a diplomat from another country? Now we have a national crisis.

Meanwhile the youth is still missing.

This is how a plot is built.

 

 

 Click link to buy my latest book Wrong for the Right Reasons on Amazon

 

 

 

 

Mass Slaughter in Schools

 

Every terror attack seems to have one objective, that is to demoralize.  The attack on innocent school kids in Peshawar jolted us at several levels.  First, this one was too close home.  Schools have been attacked earlier.  In Beslan, Russia a school was attacked  in 2004 and 1100 people were held hostage, which included school children.  It resulted in 385 dead.  

Malala and her school mates were shot by terrorists.

Kids are not safe.  Women are and will remain the prime target of terrorists, but kids are also targeted.

Why so?

These guys are following a warrior religion, I feel.  Women are property to them, and by attacking women, they are getting to the men who “own” the women.  And the kids … the most sacred thing to all humanity is our children, our babies.  Killing the women and babies will boost their morale and lower the morale of the nation being targeted.  It is the defiling or rape of a nation. It is as simple as that.

We are unprepared.  Our security is inadequate.  Most of it is guarding our VVIPs at the tax payer’s expense.  Our police is not sensitized.  No, I am not talking about India.  This is a global malaise.  The first recorded attack on a school was in 1927.  The next recorded one was in 1959. The first was in Bath, second in Michigan, USA.  Both were criminal attacks, not terrorism.

By the sixties, the terror attacks became more frequent and the criminal attacks went down.  Terror took over and went global.  Not surprising.  Any loon or psychopath joins these groups.  A person may not be born Islamic, he/she becomes one and joins these groups to act out their violent impulses.  That is the sad truth of our times.

They are shrewd.  They want economy disrupted, they want people to be uneducated.  They want nations to have scarred and miamed kids, or dead kids.

They carry out this act of carnage.  Parents in Gaza, Baghdad, Peshawar, Rio de Janeiro, Oslo, Boston, Mingora, Beslan, Siem Reap, Sri Lanka, China suffer because of it.

We condemn, we weep.

It works to their advantage.  They want this to happen.

Who are these people?

They are not religious.  They are not blind followers of faith.  They are the dregs of humanity, socio-paths, psychopaths.

ISIS actually steals and smuggles oil through out the middle east.  It is a lucrative crime.  They pretend to be followers of religion.  It gives them the legitimacy to rape and pillage.

Other terror groups have similar mercenary aims.  As perks they get to murder, to rape.

It is time we saw them for what they are.

Growing Old Disgracefully

Every one is familiar with the image of a grumpy old woman, the one who has a hump and a frown.  Or may be the irritable strident one, whose temper comes from her gouty fingers and arthritis.   Not that I am grumpy.  Hell no, no one is grumpy in my home.  Of course son junior like a typical Cancerian has to draw his bushy eyebrows together and scowl periodically, but grumpy?  Dear Me, No!

And son senior was born under a Saturnian star.  He even has the door to the first floor adorned with a door plate which says

His wife disregards it and soldiers on regardless.  But not me.  As I grow old, I have a healthy respect for the remainder of my time on Planet Earth and want to spend it happily.  For me, old age has come with a certain sang-froid attitude.  I love it.  My sense of humour has degenerated.

My attitude has always been disgraceful, and its too late to change it.

So, yesterday I went to the farmer’s market on the way home.  This market is a blessing.  One gets stuff that regular markets have abandoned in favour of ‘fashionable’ vegetables and fruit.  Not that getting squash and yam is what draws me to the place.  No.  Not even the fresh turmeric root and soya herb and beetroot green.  Mostly I go there because the prices at which you get stuff is unbelievable.  I wonder how they pull it off?

I was walking past a stall that was selling oranges.  Did you know what we call here as orange is actually mandarin?  Any ways …

These oranges were perfect.  Huge, with the green gold skin which is slightly loose and blistery.  They looked mouthwatering.

Bees rupya kilo, le lo, le lo, the guy said.

Twenty bucks for those delightful beauties?  Of course I wanted them.  So did a whole lot of others.  Who knows why he wanted to sell them so cheap.  Who cares? Maybe he wanted to sell all his stock early and go for a hot date.

I pushed in through the crowd and grabbed one of the polythene bags the guy was handing out to customers and began filling it up.  My idea was to get at least 5 kilos.  Visions of freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast was making my mouth water.

A pot bellied man in a cream and coffee check sweater jostled past me and grabbed my bag which already had some choicest oranges carefully selected by me in it.  He began putting more oranges in it.

The sight of my kidnapped oranges aroused the lioness in me.  I grabbed his sleeve and said, “My bag.”

He ignored me, which is quite brazen.  How can a person ignore a woman clutching on to his sleeve?

He put another orange into the bag with an air of finality.

Not to be outdone, I picked up an orange and put it into the same bag, much like a dog marking territory.

“Chod do.  Mera bag hai!” I said firmly and inserted a finger into one of its ends.  He put in another orange.  I put in another.  The rest of the junta ignored us.  Not that I blame them.  Those oranges were simply lovely and the levels of stock were depleting fast.

I have never witnessed or participated in such a delicate tug of war.  Both of us glared at each other and kept putting oranges into the bag but neither did he try to pull it, nor did I.  One slight rip and the oranges would spill.  The stall owner said, “Sir, Madam, take another bag.”

We ignored him and kept on clutching to our ends.  The fate of the freshly-squeezed-OJ-for-breakfast dangled between the two of us.

Impasse.

By now the bag was almost full but we kept on piling one orange after another into it, glaring.

A tiny hand snaked up to the bottom edge of his sweater and tugged it, “Papa.”

The girl, ten or less years old looked at me with askance as she pulled her father’s sweater.  His clutch on the bag relaxed slightly and I grabbed it.  Handing it to the stall owner triumphantly I said, “Tol do.”

 SO MUCH WIN

I like this growing old business.  I did not worry about what people would say.  I did not worry about being molested.  All I worried about was my kidnapped 20 rupees kilo oranges.

Sorry check sweater, but next time, get your own bag, okay?

Myopic India

Don’t we love to outrage?  We often do it without checking the facts.  It is like someone fed us pills full of self righteousness along with our morning chai and makkhan toast and said, “Jaa beta, dhoondh le koi cause angst ke vaastey.”  And then we clamber on the public transport of our choice with the rallying cry “Angst-ward Ahoy!”

Outrage …

It makes us feel so powerful.  Someone says something and we get provoked.  Provocation creates a heady mix of anger and righteousness in our hearts and emboldens us.  It gives us permission to spew our rage in the form of insults and hate at whomever has provoked the outrage.

Oh, behold us!  We are the guardians of a culture that does not give a rats ass about truth, freedom and justice.  We are its self appointed knights and we will wage battle.

Why?

Because it gives us the illusion of being all powerful.

Truth is we are like ants.  We are powerless against the system and the people who want to keep us agitated.  If we keep on outraging we ignore the real problems.

A girl gets raped in a bus, brutally.  We ban dark films and curtains on windows of buses.  We do not outrage against lax laws, apathetic police and corrupt Transport Department.

Same thing happens in a Taxi, we ban cab companies.  Such a stroke of luck, the cab company is foreign.  It does not have proper paper work.  Brilliant!  Ban it!  Blame everybody but the people in charge!

And keep the junta outraged.  Use that awful picture that underlines the fact that women are powerless.

Do you know there are stock rape pictures?  Google it.  Each one as ghastly as the next.

Among other news in newspapers is the subject of mass conversions.  350 Muslims were converted to Hinduism.  The small print said that they were given (bribed?) housing plots, Aadhar cards etc.  Ghar Vapasi it was called.  Oh wow, how very missionary we have become.  I thought the burning issues right now were womens’safety, poverty, lack of education, price rise, slow judiciary, corruption, malnutrition, unemployment.

But all is forgotten and forgiven.  We’ve added 350 Muslims to the Hindu fold.

And in other news, more North East people are being assaulted because they look different.

All is well.

Onward Ho!

 

P.S. Dear Advisor (You know who you are) I am done with being politically correct.  It kills my spirit and does not let me blog.  And I don’t buy the argument of my being a public figure and so should mind my words.  I am not that famous an author.

Winter is coming

I have a small patch of ground in which I grow vegetables and lots of flowers.  Or rather, my maali sweats it out and I sit and enjoy the result in the winters.  In the summers one can only sit out at 5 a.m. in the morning.  The rest of the day is too hot to enjoy the things one grows.  Yes I grow my vegetables, mostly because the ones available outside have too many pesticides and chemicals.  Of course I would like to be self sufficient but that is impossible.  Herbs and leafy vegetables come from the tiny patch I have at home.

May be it is because I come from farmer stock.  My father came from a village in Punjab, and all through formative years I grew up in huge government bungalows where we grew our own vegetables, herbs and spices.  It has taken me four years to manage getting the small patch of land I have to yield us some joy, but I succeeded – finally.

Here is the spinach.  We have been harvesting the leaves for the past four weeks, we still have plenty.

And the carrot and radish

The green chilli

 

And how can we have mirchi without currypatta and lemon?

And the cilantro or dhania

When I was clicking the pictures of dhania and I caught sight of this tiny stuff growing with it.  Ahem.

My dogs are such stoners that the moment they spot it, this poor plant is a goner.  They actually chew the leaves and snooze in the sun.  Complete and total doggie heaven.

Dhania of course has to come with pudina.  The bliss of having home-grown mint and coriander chutney with home grown chilli and ginger in it is priceless

Of course I grow other stuff too, like flowers.  It is amazing how much a pocket kerchief sized bit of ground can yield, given proper love and care.

And this creeper gives off the most delightful fragrance which makes my morning and evening walks a delight

And of course the Mogra flowers, which to me, ever since childhood has been the smell of home.  To me a place does not smell homely unless the air smells of them

 

And the winter blooms

 

And the marigold.  Did you know marigold, rose, pansies and some other flowers are eaten in salads?  I did not, until recently.  Rose I knew but not the others.

 

The early pansies

 

It is a tiny garden with lots of planters and pots to accommodate whatever I can grow, but it is very rewarding.  This is a tree I planted two years ago next to my hibiscus and it adds so much cheer.

 

I don’t use pesticide but I have grown a neem tree and black basil.  Mostly if the plants are infested, they get cured by water boiled with neem leaves and basil.

 

And of course the star of my garden.  I eat a lot of neem leaves which is supposedly good for my diabetic condition.

 

3 Guys and Pizza

Reena, an airhostess with Jet Airways, shared her apartment with four others.  Her co-tenants were out and she had called him.  He had taken off early from work and gone to meet her.  Things went rapidly downhill, once their passions were slaked.

“My parents have set me a deadline.  I have to get married,” she said, once passion was slaked.  Rajat barely listened.  He was too busy admiring his girl friend’s naked body and wondering how soon he could get it up again to have another go.  He feasted his eyes on Reena’s body, young, busty, with a tight ass, her short hair framing a perfectly oval face with a snub nose and bedroom eyes.

She said again, “Papa wants me to marry Kaushal by the end of this year.”

That got his attention.  He disliked Kaushal Saxena, the owner of a very up-market boutique in Lado Sarai.

He said, “You’re not serious,” I said.  “You’ll marry that sleazy dick who measures women’s tits and ass for a living?  At least I keep my hands off strange women.”

She raised herself on her elbows and said, “Rajat, sweety this sucks.  We have to move to the next level.”

He focused on breasts, his gaze travelling down to her areolas which tapered into perfect pointy nipples.  His voice deepened, “Yeah, lets.  I’ll pack up and shift in with you.  You get rid of the harem that lives with you.”

She sat up and slipped on her bra, hooking it into place with an air of finality.  “You’re not listening.  You don’t understand.  Papa and Mummy won’t let me marry a call centre executive.”

Rajat, to his own shock, did not want to flee, which was his normal reaction when any girl mentioned marriage and their relationship in the same sentence.

“I have a great job, I come from a good educated family and I just booked a flat in Greater Noida,” he said defensively.  “Are you ashamed of me?”

“It’s not that!  I love you,” Reena said.  “But …”

He said, “I am an aspiring author, you can tell your family that.”

She said, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “So you want to be the next Paolo Coelho?”

He said, tearing his eyes from great view of her cleavage, “Dan Brown, please.  I think Paolo Coelho is boring.”

She pushed her hair off her eyes, rolled on to her stomach and gazed right into his eyes.  Her lips moved but he did not hear what she said.  Her eyes were molten chocolate and he sank into them.

“Eh?” he said as she snapped her fingers under his nose.

“Focus, Rajat Chawla.  Focus.  Dan Brown has an axe to grind with the Bible and misinterpreted scriptures.  It makes his writing passionate.  And he has a whole crowd of Christians who read him, either to appreciate or to disagree.  What do you have?”

She looked so earnest, eyes flashing, hair falling down her shoulder, a strand snaking its way between her breasts.  His hand followed the strand but she smacked it away.  She picked up a pillow, held it in front of her cleavage.

Intelligent, witty and good looking, he could not afford to lose her.  He gave up the fight.  He said, “What I have is a job in a call centre, a barsaati I share with two nut cases Deven and Punit, and a Pulsar motor cycle.  What I want is just you, babe, between the sheets.  Let’s move in together, play house-house.”

She pulled on her panties and said, “Whoa!  You know what?  You are a cave-man, retrosexual.”

“Is that a yes?” I said hopefully dreaming of breakfast in bed.  “We wouldn’t use plates; we’d just eat off each other’s bodies.”

“Of course not!  And definitely not until you have your life sorted out.”

He said, “You’d be wasted on that boutique owner.”

“My cab will be here in half an hour.  I’m off to Maldives.  When I am away, think of how you can get my parents to say yes.”

He sadly rolled off the bed and wore his clothes.  “I think we should stop meeting like this, until you sort out your life,” she said.

“Are you threatening to withhold sex?” he said, his nostrils flaring up in anger.

She said sadly, “No Rajat.  I love you.  But damn it, I can’t wait forever can I?”

“You’re just 23, damn it!” he snapped.

“Try to understand the situation.  My cousin Archana is 22.  She is getting married in November.  Her fiancé’s given her a luxury car on the engagement.  He is taking her to Switzerland for her honeymoon,” she said.

“You’re being greedy and you are nagging me!”Rajat said, slipping on his shoes, now really angry.

Tears formed in her eyes.  “No.  It’s just … my parents … Ah forget it Rajat!  When will you grow up and realize that you need to make something out of your life?”

Girl friends should know better than to attack a grown man’s ego and call him immature.  He drove back to his apartment, the one he shared with Deven and Punit.  It was a three tiny bedrooms, one small living room and a huge balcony on the first floor of a house in Saket.  Punit was sitting in the living room on a beanbag, watching Deven bathe a money plant.

The sight was hilarious.  Deven had a big tub of water in front of him and he had lined up four Old Monk rum bottles in which he was growing money plants on the cane centre table they’d got from Lajpat Nagar.  Rajat stood at the door and watched him dip a money plant into the tub and then pat it dry with a towel.  Rajat’s anger receded as he stared open mouthed.  Punit winked at Rajat and said in an awed voice, “You’re doing great, Deven.  It has lived for ten days.  It is eligible now for life insurance.”

“Joker,” Deven said and stuffed the money plant back into the Old Monk bottle.

“Wow!”Rajat said, “The plants are looking really healthy.”

This was too much for Punit who clutched his stomach and gave in to uncontrollable giggles.

“Shut up, Punit,” Deven said.

“Bet you a thousand it will die,” Punit said.

Rajat said, “Of course it is going to die; the bet should be in how many days.  I say ten.”

“I give it a month,” Punit said.

Deven said, “You both lose.  It’s grown a tiny root.”  “Growing roots?  Good for you,” Rajat had said and ran to the terrace with one of the plants.

Deven yelled and ran after him yelling, “Thief! Thief!”

A low howl came from the ground floor flat, where their land lords lived.  “Did anyone time it?  Bet you it took him less than 30 seconds to lose his temper,” Deven said.  “The old man is bettering his track record.”

The landlord was mad, and whenever they made a noise, he howled.  To while away boredom, many times Rajat and Deven thumped the floor after setting up the stop watch.  It was cruel but they enjoyed it.

They sat down on the folding chairs in the balcony.  “It is only a money plant in a rum bottle, not a damsel in distress,”Punit said as Deven grabbed the money plant.  He turned to Deven and said, “Trouble with the sexy Reena?”  Rajat turned away.  Punit was really perceptive.

Deven said, “She’s hot man!  Try your pick up line on her.”.

Rajat said, “What?  I don’t have a pick up line.”

Deven said, “Oh yes you do.  When you want to impress a chick, you look into her eyes, do a funny thing with your lips and say, ‘Actually, my goal in life is to write a best seller.’  She melts.”

Rajat got hot under his collar.  He said, “It is not a sleazy pick up line.  I really want to write a book.”

“Not sleazy, you have to give him that,” Deven said to Punit.

“It is not a line, damn you.  I want to write a book, I really do!” Rajat said.

Deven said, “But do not change the topic.  Let me just enjoy the moment.  Finally someone looked beyond your muscular packaging and dumped you.”

Rajat slammed the wall in frustration.  The landlord yelled, “Bhenchod!”

“Write about him,” Deven suggested.  “Your novel can be titled “A Lunatic Real Estate Developer.”

“You can’t be serious,” Rajat said and his flat mates laughed so hard that their beer sloshed.  They sobered up as they saw his hurt expression.  And then they looked at each other and laughed harder.  Rajat began laughing despite himself.  “Oh shut up, you morons.  What’s for dinner?”

“Pizza.” Deven said.

Rajat groaned, “Please tell me it’s not pepperoni.”

“It looks like pepperoni.”Deven said.

“It smells like pepperoni,”Punit added, laughing now.

They both looked at each other and Deven raised a finger.  They chanted together, “But it is not pepperoni.”

Rajat gave up.  How was a guy supposed to nurse wounded feelings with flat mates like the ones he had?

He said with a smile, “You both are chutiyas.”

 

Wrong for the Right Reasons, quote

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shyamoli Vermas timing is wrong. In her late twenties, she finds that her marriage is irrevocably broken. She comes back to her parents with her pre-teen son and an infant daughter, only to find that she is unwelcome.

Independent and brash, she decides to bring up her children and also get a divorce without any support from friends and family. Written with wry self deprecating humor, this is the story of a divorced woman’s quest for love and security.’

Ebook : http://www.amazon.in/Wrong-right-reasons-Ritu-…/…/B00NQC8THK

Print Version http://pothi.com/pothi/book/ritu-lalit-wrong-right-reasons

It is also available at a cheaper rate at Flipkart, I haven’t the foggiest idea why.

Doors, Wrong for the Right Reason

Quote from Wrong, For the Right Reasons

Since I am not being able to blog regularly, I am uploading excerpts from my latest book Wrong, for the Right Reasons.

It keeps the blog alive