Balaka Basu's Blog, page 9

English Breakfast #WordlessWednesday

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Couple of weeks back, I made this for my sonny boy. He is fond of English Breakfast from Theobroma, a local patisseri, however due to the lockdown, he couldn’t have it for long, so I decided to prepare it for myself.

I posted this on Facebook and my dear blogger friend Anamika said that I should post this image on pinterest. Therefore, as per her suggestion this is my post for Wordless Wednesday. Here you go Natasha and Esha.

Did you create a Bucket List during the Pandemic?

Apologies for the scary title. I know this kind of title can shock us more during this pandemic. However, a Bucket List may be a good idea. It may give you the motivation to survive these days of anxiety and make you more productive and energetic.

With the COVID 19 virus spreading in leaps and bounds and no vaccine in sight, it is undisputed that we will lose a major chunk of the population globally. None of us know who would be included or excluded in that chunk. However, going by this article on Independent UK Homo Sapiens will survive another 25000 years even after this pandemic. Therefore, no need to panic.

[image error]Spanish Steps in Rome, December 2018 clicked by yours truly

Nevertheless, I think this ‘new normal‘ will last for quite some time. We will have to get used to mask, sanitizers, social distancing, work from home, online schools, and everything else that came along with this pandemic. We also have to deal with the disease, infection, and death part. Every day when we open the news we come across the number of deaths and that makes our heart sink. We cannot deny that all of us worry will I be able to survive, will my loved ones survive, will my friends survive. However hard we try, however optimistic or positive we are these thoughts are bound to occur if we have a functional and logical brain. I have friends and cousins who are regularly getting panic attacks.

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Therefore let us play a game here. Let us consider that like the times of Noah, the world will go through a bad deluge and we have to stay in our homes till everything becomes fine. What are the things that you would do to make this time memorable and enjoyable? So that we live or die we won’t regret this time that we lived during the pandemic.

My Bucket List is as follows:

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Virtually travel to as many places as possible. Virtually visit museums, take a walk down the River Thames, visit the vineyards of Spain, chase kangaroos in Australia, climb the mountains, watch people sunbathing in Brazil and exhaust all travel vlogs that I can come across. Therefore, I would not regret that I couldn’t visit these places.YouTube has started a new project where they are asking people to document their everyday life during this pandemic. I think that is a great idea. I am going to do that. Maybe not everything but at least a few photos/videos a day to document these days.Write my autobiography. I believe I had a tumultuous but interesting life. I feel my life would be ideal for Tarantino to make a film on. So I would leave the story to be made into a Hollywood masterpiece. (Optimism)Laugh a lot. If that requires artificially induced laugh, so be it. I would watch stand-up comedy or read P.G.Wodehouse, if necessary to make me roll on the floor laughing.Connect with friends through texts/calls/video calls and tell them what they mean to me. We often do not tell our close ones how important they are but now I would take this opportunity to tell everyone what I feel about them.Nurture hobbies like singing, dancing, cooking, gardening, home decor, painting, writing, and learning Spanish.Give back to society. From home I may not be able to do a lot but can make donations, make masks and distribute for free, cook food and give it to poor and strays. Adopt a stray perhaps. Most importantly plant trees, save some seeds from the fruits and vegetables that we are eating. Reduce waste by composting, lessen plastic usage.

The things that I do not want do is:

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Eat healthy. I do not want to spend time eating bland food, rather would eat whatever my heart crave for, grow fatter but my heart and taste buds would be happy.Exercise. I am a lazy sloth bear. I would rather die watching Notting Hill, or reading Namesake on my couch while eating butter scotch ice cream rather that panting and puffing doing Surya namaskar. Start into a productivity battle. Nope can’t waste my time trying to prove I am the best. Appraisals doesn’t matter. If Doomsday is near then my Java or C++ skills won’t help me. Get into silly fights. Life is precious and we should love others more now rather than hating or fighting.Regret about my mistakes in life. Rather I would try to be grateful for all the good things that I did or happened to me.

Now, tell me what do you want to do during this pandemic to make it more enjoyable and memorable, so that when you look back you have lovely memories to cherish.

How the Society in Future Could be

When I was in college, I read a short story. I can’t recollect the title or author but I do remember the story very well. It was a Utopian futuristic story. It talked about a future society without the concepts of money, property and marriage. After reading the synopsis of the story if any of you can identify the story then please do let me know.

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The story show a future society that has abolished the concepts of marriage, family and property. They have also controlled population and diseases. All adults, both male and female have to deposit their sperms and eggs in a state run fertility bank. Every year a fixed number are fertilized using the sperm and eggs from the bank. These fetuses are genetically engineered so they never have any congenital disorders. The ratio of male and female are also fixed. Once the fetuses fertilized in a test tube they are put in artificial wombs and then babies are born. These babies have no parents, they belong to the state.

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These babies are then sent to state run nurseries where nannies take care of them. Once they grow up a little they are transferred to residential schools. The education of each kid is customized and prepares them for a particular job. Their job is assigned after evaluation of their mental and physical potential at pre-natal stage. Thus each kid is given birth for a particular job. Once their education completes, they are assigned the job and a quarter to stay. They have no salary but whatever they needed the state provides. Thus there is no concept of property or accumulation of wealth.

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There is no concept of marriage but people are allowed to date and even live together but not allowed to biologically have babies. There is no concept of family. People lived together almost the way characters of the popular series F.R.I.E.N.D.S lived. They had no responsibilities, no old parents or kids to take care of. Their lives were mostly spent on their jobs and rest of the time partying. They had no stress of appraisals, no tension to earn more money, build a house, have bank balance. They had community kitchens to get their foods from and housekeeping staff who cleaned the quarters. When they grew old they were sent to old care facilities and when state saw they were no more contributing to the society they were put to rest.

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The story takes a turn when one girl and one boy fall in love and decide to have a child of their own and start a family. The whole system starts chasing them and they try to escape to another planet which was regressive and still allowed biological babies.

I personally would love to be a part of this society. It seems like an Utopian system with no stress. It is just do your assigned job and enjoy. It is almost like living on the sets of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. It is becoming ADULTS without the stress of ADULTING. But I know not many of you would probably consider this ideal. Let me know :

Why you think this would be an ideal society? Why do you think this would be a not-so-ideal society?Do you think our society is going in a direction where this would become a reality soon?Would you like it be part of that society?Can you help me find the title and author of the story?

I am eagerly waiting for your answers.

Time we Grow Our Own Food

My mother-in-law’s father was a farmer, he grew all his food supplies like vegetables, rice, and fruits on his own farm. He had a pond full of fishes and a small poultry that provided for eggs and chicken. He had cows and goats that supplied milk. He also had a small khacchi ghanni to grind mustard oil from mustard. They went to the market only to buy salt and wheat. They never had sugar and always used jaggery that they made themselves during the winter months and stored and used all through the year.

He and his wife used to spend the whole day growing their own food. I was fortunate enough to meet his wife after my marriage. She told me stories of how backbreaking work she did to grow those foods. She also had nine kids to look after. It was not easy but the best part is she never had to depend on anyone else for her food. She never had to consume pesticide laden fruits or processed food that are risky and low on nutrition.

During the lockdown, I realized that it is time we probably also should start not depending on others for our food. However, things are easily said than done. Many of our generation are actually giving up their corporate jobs and starting organic farming but that is not so easy. I do harbor a dream of going back to basics and probably start living a more sustainable life.

We live in an apartment so there is space constraint but we still grow few plants that meet a few of our food requirements on our balcony garden. This papaya tree we grew inside our apartment complex. Four years back my husband got dengue. Many others in our society were also simultaneously affected by dengue. All of use were desperately looking for papaya leaves. There was only one papaya plant in our society and everybody was taking leaf from it making it bare. We realized the importance and after he got better sowed seeds of papaya and now this is the outcome.

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Linking this to Parul’s Thursday Tree Love.

Pillars of Faith #WordlessWednesday

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I am virtually traveling back to all the places that I have ever visited in my life. This trip was taken last year. I was stunned by the golden pillars and tried to capture it unfiltered.

Linking to Esha and Natasha for Wordless Wednesday.

View From the Top

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We are in the fifth month of Lockdown. Going by the statistics it doesn’t seem that we would come out of it anytime soon. We have to adjust to the new normal. This lockdown has taken away from me my greatest pleasure “traveling”. I loved traveling but Covid 19 wouldn’t let me travel for the next two years.

Sharing this photo from one of my trips. It is making me so nostalgic. I so want to go back to the time when this photo was clicked. Joining Esha and Natasha for #WordlessWednesday

How Cooking is helping us Cope with the Lockdown

I have perennially hated cooking. Those who are my regular readers know that once I also wrote a post titled I hate cooking. However, in this lockdown period the only thing that is keeping me sane is cooking. And, if I go by my social media timeline then many more people have found solace in the kitchen.

In the initial days of the lockdown, I had to take up cooking involuntarily as my cook stopped coming. Initial few days, I managed with basic food. Then one day my son, who always had a penchant for cooking since childhood said he would help me in the kitchen.

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I saw a strange satisfaction on his face when he came to help me in the kitchen. He was doing everything so happily that it made me wonder why he was so happy in the kitchen while I was not. He was happy because for him it was a hobby while for me it was a chore. I decided to teach him cooking and a new journey of mother and son began.

One day, I was pleasantly surprised when he said ‘Ma don’t you find the sound of spluttering of the whole spices on hot oil soothing?‘ Honestly, I have always been terrified of that sound, but after he said this, I paused and reconsidered and then the sound had a whole different connotation.

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I have now found an amazing mate in the kitchen who encourages me to experiment and do better. Honestly, he has the same traits as his Dad when it comes to cooking but the difference is that his father was too critical and dismissive of my culinary skills. More than encouragement it always felt patronizing. But the beta is different. He is learning but in return teaching me so much.

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In last couple of months, I have cooked dishes that I could never imagined of cooking in my humble kitchen. I enjoy how my child jumps with excitement whenever a dish turns out perfect. He will suddenly tell me in the middle of the night “Ma do you think we can add mayonnaise to mushrooms? Can we put chocolate on a roti and turn it into a choco-roti?” His enthusiasm is contagious and I have now started playing along. We are experimenting and keeping lockdown blues away by cooking.

I would like to conclude by saying that parenthood is a learning journey, where a time comes when you become the student and your child becomes your teacher.

Tell me how are you keeping the lockdown blues away?

How the death of Sushant Singh and George Floyd exposed the Hypocrisy of Indians #MondayMusings

I want to talk about two recent sad deaths. One of George Floyd and the other Sushant Singh Rajput (who was incidentally my neighbor for a couple of months).

Let me first begin with a childhood story about one of my neighbors, that I recollected after I saw Indians posting vehemently on Social Media with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. So basically this post is stories of two of my ex-neighbors.

This was back in 1990s, we had a neighbor whom I would call as Didi. She was a kind and loving lady, who took good care of me after my mom’s untimely death. She was a spinster whose only family was her sisters, nephews and nieces.

One of her nephews went to the USA to study. After completing his studies, he wrote back to his mother that he was getting married to an American girl and settling down there. Back in those days people were not proficient in using email, social media was still not invented and telephone was costly. Therefore, most of his correspondence with his mother was through handwritten letters.

After a year he became a father. When his child turned one year, he decided to come and visit his mom in India along with his wife and child. His mom and her family, including Didi were quite excited. They started preparing for the homecoming of the son and his American family. Didi was excited and started shopping for the new bahu. She chose bright colours as she believed that bright colours would suit the American bahu.

On the day of arrival, the entire clan reached the airport to welcome the new American bahu. They waited with baited breath for the bahu, but the moment they had the first glimpse of the bahu, the whole family literally choked of shock. The new American bahu was actually an African-American bahu, something that no one in the family had even thought in their ‘nightmare’. They had taken for granted that an American wife meant a white wife. The entire excitement evaporated and was replaced by gloom.

When I met Didi, she was visibly depressed and she said “meyeta ekdam Rakhoshir moto dekhte, eto kutkute kalo j andhokare dekhte pabina. Ei rakam baje dekhte meyekei biye korar chilo to amader desher ekta meyekei korto, ora anek beshi sundari hoto.” (The girl looks like a black monster, she is so dark you won’t find her in the dark, if he had to marry such an ugly girl he could have married an Indian girl, am sure she would have been prettier)

Didi did not understand that she was being racist because I am sure numerous other Indian families would have reacted the same way. Racism is so ingrained in us that even in 2020 we post matrimonial advertisement for pretty and ‘fair’ bride. We cannot accept dark skinned Indians, we taunt our dark skinned cousins, classmates, film heroines and brides. However, we also post on our social media #blacklivesmatter. Even today if we meet a white skinned foreigner we melt but react adversely to Nigerians and Africans. Forget foreigners, we are not even kind to the Dravidian population for their dark skin. We are carrying the relic of colonialism strongly on our shoulders and then posting about the justice for George Floyd. Aren’t we the worst hypocrites?

Now, the story of my another neighbor. When I shifted to Mumbai, I shifted to a building full of TV actors, scriptwriters and singers. Incidentally, Sushant also stayed on the same floor and we occasionally met in the elevator. I do not watch soap operas so I had no clue about Pavitra Rishta, where he played the hero. To me he was just another TV guy until I watched Kai Po Che. Let me be honest, I have hardly watched couple of his movies. However, to me he was always the ‘boy next door’. We were neighbors more than a decade back but when I read about his suicide, I suddenly remembered him as the fellow I used to bump into in the elevator.

After his news broke, the whole social media again started crying crocodile tears. Every person started writing ‘ if you feel depressed, do call me, I am there to listen’. However, I know in reality these are the same people who would call me a whiner and a cry baby if I call them. This is as fake as ‘black lives matter’.

Mental Health is not such an easy thing to deal with. Those of us who have visited the dark corners of our minds know how difficult it is to gather ourselves when we hit the rock bottom. It is easy to give gyan on social media but difficult to practice in real life. So before posting on social media let us consider, does really all lives matter to us?

The worst was the reaction of Bollywood who are now crying for him, whereas few days back were taunting and mocking Sushant for his outsider status. However, I would prefer to write a separate long post on Bollywood nepotism and hypocrisy.

Let me end this post by praying for two souls who went too soon. #RIPGeorgeFloyd #RIPSushant

My Balcony Garden

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Let me keep this wordless for this time.

Linking this to #wordlesswednesday hosted by Esha and Natasha.

5 Best Romantic Movies on Netflix on ‘Sunset Romance’

Netflix has a great collection of romantic movies. When we think about ‘romantic movies’ we mostly think only of movies involving young couples, however, there are few amazing movies about elderly or middle aged couples that can steal your heart.

Love is not restricted to any age, in fact love between two people way past the prime of youth is often matured, deep and meaningful. It is often a relationship of great bonding and dependence.

Here is a list of 5 best romantic movies on Netflix about old couples

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5 Flights Up: Alex and Ruth Carver, an older couple, want to move because living in a five-storey walk-up is too difficult without an elevator. Alex is a painter and uses one of the rooms as his studio. Ruth is a retired school teacher. They have lived there for 40 years and the neighbourhood have become intertwined with their lives. The movie uses flashback to show the snippets of their life. How Ruth left her parents to get married to a man of colour, how she was unable to get pregnant, how they met and so many beautiful moments from their past life. It also revolves around their pet dog Dorothy and the concern of the old couple for her. If you enjoy soft and mushy stuff with a tinge of deep thoughts and maturity then this is your ‘must watch’ movie. The performances of Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton is an added treat.

2. Something’s Gotta Give: This is a beautiful romantic comedy with an impressive star cast of Jack Nicholson, Keanu Reeves and Diane Keaton. This movie will crack you up and also show that romance comes in all packages and for all ages.

3. As Good as it Gets: Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) is an obsessive-compulsive writer of romantic fiction who’s rude to everyone he meets, including his gay neighbor Simon (Greg Kinnear), but when he has to look after Simon’s dog, he begins to soften and, if still not completely over his problems, finds he can conduct a relationship with the only waitress (Helen Hunt) at the local diner who’ll serve him. Jack Nicholson won the Academy for best actor for this movie.

4. Nights in Rodanthe: Adrienne Willis (Diane Lane) is a woman with her life in chaos, who retreats to the tiny coastal town of Rodanthe in the Outer Banks of North Carolina to tend to a friend’s inn for the weekend. Here she hopes to find the tranquility she so desperately needs to rethink the conflicts surrounding her—a wayward husband who has asked to come home, and a teenaged daughter who resents her every decision.  Almost as soon as Adrienne gets to Rodanthe, a major storm is forecast and Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere) arrives. The only guest at the inn, Flanner is not on a weekend escape but rather is there to face his own crisis of conscience.  Now, with the storm closing in, the two turn to each other for comfort and, in one magical weekend, set in motion a life-changing romance that will resonate throughout the rest of their lives.

5. The Remains of the Day: During the 1930s, James Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) serves as a proper English butler to the doltish Lord Darlington (James Fox). Stevens is so dedicated that he forgoes visiting his father on his deathbed in order to serve, and overlooks Darlington’s Nazi sympathies and growing anti-Semitism. Twenty years after his employer’s death, Stevens tries to reconnect with Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), Darlington’s head housekeeper, and begins to regret his loyalty to his former master and also how he could never express his genuine affection to Ms. Kenton, who chose to marry someone else.

These movies were a treat to watch. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did. Do let me know your feedback. Happy watching!!

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