Blacky Don’t Bark At Me
Blacky don’t bark at me.
I ain’t no stranger.
I live just 3 blocks away.
I happen to go my home late into night most of the days. My neighborhood is a fairly calm place, where not many are on the road after 8 pm. This leaves me as the lone person walking on the road most of the times.
There is always some song that keeps running in the back of my mind like a distant radio. And when I am alone these songs come out of my mouth, that is I sing that to myself.
Here is a situation song from Green Day that comes to my mind :
I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don’t know where it goes
But it’s home to me and I walk alone
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I’m the only one and I walk alone
Well I would be wrong if I say I walk alone. There are quite a few street dogs that walk, run, <censored> , and fight at that time.
And like any other gangs, this ‘gang of dogs’ (GOD, as I call it) has a gang leader. He is small, He is black, And He is mad as hell, as Lynda Barry will put it. I think the other dogs think he belongs to a occult society, otherwise there is no reason why they allowed him to be the self proclaimed leader that he is.
This Chief of GOD, for some reasons best known to him, doesn’t like the sight of me singing to myself and walking.
He barks, barks as loud as a trumpet on a Bose speaker, when ever he sees me. Then all his accomplices come running from all over the place barking and supporting his cause(Which I am totally unaware of)
What’s worse is that the dogs inside the houses too join this GOD and bark, howl and do what not.
One day I stopped while the Chief of GOD was barking at me. He came running, barking and making gestures at me. And some how he got an intuition that its better not to come near me, so he applied breaks, skidded of the road and stopped, but still he didn’t stop his barking.
There I saw in his eyes — deepest contempt. Then the next instant it was as if he is asking me something. May be I was imagining things. But I could see in his eyes. May be he wanted me to stop singing GD (Green Day) and start singing for GOD. Like all those Maharajas of olden days, may be he wanted me to write a song on him and sing it for him.
And if you haven’t figured it out yet, yes, the first three lines of this post are of the song I am writing for him.
Bisi Bele Baath – Recipe
Bisi bele Baath: Etymology- Hot Lentils (Paruppu) rice in Kannada and Tulu
We have a two part recipe for the preparation of Bisi Bele Baath : one is the powder that gives the unique flavor to the dish and the other is the actual preparation of the dish itself.
Part 1:(The powder)
It is customary to make this powder, store it and use it when ever required. And hence the following measures are for making a small bottle full of the powder.
Ingredients: (all are numbers,unless the units are specified. Tamil names are given within the braces)
Bay Leaf (Punnai Ilai): 2
Nutmeg (Jathikaai) : 2
Cinnamon (Pattai) : 5 rupee worth
Cardamom(Yelakkai): 6
Cloves(Lavangam): 8
Bengal Gram (Kadalai Paruppu): 200 gm
Black Gram (Ulutham Paruppu): 200 gm
Red Chilli (Molaga): 100 gms
Coriander Seeds (Dhaniya):100 gm
Black Pepper (Melagu) : 10 gm
Asafoetida (Perungayam): half katti
Fenugreek (Venthaiyam): 10 gm
Cumin Seeds (Seeragam): 10 gm
Curry Leaves (Karu vepilai): a hand full
Cooking Oil: little
Procedure:
After heating the oil in a pan, fry all the spices viz., cinnamon,nutmeg,cloves,bay leaves and cardamom and keep them seperately. In the same pan now fry rest of the ingredients, Pepper,Cumin seeds and curry leaves should be the last items to be added.
Keep this fried ingredients in Sun light for 15 mins and then powder them.
Part 2 (The Baath):(Serving 4-5 people)
Ingredients:
Rice (Arisi) : 2 Alakku
Red Gram (Thuvaram Paruppu): 1 Alakku
Tamarind (Puli) : 1 lemon size
Salt:As required
Turmeric Powder(Manjal thool): As required
Coriander Powder: 1/4 spoon
Chilli Powder : 1/4 spoon
Jaggery(Vellam): A lemon size
Carrot,Beans,Sambhar Onion, Green Peas,Potato – As much as you deem fit.
Coconut:1/2 (Kopparai thenga preferred)
Cashew nuts: as required
peanuts: as required
ghee:little
Procedure:
Soak the tamarind in water for some 10 to 15 mins.
Boil the Red gram, when the gram is 3/4th boilt, add the rice and 1 spoon of the above prepared masala powder and let the mixture boil for some more time until rice is boiled.
In a seperate vessel boil all the vegetables, except Sambhar Onion.
Pour little oil in a pan and fry the Sambhar Onion, after the onions are fried,add the soaked tamarind water (Puli thanni), Coriander powder, Chilli powder,Salt, Turmeric powder, Jaggery one by one and then add the boiled vegetables. Put 2 spoons of the above prepared masala powder to this vegetables mixture.
Now mix the boiled rice and gram with the vegetables mixture to make the baath.
Put some ghee to the frying pan add the scraped coconut, cashew nuts and peanuts and garnish the baath with this. Finally plant the coriander leaves on the baath.
Politics and Satirists
Politics has long been the creative juice of most of the satirists.
The cartoons, essays and the caricatures that we read in the newspapers have now started trickling into Web2.0 world also. Like: Ramesh Srivats’s tweets.
And what best time to hear the satirists than the elections.
I was travelling back to home on an Auto. The auto driver, on seeing a yellow and something flag, said “I wonder whose flag is this”. Then after seeing the Sarath Kumar posters he went on “Ah, Sarathu kumaru.. Everybody started creating a party. If it goes on like this Vadivelu, Kanja Karuppu will start parties”
“They occupy all these marriage halls and make life hell for us”
And then came a convoy of Sarath Kumar’s party workers. They were all in the usual cinema style Sumo cars. And all were shouting “Aye,Aye,Oyi,Oyi” at other vehicle drivers and onlookers as if they were shooing away some stray cow eating their plants.
The auto driver remarked “Ithungalukkellam vottu podanamam” /For these kinds we have to put vote- it seems,with a sarcastic look on his face/
“Yellam Kai nattu kesunga.. Namba payyan oruthan irukkan.. dei yennada panrennu ketten.. Katchila senthutan na nnu sonnan. Dei.. nee kainattu ache da nnu sonen.. Athukku avan solran ‘Katchila senthachu illa inimey minister ana padichikalamnnu’”
English translation:
All these are illiterates. I have a known person. I asked him what is he doing. For that he said I joined a party. I asked him what you joining a political party? Aren’t you illiterate. For that the guy replied ‘I have joined party right, we will learn if I become minister’
5 years of GMail
Remember the days when you waited for somebody to send an invite for GMail. I remember me asking all those geeky guys to send me one if they can. It was as if like there were only two kinds of people around me. Those who have Gmail account and those who wanted one.
But after getting the account my first reaction was “What this doesn’t even have folders?!” But over the years I have learn’t to use labels.
This is the most used web application by most of us. Hope they keep doing the labs thing forever. Let it be in beta forever. 
Star Singer
With the posts about Airtel Super Singer and controversies surrounding the show making waves, I just got reminded of one such singing reality show that I used to catch up. Star Singer is a program on Asianet channel. I like the quality of singers there. And the show was language agnostic, there by we got to hear the songs from varied languages.
A couple of songs from the youtube:
Naan Kadavul
Good. Short. Predictable. Could have been better, longer and technically sounder.
Adventurous Off Road Biking
There is a little stream that runs after a couple of streets away from where I live. Having spent more than 2 days at home I thought let me wander beyond the streams and see what is there.
I started cycling and crossed the almost broken bridge. There was gap for a cycle perhaps a bike to go over that bridge.
Beyond the bridge was a large field for as long as i can see. Nothing but field except for a handful of houses scattered like miles apart. Like the one which comes in the trainspotting movie. I thought I should have taken my camera along with me.
There was small bumpy path way that was leading to somewhere. I thought let me bike along this path so that I don’t get lost. After a few hundreds of meters of biking did I realize that there is not even a single human around. Its just me and the vast field. What would you do now if a Dog comes? Somebody inside me was asking me. I was planning ways to escape the dog if at all I get to meet one.
And there came a Dog. Barking straight at me.
I was off balance in my cycle and heading straight towards the Dog. It got more scared than I am and was running away from me. It went a little further from me and was watching me drive for as long as it can see.
Then suddenly in the middle of nowhere I saw two sparkling estates. Like the ones in ECR. What are these doing in this no man’s land. I saw people from inside staring at me suspiciously.
I was about to take the right turn around the estate to spy around, when somebody yelled. “Yei Inga Yenna Panre” (”Hey you. What are you doing here”)
That was from a very stout lungi clad man. He was looking like the bald villains in Rajinikanth movies. I lied to him that I got lost and was trying to get back home. He gave me the directions to all the near by places. Good fella. He told if I hit straight on the path i will reach some village called Durcas. And if i go in south easterly direction I would reach Kishkintha. From there I can go to Tambaram if i want.
But the best thing to do considering the fact that light was fast decreasing was to put a U turn and go back in the path in which i came. I returned back wary of the fact that i would have to meet the Dog again. This time that dog wasn’t there. But a lot more were barking from the houses that were scattered here and there. And when I reached back the broken bridge it was dark.
The best adventures are self made. Instantly.
