Tag: Tamil and Hindi Songs

I love music. I believe music of any form puts us in touch with our inner self and gives us a sense of freedom. Reema has tagged me to list some music that I love. Music is always fun.

I grew up listening to some English songs, a lot of Hindi songs and a boat load of Tamil Songs. While Tamil songs were the main form of music I was listening to, my uncles introduced me to the world of RD Burman, Manna Dey, Kishore kumar in the Hindi World. My friends in School and College made sure I got some earful of Bryan Adams, Guns n Roses, George Michael.

My music love is from the 80’s, 90’s and the present time, though I prefer the oldies too (the ones that came before I was born).

This tag is about picking the songs that you loved and I will be listing 1 song each from the 3 periods of Time I have been in this Planet.

80’s:

Ilaiyaraja ruled the Tamil world. His melodies were more of a fashion statement. He brought freedom, love, compassion, happiness, sorrow in his songs, in a very unique style.

Ilaiya Nila from  Payanangal Mudivathillai (Journeys never end)  is one of the best from those times.

90’s:

Things had to change and it had to change because of one man – A.R.Rahman. The musical Genius was absolutely splendid right from his 1st album – Roja.

Thee Thee from Thiruda Thiruda is a mind blowing love song. This song is almost 20 years ahead of its time.

Latest:

Apart from A.R.Rahman and Ilaiyaraja we have some decent music directors in Tamil like Yuvan Shankar Raja, Vidhyasagar and Harris Jayaraj. I am going to pick one song from the lot and the only reason for picking this song is this is my daughter’s favourite. I think she likes Surya. She smiles wide when she sees him on screen.

Adiye Kolluthe from Vaaranam Ayiram.

If I have to call 2 Hindi movies that brought me into the world of Hindi Movies are Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Tezaab. I really love this song.

80’s:

Kehdo ke tum from Tezaab

90’s:

Aamir Khan is a versatile actor. Rangeela is one movie where he surprised me. It was a role I never expected to see him in and play it with such an ease.

Mangta Hai Kya from Rangeela

Latest: (well almost)

Continuing on my belief that Aamir Khan is probably the only lead Bollywood actor that acts well (apart from character artists like Naseeruddin shah, Om Puri), I like all the songs in Dil Chahta Hai, but this one is the best.

Jaane Kyon from Dil Chahta Hai.

What’s your list? Would you like to share? Go ahead take this as a tag and put it up in your blog, if you got an interesting list. It can be any of the Indian Language.

Zen and the art of Cooking

Is Cooking an art?

Cooking is just cooking. Cooking starts of as just a process to learn and then It becomes an art in the hands of an able master. A master chef would say that the best food is not made by its ingredients, but the way it is made with it. There is a lot of philosophy associated with Cooking than just following recipes. Recipes are mere guides. The universal truth about cooking is:

“The same dish cannot be made the same way, again!”

Even master chefs would agree to this. They would make it tasty every time, but it may not look or feel or even taste the same every time.

So what has Zen got to do with Cooking? Everything!

There may be a lot of aspects to cooking, but according to me there are 4 aspects that will make a particular food, the best product of art ever.

HOSPITALITY

Hospitality is not just about how you treat the guests. It is about how you bring your guests and set them free in the confines of your environment. The guest can be anyone – a new friend, or a relative or even the family in the house.

This is an aspect of cooking that happens before the chef even enters the kitchen. We can refer this to ambiance in a restaurant to an extent. We always have some anxiety in a new place. Hospitality is about letting that go away and making them comfortable. Only a relaxed mind, a mind that is free, a mind that is sure about its environment, will be able to taste the goodness in a good food. Even Wolfgang puck would need this for his food to taste good.

I know this is abstract, but a little prior knowledge about the guest will help you make this happen. This is where the non-cooking member plays an important role in cooking (see the paradox here?). They can make the person feel comfortable by talking things of their interest or indulging in simple activities of their interest that can free their mind.

This is what they call it as – ‘BE AT HOME’

COOKING SPACE

How would you like to have your food? In a Clean Plate or In a plate that is not washed?

If you answered Clean plate, then why should you start cooking in a dirty kitchen? Space is precious. According to Zen, Space and the Material world go together. They are different entities, yet they cannot be separated and hence they are one. Would you know how to define space if there was nothing but space in this world and vice versa?

So it is very important to start cooking in a space that is clean, that is devoid of anything from your previous stint of cooking. Just like how the universe appeared from the void or singularity, your cooking should also start from nothing or Shoonya (Zero) or empty space.

A Clean space will indicate a clean mind, a clean mind with no prejudices and hence the cooking will start with no silly assumptions from before. You will be creative each time. Why do you think programmers like to write the code from Scratch? Why do you think Mothers clean the kitchen space before hitting the bed every night?

Start with a Clean Slate everyday!

SPONTANEOUS

When Arjuna was learning to shoot the arrow, he was asked what he saw through his eyes, as he aimed. He said he saw the eyes of a bird. When he shot the arrow after that, he didn’t think even for a second. He just shot it.

So if you know what to do and figured out how to do, just do it. The moment you think as you do, you will likely be derailed from the original plan. You may end up spoiling the dish. But at the same time, if you think you can add a pinch of salt more than what the recipe says, then just add it without thinking. That will be spontaneous. Your alterations to the recipe should also happen in a spontaneous way. Also, the alterations you did today, may not work the same way the next day, so don’t bother to take notes of those alterations.

Just feel the flow, and be spontaneous. Why do you think a Mother’s food tastes the best in the world. It is because she knows you more than you think she does and she cooks the food in a spontaneous way which will make you love it! That is why it is called the Mother’s touch. It is her spontaneous alterations that suits the needs of the family, makes it taste the best in the world.

COOKING MIND

What is on your mind today? Happiness or Sorrow or Jealousy or any kind of emotions? Your food that you cook will reflect what is in your mind. So what is the best emotion that should be on your mind when you cook? Is it Happiness or should we not have any emotion at all?

It is Love that you should have in your mind when you cook. When you mind is full of love for your family and yourself , your food will taste fantastic. You can’t hate yourself and still love others, only when you love yourself (which is not the same as self centered) you will be able to love others. It flows from the inside to outside.

A Mother’s food tastes the best because of the love she radiates from within herself to the whole family. We fail to see that in her most of the times, but we sure enough love the food that she cooks. What we like is not just the tasty food, but we indirectly feel that love. And when you tell her that you enjoyed the food very much, that is all the acknowledgment she needs, to know that her love has reached you.

Cook like a mother, with all the love in your mind.

Here is an Imaginary Conversation with the Wife:

Wife: “You don’t cook much or often. All you did was a silly Rasam when you were a Bachelor! How can you even write an article on the art of cooking?”

Me: “Why not! Did Vatsayana, before writing his book, ever …” (Wife Interrupts).

Wife: “Enough, I got the point. Now, Let’s keep your blog at PG!”

Interview of an Ordinary Man

I believe that every living species in this universe deserves to be interviewed in its own way. Because, with respect to that living species, a lot of important events happen around him/her, which is definitely a worthwhile information to share with his/her fellow living beings.

Aparna is interviewing me with the following questions and as a blog friend, I am very much glad to answer her interesting questions.

1. Which actor and/or politician would you like to meet? What would you talk to him/her?

There is not really anything in particular that I will like to talk to any person, because I believe what is more important is to hear whatever the person wishes to say rather than what you want them to say. And So …

I would like to meet one Actor – Superstar Rajinikanth. Spend one full day with him in his office. There is a lot of humbleness to be learned from this legend.

I would like to meet M.G. Ramachandran ( I know he is dead, but there is no other politician I would like to meet from the current times). Spend one full day with him in his office. It is known that he doesn’t allow any of his guests to leave without having food with him. There is a lot of Hospitality and Kindness to be learned from him.

Other than an Actor and a Politician there are people that can give us a lot of life lesson. I would like to meet a Buddhist Monk in a Monastery and live there one full day leading the exact same life that he does. I would also like to invite him over to my home in Madurai and spend one full day with us. There is a lot of life to be learned from him.

2. What is your opinion about the occult?

There is nothing called Supernatural. Everything is natural. Supernatural is just a perception of humans who cannot explain something. The realization has to be that everything including us is nature. Existing with the nature, respecting ourselves and the life and things around us, is the true purpose of life.

3. What have you learnt from your kid?

How to lead my whole life moving forward. A Kid is a reflection of yourself and when you are able to see that, you will begin to love everything in life.

4. What do you think is the best – Barney/Elmo/Barbie/Lego blocks/ cars/trains/ the box any of these came in – or wait…your mobile for your kid? ( you could replace or rephrase this question )

The best toy that my kid has ever got is not Barney or Barbie or the Blocks. They are just material toys that can be interesting for a year or so, but would run away with time. The best toy that my kid has ever got is me and my wife.

This is also one thing that I learned from my kid. Often, we are stuck in a rut to find the best toy that the kid will love to play or learn with, but we forget that we, as parents, can be the best toy ever for the kid to grow up with. I certainly believe she loves to go on an elephant ride with me better than just punching some buttons in her toys. The best thing about parents is, they never get boring, they last a lifetime and they need no battery replacement.

20 years down the time, when my daughter is old enough to read this post and understand what I meant by this, and comes to us and hugs us and whispers “I Love you Dad and Mom”, we will know that she has realized that her best toys in her life were her parents.

5. What is the advice you would give to your younger self – say when you were a teenager? (I liked this question from Teeni)

Considering how I am now, There is no need for me to go back to my younger self and give him any advice. I will let him face the bumps, hardships of life and end up where I am right now, because it all turned out to be just fine. In a way I am happy that it happened that way, so there is no need and there is no point to change what happened before.

Now, I would like to interview my readers who are interested. If you are willing to take this interview, please do the following steps:

1. Pick any one of the question from the above 5. Just one question and not more than that.

2. Answer that in any way – 1 word or 1 line or 1 paragraph or a nice 15 mark essay with diagrams and flowchart.

3. Publish it in your blog or put it as a comment (If you don’t have a blog) or start a new blog and publish it(because, this could be a good reason to start your blog).

Looking forward to hear from you. Thank you for reading this.

Love and Peace.

The Valentine Light

Light, originally uploaded by ubababu.

Let the Light of Love Shine on you. Happy Valentine’s Day!

PS: You can checkout my Flickr stream on the Sidebar, or just Click here.

Rasam-a-Touille

“Why do we have to eat in a Random Restaurant everyday?” asked my friend S.

“Yes, I agree. Why don’t we cook?” I said, as I set out a stream of hysterical laughter around my room mates.

When you come out to live on your own and when there is no Hostel mess to feed you everyday as you had in College, it is hard to believe that you will be able to cook. It is actually hard to even consider cooking, never mind being able to. So the natural reaction among the gang for cooking was a simple no. Other than me and S there was no one in the crowd, who were excited about the idea of cooking.

We made a few random jokes about the new Woman training staff and made abusive remarks on the male training staff and went back to sleep.

“Anyone can cook Anyway!” said my Grandmother.

“Grandma … What are you doing here?” I tried to whisper hoping not to wake up the roomies.

Grandma: “You were talking about cooking and I thought I might help you”

Me: “But how will you? Hey wait … How do you speak English? I thought you didn’t know English!”

Grandma: “Well this is your dream and I am the figment of your imagination. So that’s how I know English. But anyway, tomorrow being a weekend why don’t you try and make Rasam and Rice. It is very simple!”

I heard Grandma talk some weird Rasam Recipe – Mix a Chameleon Juice in a Glass jar and then slice a pumpkin peel into 10 exact pieces, then cut a cactus into exactly two halves and put them all in a container. After that you pee on it.

“What! Pee on it???” That’s when I woke up and realized it was 7:30 AM and I really had to pee. We lazed around the morning reading the paper and munching some bread with Amul butter and Kissan fruit jam for breakfast. I hit the conversation with S.

Me: “So what do you think about cooking? Do you think we can really do it?”

S: “Yes definitely, I think Anyone can cook Anyway he/she wants”

It was the same words from Grandma from last night’s dream. Am I halucinating? Is the bread gone bad? I pinched myself and it pained. It wasn’t a dream.

Me: “So what are you waiting for then, let’s cook something for lunch. What do you think of Rasam and Rice?”

We set out to buy a single burner portable gas stove. It was something we could quickly buy to experiment what we were going to do. The rest of the gang spent the morning completely disinterested having no idea of what we were doing. It was like we were invisible to them. Even AS, who was food lover, wasn’t caring even a little bit about what was going on. AS can taste food very well and can be a harsh critic of food. In one bite he can quickly write off the restaurant, and so we were daring to give our food to him for feedback.

It was risky. Rasam and Rice was a very ordinary dish. He can easily reject it. But we wanted to try our best.

S: “So where shall we start first!”

Me: “We need chameleon juice”

S: “What?”

Me: “Sorry, I think I need to pee, I feel nervous about doing this. Let me relieve myself of some tension and come back in a few min”

After few minutes we were off to chop the Tomatoes, Onions and using a vessel we mixed tamarind paste, Rasam powder and added Tomatoes to it. We realized Onion is not an ingredient of Rasam and had to keep it aside, perhaps use it as a side dish. The ready made Rasam powder that we had bought smelled very good so we kept stirring the contents for a while and then let it boil. We then added Cilantro as the final touch and let it simmer for a bit and took it off the stove finally.

Making Rice is a piece of Rice Cake. Yet we managed to over cook it a little bit and made it softer. Overall, the meal wasn’t anything brilliant. Rice and Rasam was ready. We put a small serving in a plate and gave it to AS for his review. Our limbs were trembling out of fear. This time S had to pee, we waited for him.

Here came the moment. AS took the plate from us and grabbed a nice big amounts of Rasam Rice in his right hand. He then put it in his mouth with a slurping noise and sat there stunned. The camera zoomed into his face and went through his eyes into a flash back, in which Young Boy AS was having a plate full of Rasam Rice and Chips in his home.

Young Boy AS said “I love Mom’s Rasam Rice!”

The Camera came back to the Young Man AS who said “Super da! Sign me up, I am joining the Cooking club”.

We smelled our victory in the form of a great Rasam. We won, we started cooking our own food and we never turned back. We loved the food, whatever we cooked. It was a very satisfying meal everytime.

Grandma appeared in my dream again “See I told you, Anyone can cook Anyway”

Worries

Everyone worries about something at some point. It is just that “the some point”, is very different for Men and Women. Men and Women worry about things at different points and believe me, that makes all the difference. Here are a few case studies:

CASE 1: THE LAUNDRY

A Woman buys a Churidhar. She starts worrying about how to wash it right from the time she buys it. The dress is beautifully worked, but the only problem is it can only be hand washed. So, she is worried that she should remember not to machine wash it.

Now, the Man of the house always likes to impress the Woman for various reasons. So he rolls up his sleeves and tries to do the laundry himself, in the pretext of providing a surprise help. But the problem is he does a machine wash. Until this point, the man is not worried.

Man: “Honey, I’ve washed all your clothes!”

Woman: “Oh, that’s so sweet! wait … what about that churidhar?”

Man: “That too Honey, and you are very welcome”

Woman: “Oh my God, you can’t machine wash it!”

Here is when the Man starts worrying and prays to every god in every religion, to save that one churidhar from the evil effects of the washing machine.

CASE 2: THE COOKING

A Woman knows how to cook, because she is worried about what to cook even before she enters the kitchen. All your trips to Grocery stores to buy vegetables and stuff is because a Woman is worried 7 days in advance, as to what needs to be cooked the whole of next week. She doesn’t write that down, but she keeps them in mind. (Why else you think you are sent to the Grocery store? To stuff the Kitchen shelves and fridge for decoration?)

So if she says she is going to cook “Venn Pongal” and “Sambar” today, it means that she has already worried about buying all of its ingredients, 7 days in advance. This is exactly why you are having that dish today. Not because of some magic.

A Man on the other hand, only thinks that he knows how to cook, but he is far from it. The problem is the Man assumes that there are house elves that take care of putting the items in Kitchen shelves and fridge. So, he sets out to surprise his wife by trying to make a simple dish – Pasta. He promptly lets the water to boil and as soon as it reaches slightly above boiling point (noted from excessive smokey water vapour from the container) he begins looking for the pasta.

This is when the Man starts worrying. Too bad, he needs to leave it to luck to find the pasta and even if he finds the pasta, it is usually the case that there is no pasta sauce in the house 99% of the time. The legend has it that this is how Man learnt to make boiling water.

CASE 3: CLEANING

A Woman is worried about disorderliness, atleast to an extent. She is worried if the house will get clumsy and look bad to the guests. So she indulges herself in keeping things clean, decorating the home and basically tries to keep everything in order, even before it gets dirty and clumsy.

A Man just lives. He starts using things, takes the remote from the table and puts it in the couch, keeps the coffee mug without the coaster on the table, eats as he roams around the house and spilling stuff, runs cables from one point to another to setup wireless connection, and much more. After doing all that, he starts worrying that the house is now in disorder and it needs to be cleaned and sorted out.

This is when the Woman of the house, hands over the Vacuum cleaner to the Man.

CASE 4: LOOKS

Woman are worried about how they look, even before they look or any one else looks at them. I have one word for you – Make up. Ok, that was 2 words, but the point is, the worry about the look starts from the beginning.

Man walks to the closet and fetches the nearest available clothing to wear for the day. It will be too much effort to reach for the good shirt in the corner of the closet. He may or may not comb standing in front of the mirror, but he is hardly worried, how the clothes look on him.

A Colleague walks by the Man and says “Hmm… Interesting shirt for the pants!”.

That’s it, the Man is completely worried now. Not because the shirt makes him look like a clown, but because it is usually difficult to pass a witty reply for such comments.

CASE 5: BLOGGING

A Woman thinks a 1000 times before she blogs about a topic. What if people think I am stupid? What if people don’t like it? What if I get flamed?

A Man publishes the post. He then worries about a 1000 things, but then he just updates the post with those 1000 things as tags for the post “I-may-be-stupid”, “People-may-not-like-it”, “Inflammable”.