Twenty- five Seven

Personally speaking

Recent Posts

  • It really needs a Man to get a House into Shape

    For fear of offending feminists and fellow women, I am afraid today I have come to the conclusion that all it really needs to get a house into shape is a MAN.

    Unbelievable but true.

    Most days I am at home around lunch time and most days the  menu is decided by the men in the house namely the father in law and the husband. This method was devised not because of lack of imagination on the part of the women who actually ran the kitchen but because we wanted to ensure a fool proof method of ensuring that the meals were to the satisfaction of the men who graced our table.

    So this morning I ran out of the house well after my husband’s lunch was packed and told Bayda the Bai to keep it simple not realising that since Father-in-law was out of the house, the meal at lunch time would be so simple as to actually warrant my dipping into the pickle jar. My father firmly believed that a pickle on the table was an insult to a good cook for a good meal didn’t really need a pickle to spice things up. This was the reason my mother never served a pickle on the table and only made it ritualistically to be distributed to all her friends. Thus having never eaten a pickle with my meal, I didn’t even know how to eat a pickle!

    But today I learnt that without a pickle one could literally starve. I also learnt that if there is no man on the table, the food can be simply appalling! All that I had to eat was two cold phulkas, a small bowl of cold, tasteless broad beans and a glass of washed down buttermilk ( i.e buttermilk got after churning the butter). And that was it! I was simply aghast. When I asked Bayda why the meal was so awful she coolly stared me down and said ” But you wanted it simple!”

    I am now convinced that women are down right lazy and motivated to work only if directed by a man. When there is a man about the house there is a different kind of buzz – take him away and it literally falls apart. Housekeeping gets short shrift, cooking even more so and given half a chance the women would literally loll around in bed revelling in the thought that there is nothing to be done……………..

  • Tastes of the Past

    I suppose it is only natural that your cooking repertoire changes as does your age. I remember when I first got married, I would try and stick to the simple recipes and found Tarla Dalal’s  “Joys of Vegetarian Cooking” almost indispensable.Even though my father terms this culinary tradition as most pedestrian and terms it the Cheese Tomato – Ghatkopar Ville Parle axis, I love her recipes which have clear instructions and render perfect results. Another book which I strongly relied on was Mrs. Balbir Singh’s “Indian Cookery”. Alas, while Mrs. Singh’s book remains a classic that is hard to find, I also find the recipes a bit tedious and I must admit to tweaking the recipes to a large extent – combining a few, deleting a few steps and all in all making it really cooking-on-the-go. I would still strongly recommend these two books for fledgling cooks to test their skills on.

    Spurred by my initial culinary successes, I began analysing and dissecting foods as I ate them. Hence I would look forward to our daily dinners outside – especially in fancy restaurants because that gave me a chance to hone my otherwise naive palate. In the good old days when we could easily sip a Mai Tai in the bar a top the Taj while we waited for our table at the Rendezvous to get ready, or when I demanded a chicken vol au vent   to satisfy my midnight pregnancy cravings at the Shamiana or the only place where we could have a genuine Shark Fin soup was at the Golden Dragon dining at Five Star Restaurants was par for the course. Of course they were expensive but not prohibitively so………Today they have become not only unaffordable but down right obscene with the 40% tax that the Government so unfairly levies.
    Apart from the Fiver Stars, the only other dining option was Kwalitys with it pan-Indian presence and appeal, Delhi Durbar for Moghlai, Thakkars for Gujerati, Gaylords for “Continental” some stand alone Chinese joints like Fredericks and Kamling and the hundreds of small eateries that specialised in particular cuisines. The flight of the cooks from the clubs to the Gulf meant the demise of Club food which was genuinely good Anglo Indian stuff that was otherwise seen in Railway menus. 
    When the children came along (which was almost instantly) my repertoire became more nursery than haute cuisine. With staples like Khichadi, pureed spinach, cheese macaroni, roast chicken and fish and chips, I restricted my experimentation to cakes and puddings. For a while my Chocolate Brownies were a prized item in my girls’ lunch box and even during her MBBS days was a “must have before going to the exam ritual”. With packed lunches taking over my kitchen, I became a Recycle Queen with last night’s dinner becoming today’s Lunch Special. Not only did it take ingenuity but also guts to pass off yesterday’s left overs as today’s to die for meals and the children invented a new game of Discovery – trying to identify the origins of the dish of the day.

    A Home Management Consultant

    With growing confidence my cooking became faster and faster and I could whip up meals for 40 people without much help. This was quite a feat considering my very basic kitchen – a small OTG for an oven, a gas tandoor for a grill, a two stove gas cooking range, a small fridge that was totally inadequate for a party and just about two large pots to cook in. But somehow I managed to cook copious quantities ,entertain hundreds of guests and acquire the reputation of being a good cook ( much to my mother’s chagrin who would rather her daughter be known for some scientific discovery of an un-pronounceable name  or the Managing Director of a large corporation. For a while, I too felt the frustration of a trapped housewife ( before it became the pretentious HOME MAKER) and rebelliously labelled myself as a Home Management Consultant. After all, I was being called from time to time for all kinds of information regarding the home right from where to source ingredients to which bus to catch to Borivili.

    Back to the Future

    Ever since the girls flew the coop, I’ve become into a lazy cook and find it hard to even make a cup of tea. When asked for a recipe, I have to scratch my head and try and remember which one it was – the real original, the tweaked original or the truly original which originated in my head……..And unfortunately it never is the same because I actually cook with whatever ingredients I have at hand. This year I had to replace my trusty old oven and bought myself a Morphy Richards OTG. The OTG is a misnomer because I have never ever used it as a Toaster and very rarely as a Grill – for me this has been primarily an oven – a work horse if ever there was one. The new stainless steel wonder remains new because I hardly ever use it since baking is a thing of the past, dinner guests are few and far between and children don’t come home at all. With Anna Shetty’s return to the city this weekend, I hope to be able to familiarize myself with the oven and develop a relationship I had with my old Sunflame . I would have loved to go back to the newer version of my old oven but Sunflame has stopped manufacturing OTG’s altogether. At least this is what I was told by all the cookware distributors at Lohar Chawl – my favourite place to source kitchen ware. My failing eyesight and new equipment made cooking quite a challenge last night and I actually found that I had beaten up the entire cake mix without the sugar even though the cake was not sugar free! I also found that I had left the lasagne to bake in an ice cold oven that remained cold for a good half hour before I realised that I had not set the temperature. 
    Luckily in Mumbai dinners are late and protracted and this delay was considered part of the evening. My guests were happy with my take on Italian and I was happy to see my efforts appreciated. But I now realise that with more sophisticated diners exposed to the fancy cheeses and desserts thanks to the various Master Chef programmes, the easy availability of genuine ingredients like Parmagiano and Pasta, Udon noodles and Thai Ginger, Ricotta and EVO, I had better start experimenting again to produce newer and more magical dishes in my kitchen. I want to now graduate from nursery to basic to more sophisticated cuisine.

  • What really makes you lose weight ?

    The Battle of Losing Weight.

    Today after several decades of trying, I’ve finally accepted the fact that I’ve lost the Battle of the Bulge.

    I have tried starving. I have tried exercise.

    But nothing seems to work.

    The other day, browsing at Crosswords I came across several books on losing weight. Unlike the books in the past which were written by Americans and needed copious quantities of food unavailable in our markets, these books are written by Indians. These books take into account the  Indian psyche and food culture. Many of them are written by savvy young women, in a friendly readable style – almost as pleasant as fiction.
    Women & the Weight loss Tamasha by Rujuta Diwekar remains my all-time favourite. Strangely enough, all these weight loss programs are targeted at making women look better but all weight loss programs for men are aimed at making them healthier! But that’s another story for another day…………..I have been doing yoga since I was 16 years old but am still unable to do the Lotus Pose, the Pose of the Sage and several other convolutions without huffing and puffing. But hope lives eternal and I am sure that one day I will be able to do the Boat without toppling or the Cow Face with ease. Till then I will keep on trying.

    After years of hanging from the door frame in an attempt to grow taller failed miserably, my mother marched me off to my first ever yoga class at Mumbai’s Kaivalyadham . This Institute which is still by the sea has a very scientific approach to Yoga and every prospective student is given a medical test before admission. Then a consultation with a doctor follows, after which a customised set of exercises is prescribed for each student. Gradually building up to your optimum level, each student is carefully taken through the poses by one teacher attending to around four students.  Even today though the place is jazzed up, it lacks the sophistication and slickness of Yoga studios but is popular nonetheless for that old fashioned no-nonsense Yoga where a pose is a pose is a pose.

    But the tedium of the long bus ride far outweighed the promise of growing taller and I gladly abandoned Kaivalyadham for a quick racquet game played with my friends in the club. Even though I could connect the ball and had a fair aptitude for the game, I had no great passion for the sweat it generated and after my friends acquired the boyfriends they were after, this form of exercise was abandoned en masse. Besides, I think I am intrinsically lazy, so for several years, my only form of exercise was walking. And when the girls began playing at the club, I picked up the racquet from where I’d left off.  For several years we had fun at the Club playing badminton during the rains and tennis in the winter months and of course, swimming in the summer. But as the girls grew, their interest in games diminished and I had to re-structure my exercise program yet again.

    The tyranny of the Gym

    In order to keep my weight under control, I tried walking in the dark (before the household woke up) and mixed it up with the fad of the 80’s – Gymming which was more about where you gymmed and who you gymmed with rather than the weight you actually lost. Week after week I would stand on the scale and measure up and watch my inches shrink as my poundage grew. ” It’s all your fat being converted into muscle,” the instructor would tell me ” and muscle weighs more than fat.”

    “But, ” I would counter, “In absolute terms isn’t 50 kg of blubber ( or fat ) less in terms of weight than 54 kg of muscle?” Unfortunately, she never got it. Nor did I; so I threw away my twinkly tights, leotards, leg warmers and other trappings  of the Gym and went back to my walk : an erratic exercise program which again depended on the girls’ school timings, the visitors living at home, my own work schedule ( we worked from home those days) , the weather , my mood etc etc.

    Yo Yo Yoga

    So it was with dismay that I watched the pounds pile on and started looking at the at slim and sexy mothers in their forties with something akin to envy. Once again I was torn between the gym and the yoga mat and it was finally the yoga mat that won.  This time I joined something closer to home – the BKS Iyengar classes at Home Villa . I loved those classes even though I literally had my heart in my mouth as I hung suspended upside down along the wall on the first day itself. I loved those classes even though Kobad, the instructor, would gleefully pump my upper arms and wait for the titter from the class as he described them as  wonderful specimens of pure Porbunder  ghee . I loved those classes that made me stretch till my tendons snapped till one fine day the guy opposite me winked while we were doing Downward Facing Dog. At first I thought it was a tic of his that I’d  missed in previous classes but when I found the frequency of the winking increasing, I just upped and quit.
    UpavisthaKonasana_248
    Once again , for several years I pounded the roads again till I found Shiv Kumar’s Yoga Classes at the Club. Now those were classes that were sheer bliss:  springy wooden floors, colourful non-slip mats and a bright airy space. Besides,  the young girl who took the classes was easily bullied and after the 10th Surya Namaskar, she lamely acceded to our demand to abandon the 11th. What I loved about these classes was the period of rest between every set of poses. However, with two hours of Yoga three days a week bang in the middle of the morning, my time to do things shrank so when my back froze to the floor in a particularly tough Upavistha Konasana , I had to abandon this class too.

    Defying the Law of Gravity

    There were some more years of walking round and round – this time around the Racecourse, round the building or round the neighbourhood till I finally thought I’d fall down dizzy and decided I’d better go back to yoga. Which is what I did. It’s been five years or more that I’ve been going to a Yoga class which is across the road from home. We are a bunch of middle-aged ladies with no passion for fashion and no desire to look good or lose weight. We have finally accepted that weight like age is a phenomenon that defies the Law of Gravity. So we do the Tibetan Rites in an unhurried pace and sometimes skip the Head Stands.  After 5 Sun Salutations, we do some Poses of the Sage, we do a few graceful sequences and then wind down to the most wonderful Dead Man’s Pose, which sometimes, is the only restful period I get in my busy day.
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