For breakfast two glasses of water melon, green all right, sweet less right. A water melon costs Rs.25 per kg in Borivili. 'Time you got into some diet. Malayalam food channels prescribe water melon for steady BP,' edicted Rama. Well, me could not do anything about it; she agreed to add spoons of sugar and the brick red liquid went down well. Not lucky as the population at Blandings Castle in Service with a Smile, A Blandings Story by P.G. Wodehouse. 'The morning sun shone down on Blandings Castle, and the various inmates of the ancestral home of Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, their breakfasts digested, were occupying themselves in various ways,' intros W. There was nothing to make a digestion; a breakfast is and will always be dosas, wadas, chuneys and burning molaka podi (Thanjavur version). Sunshine there was, the June variety, with rains lolling in Alleppey. An empty stomach cant laugh not even at a contented Empress of Blandings overseen by Lord Emsworth. Waited when Rama announced a compensatory early lunch leading to the many Taj and Oberoi lunches in me career. Me was forever marked for seminars; yapping at seminars did not start without me or that's what me thought those days. In Mumbai winter, US and UK corporates landed at Taj and Oberoi on their way to Goa or Taj; they gassed on everything of the Indian economy. 'Best place to invest,' they said with some minister in attendance at steel, shipping, textile seminars; flying back home they forgot their words; in summers, seminars were one a week against the winter norm of five seminars a week; Indian managers, having nothing to do, also spoke and formed lunch lines at buffet tables; rotis, rice, dal makania, curd, papads and some stale gulab jamuns, were always on offer at five or seven star hotels (me do not know the basis of assigning stars); they were mostly many days food warmed today, the same menu, tasting the same through the year; no offence meant to Taj and Oberoi; free food is better than no food and as a junior reporter it was okay. Seminars started at 9 ended at 5 with a minister dropping in anytime, being a minister; never a sorry for the delay; and the corporates with folded palms bowing to the crook; they were licensing days; needed a licence from the Planning Commission to piddle. Editorial bosses were keen on the minister and the minister obliged with his PA distributing speech copies to reporters. Evenings me would type a few ministerial lines (which never got published) to earn Rs.400 per month. On that salary, seminars were a foody boon. Me first seminar was on steel at Taj; an entire Saturday went waste; didnt understand a thing; those days steel - round bars, plates and sheets - were sold in the black outside Masjid steel market. Open deals. On Sunday filed a report of the minister; published next day as newsflows on Sundays were thin. Nobody read the report. Same today. Times go, seminars are no more or rare, retired; and there is Rama offering an avial of bitter gourd, mukku manga and gur; a pick-up from a Malayalam food channel; she allowed me in the kitchen to watch the process; long cuts of vegetables boiled with coconut; me was offered a helping and it tasted well with rice and papad; at 1 the lunch went off well. 'Fine,' said Rama and me agreed. Beat all corporate lunches. Lord Emsworth may have rejected it. Me relished it. Thanks. Can we please stick to the avial skilled in pride over thousands of years in Hindu Brahmin homes?
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Bitter gourd avial
For breakfast two glasses of water melon, green all right, sweet less right. A water melon costs Rs.25 per kg in Borivili. 'Time you got into some diet. Malayalam food channels prescribe water melon for steady BP,' edicted Rama. Well, me could not do anything about it; she agreed to add spoons of sugar and the brick red liquid went down well. Not lucky as the population at Blandings Castle in Service with a Smile, A Blandings Story by P.G. Wodehouse. 'The morning sun shone down on Blandings Castle, and the various inmates of the ancestral home of Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, their breakfasts digested, were occupying themselves in various ways,' intros W. There was nothing to make a digestion; a breakfast is and will always be dosas, wadas, chuneys and burning molaka podi (Thanjavur version). Sunshine there was, the June variety, with rains lolling in Alleppey. An empty stomach cant laugh not even at a contented Empress of Blandings overseen by Lord Emsworth. Waited when Rama announced a compensatory early lunch leading to the many Taj and Oberoi lunches in me career. Me was forever marked for seminars; yapping at seminars did not start without me or that's what me thought those days. In Mumbai winter, US and UK corporates landed at Taj and Oberoi on their way to Goa or Taj; they gassed on everything of the Indian economy. 'Best place to invest,' they said with some minister in attendance at steel, shipping, textile seminars; flying back home they forgot their words; in summers, seminars were one a week against the winter norm of five seminars a week; Indian managers, having nothing to do, also spoke and formed lunch lines at buffet tables; rotis, rice, dal makania, curd, papads and some stale gulab jamuns, were always on offer at five or seven star hotels (me do not know the basis of assigning stars); they were mostly many days food warmed today, the same menu, tasting the same through the year; no offence meant to Taj and Oberoi; free food is better than no food and as a junior reporter it was okay. Seminars started at 9 ended at 5 with a minister dropping in anytime, being a minister; never a sorry for the delay; and the corporates with folded palms bowing to the crook; they were licensing days; needed a licence from the Planning Commission to piddle. Editorial bosses were keen on the minister and the minister obliged with his PA distributing speech copies to reporters. Evenings me would type a few ministerial lines (which never got published) to earn Rs.400 per month. On that salary, seminars were a foody boon. Me first seminar was on steel at Taj; an entire Saturday went waste; didnt understand a thing; those days steel - round bars, plates and sheets - were sold in the black outside Masjid steel market. Open deals. On Sunday filed a report of the minister; published next day as newsflows on Sundays were thin. Nobody read the report. Same today. Times go, seminars are no more or rare, retired; and there is Rama offering an avial of bitter gourd, mukku manga and gur; a pick-up from a Malayalam food channel; she allowed me in the kitchen to watch the process; long cuts of vegetables boiled with coconut; me was offered a helping and it tasted well with rice and papad; at 1 the lunch went off well. 'Fine,' said Rama and me agreed. Beat all corporate lunches. Lord Emsworth may have rejected it. Me relished it. Thanks. Can we please stick to the avial skilled in pride over thousands of years in Hindu Brahmin homes?
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