Temporarily out of service

Don't you just love professors? They drop you from the summery heaven of food, fun and laughter into a dank, dingy black hole filled with stagnant water called reality in just 5 mins. Here is how mine achieved that.

10 am meeting Monday August 10th 2009

"Last date for submitting the thesis to the Dean is Nov 6th. So you have to defend by Oct. The committee needs atleast 3 weeks to read your thesis, which means you have to hand in the thesis to us by Oct 2nd week. You need to have all your data by the end of Sept, then you can start on the 1st draft and have everything ready by Oct 1st week. Just email me a list of all the sequences you have done so far, we can start the data analysis next week."

11 am priority check in the train

Skip cooking experiments - no way

Skip reading blogs - no way

Skip knitting/ crochet - hell no!

Skip looking after husband - want to, but can't

Skip doing laundry - would love to, but I've a limited number of undies

Skip thesis defense and get lynched by professor - gulp, no

Skip writing nonsensical posts - don't want to but I HAVE to

People, Masala Vade is closing shop till Nov. I will continue urinating in your blogs but will refrain from doing the same in my place. This will give your injured brains (in case any of you did sustain injuries reading my posts) a chance to recoup.

Till then, as Ina Garten says, "Don't have fun without me".

Ciao!

Jai Karnataka!

Dear Dr. Vatal Nagraj,

I was very happy to learn that you and other esteemed colleagues in the Kannada Gadi Horata Samiti have called for a bandh in Karnataka on August 9th. Unveiling Thiruvalluvar's statue is indeed a big offense. Tamil Nadu does not have statues of Karnataka poets so why should we allow the unveiling of a Tamil poet? I am not sure which dimwit high court judge dismissed your plea against the unveiling. These people do not understand that statues are the first step towards converting a state i.e., initially they will want to erect a statue, then they will request for all sign boards to be written in Tamil, their Nalli's and Kumaran stores will invade Karnataka and eventually Karnataka will turn into a mini Tamil Nadu. We have to take precautions to avoid all these nasty so called 'sister' states from invading our territory. In addition to the bandh I also have some other plans to save our Karnataka from being swallowed whole by other states. These include,

1) Ban Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu and other non-Kannada movies from being screened in Karnataka. That way people from other states will be forced to learn Kannada if they wish to watch a movie. This will also teach those Imax theatre people a lesson for charging 150 Rps for a stupid Amir Khan Faana movie and just 80 Rps for a Shivrajkumar movie.

2) The medium of instruction in all schools and colleges must be changed from English to Kannada. This way we can protect our Kannada language from disappearing. This move will also prevent IISc from employing those pesky bespectacled Bengali babus in mass quantities. Who cares if they have degrees from IIT or BITS Pilani, if they can't speak and write Kannada they don't deserve to be in Karnataka.

3) All IT company employees must take the "Kannada Gotha?" (do you know Kannada) test. They should be employed only if they score 65% in the test. All conference calls and meetings should be done only in Kannada. Americans and other firangs need to step out of their English shoes and get into the Kannada chappali. One way this can be achieved is by rewriting all the computer codes like HTML, CAS etc. in Kannada, forcing everyone to learn Kannada.

4) I have noticed that the perpetually wet hair-coconut oil smelling Malayalis are invading our Karnaraka at an alarming rate. I am afraid that they will declare puttu- kadala as the official food of Karnataka. I suggest we build a 35 foot high wall between the Karnataka-Kerala border and open a small Shabarimala and Guruvayur in Nandi hills. This way we can prevent our devout Kannadigas from visiting that coconut oil state and the mallu kuttis from invading our Karnataka.

5) People from the land of gongura and pappulu podi have taken over our mess business. Every bachelor wants to visit the Andhra mess for lunch. We cannot be overtaken by these spice fanatics. We can dig a trench 30 foot deep and 45 foot wide between the Karnataka and Andhra border and fill it with our own precious Cauvery water. For recreational purposes boating and other water activities can be held at the site. This way we garner not only revenue but also let those Telangana people know who is the real boss.

6) We cannot build this water filled trench between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, I am afraid those thieving thayir-sadams will install a pipe in the trench and siphon away our precious Cauvery water. We need to build iron gates as tall as the Great Wall of China and open them once a year during Deepavali. This will give the Tamilians residing in peaceful Karnataka a chance to visit T. nagar and Ranganathan street to horde silk sarees.

7) All things chaats and poori-bhaaji is due to those irritating Hindi speaking people who come to Karnataka via Bombay. We need to employ Tamilian and Telugu soldiers to man our Bombay (or whole of North India)- Karnataka borders. If terrorists plan to sneak into Karnataka, these soldiers will defend us. Through this move, we not only give people from other states a job (how generous of Karnataka) but also save our dashing Kannadiga men from being killed in an attack (how thoughtful of Karnataka). This will also prevent Udit Narayan from crossing the border and lending his God awful nasal voice and sickening pronunciation to Kannada film songs.

8) We must replace Jana Gana Mana with Jai Karnataka and make Kannada the official language. We need to have a separate prime minister (a Kannada speaking one at that) and president (again a shudh Kannadiga) for the state of Karnataka.

I know that I should have written this letter in our beloved Kannada, but I have many readers who come from these 'sister' states. They need to know what a great visionary you are and the steps we Kannadigas are willing to take to protect our beloved Karnataka. They need to know that we Kannadigas do not care about disrupting normal life for a statue, we are not bothered that we are a part of one country called India, we do not care about the success we achieve being united, we could care less about failed crops in other states because of us not sharing Cauvery water. Life is too short to be wasted on such petty things like sharing water or being united. If we have to make Karnataka the number one country, I mean state, we need to put our time, energy and money in note worthy causes like bandhs and strikes.

Dr. Nagraj, you are truly an inspiration to youths and Kannadigas like me. I pray to the great Kannada Maathe to give us more people just like you. On August 9th I will be there burning tires and stoning buses all in the name of Kannada.

Jai Karnataka!

Yours sincerely,

SJ

Why I need a bigger house, reason # 49:

Because not all projects are compact like this one,

Some do end up taking 3/4 of the living room space:

Huh? What? I am a show off? When did I ever deny that?!

Bread Banana Pudding

What do you do when you have bananas that are more black than yellow?

Bread that is more than a week old?

And a husband who when asked to buy coconut to make chutney brings home this,

Bread Banana Pudding of course!

Recipe source - Amma

Dry ingredients:

Bread (not the soft ones)- 10 slices

Banana- 3 cut into thin slices

Sweetened shredded coconut- 1 C (If unavailable just mix 1C shredded coconut, 1/2 C sugar and 3 Tb ghee)

Wet ingredients:

1 C milk

1tsp vanilla essence

5 Tbsp sugar

1)Preheat oven to 380F.

2) Mix all the wet ingredients and set aside.

3) Lay the bread slices on a 9 by 9 baking tray. Smear little ghee on the bread slices.

4) Add 1/2 C of the milk mixture on the bread slices.

5) Layer the banana slices on bread.

6) Add another layer of bread and sprinkle the milk mixture. Add the banana slices. Like so,

7) On the top most layer sprinkle the sweetened coconut.

8) Bake for 20-25 mins till the coconut flakes turn golden.

9) Let it rest for 10 mins before serving.

Notes:

1) Its best not to try this with soft bread. The ones in India are perfect for this. I used white bread and the lower most layer became sticky, next time I will try this with a baguette.

2) The quantities will vary due to variation in size of the bread and banana and also on how thin you slice the banana. Please adjust accordingly.

3) Tastes divine as is and even better with vanilla ice cream.

Sob!

I am what you would call, Jack of all trades king of none. I have tried my hand at everything possible. Why? Because you get only one life! When I was small I used to play in the mud all day long, unable to bear this my parents forcibly put me in a bharatnatyam class. I 'danced' for a week and absolutely hated it. The teacher was a nutjob who said I had to tap my feet so hard that the sound should reach my house (which was 3 roads away!). So I put my bestest puppy eyes (& few crocodile tears) went and pleaded with my dad to stop the dances classes. He did :D Then came Bengali song class, I learnt those for 8 months then the teacher moved away and I had to stop. My parents thought, 'meh Bengali or Carnatic its all music' and put me in a Carnatic music class. IT WAS THE WORST MUSIC CLASS EVER! The Bengali teacher was so much fun, we learnt all kind of folk songs and it was fun to sing a new language compare this to the lame 'sa re ga maa'. If I got bored of 'sa re ga maa' the lady made us (my sis and me) sing 'ga re sa maa' yuck! I think I tolerated that for a month, I couldn't take more of that!

Then came drawing class, an old man used to come home and teach me and my friends. This went on for 5 months then he moved to a different town and end of drawing. After this was swimming and badminton classes- oh such fun! When I started working it was yoga class, which I had to stop because I had to come to swargalok (read:USA courtesy Aparna ;) ) .

I used to watch a LOT of you-tube videos when I landed here, I remember watching Hariprasad Chaurasia and thinking, 'hmmm...flute'. I enrolled in a flute class. After a whole week of just blowing air I finally got the whee sound from the flute! Then came the notes, I thought it would just be A, B,G and C. Oh God how wrong I was! There was D, E, F,A sharp, B sharp, C sharp, G shrp, A flat B flat, C flat, high A, high B, high C, high D, high E, high F, high C, low D, low E, low F phew! 2 years and 3 months every Saturday from 10 to 10.30 am, just me, Mrs. Fisher (she is 60+) and our flutes making music (or she would be making music and me sound!). Last week she dropped the bomb "they are going to increase the fees", the new amount is way beyond my budget. I have decided to stop classes. Unlike the glee I felt in saying goodbye to the dance and carnatic music teacher I feel sick to my stomach to tell her goodbye. Maybe because we went beyond just notes and Morzart. We spoke about gardening, how to shovel snow (I live in a flat, no need to shovel snow, but still!), the weather (she would know when there would be a snow storm/thunder storm) her dogs, sofa sets (crazy I know!), cough drops :P !!

The flute is mine and I can still practice at home, but it is never going to be like playing with Mrs. Fisher :(

Goodbye Mrs. Fisher, I didn't turn out to be like Chaurasia but I will have things to say when someone talks about instrumental music.