Looks like my sleep problem is getting worse. I am doing things that I can’t even recollect now
How else can you explain the following screenshot from my Indiaplaza account ?
Wonder how long I must have been online to shop for 16 Million odd items.
Somebody help !!!! I am morphing into a WAG …
I need a therapist !!!!
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers – M. Scott Peck
I can hear my friends groaning. Here he goes again on one of his tangents on life, dealing with dark moods and so on.
Not true this time, my friends.
I stepped out my reading rut with a recent trip to Sapna book house. This time I took time to read a few pages and made sure I am not getting conned again. Here is a quick summary of the reading action over the past week or so.
The Simple truth by David Baldacci : Not his best but still a decent read
Amen:Autobiography of a Nun by Sister Jesme : I bet the original in malayalam would be far more readable. The language is ordinary and some emotion is lacking from the story. Not bad, but if you are aware of the inner workings of Church, the story will not surprise you. Distrubing ? Yes. Shocking ? No.
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown : Just passable according to me. Far too many holes in the story line including the hindi movie like escape from a falling helicopter without parachute :)
Q&A by Vikas Swarup : Of course, the book of Slumdog Millionaire fame. I have not seen the movie, but found the book to be surprisingly good
When a tree shook delhi by Manoj Mitta and HS Phoolka : An actual account of the anti-Sikh riots that followed 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi. Events that led Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to make the following comment 11 years later “I apologize not only to the Sikh community but to the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our Constitution”. Well said, Sir !! After reading the book, my head too hangs in shame that such incidents happened in my country.
Wish you well by David Baldacci : It is a departure from his usual nail biting thrillers. This book is far more laid back, but Baldacci does paint a very nice picture. The story is a simple one, but touches you. For a change his characters seem deep and well formed. I enjoyed this one
I am out of books for now, maybe I should plan a raid to Crosswords shortly.
Speed of reading has been very rapid, I am averaging about a book per two days !!
Sleepless nights have made an untimely and unwelcome return. Mind is all jumbled up, almost beginning to see arrays of floating bodies before my eyes :-(( Frustrating ……
North Indians maybe quick to correct it as Kerala Paratha, but I insist. It is called Porotta in Kerala, I don’t care what the authentic name is !! :-)
Master Chef returned to kitchen today after a longish break. The immense relief from chest congestion after starting oral steroids greatly contributed to this early return. It is a 5 day course of steroids and has really helped.
Predictably, the return featured lots of ready to eat items. Porotta was purchased from MK retail, it comes in a 50% cooked state. You have to just heat it with a touch of Ghee. It comes out really soft and with multiple layers, just like the ones that I get back home in Calicut.
I have heard that attempting to make porotta from first principles often results in a rubbery slipper like mass, so did not even think of making it from scratch !! :-)
Chicken tikka masala was the chosen curry, again made using the ready made Chicken tikka gravy paste [I think it was from a brand called Parampara]. You have to mix the paste well with water and curd. Sautee chicken pieces in ghee till they turn golden brown, add to the previous mixture and cook for 8-10 minutes till the gravy thickens
Tasted really good. I guess it had to , considering how minimal my inputs were to the entire process :-) I have enough curry and porotta to last for couple more days, whether my new found good health will last for that duration is a different question altogether.
All this has made no impact on the eccentricity of my sleep timings, 2 AM now and I am still up :-(
Why the title ??
I have endured an especially frustrating day and I am still fuming. Remember the Dilbert experience that I was talking about in an earlier blog ??
Well the experience just got more bitter. The same article that I wrote up under great personal strife on Friday was mindlessly chopped and changed by one of our enlightened communications leaders. Let me call the person “Poet”, the reason would be apparent to a careful observer employed in the same company as me :-)
What value was added to the article ? None
What creativity was introduced to the article ? None
What was the purpose of the editing ? Not known, other than some ego kick that the person must have received
Were there any grammatical , factual or spelling errors in the original ? No chance
Was the person doing editing better informed than me in the topic ? Ha ha haaaaaa
Would Leonardo Davinci feel happy if an editor came and painted over Mona Lisa's smile because it looked a touch sad ? The beauty of the previous statement being that Davinci is being equated to yours truly ;-). You wanna edit that out “Poet”? But hey you can’t , this is my blog !!
So here is my mark of protest against all the parasitic, uncreative, ego-satisfying editors of the world. Edit this and show me !!
My turn will come “Poet”, my turn will come.
Well, it is 1 a.m in the morning and I’m blogging.
Why, you might ask ?
One of the side effects of battling a chest congestion & asthma is that your sleep becomes very intermittent. I have been so sleepless over the course of last week that I really crashed today. Woke up at 12.30 pm on Sunday, having slept for well over 12 hours !! Naturally I am a bit sleepless now after this marathon sleep fiesta
Now what has this got to do with Pakodas ?
Nothing much, apart from the following facts
(a) My ill health has reduced me from being a master chef to being a King of Leftovers. A sudden and dramatic degradation. Somehow reminds me of the following Malayalam poem :
Randu naalu dinam kondoruthane Thandiletti nadathunnathum bhavaan,
Maalika mukaleriya mannante Tholil maaraappu kettunnathum bhavaan. Non mallus can contact me for the translation :-)
(b) Due to reason a, I do not have any new cooking experiments to write about, hence this story from the vaults
(c) The name of my blog is Random thoughts, so it is natural that much of my writing will be so ;-)
Now pakoda is something that has constantly troubled me. The ingredients are simple enough. Gram flour, salt, and chopped up onions and green chillies.
The problem I have is that my pakodas always end up being a touch undercooked, though they are nice and brown on the outside. I have done some experimentation with oil temperatures, frying them in low flame, high flame, medium flame, everything !! Still they continue to turn out the same :(
Now could it be a problem with my gram flour batter consistency ? Possible, but I doubt it. It must be something to do with the way I fry them and how long they need to be in the oil.
Continues to be a mystery for me.
Btw Bangalore has the classic pakoda weather now. Cloudy and windy with an occasional spattering of rain.
If only I could get them right ……
For a generation like mine, which grew up as kids listening to classics such as Thriller, Beat it, Billie Jean, Man in the Mirror and Bad , the tragic death of King MJ does mean the end of an era.
The guy was undoubtedly a nut case, but also a champion performer and musical genius.
I guess I need to look no farther than MJ’s own song to describe his life.
Like A Comet ,Blazing 'Cross The Evening Sky
Gone Too Soon
Like A Rainbow, Fading In The Twinkling Of An Eye
Gone Too Soon
Shiny And Sparkly, And Splendidly Bright
Here One Day, Gone One Night
Like The Loss Of Sunlight, On A Cloudy Afternoon
Gone Too Soon
Like A Castle, Built Upon A Sandy Beach
Gone Too Soon
Like A Perfect Flower, That Is Just Beyond Your Reach
Gone Too Soon
Born To Amuse, To Inspire, To Delight
Here One Day, Gone One Night
Like A Sunset, Dying With The Rising Of The Moon
Gone Too Soon, Gone Too Soon
Whole day, I was making presentation for a meeting that eventually got canceled. Which is sort of ok as the slides that I were making did not make too much sense. And I am not really charging to the project anyway.
Wait a minute, I have read this somewhere. Surely not in a Dilbert strip ?? ;-)
And to round off the day, I was given the scapegoat (bakra, fall guy, loser, whatever you want to call it) hat to wear to take blame for delay in writing up of an article. The sad part being that this was not even anywhere near my responsibility to start with !! Of course, goes without saying that no one will know that I am the author of the article anyway.
Hey , my specialization as no-upside, plenty-of-downside job man is really taking off !! :)
All this with the steady polyphonic Asthma ‘ringtone’ in the background. Believe me, going through all of the above when you are struggling with your breathing rhythm does make you very very grumpy
So needless to say, I am not in the best of moods today >:o
GGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR …..
I remember this passage from my high school biology text “Asthma is a disease characterized by a sudden inhalation followed by difficulty in exhalation”.
What this does not tell you is that during a particularly bad and prolonged attack, life can seem very dark and gloomy indeed. If you don’t know where your next breath is coming from, you pretty much are forced to have a short term outlook :-)Thank god for inhalers, which have more or less ensured that those prolonged spells are nothing but bad memories !!
I also saw the following statement from Center for Disease Control(CDC) website “In most cases, we don't know what causes asthma, and we don't know how to cure it”. Pretty hopeless, don’t you think ? ;-)
All this classic Bangalore cold weather and my own chest congestion has put me in soup again.
Though like Calvin’s father, I would say Asthma builds character !! It teaches you the value of patience and it makes you understand the virtues of having an unflappable temperament.
Do you know another thing it teaches ?? The most important thing in your life is the next breath that you take in !!
Breathe in, Breathe out . My life continues ….
Past week saw me donning a different hat again, this time that of a porter. Well, not really :-)) I was just coordinating the shipment of household goods from Bangalore to Kerala for a friend.
Invariably the shifters are never on time, the supervisors are always stuck in traffic and there is some last minute hassle or the other. A similar sequence of events saw me stuck at the shifter warehouse for far longer than I anticipated. The end result being a Schumacheresque dash through Bangalore traffic to reach office just in time for a 6 pm teleconference !!
The job is pretty similar to that of driving coaching, not much upside, plenty of downside :-(( I am becoming a sort of specialist in these kinds of tasks .
Was not keeping especially well during the past week either. Heavy chest congestion has reduced me to a leisurely walking speed. Anything more than that results in coughing and asthma !!
Just came back from a drive across Bangalore, was feeling very downcast sitting at home. Reached back in time to catch the last few moments of Federer-Roddick final. I was backing Roddick to win :-(( Great match, nonetheless.
My disappointing luck with books continues, this time in the form of
Then moved on to a borrowed book, Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup. 
Ordered more books, hopefully something good will emerge soon :-((
This time it is not the computer variety, its the real deal. I have been out of service since Tuesday night. Fever hovers around 102 and just refuses to go away. Just beginning to slowly get better now.
It so happened that this was one of the rare occasions when my family was in Bangalore. So I had hot food to eat and plenty of time to spend with them. Bad health can have its own weird set of rewards :) Family went back today, so I back to pauper status.
I am extremely frustrated with the sub-standard quality of books that I have been reading of late. I can’t wait to forget that I ever read miserable excuse of books like BPO-Sutras:The Stories From Inside India's Bpo's And Call Centres by Sudhindra Mokhasi and The Last Testament by Sam Bourne. I can excuse the former, because couple of the stories there were interesting. Mostly they were just boring, repetitive and predictable.
There can be no excuse for The Last Testament though. This was my first ever Sam Bourne book, and he has resoundingly proven that he is quite incapable of putting together a suspense thriller.
It sounded like an interesting plot when I read the back cover. The book completely lacks in pace or suspense. And an extremely weak ending to boot. His attempt at using technology (like use of second life, the way e-mail IDs and passwords are hacked) are laughable, the thriller almost becomes a comedy novel in those sections. I wonder what would happen if a more capable author like Robert Ludlum had gotten hold of the same topic !!
Seems like I have to read 10 awful books to finally stumble upon a good one !!
Well finally wifey seems to have done it. She has done reasonably well in her practical exams, so in around a month she should be able to proudly display her well earned MD title !!
I’m very happy for her. Past 3 years have been soul destroying for me [and no doubt for her as well] at times. But it sure feels nice to know that when it all settles down, it would have been well worth the effort
One of the few days in which I feel so deliriously happy that I feel like singing !! Which one should I sing ??? Aaj mein upar from Khamoshi ? Halka halka sa yeh nasha from Chocolate ? Dil Kya Kare from Salam-E-Ishq ?
You be the judge :-)
6 years and still going strong :-)) Not a lot of those 6 years have bee spent together, but finally light is beginning to appear at the end of the long dark tunnel. Hopefully by next year this time, we will be a happily re-united family again !!
Even now, every time I see a dad and mom walking with their small daughter, I do feel a strong sense of pain. I guess this is a situation that I can never be totally in control of.
Decided not to go home and celebrate the anniversary as I thought it is better not to distract wifey during her final preparations for the practical exams
That leaves me with the ever challenging job of keeping myself occupied. Put on my master chef hat and baked a few chocolate chip cookies, samples below. Tasted very nice too
In fact looked so nice in the photo that several folks accused me of buying the cookies and taking photographs :-)
I have finally decided to take the pains of writing up a recipe :-), you can find it below. Pretty similar to that of a cake
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey *
2- 2.5 cups of maida
2 eggs
1 tea spoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Lots of nuts and chocolate chips :-)) [ I just bought cooking chocolate bars and chopped them up ]
Mix the maida and baking powder and keep aside for 15 mins. Thoroughly mix butter and sugar. [I had used melted butter by microwaving it on low power for a minute or two]. Beat the eggs well with vanilla essence in a mixer and pour to the earlier butter-sugar batter and mix well. You can add honey also now. Fold in the maida and mix till the batter is thick. If it turns out to be a bit watery, add a touch more maida OR refrigerate it for 1/2 hour to get the water out. [ I employed both techniques , btw ;-) ]
Add a spoon or two of the final batter onto a baking pan [I formed a small ball with the dough and just pressed it on to the pan to get the shape]. It spreads as it bakes, so don’t put your clumps close together. Bake in a pre-heated oven ( 180 deg C) for 10-12 minutes, till outside begins to turn dark brown in color. As you take out the cookies, they may feel slightly spongy on top. Allow them to cool down and they become nice and crispy on the outside.
* Original recipe require 3/4 cup each of white and brown sugar, I had no brown sugar, nor do I know from where to get it in Bangalore. Hence used honey which was suggested as an alternative
Let me start with :-(((, this is to represent how badly I am missing my family now. Maybe a familiar rant for some of you, even mildly amusing too perhaps. Ended up spending most of weekend with phone switched off, didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to see anyone.
Moving on to more pleasant things.
The master chef returns yet again with one of his magical mouth-watering creations. This time Paneer Tikka masala !! No idea of a recipe, so basically used the same one as for Chicken Tikka. I marinated Paneer in curd and masalas for couple of hours ( Tandori chicken masala, ginger garlic paste, chilli powder, salt) and grilled it in my microwave oven. Took quite a while to cook, close to 30 mins in my reckoning.
Turned out quite decent and eminently edible. See the photographs below.
I was just too hungry. So forgive the lack of decorations and garnishing :) The onions you see were actually part of the grilling process. I am not a big capsicum fan, else could have added that also to the grill
Hence [for this weekend at least] a resolution to the Pradeep-ian dilemna : To cook or not to cook, that is the question
Came back from a brief vacation to Calicut. I had to go home to provide moral support to wifey for her MD theory exams. Also had to be there for my princess’s first week of school in UKG. Exams went well, so did the first week of school
Only thing that did not go well of course is the part in which I had to come back to Bangalore:-(
Well, I have been thinking. Normally I am supposed to be someone of fairly even temperament and strong mentally. See the following description from a Facebook test Which Periodic Table element are you ?
“Iron ( Fe)
You are strong in character, emotions, ethics and physically. People who know you believe you are reliable and steady. You say what you mean and you will follow through with it because you weighed the positives and negatives of the commitment before you even said yes. Life may though difficulties your way but you are able to cope with them because of your strength..”
So maybe the reason that I have been experiencing so many troughs is NOT because I am not strong enough, it is maybe because no person is strong enough to withstand these experiences !!
There, I made a sweeping and generalized comment covering billions of people about whom I know nothing at all ..
But somehow the statement makes me feel happy. It is the world’s fault, not mine. I am fine. Ha ha ha ha !!!!!!!!
Permanent membership in a mental asylum does not seem to far off now :-)
The random thoughts continue to flow unabated …..
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