You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2007.
Yes! I can finally drive! All the mysteries surrounding gears and clutches etc have been demystified and I can actually drive from Point A to Point B! Of course, I still have to pass the DL test, and thats a month away. But today was the last day of my classes.
The first day when I sat behind the wheel, I was very self-conscious. I had no idea where the keys to the ignition were! I sat there dumbly, listening to my instructor explain to me the basics before I could start the car. I was a bit uncomfortable for some reason, as I had wanted someone from my family to accompany me during the classes, but no one could come for various reasons. This guy was a complete stranger, and he and I would be in the car, for half an hour. I wished someone was there with me. In two minutes, he deflated my worries when he started calling me ‘aunty’. GOD! I was so irritated, I forgot to be uncomfortable. I asked him his age, and he said he was 21. I told him he had better not call me ‘aunty’, but if he wanted, he could call me ‘apa’ or something like that. Grr! But the first day was pretty smooth otherwise.
Two more days went by like this, and I realised that I liked being behind the wheel of the car. However, after that was a weekend and on Monday, this guy didnt turn up. Apparently, he wasn’t well. The next day, a completely new guy turned up. He was shorter than the first guy, and looked about five years younger than him.
For some reason, I took to him immediately. And without any instruction from me, he was calling me ‘didi’, and I was ok with it. I coerced him into telling me his age, and he told me reluctantly that he was going to turn 19 this November! Gosh! A complete baccha!!
Nevertheless, the baccha was much better than the first guy in teaching me how to drive. The other guy had got conjunctivitis and never turned up after that.
Last Sunday, I told ammi that I wanted to try driving her Maruti 800. She looked scared and shocked at the same time. It so happened that we asked Sidra to come along, as mom didnt want to hold Az and sit in front. In case I crashed or something, I’m sure. Saboor also decided that he wanted to come. So it was all four of them in the cramped 800, which felt a lot different from the Santro I’d become used to driving in. I started the car and tried to move forward, but it would stop. This happened for a frustrating 6 to 7 times, and when finally the car did move, I had to take a right turn. The moment I turned, I panicked and almost drove the car up against the sidewalk!!
Ammi decided that it wasnt safe to let me drive around without an L-Board sign and so we went back, got red tape, and stuck it at the front and back of the car and went again. Once again, it took so long for me to start the car, and then we cruised around for barely five minutes before I reached the house again. After that, everyone stepped out, probably feeling lucky that they were still in one piece…:D
Well, i’m kind of sad that the classes are over. I used to look forward to them every day!Gosh, now I have to wait until I can drive the 800 again. This time, I’m fractionally more confident. Lets see what happens! Like a cheeky cousin of mine who retorted when he heard that I was learning to drive, do pray for me and the people and dogs on the road! ( said with no cheekiness, and complete sincerity!)
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One more creation from the talented Shazu. She intends to give away all these gel candles as gifts on her mehendi day to all the ladies in the family. (Psst! All those roses in the earlier picture are inside these candles now!)
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My sister in law Shazu is very creative when it comes to making something with her hands. She loves making candles and she\’s quite an expert at creating flowers out of many types of medium. For instance, she learnt how to make flowers from wax, and translated it into flowers in ceramic, and then flowers from a paste made from bread and fevicol. She can make flowers in net and now she\’s made flowers in some other medium..using fevicol and something else. Whatever it is, its gorgeous!!!
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Took this from my phone on the way back from Alathur. We were waiting at a railway crossing, waiting for the train to go by. Dusk was setting in, and crows sat on electric poles. There were no vendors selling the usual tender coconut water and cucumber and other stuff. I guess it was too late for them anyway.
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Whenever I went to Vellore, amma (my naani) would call me aside and when no one, specifically my mother, was looking, she\’d hand me some aamchoor. How I loved her for that! Aamchoor was something even better than chocolate!
Sour, tart, dripping with salt…a piece of aamchoor could last for more than two hours if you just nibbled at it. And it was something we often did, nibbling at the aamchoor while playing cards with the others, or simply lazing around in the old house in Vellore, or lying down on that huge swing that was there in amma\’s house.
As I grew older, however I started liking aamchoor that was dry and not soft and squishy. I wanted to learn how to make it, but every year, during the mango season whenever I\’d put out the mango pieces in the sun, they\’d magically grow less and less, and even less, until there wasn\’t much to dry anyway. Magic being, one of us who would pop a piece or two on our way to \’check\’ it out on the terrace, to shoo away crows ostensibly.
Last week on my trip to Vellore, I had my first bout of car sickness. I MUST be growing older. I\’ve never had car sickness ever! But this was awful! Spinning head and squirming insides! They called for a nice, big piece of aamchoor to quell it. But as luck would have it, no one had any.
At our stop in Visharam, there was no aamchoor in chichajan\’s house(he\’s my mom\’s uncle). Then, in Sathvacheri, there was no aamchoor in my aunt\’s house either. I was getting desperate and didn\’t want to sit in the car at all!
On our way back, we had to stop at khalajan\’s house(mom\’s youngest sister) who lives in Alathur. I asked her if she had and she said she\’ll be right back. She came back with this HUGE bag of aamchoor and gave it all to me!!!
Azeem also loves aamchoor and he was hankering after it. So I told him, we\’d split it back in Bangalore. On the way back, I happily nibbled at two pieces and watched disgusted as Saboor popped a whole piece in his mouth. He used to hate aamchoor when he was small, but thats changed now.
Aamchoor was the only thing that helped me out last year when I was pregnant and had such awful digestion problems. On the way back, I asked Zakia aunty how to properly make aamchoor and she gave me instructions. Will post that later in another blog.
Mmm! Right now, I\’m fasting and all this talk of aamchoor is literally making my mouth water. I\’d better stop right now.
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Its not a good and clear picture. But what could I do? Sab was pushing and jostling and was very irritated that I was taking pictures when all he wanted to do was to dig into it.
Whenever abbu used to take me to Fatima bakery, I\’d always have their chocolate eclair. I dont know why, but it was a favourite of mine then. I\’d forgotten about it, until recently, when the Sweet Chariot outlet opened up near home. Their chocolate eclair was much more superior than the one at Fatima\’s. It has a fresh cream filling, and is quite light. Saboor loves it.
I got hold of this recipe book at the Landmark Sale this Saturday. It has all sorts of puff pastries, and choux pastries and short crust pastries in it. Sab wanted me to make chocolate eclairs and I did make it on Saturday.
The only thing was that I didnt have a proper piping bag to squeeze out the eclairs. So they became small and thin. I loved their recipe for chocolate frosting and I think I can eat it straight off the pan!
I was worried about how it would taste, but Sab ate two and he said that they \’almost\’ tasted like the one at Sweet Chariot. Now, that isn\’t true, but its a relief that he liked it and he ate it. Sometimes, after all my hard work, he turns up his nose and says he doesn\’t like it, or worse, he doesn\’t even taste it. Whew!
It’s music to my ears. Listening Az speak his first words. I can’t say what was his first word as he has been babbling for quite some time now, and I could never distinguish babble from actual word.
The funniest thing is that he has four to five versions of names for the same thing. Like for me, he calls me ‘Ammi’, ‘Immi’, ‘Mimmy’ and ‘Mammy’, whichever he feels like at the time.
Then, he progressed to ‘baby’. I don’t know what looks like ‘baby’ to him. But sometimes, he looks at his favorite toy or cup or his walker, and he calls out, ‘Baybee’, or ‘Babbi’, or even ‘Babbai’ 
Then he was calling Parvez bhai, ‘thatha’. I then realised he’s imitating Saboor and calling him ‘chacha’. Sometimes he calls Anjum ‘thathi’ – his version of Chachi, and sometimes he calls her ‘Baabi’. Now that, I think is because he hears Shazu calling her ‘Bhabhi’. Amazing, isn’t it!!!
A couple of days back, he looked at Papaji and said, ‘Pappy’. A little later, he was in ammi’s arms and then she called out to papaji for something. On hearing her say ‘Papaji’, he added, ‘Pappji’
Ok, enough now. This raving mother will just go on and on about her babbling baby!! But sheesh, it’s SO exciting!!!!
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I have a morbid fear of butterflies. Silly as it seems, I always feel squeamish about insects that feel soft or dry..and a butterfly is a little of both, with its soft body and its dry, papery wings. Whenever a butterfly comes near me, I\’m the one that\’s running away, as if chased by a poisonous bee or something.
Anyways, yesterday, Sunday, mom had decided to go to Vellore for a one day trip. I went along with her, and Azeem and Zakia aunty came along with us in the Swift.
As we passed Hosur Road, the road became wide and stretched out endlessly in a double road. This is a part of the National Highway that has been maintained very well. In the median between the double road, flowers have been planted, and it all makes for a picturesque scene, with flower bushes nodding in the wind, and mountains ahead, on your side and everywhere.
Yesterday we noticed that there were scores of butterflies. They seemed to be going a bit berserk with all those flowers and they zoomed everywhere. Ammi was sitting in front with Azeem and she was the one who first noticed them.
I was glad that the AC was on and the windows rolled up. Imagine if those butterflies flew in!! Then something very sad happened. Although I dislike butterflies, I can view them with pleasure. The pleasure that a pretty and beautiful thing can give us.
One butterfly flew straight at us and rammed into the windshield. Splat! Luckily we didnt see any wings or anything, but there was a yellow splat. Saboor looked worried. What was that? Why did the butterfly hit the windshield? He asked us, but what could I say? Azeem joked that it was the butter from the butterflies…
Anyways, sometime later another butterfly came and we had a pink smear. A green smear. Saboor started asking us when we would cross this stretch. He didn\’t want more butterflies dying. But they were dying all right. They kept crashing into our windshield and windshields of other cars and trucks too. Ammi saw a lot of dead butterflies on the side of the road.
I thought back to a time when Saboor was little. About 3 years old I think. We would walk to his play school every morning. He had asked me where do butterflies go and sleep? I didn\’t know the answer to that. I still don\’t know I guess.
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After a long, long, and very long time, I sat down and wrote a story for Open Sesame. From the past three years, after I\’d joined Commit, I thought that something elemental had gone from within me. I wasn\’t able to write for children anymore. The thought scared me, but then I let it go and got busy with my novel and work and then pregnancy and then Azhaan.
Every time I met someone who used to read my stories in Open Sesame, I had to tell them that yes, I stopped writing for Open Sesame because I didn\’t have time. But the truth was, I was afraid I could no longer write stories that kids would enjoy. Daksha had rejected three of my stories in a row and after that, I simply gave up. Then Daksha left Deccan Herald and I just decided that writing for Open Sesame was a phase in my life. One which I had enjoyed, but one which wasn\’t going to come back anytime soon.
I recently started writing simplified technology(about computers and internet etc) related articles for Deccan Herald\’s school edition. When I got to know that Daksha was back in DH, and she had asked me to write for Open Sesame, I thought of just going ahead.
I wrote The Milk Monster in an hour, and I sent it to her. She liked it but wanted a lesser word count. After all the edits, its finally out on the front page of today\’s Open Sesame. Click here to read the online version. They\’ve changed the name and its called something else, but the story is essentially the same.
