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From ME to WE

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   Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. Every one of us is nostalgic over something or the other and this gets stronger as we grow older. And when it involves moving into a new apartment, it is certainly a vast change. The people, the place, the community, the neighbourhood  - you are in for a sudden change, and it takes you a long time to adjust to it. I moved from the earlier home, our first purchase about 20 years ago. And you can judge how strong my emotions would be. My son’s childhood was in that place, and he still feels strongly about the old house. Since we moved into the new place, he has been away for studies and work. So he fondly reminisces only our earlier house as his home.   I couldn’t let go of the house so much that I had kept it under lock and key while occasionally going there to clean up the place. But as time grew, I realised that my hold over the old place getting loosened and I slowly got into the mindset about letting it go. But till that time, when I prepare
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The breakfast conundrum

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If you are gloating over solving the day’s Wordle on your third attempt, try the daily breakfast/tiffin conundrum. For someone like me who hates cooking, this is the worst puzzle that tires me out at the start of the day. Most of you may have your favourite word to start solving the daily Wordle puzzle. The keyword that you rely on to find the word of the day in minimum attempts. Similarly, I have one for my breakfast riddle. But this one’s usually towards the end. After exhausting the options of Idli, Dosa and Pongal, this serves as my saviour of the morning dilemma. Yes! You guessed it right! As copy editors, we were always taught this universal thumb rule to follow when editing a story: When in doubt, cut it out. Similarly, I follow a standard proposition to crack my tiffin conundrum: When everything is out, bring  upma  out. Ah! Was that my son frowning at me? Never mind. That is a universal reaction from most people across the country. I have never understood why a breakfast item
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Menopause and MasterChef

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  I am not a fan of cooking. And I make no bones about proclaiming it. However, to my surprise, of late I have become a sort of an expert in the smoked style of cooking and have been churning out a variety of dishes day after day. And no, I haven’t got a new barbecue or an oven.  Since I couldn’t put my finger on what triggered this spree, I decided to pass on the credit to the back-to-back episodes of MasterChef Australia that I have been watching ever since the start of the pandemic in Star World. (I choose to ignore the annoying Koffee with Karan that always gets tagged along with the cookery show.) I now invariably end up naming my smoked items in some fancy chef terms that I picked up watching the cookery contest. Be it, eggplant with spicy lentils and herbs (sambar), mixed veggies in coconut and yoghurt sauce (avial), greens simmered in spices and coconut (arachuvita keerai) or even Indian wafers (appalam), the smoked list doesn’t end!  I can hear my son grinding his teeth in
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Sense and Incense

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Apart from the time when I was down with Covid-19 for a brief while when I had lost my sense of smell and taste, I have always been showing signs of mild hyperosmia. No, no, this is not some fatal disease but it refers to a heightened sense of smell. Trust me, I was not even aware that this was a medical condition until I watched a detective series, about a decade ago, in which an agent cracked a crime using someone's hyperosmic skills. Only after that, it made sense to me as to why I felt nauseated in air-conditioned rooms, new cars with fresh leather seats, perfume sections in supermarkets or five-star hotel restrooms. Well, the reason I am bringing this up now is because of an interesting news item that caught my eye this morning; the one about agarbatti sales taking a dip because of the discontinuation of WFH (work from home). Yes, you heard me right. WFH and agarbattis! The article went on to talk about how the lockdown period had actually boosted sales of agarbattis up to 3
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Size matters

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It’s finally that time of the year which makes you feel both happy and sad! Diwali is a festival that the avid shopper in me always looks forward to but it is also that time of the year when the otherwise, languid, fitness-conscious self just raises her head to scare me into business. But trust me, that’s always been a short-lived one! The truth is, while it's super fun to go shop-hopping checking out the latest designs and wanting to make a fashion statement, the ugly truth of one’s expanding size really starts to bother then; only then. And that’s why I love to shop at Fab India.  No! I am not one of those hardcore handicrafts fans who have vowed to work assiduously for the upliftment of the artisans of the land and hence would buy only clothes made by them. That I would love to do when my purse permits; but I love the shop for a completely different reason. Their ethnic designs, exquisite craftwork, handwoven cloth, natural dyes and high prices apart, what matters the most
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A Steamy Story

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    One of the comforting sounds at home for me is the whistle of the pressure cooker. Not just for the fact that it is a handy appliance that helps me scoot out of the kitchen at the earliest but also for the reason that it has been my sole companion who still gives out a naughty whistle even as I get older. I take great pleasure in keeping count of the number of whistles that it lets out.  I don’t think I can ever imagine any Indian home without this ubiquitous vessel occupying its rightful place on the shelf. It came as a surprise to me when I learnt that pressure cookers had invaded the Indian kitchens only as late as 1959 when both Hawkins and TT Private Ltd (now called TTK Prestige) introduced their products into the market.   The idea of using steam pressure to cook made its first appearance in 1679 in the form of Papin’s Digester, a vessel named after its inventor, Denis Papin, a French-born British physicist. But the concept paved way for greater inventions as the steam engine
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