And the Music Plays!

Managed to catch glimpses of the recent (I guess 26 Feb wala) episode of Who wants to marry a monkey? errr Rahul Dulhaniya Le Jaayega aka Rahul Mahajan’s Swayamvar. This is the episode that I saw after the initial episode. But duniyawale did keep me updated about the happenings ahem ahem Happenings in this wedding drama. Jaise ki the item numbers that the contestants did for Rahul and the intimacy & chemistry judgement episodes which I guess must have received the highest TRP. The lady who runs the parlour which I frequent was sulking the other day as she seemed to have missed these crucial(!) episodes. When she sulks about having missed any episode of any any reality series, there is a high possibility of damage to the eyebrows.

Anyways, the mad guy err Rahul seems to be giving handy tips to all guys out to get married. Next time when you come across a potential bride or if you go to her house to see her via the arranged marriage route or any other route, do carry a CD full of item numbers that you like. You can then ask her to perform on them and judge whether she is marriage material or not.

Also this chap gets cozy with all most all the girls to test his chemistry with them. Another tip.

Also I noticed that his real mother and sister have not yet appeared on the how. Or have they? I don’t think so.

Now the three finalists are Dimpy, Harpreet and Nikunj. Mrinmai was eliminated.

Dimpy – Remember the one who made the initial appearance in a cleavage revealing outfit. She had won the first Pyar ka Nazrana.

Harpreet and Nikunj had won the second and third pyaar ka nazrana respectively.

What’s with Rahul and his first impressions???

And the important point to be noted is that the girls who finally made it to the final3 are the ones who went all out over the show and said that they were there for publicity. Kuch daal mein kala out here.

The ones who seemed to be actually interested in marrying were eliminated.

Toh aisa lagta hai, Rahul will finally place the varmala on one of these girls. Most probably Dimpy. Second option – Harpreet and Third – Nikunj.

So finally he has chosen those girls who had themselves said that they were more interested in publicity than marrying him. So it seems once he choses one of them, they will reap the benefits of being on the show, attend press interviews, do a few more reality shows and then turn around and say that they are not yet ready for marriage. The most probable reasons that they would give – I am too young to get married. Dimpy is 21, Harpreet is 20 and Nikunj is 25. And Rahul is around 32. Other reasons that the girls could give would be – Career, Incompatibility, etc.

The girls are more interested in being the winner. Not in marrying him. After all who wants to marry a monkey?

So ultimately Rahul would say that he was ready to get married but the girls weren’t… Toh main kya kar sakta hoon?

Punjabi Garam Masala – Basic

How to make it at home?

Get hold of the following ingredients first:

1. Jeera : 50gms
2. Ajwain : 10gms
3. Laung : 1 spoon
4. Dalchini : 5-6 sticks
5. Kali mirchi : 25-30gms
6. Kali elaichi : 12-15
7. Tej patta : 4-5
8. Sounth : 1-2
9. Dhaniya seeds : 3-4 spoons

Roast all these and grind it in the mixer to make it a fine powder. And we have the Basic Punjabi Garam Masala ready!

There are various other variations of Garam Masala… you may add a piece of jayfal also which gives it an altogether different quality. There are various other ingredients that can be added to make other evolved forms of Garam Masala.

Chronicles of PA#1

This is were PA turns into a 50′s style housewife.

And sings Raag Bhayankar.

PA needs to go and buy vegetables from the bhaaji market. Something that she has never done before. She has been to the bhaaji market a couple of times before, albeit hardly ever alone. It’s usually with Mom. But she is petrified of going alone. But she has to. What needs to be done, needs to be done. She also needs to run other errands and accomplish other gharelu tasks which albeit need to be accomplished outside the house, like getting milk, going to the temple and giving daan/donation, etc.

PA being PA needs a chronological order in which she needs to do all this. Some sort of a flowchart would rather be preferable, she thinks. However Mom refuses to fulfill this wish of hers, instead offers her a chronological order which PA needs to mentally make a note of, so insists the mother.

The mother also gives PA important pointers which will help her in doing the task at hand efficiently.

Instructions given to PA:

1. Take a wallet which has the required cash handy in it. Keep chutta/chillar/loose cash/coins separately. (Tips from PA – Yes, PA also gives tips – Chillar plays an important part if you intend to play the household types, the 50′s style)

2. Carry wallet, shopping bag (as plastic bags of the flimsy kinds are banned) and some other food items in a separate bag which need to be donated at the temple.

3. Once outside the house – Go to ABC bania shop and buy x number of y packets of biscuits. How much would each cost, PA asks just so that she knows where she is heading in life err… in her mission. Well, PA needs to know the cost implications beforehand, nah? Anyways, z is the amount that she needs to pay the bania for the said number of biscuit packets. Good, PA thinks, now she won’t have to do mathematical calculations in front of the bania else she might forget the other gharelu-shopping instructions.

4. Place the packets of biscuits in the bag containing the other food items which need to be donated.

5. Go to the temple and give the donation wala bag – basically anna daan to any needy person or beggar sitting outside the temple. Important pointer by Mom – Make sure you give this donation to a needy person outside the temple and NOT to any visitor who is visiting the temple for darshan and certainly not to any passer-by. Knowing PA’s lost-mindedness, this is indeed a very important and crucial point. Imagine what would happen if you give daan to any random person??? Also another important point, make sure that you don’t stand there for long as other beggars would mob you and take care of your wallet and mobile at this time. Beggars would mob PA?!!! Kya din aa gaye hain!

6. Once done with Step 5, walk a few steps ahead of the temple, you will notice a nariyal-wala… err coconut wala. Next to it would be OUR bhaajiwala – the baajiwala that we usually buy fresh vegetables from and next to it would be the fruitwala. PA tries to ratofy, so our bhaajiwala is basically between the nariyal-wala and the fruit-wala. Repeat thrice. Done.

7. Go to OUR bhaajiwala and tell him to give you 1 Kilo of Tomatoes, Half Kilo Dhoodhi and Pao Kilo Bhindi. Tell him you are xyz Aunty’s daughter and he will recollect, so says the mom.  You can then choose the required vegetables from the lot yourself or tell the bhaajiwala to do the needful in case you are confused. PA anyways prefers the later. Tell him to keep the stuff ready while you do the rest of the shopping. Haan, we are anyways his regular customer. Itna toh karna hee chahiye, nah? And tell him to sort the tomatoes, dhoodhi and bhindi of the kinds that xyz aunty usually buys.

Question time for PA: Whats Dhoodhi? Whats Pao? She gets a demonstration for Dhoodhi. Now whats Pao?! 250gms, my lovelies Now ratofication time: Tomatoes, Dhoodhi, Bhindi – One, Half, Pao… that’s the order. Important pointer by Mom – Make sure that you call ‘dhoodhi’ a ‘dhoodhi’ only in front of the bhaajiwala, he wouldn’t understand otherwise. Don’t call it by the various other names or nick names that you have bestowed on it. Pointed to be noted, mere aakaa. PA also makes a mental note of the approximate amount that she would need to pay the bhaajiwala depending on the current market price of the said vegetables.

8. Once you’ve placed the order with the Bhaajiwala and instructed him to do the needful, its then time to buy Potatoes from the potatao-wala. Now where the hell is the potato wala??? PA wonders aloud. Behind the Fruit-wala. Oh ya, refer step6. Behind the fruitwala is MNO shop… Alright I need to buy Potatoes from MNO shop, PA interrupts. Noooooooooooo, says Mom… MNO is a salon!!! The Potato wala is behind the fruitwala and infront of this MNO shop. Okay, don’t go in to this MNO salon asking for potatoes, PA tells herself.

How much do I need to pay the potato wala, PA asks.

Rs. X, says Mom.

Rs. X per potato?

Noooooooooooo, Rs. X for the one kilo of potatoes, NOT PER POTATO. Else people around the city would be eating vada-pavs for a 100!!!!

Err.

9. Once you go to the potato-wala, you will see two varieties of potatoes. Here manual sorting is required. Choose potatoes from the better of the two qualities, the one which is slightly more expensive than the other. Well, how do I do the manual sorting, so asks PA. How may potatoes do I need to choose via this manual sorting, asks PA. One kilo. How much will be one kilo potato? You’ll know by andaaza. Err… what is andaaza… you tell me by quantity. Approximately n number of potatoes. Good I can never get this andaaza thingy ever!!!

Here there is a three step process in choosing the right potato: 1. It shouldn’t be too soft else it will go bad easily and soon. 2. It shouldn’t have too many holes in it. 3. It shouldn’t have green patches in it else it will be too kacca. Rehearsed -1,2,3… done. Sort and put these potatoes in a tokri and get 1 Kg of these. Okay.

Pay the potato-wala. Get these potatoes in the shopping bag you that you have taken from home.

10. Once done with the potatoes, come back to the bhaajiwala and collect the vegetables that you has told him to keep ready. Make sure that you tell him to put extra masala. Err… masala? Whats that? Free dhaniya, ginger, mirchi etc. He knows ‘masala’. You don’t need to explain him that. Good.

11. Then go to DEF milk shop. If that is closed go to PQR milk shop. And get half a litre of milk for giving it in the temple tomorrow morning.

12. And then come back home.

And this is what eventually transpired when PA was out on her gharelu mission:

Step1: As instructed. Ekdum.

Step2: As instructed. Ekdum ekdum.

Step3: At the bania shop – PA sees a man taking a walk inside the shop. She wonders if he is a customer or is he The Bania. She thinks of the repercussions if she asks the man for biscuits and he turns out to be a customer. Aap owner… err dukandaar ho kya, PA asks just to be on the safer side. Yes, he says. Good. And buys the biscuits.

Step4: As instructed. Ekdum *multiply by* 4

Step5: PA was petrified of this Step. The word M.O.B was playing Raag Bhayankar in her mind. Also PA had to be extra careful and cautious that she doesn’t give the daan to a temple visitor or a passer-by. It had to be a needy person. PA had scenes cropping up in her mind of giving daan to a temple visitor and the embarrassing looks on either faces. What if the other person uttered some not so nice words. PA needs to be extraaaa careful. Very careful. She carefully scans the crowd outside the temple. Locates and urchin kid and hands him the entire bag of daan. And moves away swiftly before the other beggars and urchin locate her and pounce on her! Done with Step5 safely.

Step6: Locates OUR bhaajiwala and grins at herself.

Step7: PA walks up to the bhaaji wala, smiles at him (why did PA smile at him, even I wonder) and tells him – ek kilo tamatar, aadha kilo dhoodhi aur pao kilo bhindi in the tone of an expert. Bhaaji wala smiles back at her. Err too many smile exchanges. Why do I need to smile so much in the bhaaji market… Its after all just a bhaaji market. Need to keep a check on that. Aap yeh sab bhaaji nikal ke rakho… main xyx aunty ki beti hoon… unke regular tarah se pack kar ke rakho… tamatar ache aur lal, bhindi choti size ki aur dhoodhi ummmm…. errr…. acchi wali. Aaap yeh sab nikal ke rakho main paanch minute mein aati hoon. Done with Step7, finally!!!!

Step8 & 9: Located potato-wala. Thankfully didn’t go inside the salon and ask for potatoes! Thank God for that! At the potato wala, a lot of women in their 40′s were sorting and choosing potatoes. Err… why am I here? Anyways, PA tries to see if she can squeeze in somewhere, stand aaramse and sort+choose potatoes. Par aisa toh hota nahin hai, PA observes. So, she squeezes herself and stands between two 40-ish women who were totally engrossed with the sorting and choosing. PA looks at each one of them. They look back at her. Well by now they had guessed that PA was about to take baby steps in the art of potato sorting-choosing-buying. PA observed their procedure and along with the 3 pointers given by mom, did the sorting and choosing and kept the potatoes in the tokri. And hands over the tokri to the dukhandaar. Ek kilo, she says. Do kilo, he says. Nahin nahin mujhe ek kilo hee chahiye, PA says. Par aapne tokri mein do kilo daala hai, toh de doon kya? Nahin, PA says. Takes one kilo, pays him and does away with Step8

Quantity ‘n’ went for a toss as that depends on the potato size. Lesson1 of the day. A woman pushed PA with her bums at the potato wala and didn’t even say sorry. There is no time for sorries in the bhaaji market. Lesson2. Bhaaji market mein bhi koi sorry bolta hai kya!

Step10: Went back to the bhaaji wala and collected the vegetables. Told him to add masala. Dhaniya daala? Ginger daala? Hari mirch daala? Err…. baaki sab daal, PA asks. Yes he says and waves a green jhaadi at me. Yeh bhi daalon kya? Haan haan daal do. PA didn’t have any clue as to what that small green jhaadi was until she came home. It was the kari patta, by the way. I get confused with all these pattas!

I ask him how much only to realize that he has also accounted for the ‘masala’ instead of giving it free. PA should have asked for the free ‘masala’ AFTER doing the payment. Very important lesson of the day. The great indian housewife is someone who is able to extract these freebies from bhaajiwalas. Aha! Pleasures of doing grocery shopping in the bhaaji market. Something that you can never experience in the malls. A first for me… even though I failed at it miserably.

And blunder of blunders – I snap back at the bhaajiwala… OUR bhaajiwala and tell him in front of some 7-8 other customers of his that yeh masala toh aap hamesha bhaaji ke saath free dete ho! He grinned back sheepishly at me. He had no other choice. PA realized that thsi is actually an art… the art of vegetable buying and the art of getting the best deal as well as freebies. Never ever talk about best prices and freebies in front of other customers. Never ever. Thats harakiri. Good that the bhaajiwala didn’t murder me!

Step11: Thankfully milk is available at DEF milk shop else she would have had to walk down to the other one! Doodh hai? Aadha litre wala? (PA was about to aadha kilo dhoodh… thankfully she realized before the words could reach the shop-wala’s ears. Haan madam. Kaunsa chahiye? Koi bhi de do. He keeps 2-3 packets in front of me. All were of the same price so PA choses the one which was more fancier looking. Err… what else! Pays him, places the milk packet aaramse in the shopping bag and heads home.

Step12: PA reaches home safely.

Thus ends PA’s maiden gharelu maha-puraan.

Have you ever thought why is my blog called ‘And the Music Plays’???

No one has ever asked me this. I wonder why?

I seem to have become ancient now. I don’t seem to take a fancy for networking sites anymore. Am I the only one who thinks like that or do you (yes, YOU) also resonate with that?

PA played around with Google Buzz for a while since yesterday. And every time I log on to it, there seems to be some improvisation in the features. I think so. For better or worse, don’t know yet.

I tried finding the link to turn it off yesterday. But couldn’t. Or may be it wasn’t there yesterday. But it is there now!   And it is just at the end of your Gmail Page – above the ‘privacy policy’ link. So you now know how to get rid off this buzzzzzzzzing thing! And the link is called ‘turn off buzz’. And you should have seen the smile on PA’s face once she saw this link

You may turn on this link (turn on buzz) if you have taken a fancy for ‘Buzz’. Once you do that, you will notice an notice that it has now appeared as a system label below ‘Inbox’ – generally seen on the upper left hand side of the page.

Google Buzz basically appears to be a combination of several networking sites. However it is integrated into your Gmail Page. However it does have a striking similarity to Twitter.

One of the biggest drawbacks in the current version and on while Google seriously needs to work on is that – you neither get notifications nor do you get approval requests once someone follows you. Assuming you are not comfortable with a certain people or spammers following you – then how do you locate them? Search for such random followers regularly??? Tedious and annoying? And even if they Google decides to send you notifications of new followers – isn’t it time-consuming, annoying and irritating to log on again and ‘block’ or disallow them from following you.

Wouldn’t it rather be simple and in lines with privacy, if there is notification taht is sent to you once someone wants to follow you. You may then approve or disapprove their request. And only once you have approved them, they will be able to access your updates, etc.

Assuming you are off email for a few days and you already have 250 odd people following you on Buzz. You come back from your so-called email vacation, log on to Buzz and see the list of Followers has now increased to 300. Even if Gmail sends you notifications of new people who have started following you, still it would be tedious to find them in the list of followers and delete them. Rather it would be preferable that a notification is sent to you once someone is keen on following you and them accordingly you may approve and disapprove the request.What say?

Everything else about Google Buzz and their so-called privacy policy can be read here – link

Trying to check it out. Read about it a few hours back and lo and behold! I see the link under the Gmail Inbox now. Not Bad.

Let me see if I can tolerate it or will I grow out of it just like Facebook

Got this as a forward, liked it. So here it is:

As I mentioned Mom got diagnosed with Asthma yesterday. She was unwell most of yesterday. The wretched day ended with Dad slipping and falling, thus hurt his left foot with blood oozing out and a terribly swollen foot. All in a day.

…………………………………….

Choked words.

Choked voices.

Choked thoughts.

Mom wasn’t able to breathe properly the whole of last night. We went to the doctor today. She was diagnosed with – Asthma. Had she gone alone to the doctor, she wouldn’t have told anyone at home about the diagnosis. She asked the doctor 10-12 times if it was actually asthma. She is still living in denial.

I know that a lot of people these days have Asthma but seeing your own parent suffer even a bit is enough to make your throat choke.

I wanted to cry but didn’t want to in front of her. I was trying to humor her by cracking silly PJs… and maybe somewhere was trying to control the tear that was wanting to come out.

Two years ago when dad suffered a major heart attack and we were in and out of hospitals for close to two months. I never cried in front of him. But I did cry a lot when I was alone. And that again was February and he had the attack just a day after my birthday. I am beginning to dread my birthday month now.

Seeing mom in the slightest of agony and pain, kills me.

Doctor said that since it is just the onset of Asthma and since it is in the early stages, it can be controlled to a great extent with proper precautions.

As of now, its allopathic medicines. But is that the only way? Is there something that can be done about it by means of ayurveda or homeopathy?

~Please avoid reading this post.

I have been posting forwards and recipes just so that I could divert my mind. And also because I somehow deliberately avoid talking about all the grimness in one’s life.

But when everything is grim, dark and endless, I could help but write this crap.

Life has been dark for quite sometime now. They say that every dark cloud has a silver lining to it. I am searching for mine. I haven’t seen it as yet. If you locate it, let me know.

I wept myself to sleep last night. I didn’t want to. But did so. Moreover because it was dark and I was alone. I didn’t want my loved ones to know about it.

Nothing seems to be moving. And even if at times they move, it seems as if they are moving in the wrong direction. When problems come, they all come together. Just when you feel that you may find the solution to one issue, you get another one. I have also read and heard that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. I don’t know how strong these problems want me to be.

Life these days looks like a dark never-ending pit. And I am unable to get myself out of it.

Made Aloo-Paneer-Matar bhaaji last night. Turned out to be decent enough given the fact that I am a novice when it comes to culinary skills.

The Recipe:

1. Cut the paneer into pieces/cubes. Deep fry them in a kadhai. Take them out and keep them aside.

2. Get a few potatoes. Peel them and then dice them.

3. Put some vegetable oil in the cooker. Let the oil heat a bit.

4. Add jeera.

5. Add tomatoes. You can either cut it into small pieces or just into four parts if you are in a hurry.

6. Add the potatoes.

7. Add matar (green peas)

8. Add turmeric, red chilli powder and salt.

9. Stir it for a while and add half a katori of water to it.

10. Close the lid of the cooker and let the cooker take on from there. Keep checking after every 2 minutes. Once the water goes dry and the potatoes are cooked, add the paneer that you made in Step 1 and stir it for another 2 minutes.

~ You can eat this with phulka, chapati or plain paranthas.

You can’t turn around in tunnels…Once you’re in them – you’re in them…You can only move forward…Sometimes life is like that…And it might make you feel stuck at first until you realize…As long as you keep moving forward…You keep living.

~

Got this as a forward. Thought of sharing.

Trying to instill some positivity in myself in this dark month. I know its my birthday month. But there are things that I don’t blog about… may be I will some day. Maybe not.

Yeah thats the song on my mind today!

What else can happen if PA ends up dreaming of this song last night?