Something that works...

...for those who are working towards to get that perfect waistline. Here is a tested food formula that has worked and can make you feel that universe is working perfectly with you in magical ways to get you what you want, bite by bite. Its simple, quick and delicious. Its a salad. Ingredients like sprouts (moong), onions, cucumbers, de-seeded tomatoes, carrots, beetroots, corns, fresh lemon juice, olive oil and black salt are simple to assemble. Just finely chop all the veggies and toss them altogether with sprouts. Add black salt, lemon juice and a dash of olive oil and add in fresh coriander/cilantro leaves for all the benefits it promises. For the time I have tried this recipe, I can vouch for two things, one it did not make me feel that I made a compromise to a foodie that I have become and two, the results have been sweet and surreal.

Try it. And if this salad works for you too, I prefer cash. I can settle for something less controversial, say, good books. Jokes aside, wheeeeeee for it!

Distant Relations: Orhan Pamuk

At quitting time, while buses and streetcars as old as Satsat’s clerks rumbled down the avenue, shaking the building to its foundations, Sibel, my intended, would come to visit, and we would make love in my office. Despite her modern outlook and the feminist notions she had brought back from Europe, Sibel’s ideas about secretaries were no different from my mother’s. “Let’s not make love here. It makes me feel like a secretary!” she’d say sometimes. But, as we proceeded to the leather sofa in the office, the real reason for her reserve—that Turkish girls, in those days, were afraid of sex before marriage—became obvious.

Little by little, sophisticated girls from wealthy Westernized families who had spent time in Europe were beginning to break this taboo and sleep with their boyfriends before marriage. Sibel, who occasionally boasted of being one of those “brave” girls, had first slept with me eleven months earlier. But, by this point, she felt that the arrangement had gone on long enough and it was about time we married. I do not want to exaggerate my fiancée’s daring or make light of the sexual oppression of women, because it was only when Sibel saw that my “intentions were serious,” when she was confident that I was “someone who could be trusted”—in other words, when she was absolutely sure that there would, in the end, be a wedding—that she gave herself to me. Believing myself a decent and responsible person, I had every intention of marrying her; but, even if I hadn’t wished to, there was no question of my having a choice now that she had “given me her virginity.” Before long, this burden cast a shadow over the common ground between us, which we were so proud of—the illusion of being “free and modern” (though, of course, we would never have used such words for ourselves), on account of having made love before marriage—and in a way this, too, brought us closer.

Full story, here.

Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide

To me, The Hungry Tide, came across as a manifesto of complex relationships we human beings form with each other and also with, nature and its fury, as the circumstances unfold. Portrayal of intricacy through each characters ambition seems like Ghosh's proficiency he was born with which he uses with supreme poetic and romantic yet remains somewhat mellow in approach.

The backdrop, a vast archipelago of islands, the Sundarbans. Characters, Piyali Roy mostly referred as Piya, a scientist who hails from Seattle and comes looking in Lusibari (evolved from Lucy's abode) for rare kind of dolphins and not looking for love, at least, that's what she thinks. Kanai Dutt, a Delhi based businessman, who comes to Lusibari at a request by Nilima to fetch a packet written by her husband Nirmal and has been instructed to be given to Kanai only. And finally, Fokir, an illiterate man but who possesses deep unique knowledge of river and wildlife like no one else does. Fokir, rarely, almost never speaks directly to readers, since he only speaks Bengali and his words are often translated to Piya and others and thus to us readers. Yet, he manages to bind you with an emotional and enduring sympathic bond since not many understand his fiercely true soul. He, with his depth of knowledge and integrity to his work, persuade you that being truly adept and deeply involved in your field of work knows no barriers. His impassioned connection to the river, tides, wildlife have a spellbinding impact throughout his presence and even in his absence towards the end of the novel.

Once, during a conversation with Kanai, Fokir tells him, "truly honest people have no fears and have nothing to worry about." And this captures the essence of his character and his superiority over worldly matters and Kanai. who is once described in Nilima, an elderly and experienced woman's words,

"Kanai's problem is that he's always been too clever for his own good. Things have come very easily to him so he doesn't know what world is like for most people." Piya could see that the judgment was both shrewd and accurate but she knew it was not her place to concur. Nilima said, "Just a word of warning, my dear- fond as I am of my nephew, I feel I should tell you that that he's one of those men who liked to think of himself as being irresistible to the other sex."

To Kanai, Fokir once explains his inexplicable bond that he had and still has with his mother. To a nonplussed Kanai, a question like, "where do you see her face?" seems really appropriate. To which Fokir simplistic response says it all.

"He smiled and began to point in every direction. Here, here, everywhere. The phrasing of this was simple to point of being childlike and it seemed to Kanai that he had finally understood why Moyna (Fokir's wife) felt to deeply tied to her husband, despite everything. There was something about him that was utterly unformed, and it was this very quality that drew her to him: She craved it in the same way that a potter's hands might crave the resistance of unshaped clay."

The Hungry Tide has much to be cherished for its words craft and few things that cannot be captured in words, all said and set in a world away from this industrialized world which is again not devoid of multiple layers of human emotions. In his own words, Ghosh tells us, that words are like the winds that blow ripples on the water's surface. The river itself flow beneath, unseen, and unheard.

Outdated

Not so long ago, a teenager girl threw this below message in a missive, my way with much profundity and I gasped as if each word in it was meant to hurt me. Deeply. I read the message several times over. With each attempt, as I tried to decipher this new language, I felt like an obsolete crazy woman who is unnecessary obsessed with words, complete words, correct sentences and spellings. Buh.
Do people wonder why their results were never ever slutty? It could be that we didn't watch too many muvys. :wink: :wink:

hmm...k......cet resluts wer gud...score ws decent enuff...i think ill get in2 vet college:D....nd... vll go 4 a muvy wid frenz.

Quote unquote

"Too many women, in too many countries, speak the same language, of silence."

"There is no bigger hoax than the fidelity of a man, married or otherwise."

I cannot recall the sources of either of them but remember them very distinctly. Missed writing down the names, so if you know it, do share it. And another quote, its source I do know:


"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, suffering, loss and have found a way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I did finish reading The Hungry Tide and I am hoping to write on the book sometime soon, not the extended review though, mainly because I feel incapable of doing justice to the book. It got really engaging after the half mark. Sigh.

Amitav Ghosh: The Hungry Tide

Somewhere around half mark of the book, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and it occurs to me that for me one long story goes much slower than long book of multiple shorter stories. I do not know why that is. Perhaps, some quirk about myself that I am unaware of. In any case, I am finding that Ghosh's writing is rich in texture created out of subtle texts and interrelated nuances and makes you want to go slowly, ruminating it, savoring it, bit by bit. I cannot say for certain that I will be writing a review later but few lines that I jotted down so far are here, shared:

The true tragedy of a routinely spent life is that its wastefulness does not become apparent till it is too late.

***
We were on the river, heading home, when the wind suddenly started up. Within moments it was on us- it attacked with that peculiar, wilful malevolence that causes people to think of these storms as something other than wholly natural.
***
In my mind's eye I saw them walking these thousands of people who wanted nothing more than to plunge their hands once again in our soft, yielding tide country mud. I saw them coming, young and old, quick and halt, with their lives bundled on their heads, and knew it was of them the Poet had spoken when he said:

"Each slow turn of the world
carries such disinherited ones
to whom neither the past nor
the future belong."