Weverb12 #16 replicate [CREATE]

What were you inspired to create/make this year based on something else? (i.e. a pin from pinterest, recipe from a friend, etc.)

As always, when it comes to creating, for me it's food. I did not, actually, create anything very exciting this year. In 2011 I created a piña colada cake that I'm very proud of, and some other things too. This year my cooking has just been low key, so what I created would probably be MinCat's foolproof south Indian tasting, nutritionally balanced thingy.

It sprung from a trend that's been growing ever stronger this year--a craving for south Indian flavours. My main problem with making south Indian food is that it's heavily rice based, and also involves making three things at a time, which takes up so much time and so many vessels! And then I didn't have gas for four months, so I really couldn't cook full on meals. One day I was going to make one of my standard one-dish europeanish meals of lentil stew, when the craving overpowered me and I tipped two tablespoons of Puliogare mix into the cooker with the lentils and veggies. And holy mother of god! I HAD REACHED NIRVANA! Then I ate only that for a few weeks, before settling back into normal food again.

It's funny, this south Indian nationalism trend I've been having this year. I just like hanging out with Tamilians more--I connect faster with them. I want to eat dosai and idli every day. I'm always thinking of ways to make chutney. I don't want to cook anything north Indian anymore, not even MATAR PANEER! I occasionally make pasta or Spanish omelets, sometimes shakshuka, but that's it. It's all south Indian food. I wonder why.

May-kaaran

Each year, when my sister is here and my cousins visit, we gather around the table for my grandma to prod our palms and produce occult pronouncements like "Ah yes, you'll want to get married after you have a physical relationship"--to The Snoog, who proceeded to gulp in shock till Scoo dived in to the rescue.

Now Nona is famous among many for the accuracy of her occult pronouncements (you can't really argue--once you have a physical relationship, you are more open to marriage, unless you're a bit of a ho like me). She told a friend of mine, who desperately wanted to study in Germany, that he wouldn't--but he'd study abroad all right, and use his German. He studied in the UK and is now in Switzerland. She told me, on the 2nd of January 2011, that I shouldn't fret about work--it would sort itself out in 15 days. Penguin called on 17th January. She told me at Deepavali that after 15th November all the things that had been bothering me over the past three years would begin to chill out--I found Career, evolved the right kind of relationship for me, and have a truckload of friends in Delhi now. She also told me I'd be promoted, and I was, on the 1st of November or something like that.

This time, her pronouncement for me was this: You'll have a very good year, with a very interesting middle. Will I go to Colombia, I asked. That's a very specific question she said. Okay, I said, Will I travel? Yes, short trips, about 15 days at a time. And also on work. Oh, also, you'll find yourself in a permanent relationship in May.

It was my turn to gulp like a beached goldfish.

What does it say about me that the one sentence I've been waiting to hear from her for ten years, when it finally came, my reaction was: What! May?!?! No! That's too soon!!!

Of course we've been referring to the proposed arrival as May-kaaran, or May-man. Though apparently there's a delectable double meaning in Tamil that I don't remember.However, Universe, if you're listening, May-kaaran better be able to furnish our house from Fab India ;)

Suicide: A Death of One's Own

Was reading this long and lovely article today. I'll be honest, I have no idea who she is, this woman who put a bag over her head and peacefully left the world. There is just something about the article that struck me. Early on, it describes this strong and very feminist woman thus.

She took Woolf’s concept of a room of one’s own to heart. In fact, she had several. There was one at her sprawling Central Park West apartment, purchased for tens of thousands of dollars in the sixties, and another at her country house (she had a “bat house” nailed to that house’s barn; Heilbrun loved bats). Then, when she was 68 years old, despite having three grown children, two grandchildren, and what by all accounts was a loving marriage, Heilbrun bought another house, all for herself. She wanted a house, she said, away from the “family togetherness” of the other house—“small, modern, full of machinery that worked, and above all habitable in winter, so that I might sit in front of a fire and contemplate, meditate, conjure, and, if in need of distraction, read.”

Then it says:

Heilbrun’s suicide was an act of will, an idea brought to life. It was something she chose, by herself, for herself. ...
And Heilbrun was nothing if not sensible: She made what she considered informed decisions, and seldom second-guessed herself.

 So there is a picture they have taken pains to build here. And then they go and print this.

In the days since her mother’s death, Margaret has been up and down: She is not quite sure what to think. “It’s not that I’m angry as much as I’m mystified,” she says. “She had so many more friends than I did—friends and acquaintances, people who looked up to her, who saw her as a nurturer and role model. Was it that she herself had no one to turn to? Why did she feel so isolated? She must have had fears and other feelings I can’t begin to have known. I know for myself that if you’re scared enough of something, you won’t ever speak of it.” She twists one of her rings. “But,” she says, “it was her plot.”

I don't understand why, if the case they have been building in the article all this time is to have a death of one's own, why they needed this quote from the daughter. It's also interesting to think that this closest daughter of this unconventional woman, with a very strongly and clearly articulated stance on life, has such a conventional reaction/interpretation. (Ok I'm not being horrible she lost her mother she wants solace, she doesn't want to believe that her mother decided to leave her, I get it.) The fact that it's in the article sort of undermines the whole thing for me. The point is that this woman made all her choices and lives by her principles. To me, it doesn't seem like such a terrible thing if, like the witches and wizards of the Discworld, you could know or even choose when you leave the world. You lived the life you wanted to; you have achieved things you think are worthy; you're done. You leave.

Sorry this might seem random but it just really struck me in the context of this particular women, about whom I know nothing, in this particular article, that it turned something of strength and fire that she had built into something banal and trite. Why do it?

P.S. On a lighter note, here's an idea to adopt from her life! Her children, "In their teens, they were each suddenly required to cook dinner for the family once a week—it works out perfectly, Heilbrun told friends, as long as you’re willing to eat peanut butter and jelly from time to time."

Directionism

Not to indulge in it too much, but when I went to the doctor on friday, and again this morning, for my evil bitch ass tonsilitis, I realised that the man, despite being phoren educated and working, and putting his registration number on the prescription, he would only talk to me in Hindi Which meant that I responded in Hindi, but then I couldn't really describe the horror of my plight in the most accurate way.

Funny, cos down south, an urban middle to upper middle class doctor would never talk in local language unless patient couldn't do English..

Also, my friends keep singing those handclap game songs, you know biscuit biscuit what biscuit cocoa biscuit what cocoa while clapping hands madly in rhythm kind of stuff. But the same rrhymes, saying the same things, are in HINDI! Again, no problem with that, but even in a school where we didn't actually talk to one another in English, we sang the songs in English.

Is it just cos the likelihood that someone in Delhi speaks Hindi is exponentially higher than the likelihood that someone in Hyderabad will speak Telugu?

Edit: super advantage of north Indians not speaking English--when a telemarketer calls and babbles shudh matrubhasha at me, I just say look, I don't speak that much Hindi, I don't want to buy anything, so if it's anything else please speak to me in English. They say, aap ki samay ke liya dhanyavad and hang up.