Idle thoughts …..

I have been “uniquely” blessed with a taste for sweets and desserts. Some people, rather sarcastically term it as a craving, although I tend to turn my deaf ear to such “allegations”. I must admit, chocolates are my weakness and I hog on brownies. But I do spare sometime to try out sweet dishes from the rest of the world. In fact when in a restaurant, I call my entrée as my dessert and vice versa. And that was perhaps how I ended up trying a baklava.

My first encounter with “one of this kind” was in Manhattan, when a friend of mine suddenly decided that I needed a “turkish delight” (not the candy version) and took me to a restaurant downtown. A croissant-like exterior, stuffed with “halva” and nuts, soaked in sugar syrup, was how I was described this amazing dish, on my way to the place. And do I need to mention that I decided to save up the “real” entrée for another day? . Served in a triangular dimension, warmed aptly to melt in your mouth, I must say, this dessert certainly did manage to enter the top ten on my list of the best.

The second encounter came today, at my relatives’, while preparing for the grand dinner at their place. As casual as casual can be, they asked me if I had ever eaten a baklava. Having been one of my favorites, I promptly replied, “Yes I have. Isn’t that a Turkish speciality?” A thundering silence followed, and I realized my mistake!

It has been a “holy war” since the 18th century, on the origins of this pastry. The Greeks call it theirs, after the “gastris” of the ancient era. And the Turks lay their claim owing to its Ottoman origins and an Arabic flavor to its name. Some of the neutralists or the liberals call it a middle-eastern dessert, encompassing all different regions which could potentially lay their “rights” on this mouth-watering confectionary.

Be it Greek, or Turkish or Arabic, I must say I just cannot stop eating them, once I see it in front of me. Top it with a strong dose of caffeine, and it makes for a perfect evening snack.

I did have a taste of clafoutis (its apple version, often known as flognarde), a French dessert, the same day, but let me save that write-up for another day.

Disclaimer: This post does not intent to hurt the religious/”regionistic” sentiments of any specific group of people. Everything written here is strictly the author’s point-of-view. The author does not wish to see a public outcry like the one that is often caused when “Mumbai” is termed as “Bombay”

Update: Here is a quick snapshot of what I savored yesterday.

For a hollywood that thrived on the success of Michael Crichtons, Stephen Kings, Dan Browns and Robert Ludlums, Final Theory would indeed be a delightful catch. This book has every characteristic of a new hollywood blockbuster. But sadly I have started to hate authors, who geared their writings with a movie contract in mind. For this same reason, I stopped reading Stephen King’s works – an author whom I had grown to like through his “The Eyes of the Dragon”! Such books, although fast paced and enthralling, do not leave enough mark to make you read it again. The story line completely overshadows the narrative beauty or the deep characterizations, that books were once known for.

Having said that, I must admit, it is indeed an amazing talent to create a story line as gripping as it has been in this book. I did manage to finish the book in one sitting, which has been rather tough off late, given the heavy work schedules. Making sure that every aspect of the story makes sense even as you tread towards the grand finale is an art in itself. And with the elements of science, it makes for an even bigger thriller. But I would term Mark Alpert as a scriptwriter instead of an author!

It was indeed a long break from the blog, and lots more to write than just this. But I guess I had to pen this down as soon as I finished reading this book. Next up, The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng.

… the lives lost 8 years back!

PS: On a brief and unexpected hiatus. Hoping to get back as soon as soon can be.

It all started when my friend and I who owned the server where this blog was hosted, decided to clean it up a bit, due to the sluggishness that this Linux server suddenly decided to adopt from its WIndows compatriots around the globe. As is well-known (or should I say notorious) amongst the people in IT, a “fat-finger” was what triggered off the chain reaction. The result – the server decided to take control by locking us out, still running all the services that we needed. Unable to accept defeat to this lifeless “being”, we decided on a reboot. So all it took was a “powercycle” and everything came crashing down! Three days and 50 emails later, here we are back again, with almost all of it restored back to normal.

This whole saga really did call for a break, something that could take my weary eyes of the monitor. And “The Bastard of Istanbul” by “Elif Shafak” did just that. A rather surprisingly witty tale which juggled between Turkey and San Francisco is proving to be a worthy read.

Particularly interesting were the scenes from Cafe Kundera on the streets of Istanbul and the myriad of interpretations on its christening, which the author claims has nothing to relate to Milan Kundera . Conversations between a group of people, amusingly referred to as, Exceptionally Untalented Poet, Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies and his shallow slew of girlfriends often termed as appetizers, Dipsomaniac Cartoonist and his wife, Asya Kazanci (a central character in the book, with her unending rants about her aunts and ballet) and Closeted-Gay Columnist, over alternating orders of Cafe Lattes and Beer were probably the best part in this book.

Although certain parts along the way, reminded me of the “mega-serials” in India, it did provide a humorous tone to the “extravagance” called tradition which tried to blend in with the modernity. Im still on the final few chapters, and am hoping to complete it before the new week begins and things start to get busy again.

A very happy Independence day, albeit a day late.

It was just another long weekend, that I was looking forward to, with loads of outdoor activities. With the weather playing its part to help move forward with everything I had planned, including a dip in the swimming pool that recently opened in our apartment complex, little did I know that I would have a “private” one in my apartment!

It happened around 12:00 noon on Saturday. I was lazying around in my room, taking a quick break before heading out to the city to watch the fireworks (I know this post is a little too outdated, and should have been in a month ago), when the fire alarm decided to go off. As was the case in our building, any small smoke in one of the houses usually set off an alarm in the whole building, and this time too I decided to ignore it, hoping that it would not last long enough to get me out of my bed. 10 minutes went by and it showed no signs of ceasing. It was then that I decided to take a stroll down the stairs to see what had happened. But as soon as I came out of my room, I saw a pool of water gathering itself in front of the bathroom, under the carpet. Rushing into bathroom, I saw the tub overflowing due to the tap which my roommate had left open!

It took a while to vacuum the carpet and drain out the pool in the bathroom, but little did I realise that there were much more “serious consequences” to this trivial act of overflowing tub! As “fate” would have it, the water had found its way through the walls to the hallway and all the way down to the apartment below, shorting the alarm circuit on its way down! And people had gathered outside my door trying to figure out what was going on. What followed was two hours of hard work on a holiday weekend for the maintenance crew and a not-so-happy look on the face of the old lady who lived downstairs .

Today, a heavy thunderstorm that rattled the windows in my room, woke me up with a start. I looked out of my window to see a similar sight of an emerging flood and that took me back to the day when I had one in my very own apartment . So here’s to today morning’s downpour….

will be “right” back!

I have a quality, which can be termed as irritating to people around me at times. I go in tangents from the topic of discussion, most of which are in no way related to the present one, often triggered off by a single word or a phrase. It happened again the other day, while I was reading about the plane crash in Yemen. It must have been to find out the route that the plane took to crash into the sea, but I remember looking at the map of the world. That triggered off an interesting thought on stamps and how rare the stamps from Yemen were. Well, I must admit the people around me were kind enough to continue with the discussion on stamps.

Nostalgia, as I would term it, it took me back to those days when I had four books of stamps, labelled and stacked neatly. Sorting them based on countries (India obviously being the one topping the list) and taking a weekly statistics of the number of stamps from each country and the total number of countries “owned” (although the rate at which this changed was rather low) was more like a full time job than a hobby, during those days. Back then, for every letter that was delivered home, our eyes were always on the stamps that it contained. And if it happened to have one which we did not own, the direct consequence was a fight between my brother and I to figure out who will take possession of it this time. Yet another day, we eargerly looked forward to, back then was when my father decided to open his collection of stamps, with plans to distribute some of his “wealth” among the two of us. This usually happened once in a month. He had some of the most exquisite collections that I had ever seen, and perhaps his was the best source for our budding collection.

I also remember how we carefully peeled out a stamp from the envelope. We left it in water for a few mintues to clear off the gum that held the two together. Now that in itself had a science behind it. We soon came to realise that the time taken for the stamp to completely detach itself from the envelope varied from country to country. . This process was usually followed by carefully drying the stamps in a “wind-less” environment and then ironing them to get them back to shape, once dry.

Gone are the days when stamp collection was a primary hobby among all school going children. I guess it died a natural death, going down with hand written letters. “Snail mails” as they are now affectionately called, have been completely taken over by the “e-mails” and messaging. Technology has defintely helped bring people closer, but what it took away from a child, were simple memories such as these which stayed on for a lifetime.

Testing my RSS feed that got hijacked!