Category: General

Brussel sprouts thepla

It was originally meant to be kasuri methi thepla. I didnt have a clue what kasuri methi was all about, till my wife had asked me to get some from the shops down the road. I had heard and eaten quite a lot of methi and other leafy vegetables, but kasuri methi was something new for me altogether.

Curious to find out what this new thing was, I was down at one of the shops run by a friendly neighbourhood pakistani guy and was browsing through the shelves. Shelf browsing qualifies to be one of my hobbies due to the fact that you can pointlessly go through a lot of unwanted stuff, and spend a lot of time during the process.

After spending time on browsing through the shelves, I had located kasuri methi boxes, and there were two brands of kasuri methi on the shelf. One brand was priced less and the other had an offer. The alien miserly genes in me had started the mental calculation. (See, my miserly genes has to be alien, as in my family I am the only one with the trait – that deserves a separate post altogether).

While I was indulged in this, a middle aged woman walked in and asked the shopkeeper for kasuri methi. He guided her to the shelves where two brands of kasuri methi were kept. And then came the question from her -“which one is pakistani”. I was shaken out of my slumber and was wondering whats going on. The shopkeeper diligently pointed out the pakistani one and she took it and disappeared.

There I was, standing with two different boxes of kasuri methi in my hand, I realised, one made in India and one in Pakistan! How could I be such an unpatriotic guy! Even kasuri methi had nationalities. That moment spurred such a rush of patriotism in me that I had to act impulsively and I immediately had to find the correct one that I should buy.

The wife, expecting kasuri methi for thepla making was puzzled to see brussel sprouts in the shopping bag. As her eye-brows arched in the shape of the Arjuna’s mighty Gandeeva about to shoot some aagneyaastra, I started lecturing her on patriotism and its position in relation to kasuri methi. I narrated to her what had transpired in the shops and the importance of patriotism. When she still didnt understand the meaning of brussel sprouts, I had to explain.

After all we were now british asians and we have a moral duty of patriotism towards Great Britian as well. I explained to her that, as I couldnt find any “made in britian” Kasuri methi, I had to settle for the closest thing that britian could manage for thepla making – brussel sprouts. As any understanding wife would do, she understood the situation perfectly and the clouds of confusion left her face.

I was proud that I had taken a stand in the issue and had acted patriotically, making the right choice. To add to the joy, my wife also understood my position clearly and stood by me. Now she does the shopping herself.

For animal rights

I have become a supporter for prevention of cruelty to animals. No, Maneka Gandhi didnt come in my dream and threaten me with dire consequences for something that I did few years back. Rather we recently shifted houses, and that brought about the realization about the suffering animals go through.

We recently moved from a three bedroom house to a two bedroom house and my better half was managing the move. The stuff that we had to pack before the moving deadline was enormous. The things that you accumulate when you stay in a place more than a year is amazing. Yet, we had a deadline to stick to. I had given the option of creative visualisation to my better half as a way to proceed, but the presence of my parents gave her the confidence to shoot it down.

So it had to be me, who after toiling in the workplace (gathering several trivial information from the world wide web – and occasionally glaring at the only up-to-date work that I do regularly – which incidentally is keeping a list of things to do) come home and start doing work again! Injustice… Cried my soul, Gross Injustice, but the sound was lost in the instructions that came from my parents and my other half.

Day after day, the packing was progressing. It was one of those days, as I was pulling out stuff after stuff for packing into boxes, I suddenly felt this deep sympathy for Dusshasana. Yes, our beloved Duryodhana’s brother from the Mahabharata. I could feel the stress he might have gone through while pulling out Draupadi’s sarees one by one. Here I was thinking packing will be over in a jiffy and as I pulled out stuff to pack, more appeared. Just like the situation dusshasana was in. This packing seemed futile and I had a thought that this might land me in the battlefield of kurukshetra.

Once the packing was done somehow and we shifted to the new place, came the next shocker. I was supposed to unpack and arrange the stuff as well! I had always thought that parents loved their children and so does a wife love her husband. But the way things were going, I felt as if all those ideas were wrong. Once a man marries, he becomes part of a circus, where he mistakenly thinks that he is the ringmaster. Its only when the show begins that he realizes his position. I felt like an animal performing tricks in the circus, while the ringmaster(s) crack the whip. The show had to go on, and the animal did perform.

Now I am all for animal rights. You still dont agree, shift houses and let me know.

Creative Visualisation

I have decided to write again. I have been thinking about getting back to writing, and then I found out that creative visualisation is the way to go. For the sceptics, there is a comment link in the bottom, where they can rant about how no such thing exists etc. But from experience I can see that it has worked.

For example, just after my 12th standard myself and my brother became economic immigrants, so that the GDP target of our household will be met, irrespective of the rising inflation and global warming. So we found ourselves in amchi mumbai, where we found jobs. Actually I discovered methods of getting paid with least amount of effort, and my brother discovered a method of getting least amount of pay with maximum amount of work (trust me, there is no free-will, its all destiny, and things do happen like that).

Its during one of happening time of our lives that I found out about creative visualisation. It said, you just need to have intention, and the universe will make it happen for you. It around that time that our parents also decided to move to amchi mumbai, where we had this nice one room house, which served as a kitchen, hall and bedroom, rolled into one (yes, we had separate bathroom, you curious types). The main advantage was that it was a house, with land around it, in which weeds had grown with abandon, housing several reptilian species .

This is where I decided to experiment with my creative visualisation. I had a wonderful intention to clear the garden of the weed and grow some nice plants in the frontage and a nice vegetable garden in the backyard. The way creative visualisation works, you need to relax yourself, think what you want the universe to manifest, think how it would look when its already manifested and then leave it to the universe to work on. If you snore during this process, try to re-do the same thing again. This intention I had sent to the universe and made sure I didnt interfere with the universe making it reality, and hence spent my free time in yoga-nidra.

Its around the same time that my father also had the idea that the garden needs to be cleared of weeds and as an ideal father he told his two sons. My brother immediately started gathering tools, while I was looking at my father with peaceful serenity. I wanted to explain him the intricacies of mysterious universal laws, which governs the whole cosmos, but decided against it as he was not in a very receptive mood.

Needless to say, my subsequent days were spent very little at home, where there was scant respect for universal laws, which was obviously working in the background, doing all that needs to be done. I heard from my mother occasionally that the whole family, except me, was clearing the weeds, while I was doing a disappearing act. In truth, I was attending to some “urgent work”, which mysteriously manifested itself. Within a week or two, the land around the house was transformed from a weedy jungle to a lush garden (with some pots and shrubs) and a vegetable garden soon sprung up behind the house.

While all my uncles say that it was the herculean effort by my brother and my parents that transformed the house as it became (which they were impressed with), I was absolutely sure that the creative visualisation was the force that created all this change, the universal laws never fails. But as Vasishta’s staff absorbed all the weapons thrown at him by Vishwamithra, I had to absorb all the accusations of being lazy and useless with a calm attitude that I had been bestowed with.

As I was convinced of the powers of visualisation, I thought that I can make it work in writing also. My blog had become a sort of pre-historic site, where I used to write just once in a while only, that too when I got bored. Thats when I thought that I should start creative visualisation. And once again this has worked. As my ghost writer types away, I just have to lie there thinking of different ways to bring this knowledge to layman. The power which can transform their lives – Creative Visualisation.