Ramblings of a delusional dumbass

The greatest trick sweet makes pulled off was convincing the entire world that making Mysore Pak was tough. It isn't. Sure, it's quite labour intensive, but a little exercise never killed anybody. Consider it the calories you burn off before piling it all up with the sweet concoction you are about to make. The problem with making Mysore Pak is not how much elbow grease you put into it, it is how precise you are with the timing. Keeping a watch on milk from boiling over is child's play compared to this. You let that golden yellow bubbly sweet mess on the stove for 1/16th of a second longer, and you end up with a piece of metamorphic rock. While eating Mysore Pak is an otherworldly experience in itself, making it is quite magical in its own way. Because you can use a small amount of ingredients and still end up with a fuck ton of it. I learnt that trick accidentally. So don't use a big cup for the measurements, and use the same cup for all measurements. Measure t...

Travel has never been my forte. Especially on a motorcycle. I’d been on sub-100 km rides on my little 110cc steed back when I was young and stupid. Almost every one of them to my grandmother’s place 40 km away from home. The machine was underpowered, the seat was uncomfortable, and my hands and feet would ring like a tuning fork at the end of every ride. Not a very pleasant experience. Neither have birthdays been big. A few unsavoury experiences that coincided with my birthday have made me believe that my birthday is jinxed, leaving me with a bad aftertaste at the mere thought of it. I’ve always taken both travel and birthdays with a grain of salt – unless prodded and pleaded by my friends, I try not to engage in either. So, this year, I decided to ride to Hampi for my birthday. The Journey Hampi has always been on my mind for quite a while now. Memories of the boulders and ruins kept coming back to me like flashes from a past life. I’d been to Hampi on a family trip long ago –...

Peanuts. The poor man’s badam and the bored man’s entertainment. This quick and easy to make snack is the perfect antidote for your mid-morning munchies. You know, when it’s too late for a second breakfast and too early to cook a real meal. Get some Haldiram’s salted peanuts. Or masala peanuts. Or grab a handful of peanuts, roast them on a pan over medium heat. If you go the roast-my-own-peanuts way, make sure to remove the skin. Finely chop one small cucumber, one small onion, one small tomato. Be careful not to chop off one small finger. That would be painful and unnecessarily messy. Add a few drops of lemon juice. Add a two-finger pinch of chat masala. About a pinch of black salt/ table salt. Add the peanuts and mix them all nicely – but gently. If you’re feeling fancy, add some chopped coriander as well. Goes well with a stiff drink. Or so I’m told. Enjoy.

Would you call a pualo a pulao if there’s no vegetables in it? I would. Not. This isn’t exactly a pulao. This is like a weird kushka, masala bath type rice dish. The name doesn’t matter. It’s just really tasty and you should try it. Bathe a cup of rice in cool and clear spring water flowing in the direction of the wind. If you don’t have a stream handy, regular tap water will do. Soak this rice in clean water. Then you go gather some stuff lying around in your kitchen. A cardamom pod, some cloves, an inch of cinnamon stick, jeera, fennel seeds, pepper, bay leaf. Yeah that should do. It’s okay if you can’t find all of these, but you should have at least some of these things. One medium size onions, handful of mint and corriander leaves, 2-3 green chillies, garlic-ginger paste. Chop them and grind them to a fine paste. You’re going to grind them anyway so don’t worry about them being finely chopped. Just run your knife through it roughly and that should be good enough. As lo...

I’ve read several reviews of the latest (?) Darshan starrer Yajamana, but none of them got the point of the movie. I think this is the first movie to have suffered such an ill fate solely based on the collective inability of the reviewers to grasp the crux of the film. It is an intelligent movie. Probably the most intelligent one since A, or Upendra. I guess people just brushed this movie off as a shallow, no brains mass entertainer based on the cast and crew.   It’s as if a small group of people managed to change the perception of a movie among the larger masses with their power of social influence.   It’s like watching a Nolan movie in real time. Yes, on a surface level, the movie ticks all the tropes in an average Darshan movie. Where Darshan rides a Bullet, low angle shots of him make him look like a bull (in a good way, don’t lynch me), there are two heroines- a mod one and a gowramma one. There’s a “special song” with the modern female lead. And the act...

Some people call this tomato bath. The same people also call tomato chitranna as tomato bath. Well, which is it? Make up yer goddamn mind! But what are names anyway? Just meaningless sounds associated with meaningful gizantropitals. See, that’s a name I just made up. It means nothing.   But I digress.   Wash and soak a cup of rice in water for about 20 minutes. You can go all fancy and soak basmati rice. Or you can soak whatever is lying around the house as long as it is rice. In a pressure cooker, dribble a table spoon of oil and same quantity of ghee. Fry some whole spices till they are fragrant.  Cardamon pods, cinnamon sticks, peppercorn, fennel, whatever. Add 3-4 split green chilles, two thinly sliced onions, a couple of pods of chopped garlic and a table spoon of ginger garlic paste. This is also a good time to add a handful of mint leaves and coriander. Fry till the onions are translucent/ golden brown/ until you are happy. Then add 3-4 ch...

A post Matrix, post Children of Men, and pre John Wick movie that combines the best of all three worlds to give you a heady concoction style, glamour, action, and boobies. Roger Ebert gave this movie 3.5/ 4. “There once was a woman who was quite begat.   She had three babies named Nat, Pat, and Tat.   She said it was fun in the breeding,  but found it was hell in the feeding   when she saw there was no tit for Tat.”   Shoot ‘Em Up is not for the purists- either of cinema or of action. It’s pure madness on celluloid in its truest form. It doesn’t have the emotional anchor of John Wick. It tries to, it really does, but it fails short because we just don’t really give a fuck about the protagonist. Not even when we learn why he turned into a brooding, man of serious demeanour (?)- supposedly supposed to make us care for his sad past. Then there’s the style of the Matrix. It’s been done to death, especially in the time when...