Of Homemade Music Videos and Home-cooked Food

It's vacation time right now, and where I usually would be sitting at my computer, trying to get a view of the monitor through my daughter's flailing arms, and trying to coax my thoughts to surface above the din of Debbie's voice and her noisy toys, I sit here right now in utter peace and quiet, with no one switching off the computer mid-post, no buzzing voice in my ears, and no baby fingers trying to get at the keyboard... Just me, my thoughts, and you readers.... and I HATE IT! No. Sorry. I didn't mean you, my readers! I love you guys! I meant sitting at home alone, without Debbie, just me and this empty house...sigh...

Debbie's gone to her grandma's (my mom) for a week...wait, actually it is now been more than a week. She is having the time of my life (I mean Debbie, not my mom! God only knows how my mom is handling it there, because along with Debbie are 6 other boisterous cousins filling the house, and toppling down God knows how many flower pots! Enjoy mommy...hhehe!). So anyway, Debbie gets to play with all those kids ranging between the age of 6 to 16. And they are not even her cousins...their mine!! That's what happens when your grandmother is  your grandfather's second wife, and is just around 6 years older than your mother...and she (your grandmother) had 8 kids! I think they took the whole "the more the merrier" thing too seriously! Whew!

Anywho, Debbie is playing with kids ranging from 6 to 16 years old, who are all her aunts and uncles!! And she has not missed me yet... :( That doesn't mean I can't miss her... I do, I do... I miss her sooo much...

I miss this little girl...

and her lovely smile...

and her crazy-awesome singing...

Boohooo! I want my babyyyy!

*sniff* *wiping eyes, blowing nose*...

And in a funny tangent way, I want my mommy.... and her food...
Actually I've been feeling that for quite a while, so I wrote something for her...

Mom, this is for you... (pssst, can you please consider this as your advanced birthday present? Kidding. Totally getting you a real present on your birthday... :D)

----------------------------
Street food...

"... Is unhygienic, uncovered, and unappetizing",
Said mother, piling a mountain of rice
Onto my plate already sagging
Under the weight of healthily boring home-cooked food.
Grumbling, sniffing, dipping fingers in gingerly
I question...
"Why can't I have a snack instead?"

Crisp samosas are the best.
Waiting near the familiar heat of food
Sizzling in hot oil,
Eying the one that you will choose
If you had a choice,
Peering into the cart
At sauces and spices,
I make a mental note -
'Remember to ask for
The sweet and sour sauce.'

Jaws clench at the tangy thought
Of salted gooseberries
That bring back memories of
Dead-broke college days,
When a rupee earned you a bag of those sour gems
That set the saliva flowing 10 years later!

Corn on the cob
Luscious, spicy and crunchy
Satisfy the sharp hunger that comes
From trudging up the lanes
Of little towns on hill stations
In search of the perfect bargain
On a thick woolen sweater.

Ice cream in a park -
Dripping water and icicles that take the place
Of real cream and flavor,
Cold chunks breaking off
Onto tongues,
Causing brain-freeze
And the rush of guilty pleasures
That mother would scorn at.

Vadais are good too.
Crisp exterior giving way
To warm dough and stray chilli bits,
The accompaniments as beckoning and cozy
As the kitchen at home...

The kitchen. Where mother
Would always have food on the table,
A soothing word
A listening ear
A tearing eye
A smiling face
For me, the wayward child,
Who ate too much street food...

The Men in Blue Bring It Home!

YAAAAAAAY! India won the Cricket World Cup after more than 20 years. I am truly happy! It was a wonderful moment, when every Indian on the planet felt one with their Indian counterparts, regardless of the religion, state, caste or social status they belonged to!

Let me stop the gushing to tell you that you would never have heard me rave about cricket ever before on my blog, and, I solemnly promise you that you will never again hear another word about cricket in the future! I am no cricket fan...when it's IPL time, I flee a mile away from the general vicinity of the television and my cricket-maniac husband. I still hold on to those ideals. As a matter of principle, I never watch cricket, because here I am slaving over a desk all day, and coming home and slaving over a stove, and some boy-man hitting a ball around gets paid a gazillion times more than me!! I take exception to that. And what do we get sitting in front of a television watching said boy-men romping around? NOTHING! Those are just my views, and you are free to disagree - in fact, please do disagree. That's what a free country is all about. Anyway, point is, I "dislike" cricket, to put it ever so lightly.

BUT, c'mon winning the WORLD CUP is a whole new deal altogether!! I actually invested a good 3-4 hours of my weekend on Saturday night, sitting and watching the latter half of the match. All because I truly began to admire the grit and determination of our boys out there on the field. I have developed a sense of deep respect for MS Dhoni, captain of the Indian cricket team. The way he carried himself throughout the game was simply awe-inspiring. Even after he hit the winning sixer, his obvious happiness was so understated and so balanced that you had to admire his maturity and his ability to keep his head, no matter how low the 'downs' or high the 'ups'! He let Sachin take center stage during the celebrations and he walked a good two-paces behind, just enjoying watching his team mates celebrate. The whole country is cheering for this man who has led the Indian cricket team to so many victories in such a short time. I think he is truly an inspiration to the youth of our nation!

And then there was the game itself. Though I wasn't exactly gnawing my way through my nails in anticipation, it was an exciting game, all said and done! The moment when Sachin got out was a real shock. Even the celebrities in the stadium lost their photogenic smiles when Sachin walked off the pitch. I think that was the one time I saw Rajnikanth actually look defeated!! :) I also felt really sorry for Gautam Gambhir, after he failed to hit a century. The look on his face when he walked back the stands, was nothing short of heart-breaking... :(

But the fact that Dhoni and Yuvraj were able to bring the team back to pace, and win the game for us was really thrilling! At the end of the game, when Dhoni hit that fabulous sixer, my husband had just one thing to say, "Now Sachin can retire in peace!" And I had to agree. It was so moving, how the entire team was playing for just one man! One man who had inspired them, made India the force to reckon with in cricket, and took so many risks for his team! What Virat Kohli said about Sachin was amazing! After he had walked around the whole ground carrying Sachin on his shoulders, he was asked why he had done that. His response: "Sachin has carried the burden of the country on his shoulders for 28 years. So, I don't mind carrying him on my shoulders!" Awwww! that is so adorable! :)

So, there it is - India won the CRICKET WORLD CUP! I think we will be riding this wave for a long, long, long time! And hey, I don't even feel furious that these guys are getting a crore each!But, it stops there. IPL is next week, and you won't hear a word about it from me..NO SIR!

The Boys in Blue lift the Cricket World Cup!!

Check out Sreesanth's expression! :D

The Indian skipper reaching out for his keep-sake stump from the winning match

The great Sachin deserved the parade on the shoulders of his teammates

Awww! Isn't this adorable?!

Love Walked In - Marisa de los Santos

There are many different reasons why we like a book. Sometimes, it's because the story is so gripping. Sometimes, it's because the author is our favorite and we just like his/her style, sometimes we love a book because one of the characters reminds us of someone we know (sometimes even ourselves), or we love a book because we wish we had that sort of romance/thrill/happy ending in our lives. But sometimes...sometimes... we love a book because it is pure poetry. As cliche as that sounds, I am saying it from the depth of my book-loving soul!

It is not so much as the story itself, or the plot that carries the beauty. Instead, the beauty lies in the place that it should - the words, the diction, the thoughts, the expression, and the heart of the writer. I experienced this poetry in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. Pure poetry! I also remember feeling the same sense of upliftment, of being taken to a different plane when I read Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie". And now, I felt the same beauty flowering inside of me when I read Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos. 

The way the book starts - the very first line that the author decided to write on the very first empty page - is itself breathtaking: "My life - my real life - started when a man walked into it, a handsome stranger in a perfectly cut suit, and, yes, I know how that sounds."

And YES, I know how this sounds! You're going to say, "Pfft! there she goes again! Raving about some soppy romance novel!" But my dear friend, that's where you are terrible mistaken. This is not a soppy romance. Yes it is a romance, but there is a beauty in there that appeals to every woman. The beauty of love and motherhood, and the pain of having a beloved child plucked out of your hands and handed over to someone else, the reassuring warmth of family, and the wonder of life itself.

The plot is actually quite simple. Cornelia Brown (a most unlikely pairing of first and last name, if there ever was one), the manager of Cafe Dora, a little warm coffee house in Philadelphia, has a good, strong college education but prefers to work in a restaurant. She is a die-hard romantic and believes that every girl's life should be like The Philadelphia Story, where she finds the right dashing, tall-dark-handsome, smooth and suave man for a soul mate! And she truly believes it will happen to her!! (Yes, double exclamation marks right there, because, seriously, who is she kidding?! That stuff doesn't happen in real life. In fact, it doesn't even happen in reel life nowadays - anybody watch Knocked Up??)

But find him she does, and his name is Martin. She is head over heels in love with this man who can do no wrong, who will listen calmly to her without saying a word, and who will take her on the most starlit romantic dates. Suddenly, one day, Cornelia's world is turned upside down when a little 11 year old girl walks into the coffee house with Martin, and he introduces her as Clare, his daughter....


The book consists of two stories told alternately, from the point of view of the central characters  - Clare and Cornelia. Finally, their lives dovetail, Clare finds the family she longs for, and Cornelia finds the love of her life. As usual, I am not going to give you anything more on the plot. It is actually quite simple, and comes to the most logical conclusions.


However, there is a huge advantage in the plot being so forehead-slapping simple. Instead of filling the book with twisted plots, the author uses her space to flesh out the characters, to create a clear picture of each scene, each interaction, each incident, and each reaction of each character. She does this so well that at we easily begin to think like the characters in any given situation in the plot! It's like listening to your best friend talk about her life - you listen with involvement, have an opinion about everything, advice your friend on the next move, and are dying to know what happened next.


Read this book to see how a modern novel should be written. Hope love walks in for you too....sigh! That is so soppy and cliche but what the heck...

The Ultimate Blog Party 2011 - Join the Fun!

This is my linky post that is going to be my ticket to the Ultimate Blog Party 2011, only THE MOST sought after online blog party for mom-bloggers like me, and probably you! :)  The party is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom.com, a really great blog written by twin mommies (how cool is that?!) Janice and Susan. Check out this post to know more about the Ultimate Blog Party 2011, and how to enter. If you headed here from the party itself, allow me to introduce myself and my blog very briefly. I am Jane Hamilton, and I have been blogging for the past 3 years. In my blog here, "Ad Libitum", I talk about anything that interests me, including cooking, a great trip I had, a soppy romantic movie I saw, or my opinion on stuff. Nothing earth shattering, but I just like to put my two-pence out there! Also, I do what mommies love doing the most - talk about my child. My 4-yr-old girl, Debbie, is the joy of my life, and here I talk about her little skirmishes, her toys, her favorite food, and generally how she makes sure I never have to suffer from dull moments in my life. And of course, I talk about my beloved husband, the man of my dreams, my knight in shining armor, and the reason for my deep-seated hatred for watching any sport on TV!

I am neither a prolific writer, nor a regular one. I hold down a 9-6, and though it is no excuse for not posting often enough, my lazy self somehow lets it be. When I do write, I spill my heart out!

So, welcome to Ad Libitum, where, really, things are quite adlib. Hope you enjoy your stay.

If you are one of my readers, what are you doing reading this? You already know boring old me...HURRY and join me at the Ultimate Blog Party!! Go ahead and add your blog to the linky and meet more awesome bloggers like you! I'm going to do just that right now!

Watching Real Television for the First Time EVER!

Did you have one of those childhoods that has been deprived of the most basic things that every other family on the planet seemed to have in plenty? Like ice cream, or play time, or best friends, or, like in my case, television?? Yes, I was television deprived in my childhood. I think it has had an adverse effect on me, and it affects the way I function as an adult. 

You see, when we were kids, my parents were very skeptical as to how the "idiot box" could damage their offsprings. So, they never let us watch television. When they did, it was some stupid cartoon that, I personally think, had a far worse rotting effect on the brain than something a little more real! And for the most part of my life, I watched Arabic TV programs! I totally (and only) got Arab humor, I did not understand anything that wasn't said with Arab body language or an Arabic accent, and I was actually riveted  with Arabic TV serials. In Fujairah, in the 1980s and '90s, that is all was available on TV. If you wanted to watch anything in English, you had to wait till Thursday night, when they played some English movies that were either as old as the hills, or as unfunny as Clint Eastwood! It made the wait till midnight on Thursday totally worthless. I think if my parents had just gone and booked the damn cable, we would have gotten our fix and moved on. Instead, they were busy "growing us up in the right way", and we were the most TV-deprived kids in the country! 

What was the result? When we saw cable TV in someone's house, we went CRAAAAAZZZZYYY! I think anyone who has ever come within close quarters of my siblings and I will say that when the TV is on, we are dead to the world! You could detonate a bomb beside me, and I wouldn't notice if I was watching 'Remington Steele'!! That was because I rarely saw people talking in English and being dashing, let alone Pierce Brosnan being awesome! 

I knew all the trivia, gossip, reviews, and the finer points of Hollywood shows and movies, and I knew the names of all the actors, and who they were dating at any point of time. And yet, I never really got to watch a proper English movie until I was in middle school!! My parents were creeped out when I spoke at length about some actor or movie, knowing that I could never have gotten to watch that movie or have known about that actor!! My dad used to let us watch movies like 'George of the Jungle', 'Jurassic Park', and 'Baby's Day Out' when our family friends (read boring adult friends of my parents) bought the CD or DVD. Kindly note that I saw these movies when I was in high school! And that was all we were allowed to see. One movie we could watch as many times as we wanted was 'The Sound of Music'. So, I keep saying to people that I have seen the movie more times than I can remember, and you'd think it's because I was a big fan, but now you know the real reason why? Heck, it was the ONLY thing we were allowed to watch!!! I remember my dad saying that he did not want us to watch 'Anaconda' because the snakes were too huge and scary!! Wha???

My TV-deprived childhood and teenage years turned to LIFE-Deprived college years, where I spent 3 years in a hostel, where the only thing we got to see was "Ozhiyum Oliyum" every Friday at 7pm. Tamilians, you know what I'm talking about. It's a show where they played Tamil movie songs with the grating violin music and the over-dressed heroines doing demented dance moves, and the heroes accompanying them with robotic movements. I watched even these shows, simply because I liked to see the light on the television!! You know, my mom used to say this about me: This girl will watch the television, even if there is only a white light on it!! And I have been known to stare at TV static for almost an hour, hoping against hope that the picture will resume! Ahem... Anyway, my parents are good, exemplary, salt-of-the-earth types, and I LOVE them, but the truth remains that they wouldn't let me watch TV. Till now, TV remains a weakness, a fatal flaw, and an obsession for me, my sister and my brother! Go shrink that!

So, time went on, and wherever I went, bad TV haunted me. Finally I landed in Nagercoil, where we had cable TV, and boy was I happy!! Little did I know that "cable TV" in Nagercoil meant 30 local channels that had the same death-inducing crappy programs hosted by the same nasal host with the cheesy clothes, the heavy make-up and the stiff body language, who played the same crappy old Tamil songs that even the actors in the songs wouldn't be proud of!! Some of the remaining channels contained local Christian programs that featured the very same people you saw in church every Sunday and then in every grocery store during the weekend! GAAAH! Finally you had BBC, CNN, StarMovies, HBO, and Star Sports in their grainiest, most teeth-chattering, nail-scraping-on-blackboard glory! So, wheee! I was happy....NOT!

This month, my life changed into this glorious aria to television, when we got DTH at home! Yaaaay! The clear-screen-high-definition heavens sang songs of joy in surround theater clarity!! And I. Was. Home. 

So, here I was, sitting on the couch, basking in the glory of watching one channel on a small box in the corner, and also being able to scroll down 100 and more channels, not being able to decide on whether I should watch that awesome reality show on one channel or this classic Oscar-winning movie on this channel, when.........

...... my husband comes in, grabs the TV remote from my hand, activates all the sports channels, and sits down to watch the IPL.

Cue: hair-tearing and gut-wrenching screams!

Commitment Issues and an Evening Class

I have loyalty issues - with books. You know, that urge to ditch a book few chapters in, and run to another one, simply because the blurb on that one is too darn attractive? Yes, I think if we had psychiatrists for bibliomaniacs, they would say this was a serious ailment... Commitment issues.

I went to Chennai last month, and where people come home with loads of clothes, fashion jewellery, jeans, and more normal stuff, my family went to Chennai and came home with a cartload of books. Now, give me a "whoop" if you get what I'm talking about! Some people out there might think it would have been more clever to buy something more worthwhile, valuable, shiny... I did try, you know. I went into Spencer's in Chennai, and I DID oggle at the purses, the jewellery, the food, and the clothes (especially the Kurtis and the jeans). But then I walked into the books section, and my mind went blank. I forgot about all the awesome things I saw back there, and gave up.

So, now I have more than 5 books sitting on my shelf, and I can't decide what to read. I also borrowed two books from The American library (located inside the American Embassy compound), and I have literally picked at one chapter each, still unable to decide what I should settle down with.

What did I do finally? I decided to clear the air (and my head) with Maeve Binchy. So, I read     Evening Class. It's a lovely book.

This was the first time I read Maeve Binchy - thanks Nameeta and Karen for introducing me to this lovely writer and for feeding my obsession!

So, anyway, Evening Class. The story is about how an Irish lady teaches Italian to a very diverse group of people. She runs the class along with a teacher who works in the school on whose grounds the evening classes are held. The class has around 30 students, and the entire novel tells the story of each one of these students and how they came about attending an Italian class.

So, if you're thinking, "Whups, that's a hell of a lotta characters," then you couldn't be more right! It starts with the story of Aidan, a teacher who has been waiting for the post of School Headmaster all his life, and the love affair between his 20-something daughter and the 40-yr-old teacher who actually gets the headmaster job... Oooh Harsh!

Aidan meets Signora, an Irish lady who followed her Italian lover to his hometown and settled across the street from him, and watched as he married an Italian girl his family chose for him, and had babies, started his own restaurant, and eventually died. During all of this, she keeps their love affair a secret, and finally returns to Ireland when the widow of her lover requests her to please leave the country and his memory to the grieving family. At this point, Signora also finds out that the family knew all along about the affair that had been, but had also decently refused to make an issue out of it. Poignant!

The story of Signora is really what laces the entire novel together, as she comes in contact with each character, advising here, helping there, appreciating one, learning from another, until all of them take home something beautiful and valuable from her Italian lessons and her personality.

Having said that, just you try keeping track of all the Irish names, the stories, and the back stories, and the what-not!! I really became confused at times, when two characters had similar personality traits, spoke in a similar way, or had criss-crossing story-lines.

In the end, though, it is a lovely book that you should read on a sunny Sunday afternoon, curled up on your couch, or you can read it in between watching MasterChef (like I did), or read a few pages every night, and go to sleep knowing that everything will be okay, which is my favorite way of reading a book! (So different from the sheer terror that you take to bed with you, if you read Harlan Coben! But that's a story for another post.)

I read the book, and isn't it a nice coincidence that a second book by Maeve Binchy, which another friend gave me (Thanks DazzlingRay!) was like a tangent story of Evening Class? The main characters of Quentin's are minor characters in Evening Class. So, it makes me feel happy that I know what EVERYONE is doing... :P

Anyway, I'll be back with a review of Quentin's as soon as I'm done.

Thanks for sticking around. Love ya!

Tell Me About Yourself, Please?

It's a random day today ('random' since The Big V-Day was a week ago, and if I wanted to make a comeback, I really should have done it then and yet I chose today...) and I am ashamed, and am mentally crawling with my tail between my legs right now, because I have not blogged for so long. The last entry was a lame one on my Wordpress blog status update in January. Why I felt driven to put that up is anybody's guess. It makes me cringe....like, major hiney-cringe, when I look at it, but I am leaving it up there anyways, because you're my friend, and whether you like me the way I am or not, I am not going to pretend to you, this far in our relationship...," thus she spoke into total emptiness, without stopping to wonder who was listening.

Ahem...anyway, so, instead of talking about me I want you to tell me things about yourself, since I love you all, my dear second-chance-giving readers. I have a few questions for you, and I hope you will answer them in the comments section. So, here goes:

1. What do you like most about being around friends?

2. what is your favorite drink?

3. What is your idea of fun?

4. What book are you reading now?

5. Who is your favorite actor/actress?

6. What is your favorite movie of all time?

7. What time is it?

8. If you could change something about yourself, what would that be?

9. Are you in love?

10. Are you able to love peope with all your heart, mind and soul? (corny, I know, but answer it anyway, won't you?)

11. How can you describe the worst feeling that you have ever experienced? (heart break, cramps, you can talk about anything here, as long as you don't mind doing so...)

12. What is the first thing that crosses your mind when you wake up in the morning?

13. How many times do you wait for your phone to ring before you pick it up?

14. What is your favorite smell/flavor?

15. Do you cook? How much do you like your cooking?

16. What is your idea of partying?

17. You will grow up some day, won't you?

18. When you grow up (whenever that will be), what would you like to be?

Right, now that you're going to tell me all your dark secrets, we're going to be BFFs. Yaaaay!

Note: These questions are taken from SampleQuestionnaire.com. I think it's okay to borrow from them, coz I think that's what they intended. Anyway, feel free to use these questions on your own blogs, if you want. Have fun!