From the Archives: A Confession

I found this as I was going through my drafts today. I should have posted this a year ago. But the elusive right time never came, and eventually, I forgot. No worries, though. The word is out, and everybody knows what I did last summer. So here is a much-postponed letter to my dad.

Play along, try not to google the clues. Just pay attention and hopefully you'll figure it out. Have fun!


Dear Pa,

I feel you deserve to know a secret. I went exploring in a foreign land this summer, without you knowing. But you'll have to guess where. The day I ventured out here, I was in transit. In three places (in different corners of the world) but not wholly in any one of them.

Well before I ever came here, I dreamt about being here. In a long, long tram ride. In real life, this tiny city has 73 kilometres of tram tracks, and more than 110 trams! No wonder that's all I could dream about.

This incredibly cool city was one of nine European cities of culture in 2000, hosted the 2007 Eurovision contest, and held the 1952 Olympics. Blah blah blah.

It snows for more than one third of the year , and has an average of 51 days without sun in the winter. Imagine that! So when Carl Ludvig Engel designed this city, he very fittingly wanted it to be The Great White City of the North. His neo-classical architecture was so convincingly Russian that the Gorky Park film crew decided to shoot here instead of Moscow, where the park originally consecrated to Maxim Gorky is. Here, have a picture example of all the Rusky business.

Like me, people who live here love all kinds of fish, except, perhaps Tomato Baltic Herring, which isn't quite so much a fish preparation but a method of punishment in schools in this country.

Where there is fish, there must be water. And my, is there water. This city is built on over 300 islands. Three hundred! But it also has rocks. Big ones. The world's largest continuous rock tunnel is here.

You've probably guessed by now which city I'm talking about. Please, please tell me you peered at the picture above with a magnifying glass, at least?

I had such an awesome time there. It was the perfect last bit of holiday adventure before I went back to being in Delhi's belly again. More fun because it was on the sly, of course. And because while I was there, a giant rainstorm struck the city, and everything got soaked, and my plane washed away. That last part is not true. Unfortunately.

But almost! Because, when I got back to the airport (almost rain-soaked, but well in time!), they told me my flight was delayed. And so I had fun window-shopping in duty free and taking up kind strangers' offers for coffee and conversation for the rest of my time there. I can be such a happy, hippie hobo.

Please don't be mad, Dad.

All my love,

N

Eggs

If you have ever talked to me about food, you must have discovered how much I love eggs. What 42 is to some people, eggs are to me. Ask me for breakfast, and I will offer to make you eggs, any way you like. Ask me for lunch, and I will offer to make you eggs. Ask me for dinner, and I will offer to make you...well, you guessed it.

Truth be told, it's because they're just that versatile. You can use them in coatings, fillings, and main courses. You can cook them with vegetables, in fried rice (or noodles), or just by themselves. You can fry them, poach them, scramble them, boil them (eugh), foam them, age them, devil them, bake them, shir them, soup them, spiderweave them, and probably even dance with them.

The only thing you can't do if you want to successfully enjoy an egg, in fact, is to break it on the way home.

So it's only natural that I want to share with you some of the fun ways I've used eggs recently. And boy, I've used a lot of eggs. Perhaps a personal best? Thirteen in one day. And that's just to bake with.

Let's start simply with fried eggs. Here, have a look at my lunch and dinner from [some day] last week. For lunch, spaghetti with chunky tomato sauce and a fried egg on top. Yolk, just runny. Yummy. And another fried egg as part of dinner. This time with a yolk that wonderfully, sunshinily spread itself out in the pan. Topped with Italian pizza seasoning herbs (!), and eaten with toast. I can't even begin to tell you how good this was.

I'll just leave you to drool for a bit.

And then, I took the day off from classes to bake! It was my daddy's birthday on the ninth, you see. So I set about, with all the zest in the world (and tons of the lemon kind in my fridge), to bake. The trouble was, I didn't know what to make. AND, my sister had eaten all the eggs.

Okay, she'd eaten two of them. But two out of the six eggs I had carefully planned my undecided recipe around? Man.

But like every time things go wrong, things went super right afterwards! I went and bought a zillion eggs, and I didn't break them on the way home. I separated the whites from the yolks for seven whole eggs without mixing them up, or leaving bits of the shell in the mix. I measured and sifted the flours (which I usually don't have the patience for), and didn't even yield to the temptation of adding any whole wheat flour into it. I beat the whites till they were softly peaking, added some sugar, and beat till they were beautifully meringue-like shiny. I followed a recipe, for heaven's sake, for probably one of the few times in my life. And then, I poured the whole mix into baking trays without letting it collapse!

I felt like a superstar.

I won't bore you with the details of how much I enjoyed making the strawberry topping, which I smeared all over everything. Instead just look at how it turned out. Sponge cake with strawberry filling. All professional. All natural.

I made lots more cakes that day. One large-family-sized cake, and twenty-four gooey chocolate cupcakes. They smelt so good, I was afraid I'd finish them before everyone else could taste any. I didn't.

I had cake batter instead.

A note: I have a simple, delicious, new go-to recipe for chocolate cake. Ask me for details! (Or cake.)

World Photography Day

In honour of World Photography Day (19th August), and also because this is my final year in college and next year I can take pictures of more exciting places! I thought I would document my day there. Of course, getting there involves walking to and from college, which is far more exciting than college itself on some days, so this set of photos isn't strictly constrained to campus grounds. But there's enough Stephania floating around in the archives, anyway. Here's my photographic ode to Delhi University.


8.15 am

11.45 am

3.05 pm

Happy days, these. Starting in yellower-than-sunshine stop lights on my favourite way to walk to class, sprinkled with ephemeral rainstorms, friends, their full wallets(!), lost keys and by-the-by astronomy lessons, and ending with a nap that quintessentialises college life: whatever you want, anywhere you like. Man, I'm going to miss this place.

Happy (belated) Photography Day, everyone!

Yeni

Yeni, the Turkish word for new. I like how it sounds like yes and no, the mixed up feelings you get when change has just blown you into a new place.

Or a new time, for that matter.

Why do I say that? Because this blog is a year old. A long-term relationship with the slow picturisation of my life. Much has happened in the past year, and yet it doesn't feel like all that long. It's been a much-awaited exploration of a lot for me, and I'm glad I've had somewhere to reflect on them, and someone to share them with. Thank you, everyone, for patiently following, commenting (and complimenting), and mostly, keeping me company.

I'm just going to continue to look out my (new house's) window, and show you the view.

A bit of wabi-sabi from the trenches.

Because every time she saw him for the last time,
that thing ensconced by her ribcage
shattered
into a zillion shards of coloured glass,
scattering haphazard rainbows
of sparkling broken light.

Like pieces of a butterfly's wing,
hidden in the mossy brickwork
of a walkway
they were going to build over.

      (PS:       Our college is nuts. Just thought I should tell you. They're covering up everything charming about the building in marble that reeks of money, without actually making sure all the stuff underneath works. Water, electricity, ventilation. Boy, some alumni are going to rave.
     PPS:      This photo is entirely unedited. The first in a long time. Maybe I should get back to doing that some more.)

Post-dated: Interns' Night in the City

My friends interning at fancy-schmancy (Fortune 500) companies have spent all summer regaling me with stories about the four-hour working days, glitzy Macs, and pay packages that would make a grown man working professional jealous.

Well, I didn't get any of that.

I did, however, get a chance to be adopted by the (flamboyant) saviour of the AIDS-stricken world, more than my fair share of good food, and the coolest bosses by far. Heck I even got to go dine (and drink!) with them. They shared with me one of those well-kept Delhi secrets only people who know, know. And here I am, sharing it with you. Aren't you lucky.

The Delhi Golf Club, where you get the softest seekh kebabs I've ever eaten, the yummiest stuffed potato flatbread (aloo da kulcha to all Punjabis), and wonderful company. More pictures some other time. I'll just leave you with these polaroids and one picture of a piece of tandoori chicken that looks a little lonely, showing just how much (and how well) we ate.

On another note: due apologies for the delay. I've been meaning to post these since last week, but the flu gods were conspiring against (or maybe I should say with) us this week. Our entire extended family (of ten! two grandparents, two sets of grandchildren, and a middle layer of assorted parents) has been bedridden, in shifts. Our own private hospital ward, where the nurses switch roles with the patients. We're not playing happy families, we are one.

Clické

The other day, I was telling a friend how sunset silhouettes are so cliché. And then I went out and clicked one.

Oh, the joys of walking into the setting sun.

Me, A Couple Trees, and RB

Delhi's forts are far more fun to explore when you're with (photographer) friends. Come back soon, Bhaumik!