A Chicken by any other Name - I

Cooking chicken is pretty boring . Washing the pieces if you have bought it fresh takes the mickey out of me and by the time I have graduated to cooking it I have lost all interest and bunged it in the wok with some chopped onions and garlic and covered it and then praised the Lord when the children have eaten it . Not that I'm on the lookout for chicken recipes , mind you,but when one comes across something as uncomplicated and interesting as this one posted by my blogger pal Sandeepa , then one sits up and takes notice and goes out to buy some chicken breasts , nicely cleaned and trimmed of all fat and picks some tulsi leaves to substitute for the basil and lets rip. The result is not bad although I say so myself .

The Recipe - Giada's grilled chicken with basil dressing , tarted up a little by me

500 gm boneless chicken breasts

1/4 cup olive oil

freshly ground pepper

fennel seeds roasted and powdered - 1 1/2 tsp

salt

2tbsp lemon juice freshly squeezed

Whisk the marinade ingredients together and rub the mix into the chicken and reserve for about 2 hrs .

Blend two fistfuls of tulsi or if you are lucky,basil , along with a bunch of mint leaves and 2 chopped cloves of garlic .Add a tsp of lemon juice and some lemon zest along with a little salt and pepper to the blend .Whisk it thoroughly and start adding the olive oil till it is blended through and is a lovely translucent green .

Grill the chicken breasts or fry them in a nonstick pan . You wont need any oil . Douse with the basil - mint dressing and serve . I cooked the marinate through and used it as an additional sauce , not that anyone wanted it - the basil-mint concoction was so good .

Serve with a good crusty bread , boiled veggies tossed in a little butter and some mushrooms cooked with oregano and peppercorns .

Tulika Blogathon 4

This is for the Tulika Blogathon 4 .

When we were small there were these six page books of "chhoras"or rhymes printed by a Bengali publisher . There were 3 or 4 volumes and they had a rhyme a page with very colourful and detailed illustrations. When I was a child I remember Ma and Thakuma reading out these rhymes When my older daughter was about a year old I was browsing through some books at a magazine stall when I chanced upon the books and promptly bought them to read out to her . My mother followed this up with “Chhorar Boi” a seminal collection of popular Bengali rhymes , with beautiful line drawings that have continued to enthrall children and grown ups alike through generations .

Khoka Ghumolo para jurolo

Borgi elo deshey

Bulbuli tey dhaan kheyechey khajna debo kishe

Dhaan furalo paan furalo
Khajna debi ki?
Aar kota din shobur koro
Roshun bunechi.

Like most old Bengali rhymes this was a direct hit at the Maratha marauders who terrorised Bengal at that time for revenue against the paddy harvests. The paddy was harvested , sold and the money hidden so that when the Maratha hordes , called “bargis” came the excuse was that the birds had destroyed the crops and the villagers had planted garlic which would take a relatively short time to be harvested . Whether the hordes murdered the Bengalis for their blatant lie or waited till the garlic was harvested for a meagre return,is lost to history .

The painting shows a mother rocking a baby to sleep on her lap - the khoka of the rhyme and there is a hazy dreamy background of marauding dacoits on horseback and fields of paddy being harvested .

Another one goes like this

Chaand uthechhey phool phutechhey

Kadam tolay ke

Haathi nacchhey ghora nachhey

Shonamonir biye

An elephant and a horse dance hoof to hoof in a grove of kadamba trees on a moonlit night , possible serenading Shonamoni who is getting married .

Khokababu jaye

Laal moja paaye

Boro boro didira sab unki mere chaaye

Khoka phirey na takaaye

It is ironic and predictably so , that Shonamunis or Ranis always got married or got their leg pulled because they could not cook “payesh” ( kheer / rice pudding ) or gazed admiringly at the brother(as in the rhyme above) - a chubby little boy in short dhoti, a red jacket and bright red socks and turban going off to war with a wooden sword and a scowl , thereby occupying a role that was secondary to the boy, small though he was . But given the time in which they were composed women did play second fiddle and therefore this condescension was to be expected.

The fact however , remains that generations of Bengali children have grown up listening to these rhymes which have stood the test of time and I can vouch for the fact that almost every Bengali parent has sung at least one or the other as a lullaby and most children can recite them pat from memory.

A popular sit down game we played as children was

Ikri mikri chaam chikri

Chaam kaatey Majumdar ,dheye elo damodar

Jagannath er haanri kunri, duware boshey chaal kaari

Chaal kaartey holo bela , bhaat khao shey dupur bela

Bhaatey porlo maachhi , kodal diye chaanchi ,

Kodaal holo bhonta , kha chhutorer maatha

We sat in a circle with our palms down on the floor and one person did the counting , going from finger to finger while chanting the rhyme . The finger where the rhyme ended was "out" and one had to fold up that finger .And so on it went ,till one person and one finger remained and that person won the game . There was no skill, no dexterity ,maybe a little cheating but wholly absorbing in a world where only the print media ruled supreme !

Roughly translated the rhyme hints at a a lot of activity wherein a Majumdar is cutting a skin off an animal , which if you go by the caste hierarchy strictly , is not his work and Damodar,therefore , rushes up to prevent him from doing it . The rice takes so long to be cleaned for the pot that afternoon has rolled by before they can eat . But there is further travail in store because there is a fly in the rice which has to be dug out with a spade . The spade gets blunt so intense is the ordeal of removing the fly and everyone collectively swears at the carpenter – now why ? I I have no idea ! But it is great fun to sing it out .

The fish we took to the Bride's house

On the morning of the wedding , the fish seller brought the fish .Over 6 kilos on weight it was fat and full , glistening black graduating to a silver pink towards the belly .

Using sindoor the women drew a large dot between the staring dead eyes . They then drew a line upwards representing the sindoor in the parting of a new bride's hair . They fixed a faux goldround nose ring called a "nath" to the gawping mouth of the fish and a faux gold tikli along the line of the sindoor . Then they lovingly dusted it with red and gold powder and fixed a bit of filmy red gold gauze over the fish which looked bizarre but festive .

They laid it tenderly on a freshly washed green banana leaf which was placed on a red "kulo" once used by women to winnow out the unhusked rice and stones from rice before the days of cellophane packaging . A silver bowl of turmeric paste ground by three married women , blessed by the old, toothless fat priest and used by the groom first , was placed beside the fish . Along with an earthen bowl of mishti doi and woven bamboo trays with varieties of sandesh they left for the home of the new bride .

Since it was all rather informal , the two girls strayed to the terrace ,where they saw the fish being slapped around by a dark stocky man in a blue checked lungi . He then washed it clean under the running water and the sindoor flowed away like blood . The "nath" and "tikli" were kept aside carefully , perhaps as gifts for the man's wife.

Washed clean and white the fish lay compliant , yielding even , on the green leaf while the man, whistling , hiked up his lungi , selected a big blade for the "bnonti" and unceremoniously chopped off , first the head and then the tail before homing in on the fish proper .

The younger girl on seeing her beautiful fish desecrated in this manner , fled in tears down the stairs , while the older one , more astute,thought in terms of what a good lunch the fish would make .

Green Thumbs

The house she grew up in was a tall 3 storeyed yellow building bordering a park . The windows had green shutters and the front door which faced the east had a beautiful stained glass panel which caught the sunlight in the morning and painted beautiful patterns on the marble floor . There was a doughty old grandmother who ruled the house and a beautiful tall dark mother with long hair . There was a doll burnt in a bonfire of foreign vanitie, together with frilly fancy frocks ,by the father who suddenly went swadeshi .

All this suddenly vanished when the father took a bad business decision and the family was suddenly doomed - two children dying , the mother too, after a while from tuberculosis and the rest of the children parcelled out to relatives , as the father also passed away .

Now , in all of this , the girl had no chance to find out what affinity she had with nature and the earth especially .That came later , when she married the Man she went to college with, finding love and security and the comfort of a home she could call her own .

The first houses they lived in were apartments and it was only when she went to Jamshedpur , that the idea of a potted garden struck her and she discovered that she had green thumbs . The collection of plants then travelled with her wherever they went in the course of duty - the little cactus plant with hard thin bony stems and the loveliest tiny red flowers , the crotons , the curry leaf plant , the strange plant with the bloated stem sprouting deep pink flowers, the roses which bloomed in an almost rabid frenzy ,the bonsai bodhi ,innumerable plants and cuttings .

For some time when the Man was very very sick and there was tumult raging in the small secure haven she had created , with her husband and the two girls ,she put them on the back burner and when the Man died and she relocated to a small University town , she planted this cactus .

It blooms once a year in the height of summer and has a faint lingering fragrance that stays even when the flower has dried . There is something ephemeral and ghostly about its almost mystic beauty , its sudden appearance and its sudden departure .

( Photos - courtesy Manjari Chakravarti)

She has been gone these long ten years ,a time that seems to be so compressed as to be almost yesterday . Sometimes one turns to the phone to ask her a question or seek a frame of reference and then the sudden pang of realisation that she is not there any more ,is so sharp and sudden that it is almost like a physical pain , so pure is the agony .

And then suddenly something like this comes . It is physical - this feeling that she is reaching out to comfort and reassure and then one realises that this is the hardest thing to endure .

What it takes to beat a stereotype ..

Been tagged by Dipali and Ceekay to note down things which show the shades of Yang in me . I am guilty of not having been a tomboy in my shadowy childhood and youth - I never climbed a tree , nor could I learn how to cycle - I fell off 15 times in one afternoon - I could drive, but Ashis certified me unfit to drive because of his personal neuroses which seemed to magnify every time I took the wheel . I could go on and on ....

But no I am not an "abala nari" and I have always believed in personal freedom, spaces and the ability to do things on my own . I also do not believe in gender stereotypes and-firmly believe that each person has to end up being able to carry out functional jobs without depending on others .

I do not differentiate between blue and pink and both my girls have worn both shades happily when they were infants .

However -

1. I love to whistle and do it quite well
2. I take very long strides when I walk . I have never minced or sashayed
3. I can change a fuse and have done it often when I lived in the hostel
4. I love gizmos and I am the one who connects new electronic gadgets and gets them working , reads the literature and understands the working and can actually get a screwdriver to work without being all thumbs about it .
5. For a long time I have been a lone woman in a male dominant office and juniors often call me "sir"
6. I have no problems with travelling alone , staying in strange places on my own and moving around on my own in a strange place .
7. I DO NOT NEED anyone to chaperone me around anywhere ( read I don't need AG as a permanent escort ) and am happy when left to my own devices .
8. I can change light bulbs , provided that they are not too high up . When the drawing room bulb blacks out , I climb on to the window sill , reach up and change it
9. I move the furniture around when it is required and do not recall AG ever condescending to help me . Anyway I would rather have him out of the way when I get around to doing such things .
10. I believe in wearing out a pair of sandals/slippers / shoes before starting on another and cannot be bothered to co ordinate my outfits( not that I look bad ) . In fact the day I co ordinate, my colleagues' collective jaw drops .
11. I forgot to add that I often swear like a stevedore on shore leave which prompts my friends ( including Dipali ) and family to say "Language , Ruma " !

I am sorry I do not have a son because I would have ensured that he cook, serve, sew a button , wash the dishes and so on and so forth and generally make himself useful around the house . While I am supposed to tag people I will just leave it as an open option as I am sure others would have similar stories - so do examine yourselves and hold forth !