Video Wednesday: Qissa-e-Parsi | The Parsi Story

Parsi’s are an integral part of Indian society. They may have come to India only in the 8th and 10th Century but yet they have become a part of the fabric of this country.

Legend has it that when Parsi’s first came to India and asked King Jadhav Rana of Gujarat for permission to settle in his kingdom, he asked them how they would live here in the midst of people who were not their own, not like them at all.

The leader of he Parsi’s asked for a bowl of milk and sugar. When these were given to him, he mixed the sugar in the milk and offered it to the King, asking him to separate the two. The King looked at him perplexed and he explained - ‘Your people are like milk and we Parsi’s are like sugar. We will become part of your people and add sweetness to your society.'

Even today, this seems to hold true. Anyone who knows Parsi’s or has Parsi friends will vouch for the wonderful people they are, sweet natured, kind, gentle and with an great sense of humour. They are people who are not just great with numbers but also good at heart.

I came across a video about them them the other day and couldn’t help but smile with fond memories of my Parsi friends. Here’s to some wonderful Parsi people I’m met and dear friends I’ve made over the years. Salute.

http://youtu.be/U-hT10XKZbA

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Tuesday At The Movies: The Newsroom

Tuesdays are about movies but this week we didn’t watch movies, instead we finished watching the last season of The Newsroom. So that’s what this post is about. :D

We started out with this series over a year ago. I remember enjoying it but I seem to have forgotten most of the storyline. I needed some refreshing before I watched the last season. Here’s some stuff I knew and some that I found out...



The Newsroom is a TV series about the day to day running of a news network and the lives of the people who work in it. The episodes revolve around recent real events and a news staff that is trying to report the news both ethically and responsibly.

Starting out in June 2012, the series completed in December 2014 with 25 episodes over three seasons. The series has a fairly large cast with the key roles being played by Jeff Daniels, Olivia Munn, Emily Mortimer, Alison Pill, John Gallagher, Jr., Sam Waterston, Thomas Sadoski, Dev Patel.

The series was created and mostly written by Aaron Sorkin and premiered on HBO. The series and its cast have been nominated many times but have won twice - the Critics' Choice Television Award for Most Exciting New Series in 2012 and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series - Jeff Daniels in 2013.

Some trivia -



The character of Sloan Sabbith is supposed to be fluent in Japanese and Olivia Munn who plays the role is actually fluent in Japanese, as she spent her childhood living in Japan and graduated with a minor in Japanese.

Aaron Sorkin has a favourite episode title - "What Kind of Day Has It Been?”. He has used this title for the last episode of all his TV shows - The West Wing, Sports Night, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. This is also the title of the series finale episode of The Newsroom.



Jane Fonda’s character Leona Lansing is quite like a female-version of her third husband, Ted Turner. The name "Leona Lansing” comes from two highly successful businesswomen, Leona Helmsley a real estate developer and Sherry Lansing the former Paramount Pictures CEO.



In the last episode of the series the guitar played by Jeff Daniels is actually an OM Jeff Daniels signature model created by Martin a few years ago.

And lastly The Newsroom is the first Aaron Sorkin show whose pilot episode wasn't nominated for any Emmys.

The Newsroom was an interesting TV series with an insight into what happens behind the scenes of the news channels we watch. It’s a series I enjoyed and one I would recommend you watch.

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Pawsible Weekly: Prey Model RAW

Che and I first heard of the RAW diet 5 years ago, Cuckoo and Senti were around a year old then. I’m not so much of a raw meat fan so it was Che who did all the research and figured it out. It was how we started out.

A RAW diet simply put is feeding your dog or cat raw meat. However it isn’t as simple as that, the idea behind it is that each species has it’s own specific diet. Dogs offshooted from wolves and hence are carnivores by nature.

Being around humans for centuries may have made them omnivores but their base instinct is still carnivorous. Given a choice between curd rice and meat, a dog will always choose meat. And in a choice between cooked and uncooked meat, raw meat will always win.

In the wild, dogs would have hunted and eaten, which means they would eat different animals and different parts of the animal everyday. There would also be days when they wouldn’t bring down prey and hence would have to go hungry.

PMR or Prey Model RAW tries to recreate that. Some even go to the extend of allowing their dogs to hunt and eat. Well, we don’t do that but we do try to give them a varied balanced RAW diet.

We’ve been feeding our dogs RAW for almost 5 years now. And as you can see in 5 years I now know more about meat. I’m still not a fan but I’ve learned more about meat in 5 years than in the 30 years before that! :D



Aside from me becoming more of a meat person, we have also seen amazing results in the dogs. They fall ill less often, weight control is so much easier, no food fuss, skin and coat is in great condition, teeth are white and breath is clean (my dach’s are an exception in this), even aging seems to have slowed down.

Maximus and William have lost weight and toned out beautifully. I can also help them with their old bones and arthritis better with natural supplements rather than pills and tonics.

Buddha, my old boy who has a heart condition and arthritis doesn’t show a sign of it. And Elu who started out on RAW when she was just 5 months old has grown out beautifully in the last 7 months.

Buying meat for 6 dogs, planning it, and sorting it takes 4-5 hours a week (compared to this the feeding is a snap) but it’s completely worth it when you look at the results.

I’m still learning myself and there is a world of information out there. You’ll hear about stuff we are doing for sure in these weekly updates as we go along for I am constantly trying to figure it out, tweak and fix their meals.

But if you have a dog or cat and are contemplating the Prey Model RAW diet, the RAW-Feeders India group on Facebook is an excellent place to start.

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The Week That Was: Week 10

 

Last week was like every other week except for a few things that were different.

We started the week with catching up with friends over dinner to celebrate a project and got introduced to the band Oorali from Kerala. These guys played some wonderful and surprising music. For someone who doesn’t understand a word of Malayalee I was mesmerised by the music. Truly music has no language!

#houseparty #epic

A video posted by Chenthil (@chenthilmohan) on Mar 2, 2015 at 9:06am PST

The dogs have been sleeping inside with us and it’s a wonderful feeling waking up their faces in the morning. Not so nice though when they fart in your face during the night. :D

 

 


Some nights I have to fight to get my sleeping spot...

 

 

There’s a lot of these guys popping up in one of the fields we walk though. Thorny buggers but yet so beautiful!

 

 

And the tabebuias are in full bloom all over the layout. The world seems a splash of yellow!

 

Elu can sometimes be quite the poser!

 

The freak rains were a welcome respite from the heat. Cuckoo, William and I have a common love for the rain. We can sit and watch it for hours!

 

 


William tears up when he eats. The more he eats the more tears there are! :P



We had a girls day out at Teena’s where we caught up over lunch. Little Avni spent the afternoon cutely and constantly asking ‘What does fish do’ to get us to make a fish with our hands. :)

 

 


And Teena made these awesome starters. A papaya salad and salami wraps. We ate 3 plates of those wraps!

 

 


Beautiful decal isn’t it? I saw it an an Aunt’s when I managed to make it for a late lunch after a hectic meat run and sort. I want to do something like it at home.

 
What have you been upto this week?

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Saturday Tirade: India’s Daughter

After the BBC documentary India’s Daughter aired on 4th March, everywhere everyone seems to be talking about just that. It’s been 3 years since the incident happened in Delhi, or more like two years since it happened in December 2012 and the documentary has refreshed everyone’s memories.

I remember those days in 2013 when for months every media channel and every medium of communication was filled with talk of the case. And this week seems like it all over again. Not as much or as strong maybe yet it’s there again.

http://youtu.be/qUvlwmIfyx0

{Just in case this link stops working, here's another - https://vimeo.com/121374149}

The Govt. is fighting to shut everyone up, to ban the documentary and everyone else is raising their voices in protest. Some protesting against the Govt., asking for freedom of speech, stating democracy, some panning the documentary for showing India in bad light, some spewing anger at all that was said in the documentary,…

There are a lot of voices, views and opinions out there. It was all of this that brought the documentary to my attention and I went and watched it. I wanted to know what all the hullabaloo was all about.

The one hour long documentary by Leslee Udwin is nothing extraordinary in every way. The script and story isn’t new, the way the show is pieced together isn’t great and every quip and dialogue has been said enough times before this.

As a woman who was born and has lived all her life in India, I found nothing in the documentary. My blood didn’t boil, anger didn’t manifest, nothing happened. No, that’s not true, something did happen, I did laugh, the laugh of resignation, the laugh of sadness, the laugh of knowing that next week there will be a new sensation, a new talking point.

A lot of men in the video said the girl had it coming, a educated lawyer talked about women as flowers, flowers that can adorn a head or be thrown in the gutter. Another talked about burning his daughter alive if she stepped off the line. To them women were just objects, livestock, cattle. To them women are not equal in India.

And we will never be equal. At least not until women rise up and fight for their own. Until mothers, sisters and wives of rapists ask for justice, for their men to lynched so other men may learn a lesson and other women may become safe.

The plight of women in India or for that matter the world will not change until we women change. Until we stop toeing the line, following the rules. We need to get up and fight, fight the system, fight culture, fight society, fight rules, fight.

We need to start wearing what we want to, going out when we want to, doing what we want to. All of this without being scared of repercussions. The repercussions will come, men will push back, but we can have the world only if we push, only if we fight.

Fight not to be better or bigger but fight to be equal!

****There was one thing that stood out for me in the documentary and that was the parents. Jyoti Singh’s parents are just awesome, it takes a lot of courage to bring up your daughter the way they did, it also takes a lot of inner strength to watch your daughter die and still talk about it. F**K You Arnab for your nonsensical ideas of hiding rape behind a veil of Nirbhaya. Her name was Jyoti Singh and her name must be taken (shouted out actually) so we may remember her both for her courage and for how she was raped.****

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Friday Review: Afghani Qabuli & Biryani

I consider myself a foodie even though I am quite a fussy eater. Well, you know like haggis, there’s going to be a lot of fuss before I eat that. :D

But seriously, I do love trying out new food and exploring flavours so when I am offered an option to go to a new restaurant, I’m not one to say no.

We’d heard of Afghani Qabuli & Biryani from friends who recommended it highly and so one afternoon we headed out to check it out.

Situated on Nehru Main Road in Kammanahalli, this little Afghan place is hidden away and yet easy to find. The layout on the inside is simple with a comfortable seating arrangement that can accommodate a couple or even a large group. The walls are covered with paintings and pictures of Afghanistan.



We settled in and ordered what we had been told was the best dish in the house. The Afghani Traditional Mutton Gravy with Qubus and Chakni. It comes with a mug of Afghani Traditional Dogh so we asked for that to be made two.

The mutton gravy was served in a large dish what facilitated the tradition form of community eating. We broke bread and dug in, breaking off only to sip on our dogh’s. The gravy was lovely and yum with about 7-8 pieces of boneless meat. The dogh is something else, refreshing and quite close in taste to our raitha and yet so very different.



Service is fast with minimal waiting time. Service is also done with courtesy and a smile. We enjoyed lunch but that wasn’t all we ate. We were also served a complimentary plate of firni, boy you should have see the smiles on Che and my face. :D



We enjoyed our experience so much, we’ve been there again, and this time along with the mutton gravy we also tried the Afghani Traditional Biryani. This was also great in taste but maybe not my favourite since I don’t like sweetish food too much.

Over all this is a must visit place if you like Arabian/Afghani food. A nice ambience, well lit, simple and clean. Not noisy music, delectable food, impressive service and light on the pocket pricing (Our bill was about Rs.500 for 2 people). This place has it all!

My Rating -
Ambiance - ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷
Music -        ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷
Food -          ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷
Service -     ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷
Price -         ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷ ✷

 

Afghani Qabuli & Biryani - Zomato

Phone - +91 9008735522

Location - Shop 21, Nehru Main Road, Kammanahalli, Bangalore 560084

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Book Review: Butter Chicken in Ludhiana by Pankaj Mishra

Title: Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India
Author: Pankaj Mishra
Paperback: 276 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books Australia (December 31st 1995)
Genre: Travelogue
Read: Paperback
Stars: **/5
Buy On: Amazon

Summary: (Goodreads)
In Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, Pankaj Mishra captures an India which has shrugged off its sleepy, socialist air and has become instead kitschy, clamorous and ostentatious. From a convent educated beauty pageant aspirant to small shopkeepers planning their vacation in London, Pankaj Mishra paints a vivid picture of a people rushing headlong to their tryst with modernity. An absolute classic, this is a witty and insightful account of Indias aspirational middle class.

My Review:

Note: This review was first written way back in 2000, for a website OyeIndia.com that existed way back then. :D

Cover: So-so...

Paper and font: Good.

Readability, language: Big words...

Why did I choose this book: How could you not want to read something with that title!

Pankaj Mishra’s book Butter Chicken In Ludhiana is not a must read but you could call it a good read.

The book is a travelogue of Mishra’s travels in small (small he says, I would say somewhat small) towns of India. It is a good book in the literary sense, the language flows well but literary isn’t all that is important in a book.

The book is pretty entertaining but personally I didn’t find it very insightful. Mishra seems to have a problem with everything, you hardly find him appreciating anything. He has covered quite a few towns but somehow I felt he has left out North East India and quite a lot of the South. He has a lot of complaints about each town and its people, though some of the stories he recounts of people are entertaining and have a ring of truth to them. He hardly seems to look around the places he goes to. He just keeps meeting people.

Another thing I noticed is that he uses big words where small ones would have sufficed and maybe would have expressed what he wanted to convey better.

What I would give most credit to, would be Mishra’s interaction with people. He looks up someone or the other in almost every place, and his conversations are enlightening at times and ridiculous sometimes. Maybe he should have said ‘People in small towns of India’ rather than ‘Travels in small towns of India’.

I found Mishra very superficial, if he had just looked beyond or below the surface he might have found something’s that would have touched him and things he would have liked.

On the whole this book is one you can repeatedly read, and you will always find something you missed out last time. This book is for a select lot, it isn’t what everyone can read.

About the Author:
Born in 1969 somewhere in North India, Pankaj Mishra went on to complete his MA in English Literature from JNU, New Delhi. In 1992, he moved to Mashobra, a Himalayan village, and has been writing from there since then. He is an author of 4 books and many literary and political essays. You can find out more about him at his website pankajmishra.com.


Buy On: Amazon

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