work in progress...

busy setting up the exhibition
Originally uploaded by DraconianRain

My flickr friend Aky Cookie took my interview for his blog recently. It was a funny session, and I think the outcome is quite so.
I was very earnest about it. have a quick read here
In other news, i'm still processing and uploading my snaps from Ahmedabad and Baroda. Also, P@P invited me to give a smilar presentation as the one I gave at Bangalore recently. I think I'm getting better at public speaking! Its on 4th December, and if you are in Pune then, do drop by at the New Art Gallery, Apte road at 2 PM. I realise its siesta time for everyone, but I have some hope of seeing a decent audience.
I accidentally attended a book launch at Landmark Pune this friday. I wanted to spent some time exploring the graphic novel section there yet again, but unfortunately that section was blocked off by chairs arranged for the event with people already having occupied them. So I had to wait for the authors and editor to officially launch the book, read a bit from it and interact with the audience. Not that I minded. I had some time to kill. The book is an anthology of short stories written by urban authors, both young and old.
I wan't too impressed by whatever i heard being read out, but got so intrigued, that I bought the book. I could have read it then and there, but it wasn't too expensive, you see. And I was hoping there would be something in there that i'd like. Indian fiction has disappointed me till now.
Maybe I'm just prejudiced...

my version of the Black Keys song: 'Tighten up' Shot one fine november morning.

Performed by me and my little guitar!

Unexpected gifts

Unexpected gifts are truly worth cherishing. Dr Vivek M from Bangalore, sent me five rolls of 120 film. I've never felt happier! I'm going to enjoy taking every photo from my old medium format cameras now!

My experiments with intuitive and improvised cooking -V - the making of the Kashimiri 'Kahwa'

sometimes, I drink some tea in the afternoon. I have a stock of some mildly flavoured tea bags so the effort is minimised to heating up water and adding sugar and dipping the tea bag into the hot water.
Today afternoon, I was watching a movie on TV at teatime, and was contemplating having some tea. I glanced up at the kitchen cabinet and saw almonds which reminded me of Kashmir and the kashmiri Kahwa. I have lived in Srinagar for a couple of years during my childhood and remember the first time I drank that wonderful flavoured tea. I really love good aromas of food and drink, and what can be better than freshly brewed Kahwa with the aroma of Cinnamon? And the mild flavour of cardamom and saffron along with blanched bits of almonds and pistachios in the brown-green liquid!
So instead of drifting, I made some kahwa for the slow, lazy afternoon.
Here's how its made

for a pot of tea:
Ingredients:

1. Green tea leaves. I think the Kashmiris use some specific type of tea, but I don't know which.

2.cinnamon powder (dalchini)- maybe 1/3rd teaspoon or a little less (or 1 stick of cinnamon bark)

3. saffron - 3 to 4 pinches (I didn't find where it was hidden in the kitchen, so I didn't use it)

4. cloves - 4

5. Cardamom - 2 - mildly crushed with peels

6. Few almonds - maybe 6-8

7. Few pistachios - maybe 6-8 again

8. water... 4 cups

9. sugar as required. maybe 3-4 teaspoons.

To make the tea, boil water along with the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and sugar. take the water off the fire and add tea and leave it standing for 5-10 mins. Strain the tea and add saffron
Heat over a low flame and add chopped pistachios and almonds.
And you have fragrant and delicious Kahva!

The new one!

The new one!
Originally uploaded by DraconianRain

Yes! I finally bought a new macbook Pro 13". Wo bhi Karz me dub ke!
I hope I can repay my creditor on time!

my experiments with intuitive and improvised cooking IV - 'Makai kadhi'' (Corn curry)

We've been eating some really heavy traditional food and sweets lately. So Today I decided to make something a bit different for lunch.

I looked around the house and found two corn cobs and decided to make some sort of corn curry.

So I found this nice recipe for corn kadhi, but its not like the kadhi we make with dahi.

Ingredients:

Corn from 2 cobs

1 cup onion

1 cup grated coconut

3 cups milk (also depends on how thick you want it to be)

4 teaspoons khuskhus (poppy seeds)

a few cloves (maybe 4-5)

4 green chillies... more if you like your curry hot!

Dalchini (cinnamon) 2 sticks or 1 tea spoon.

2-3 small cardamoms

1 1/2 table spoons oil

2 tea spoon lemon juice

6 garlic cloves

2 teaspoons grated ginger

chopped dhania (coriander leaves). depends on how green you want the curry to look, but i used almost half a cup.

So here's what I did:

Step 1:

Boiled the corn cobs till cooked and separated the corn grain from the chaff. That is a lot of corn!

Step 2:

Take the chopped onion, grated coconut, green chillies, ginger, garlic, poppy seeds and coriander and grind it to make a paste.

This is how the paste looks like.

Step 3:

Heat some oil in a vessel and fry the above made paste in it.

Add the cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. Then add the lemon juice and stir well. And finally add the cooked corn and milk and mix well

Add salt.

You might want to add some more water or milk.

While cooking, the whole house is filled with the subtle aroma of cinnamon.

It looks equally appetizing and tastes really good!

How is it possible...

that everyone I know likes the movies 'before sunrise' and 'before sunset', but me?

Backup shackup

After the 4 gig flash drive, the logical progression was to go for something bigger - a 1 TB western digital external hard disk drive! after spending so much money on it, I would like to think that my data is finally safely backed up (even if it really isn't)

My first trip to Zuna bazaar...

I visited Pune's old flea market today with Pooja and Persis. It was quite exciting. I bought lovely red shoes! They were right there... somewhere amidst the sea of brown and black shoes, screaming my name. I picked up one and tried it, and it fit perfectly... I didn't have a 'Cinderella and the glass slipper' moment, but close to it. As Persis said... it made me smile...

So I have red shoes.

I rule technology... not the other way around!

Two and a half years ago, I lost my old flash drive when we conducted a workshop on Pune and its planning at CDSA. Someone must have flicked it. I bought it in 2006, when I visited my uncle in Dubai, and I was the only one amongst my friends to have a cool 2 gig flash drive. It made things so much easier. I could carry a lot of my work to college, share music and data, and sometimes viruses. I couldn't imagine life without it. Every thing was so convenient!

And then... poof! just like that it vanished... and along with it, the convenience of portable data. I realised how much I had taken the flash drive for granted and how technology was ruling my life.

A few days later, I vowed never to buy a flash drive till it became absolutely necessary to own one.

Over the last two and a half years, I managed well even without any. I saw the price of these things dropping, the memory capacity increasing and flash drives becoming a common item available at my neighbourhood stationary shop from their erstwhile special place in electronics shop.

Now, after two and a half years or flash drive less existance, I had decided that these things were finally stripped off their elite status and were now common cheap stationary items, and I could get me one of those to make data sharing just that little easier for me.

So today evening I went to a little neighbourhood stationary shop, and bought a tiny blue 4 gig flashdrive.

Of course, the second time you buy a pendrive after losing one two and a half years ago, you use it more responsibly and decide that you'll not let it control your life.

I haven't yet put any data on it. There isn't any need to, not yet...

my experiments with intuitive and improvised cooking - IIIThe baking of the Chocolate brownies!

Yesterday, as Avani and I were discussing about overpriced dramatic deserts in restaurants, we came to the subject of sizzling brownies with ice cream. And I suddenly though of making some. I have always enjoyed baking cakes, but I'd never tried baking a brownie cake before.

Brownies always remind me of the last vacation I took with my parents, all of us together. back in 2005 in Pathankot. The three of us visited Dalhousie and Khajjiar and ate amazing chocolate brownies. We had a great time there.

So brownies are equivalent to good memories. And baking is the ultimate therapy!

My cousin Avani is here for her vacations, and she loves baking too. So we decided to bake a chocolate brownie cake in the evening. Fortunately, my mother and grandmother had gone out, giving us a free hand to bake the cake the way we wanted to without any special instructions.

All the ingredients needed were all at home. That made life so much easier.

So Let me share what we did:

Ingredients:

Cocoa 1/2 cup

Melted butter 2/3 cup

hot water 1/2 cup

eggs 2

sugar 1 1/2 cups (I know... )

baking soda 1/2 teaspoon

flour 1 1/4 cups

walnuts 1/3 cup

grated chocolate 1/2 cup (maybe less :P)

salt a pinch

So here's what we did with this stuff:

We first mixed the dry cocoa and baking soda, then melted the butter and poured half of it and mixed it.
Then we added the hot water and mixed it.

Then we added the beaten eggs and sugar and mixed it.

"mmmm..." that tasted awesome...

Then we added the butter and mixed it...

even more "mmmmmm... "

Then we added the flour and mixed it

and the nuts and the chocolate... and we stirred and it was an awesome looking and delicious tasting batter...

Then we took a baking dish (we found only a heart shaped one... ), greased it, and poured the batter in it and balked it till it was done totally. Then we cut it up into pieces! we had our brownies ready! delicious!

And then we phoned the ice cream shop near my place and ordered vanilla ice cream and had chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream!

That was the ice-cream on the cake! What a Friday evening! :D

RED RED RED!

Ok... I'm obsessed... I actually bought this colour!

Looks 'hawt'

The nail paint... not the camera :P

The insides of a canon EFS 18-55 lens

the 18-55
Originally uploaded by DraconianRain

And how it looks from inside. Its my flickr friend - Deepak Kul's lens. It's motor broke down, so the camera repair guy tried to salvage the lens. He removed the motor so it could be used as a macro lens, once reversed. All that needed to be done was to change the aperture manually to a smaller one instead of the large default.
So I opened the lens, and saw how it was from inside, changed it's aperture manually and put it all back together and clicked some!
Ah... Fun!

I needs the new bicycles...

So my regular mode of transport has been causing me some problems lately. And unfortunately, the guys who service it haven't been able to pin point the problem... So I am in a bit of a mess. I mean, my lumala is. Things are coming off. All the plastic bits, the pedal crank makes loud sounds. The gears don't shift properly. But I must persist with this. At least till I get some money to get a new cycle. sigh...

Realisation strikes yet again at the wrong time...

That there is a thin line separating being proactive and being creepy.

I think I crossed that line yesterday.

from being borderline proactive, to being borderline creepy, I can look back and say, I've done it all!

Yet, I take little comfort in knowing that I'll laugh at this 10 years later.

my story in COMIX.INDIA volume 2 - girl power!

my story in COMIX.INDIA volume 2 - girl power!
Originally uploaded by DraconianRain

finally published! Hopefully the first of many more to come! :D

The drawback of being proactive

Two years ago at the flower market at Mehrauli two men on a motorcycle dropped a polythene bag with a tiffin box in it. A young boy picked it up to return it to them. The two men refused to take it and sped away, leaving the boy with the bag, which exploded while in his hand, killing him instantly.

And what was the boy's fault?

-Being proactive.

Being proactive got him killed.

In the age we live in, how can we be proactive without hurting, not anyone else, but ourself.

In our everyday life, a simple gesture, a small comment, a mild reaction or a little good deed is so easily misunderstood. Everyone's on the edge of their seats as if something is about to happen. And at the slightest provocation, we leap out of our skin to be something we were not meant to be.

Lately, I have been getting hurt being proactive. So should I forget myself and be as indifferent to myself and everything?

As always, it's not a choice i'm being allowed to make. Everyone else seems to want to make it for me.

The keeper of secrets

I can keep secrets to myself very well. Any secret that comes to me stays with me, and the chain ends there. Secrets are fun to keep... but after a while I am burdened and I want to tell someone else but I can't... Because I'm not meant to. They aren't meant to be divulged.

Secrets can make or break anyone. Secrets can win someone a war. Secrets can keep relationships from falling apart. Secrets make the keeper eternally powerful. Secrets can keep a lot of people happy...

But most secrets I know are about myself. Isn't life disappointing?

Yoga with the kids...

My yoga teacher asked me to join in for a kids yoga class yesterday. I thought it would be fun to work out with kids aged 6 onwards. They have so much energy just waiting to be dispelled! This yoga session is specially for them being extremely fast, taxing and complex!

As we sat to pray before we started yoga, almost everyone started getting restless. At that age, no one likes to sit in one place in one position for too long! But even the prayer was much more fun with this batch. Kids have no social inhibitions... no stigmas and no consciousness. They don't hold back. they just do everything to the fullest and their efforts are unrestrained... And when you are with so many kids like that, you become free from within. With unrestrained efforts... no inhibitions. you are just one with the strong energy vibrations surrounding you.

And its fun to watch children doing all those yogasans and making it look just too easy. This batch was noisy and funny... where everyone encouraged each other to do what they are told to, there was an air of exigency and excitement. And before I knew it- an hour had passed, and the rigorous regime has culminated with 20 fast cycles of halasan and paschimotanasan back to back, and it was finally time for shavasana for recovery... where no one could close their eyes, or lie still. Not even me! I rolled to the side and got up with the others and went down. We all got onto our bicycles and had a small conversation about them and the accidents we have had... I think I made some friends!

Kids are so carefree... so happy. They can forget about their worries and troubles so easily. They ask questions unabashedly, innocently. They don't hide their thoughts. That art is acquired much later in life. Their friendship and companionship is unconditional, unbiased. I realised I was so happy being with them and being like them, that I decided that very instant to attend this class every Saturday evening!

And my latest crazy is:

The bright blue big gym ball thats the latest addition to my room! The one I sit, swirl, twirl, twist, bend and bounce on... All that while working! What a way to sit on your butt, yet have fun!

SSB Pinhole camera version 2

Presenting the new and improved Sweet Shop Box (SSB) pinhole camera.

my experiments with intuitive and improvised cooking - II

The making of the seasonal Panha and easy raw mango pickle :)

For the last few days, every time I looked out of the window, I saw lovely green raw mangoes dangling from a mango tree. Todays I finally decided to pluck out a few and make panha. Panha or 'aam panna' is a seasonal drink prepared with the pulp of raw mangoes.

So here's what I did:

1. Looked out of my window every day to see green mangoes

2. Plucked a few

3. Washed them and soaked them in water for 15 mins

4. Kept one raw mango aside for some quick fix pickle.

5. Put them in a pressure cooker.

6. Pressure cooked the raw mangoes

7. Let the raw mangoes cool down.

8. chopped the one raw mango kept aside

9. Added some salt and a bit of sugar and some chilly powder and mixed well.

10. Heated a bit of oil and gave it a tadka of mustard seeds and turmeric powder.

11. Kept the pickle aside.

12. Separated the peels and the seeds from the cooked mango pulp. and mix it with water it was cooked in.

13. Added jaggery (gud/gur/gul) for sweetness

14. Mixed it all up... and let the jaggery melt. Then mixed it again after a while.

15. Took some of this concentrate and mixed it with cold water. Garnished it with a tulsi leaf, and it tasted wonderful!

Enjoy :)

After months of uncertainty, I finally managed to put in place of my old one, a new computer...

Phew...

एका हत्ती आणि गाढवाची गोष्टा

पेरूचा झाडावर हत्ती बसलेला.
एक गाढव झाडावर चाडत.
हत्ती: कशाला आलास?
गाढव: सफरचंद खायला.
हत्ती: गाढव! हे पेरू चे झाड आहे...
गाढव: मी सफरचंद खिष्यात आनलाय ना...!

sakal published an article on my homemade lenses

sakal published an article on my homemade lenses
Originally uploaded by DraconianRain

Finally some recognition! Sakal published an article on my lens building hobby!