In which we remember our blog, our Telugu-ness and our lunch. (not necessarily in that order.)

Yello. Please note the conspicuous absence of apologies and excuses. I have evolved so much, no?

So we woke up this morning feeling all wholesome, traditional and festival-ey. As this tends to be a bit of a rare occasion we usually like to commemorate it with wholesome, traditional and festival-ey food. And nicely enough, today be Ugadi. As they say, timing is everything. So here we have for you two things —

First, the Ugadi pachchadi, the traditional chutney/mixture combining the six primary tastes (shaD-ruchi) that symbolizes the different experiences that make up life. (Yes, deep philosophy can be found anywhere, you just have to look for it.) The six tastes in question are sweet, bitter, sour, tart, chili and salt. Jaggery for sweet, tamarind for sour, raw mango for tart, red chili for chili and salt for salt. Neem flowers are used for bitterness, and if you cannot find them then please don’t substitute karela/bitter gourd. It doesn’t work. Really. I’ve tried.

The tart and sour thing confused me for a while, but try sucking on a piece of tamarind versus a raw mango and you’ll quickly know the difference. Tart is what makes your tongue click against the roof of your mouth with a ‘tcha’ sound. Yes, that is tart. I think they call it vagaru in Telugu. Its that tongue pricking feeling that is most prominent in baby raw mangoes.

The funda of eating this pachchadi, as mom explains it, is that you have a spoon of this the very first thing in the morning on Ugadi. The first taste you encounter (after the taste of your toothpaste, preferably) determines how the rest of your year will be. I imagine the system can be rigged easily enough by putting copious amounts of sweet, but that’s a whole different ball of jaggery.

The second entity in the picture is the luminescent raw mango rice, that symbolizes the presence of one too many raw mangoes in the fridge that were bought for the aforementioned pachchadi. No, but seriously. Raw mango rice (known as maamidikaaya chaddi in Telugu. No, not chaddi as in what Dada Kondke used to wear. This is the softer d sound.) is truly a work of art. One of the simplest of rices to make (the only thing simpler is perhaps lemon rice) — it combines cooked rice, grated raw mango and tadka (also known as phodni, bagaar, popu, seasoning, whatever-you-wanna-call-it) to create a simple, flavorful dish that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Heavenly, it is.

Anyhoo, if you want recipes, please ask. If you want to eat it, cook it.

Happy new year, Ugadi, Gudi Padwa, Yugaadi, and Cheti Chand to all!

Yesh, I really am!

No excuses. No explanations. Just a loss of enthu. (Yes I know. The horror!)

Some of you are still around to read this, one hopes. If you are, then yayy! If not, then I shall build and you shall come and we shall all drink and make merry.

Whee!

Have I ever mentioned that I totally and unconditionally adore Mel Brooks? There’s an episode of Mad About You where Paul and his cousin go to their Uncle Phil’s apartment to move a couch. (Grainy video. Bad sound. Totally worth watching!) Uncle Phil, the source of all Buchman family history, is played by the inimitable Mel Brooks. After the move, they discover a stack of old photos under the couch. Uncle Phil looks at a picture, and proclaims ‘Paulie on a pony!’ He then holds it up to his face and changes his mind and declares it is ‘France!’ Thrilled that the same picture can be multiple things, he moves it back and forth, announcing — Paulie on a pony! France! Paulie on a pony! France! Paulie on a pony! France! Romania! The last bit is when he moves the picture really far away. Priceless moment, it is.

Now for the photo. It had been raining all day. But when the sun announced that it wanted to set, the poor clouds were compelled to take a breather. They stayed gray and overcast, sulking. But we’re not done!, they whined. But the sun ignored them and shone through anyway. Too bad, it said, making it clear who was the boss. And just like that, the rain on my windowpane turned into little drops of molten gold, reflecting the last rays of the sun, as it vanished into the indigo blue of the horizon, on its way to embellish another window and intimidate another cloud.

There’s two things I love about this shot. One, that the sun is nowhere, except within the rain, which is a lovely bit of irony. And two, that the picture looks like a world of spiraling galaxies, mysterious planets and flaming meteors from afar, and yet, up close, imprisons the infinite sunshine within a few drops of rain.

Today, I have my own Paulie on a Pony! France! moment. Happiness comes.

In which we provide an illustrative tutorial on song and dance routines in Hindi films.

Alright. Gather around peoples. It’s time to get on the soapbox.

Every time I see someone use the phrase running-around-trees to refer to current Bollywood song-and-dance routines, I get annoyed. Yes, Bollywood is escapist and unreal. But news flash. We do NOT run around trees. Not anymore. They stopped doing that, circa 1992. They’ve chopped up all the trees and replaced them with ostentatious sets that resemble space-age metropolises. (Or ostentatious red and gold, stained-glass sets if you go the Bhansali way.) Even the sarson ke khet loving Yash Chopra productions have retired their gaggle of giggly sahelis and instead prefer to feature hotties on the beaches of Sydney and Rio.

Now for those of you who don’t understand words, we have a simple illustrative example of song-and-dance routines in Bollywood, then and now. First Exhibit A, from 1970.

As you can see above, the 70s were a time when trees served many a purpose in Hindi films —

• To run around and sing songs.
• To hide behind and (presumably) kiss.
• To fill up background space when you didn’t have the budget to hire backup dancers. (Standard formula used — one banyan tree = 5.2 apsaraa girls.)
• For hero to hide behind, while chasing the villain with a gun containing a single bullet. (The hero being twice the width of the tree is of scant significance.)
• To sway menacingly to warn the audience of the storm (figurative and literal) that is soon to strike the hero-heroine. (A device used excessively in ghost stories just before villain puts buri nazar on heroine, kills her, and leaves her bhatakti aatmaa to torment audiences for rest of movie.)
• To topple over onto an obviously-fake miniature house to indicate a natural calamity of choice (earthquakes and floods being most popular) thus separating the hero and his family, only to have them be united in the end, after singing the ubiquitous family song. (For all of you who scoff at the idea — exactly how many of you have a pre-determined group song as part of your family contingency plan? Hah. I thought as much.)

Bottomline, trees were important in Hindi films and their importance in romance was no less. Without the tree, the hero had nowhere to trap the heroine so he could lean into her for a kiss. Without the tree, the heroine had nowhere to back into, before coyly giving in to the kiss. Without the tree, Jaya Bhaduri couldn’t annoyingly hide from Randhir Kapoor while singing main yahaan to his tum kahaan. Without the tree, Vyjayanthimala couldn’t hang off a branch, coyly swing her ghaghraa back and forth, and sing dil tadap tadap ke keh rahaa to Dilip Kumar. Well, you get the point. Trees — important.

Now we move on to Exhibit B. This is 2008. Notice. No trees. No nature. Just oodles of symbolism. Whoever said Hindi movies cannot be subtle?

So now you know. Movies of the 70s and 80s were more eco-friendly. And that is the convenient truth.

Lunchtime inspiration —

Q: What do you get if you make Rabindranath Tagore blush?
A: A Sharmila Tagore.

Damn, I kill myself sometimes. Pliss don’t kill me?