July 2010 – Ramana's Musings

A Terrace Garden.

My friends Deepali and Sandeep live in a block of flats some half a kilometer away from where we live. They are on the fourth floor and are blessed with a terrace open to the sky accessible from their living room. The terrace is about 25 Square Meters in size and overlooks a few other blocks of flats.

What Deepali has done with the little space is amazing and here are some photographs.

Regular readers will remember that they had reminded me about the butterflies that come for their jasmine flowers. Here are a few photographs of their jasmine plants.

I wish that I could afford to hire Deepali as our gardener!

Potatoes and Beans.

Ingredients.

Rajma (Kidney Beans) 1 cup
Potatoes, 2 large cut into cubes
Onion 1
Tomato 1
Green chilli 1
Garlic 4-5
Ginger an inch
Red chilli powder 1 tsp.
Turmeric Powder 1/2 tsp.
Coriander powder 1 tsp.
Garam Masala Powder 1 tsp.
Vegetable oil 3 tbsp.
Salt to taste
Coriander leaves a fistful for garnishing

Method:

1. Soak rajma in water overnight.
2. Pressure cook rajma until tender.
3. Cut onion, tomato and green chilli. Grind it in mixie along with ginger and garlic and make paste.
4. Heat oil in a pan. Add the paste and fry on medium heat until golden brown (The oil starts separating from the mixture).
5. Add red chilli powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder, garam masala and salt. Mix well. Fry for 2-3 minutes.
6. Add the potato cubes and add water enough to make thick gravy. Bring the gravy to boil.
7. Add cooked rajma (along with the water in which it was cooked). Stir well and cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes.

I hope that you enjoyed reading another post of the Friday Loose Bloggers’ Consortium when eleven of us post on the same topic chosen by one of us. Today’s topic has been chosen by Magpie.

Please do visit Ashok, Conrad, Grannymar, Magpie11, Maria, Gaelikaa, Helen, Judy, Anu and Ginger to see ten other views on the same topic. Some of these bloggers may be preoccupied with vacations, examinations, family problems and/or romance, so be a little indulgent in case they do not post or post late.

Garnish with chopped green coriander leaves and serve hot.

Butterflies and Jasmine.

When I wrote my post on The Butterfly I did not mention why the butterflies come into our garden. My friend and regular commentator Sandeep reminded me to make amends with his comment: “A similar looking butterfly seems to have made our garden its home. It seems to be partial to the jasmine flower, for some reason.” I shall post photographs of Sandeep’s garden soon.

We too have a few jasmine bushes which have been allowed to grow as hedges along the fence that borders our compound. The butterflies must be coming for these. The photograph above is a close up and here are two other photographs:

Both the photographs were taken early in the morning, from the veranda where we sit to have our tea, read the newspapers etc. The top photograph shows the plants covering the North West corner of our compound and the lower one shows the jasmine flowers that have fallen on the paved ground. We have paved the garden rather than have a lawn as we keep moving potted plants around. The gaps between the stone slabs had thick grass growing which we have mowed down for the monsoon. Fresh grass will now sprout and cover the gaps with thick green colour soon.

The jasmine flower is blessed with a heady scent. When the breeze is from the right direction, the veranda and part of the living room immediately behind it get the scent and it is unbelievably enticing.

The jasmine flower is used to make garlands and the garlands are worn by many Indian women in their hair as an aid to beauty and for the perfume.

In the good old days (ahem!) we had an institution called the mujhra to which men of refinement would go in the evenings for some entertainment – the Indian equivalent of a night club! They would inevitably be welcomed inside by the Madam, with a garland tied around their wrists from long strands of jasmine stringed together.
The men would lounge around on thick mattresses on the floor, spread around the periphery of a hall and the dancers would dance in the center. The men would keep smelling the jasmine tied around their wrists in the belief that it enhanced their perception! Here is a very popular mujra scene from a famous Hindi film. You can see some of the patrons with the jasmine flowers on their wrists.

Corporal Punishment And Mr. Kuruvilla Jacob.

There has been much coverage in the local and British newspapers about students being punished in schools and being harmed or being driven to suicide. This article in the Telegraph will give you an idea of the situation.

Just the other day, I read another news item about our Central Minister waxing eloquent on Indian education. What he said is unimportant, but the occasion drew my attention. It was a Kuruvilla Jacob Memorial Lecture. My antenna went up as Mr. Kuruvilla Jacob was the Prinicipal of a school where I studied for four years before getting my School Leaving Certificate. The Madras Christian College School. The link gives you a broad idea about the man and the esteem he is held in by his students.

Mr. Jacob will be remembered by thousands of students from the three schools where he left his imprint. I have nothing but great respect for him and the way he punished some of us, including me. I had met him on a number of occasions after leaving school at Chennai, Hyederabad and Bombay and he always remembered me straight off and would graciously congratulate me on my, then small, achievements.

The other teachers in the school did punish their students, usually by asking them to stand up on the bench for the duration of the class or by sending them out of the class. Both punishments invited trouble depending on whether Mr Jacob took his rounds during the time that the punishment took place. If it did, the student was called to his room where a cane was kept and depending on the seriousness of the occasion, the number of canings was decided by him. One stretched out one’s non writing palm and the cane swished down leaving a welt.

For many of us, getting caned by Mr. Jacob was equivalent to getting a badge of honour. I got many I can assure you. I doubt that any old student of Mr. Jacob can be found who will say that he was unjustly punished or was driven to suicidal tendencies by the punishment meted out by the teachers and/or the Principal of their highly regarded school. I doubt also that you will find any person of my generation or perhaps even a couple of younger generations complaining about the punishments that they received in their school.

I personally believe that excess parenting and molly coddling of children are making them into what Bikehikebabe so effectively calls namby pambies. Are we producing wimps? Or have we already produced wimps who in turn are producing wimps?

India Gets A New Symbol For Its Rupee.

The most used abbreviation for the Indian Rupee has been Rs. or for international purposes, INR. India has not had a symbol for its currency like $ for dollar, and this has now been corrected.

Like most Indians I am very happy that this has happened. I am trying to get the symbol incorporated in my keyboard so that I can start using it in my communications.

India is also blessed with some remarkable cartoonists who portray India at its best. One of them is Morparia.
He has come up with his own version of the symbol and I doff my topi to him for this brilliant cartoon.

Criminals.

“Smiling Faces Do Not Mean That There Is Absence Of Sorrow!
But It Means That They Have The Ability To Deal With It”
– Anonymous.

The above two smiling faces featured in my post “Brothers”. It was suggested there that one of them was a criminal and the other a police officer and the readers were asked which one was the former and which the other.

I reproduce below some responses which may not have been read by many of my readers of that post.

Cheerful Monk – “…who is the criminal and who is the police officer in this very unlikely story?” The fellow who needed hip replacements because he jumped out the second story window, of course. :)”

Nick – “The two of you do look very similar. Clearly the dapper, well-groomed individual on the right is the upstanding police boss, while the dissolute old rogue on the left is obviously the local Mafia boss trying to conceal his latest highly lucrative drugs shipment.”

Darlene – “I think you are both plotting a lucrative crime. You are too much alike to be a policeman and a criminal.”

Melody – “Forget the cop/criminal films, I think your life story would be a blockbuster movie here in the U.S.”

Ashok, do I need to say anything more?

I hope that you enjoyed reading another post of the Friday Loose Bloggers’ Consortium when eleven of us post on the same topic chosen by one of us. Today’s topic has been chosen by Ashok the lawyer in the making.