Tuesday 13 May 2014

How I make tea

Tea is something I can’t live without. So I’m compelled to make it 3 times a day. I’ve decided to share with you my tea recipe albeit with some other totally pointless and random stuff that I somehow end up doing. For those of you who are viewing this post in the hopes that I will be giving you the recipe for making tea, I’m going to be a good girl and say that you shall not be disappointed. Just consult an expert first or you might blow up your house.



How it’s supposed to be done  
                                  How I do it
1)
Turn on the gas stove.



Go into the kitchen. Complain about how messy it is but do nothing to make it less messy. Then go the LPG cylinder and turn the knob this way and that and finally figure out the right way . Take the lighter and light the stove (in not less than 3 tries).
2)
Take a vessel. Keep it on the stove.               
Rummage through the cupboard and choose the nearest one(pff.Easy).Keep it on the stove lopsidedly.
3)
Pour about 1 ¼ cups of water    
Fill 2 cups with water. Spill some down. Curse the world. Recover. Drink the water from 1 cup. Fill it again (not exactly ¼ because how in the world am I supposed to keep track of that? It’s water. Come on)             
4)
Put the ‘tea powder’ (about 3 small spoonful) in the water and allow it to boil till the volume of water left is approximately ½ that of its original volume. The aroma of the tea should now fill the room.

Take a spoon. Decide not to use it because it’s too big which will lead to an error in the measurements (10 points for trying). Search for a smaller spoon. I won’t find it. Use the bigger spoon anyway. Spill some tea powder down. It mixes with the already spilt water and becomes even more disgusting. Curse myself now. Allow the water to boil. Curse about how hot the kitchen is. Decide to go stand under the fan. Hear a sizzling sound and realize that I’ve let the water boil for too long, so much so that the amount of water now left is just about a pint. Vow NEVER to make tea again. Ah yes. The aroma. All that I’m able to smell now is my sweat and my frustration.
5)
Turn the stove off and pour about a cup of milk (if you want your tea to be ‘strong’, pour little milk else pour a lot of milk). Use a strainer to remove the tea powder. Put sugar as per your requirement.
Turn the stove off without anymore mishaps. Pour some milk. Taste the tea. Spit it out realizing it’s too hot. Howl for my mother to set things right. She howls back saying “you started it. You must be the one to finish it”. Damn it. Wait for the molten lava to cool. Add sugar. Taste it again. Realize that more milk needs to be added. Add milk. Realize that more sugar needs to be added. Do the usual swearing routine. Add sugar. Search for the strainer and successfully find it. Do the needful. Pour a little bit of it down again.
6)
Your tea ought to be ready now. Enjoy it.
The tea is ready but the kitchen is not. So try my level best to do something. Fail. Accept my life and try to move on. Get out of the kitchen and drink my tea. Realize it’s the sweet nectar of life and heaven. Congratulate myself and wallow in self praise. Decide to break my vow. Hear my mom screaming at me to clean the kitchen. Wallow in self pity.

 P.S. Just so you  know, the tea usually turns out to be pretty good (even by my standards).






Thursday 8 May 2014

Why I don’t(can’t) watch movies.

I can hear you all questioning my sanity(and my honesty) but just hear me out.  My mother tongue is Tamil. I have the option to switch between Tamil films and Hindi films (I don’t mean to brag but I've finished all the Hindi exams and am currently a Hindi pandit. ahem.) and yet I don’t watch films nor have I watched many(now short films are a different story). Now allow me to explain myself.
1) I don’t watch films because I’m too lazy to go the theater.  What’s the point?  Wait for a week and you get to see it in the comfort of your own sweet home. You try going to a theater on the first day release of a Rajini(sir) film and come out unscathed with your hearing and limbs intact.You’ll know what I mean. Trust me. I've tried. I know you want to get the ‘theater experience’ and stuff but you don’t have to ‘experience’ it every time a movie releases right?.Maybe it’s just me. We’ll never know will we?
2)I watch films ONLY if they’re on TV and ONLY if their show timings don’t interfere with my sleep schedule(nap time included). We have a set top box. And this is really bad because you can now choose which channels to not watch. So my parents don’t pay for the English movies channel no matter how much I beg them to(no surprise there). So that’s out.
3) What’s that? Watch videos on the internet? Okay. My internet is as slow as me doing a Chemical equilibrium problem. So if the movie is for 3 hours it takes me triple the time to download it or watch it online (1 hour for the website to load, 1 hour for the link to load, 2 hours for me to decide whether or not I actually want to watch this movie after all this inner and outer turmoil, 1 hour for me to go find my laptop charger and the rest of the time for it to buffer/download. You do the math).All hell breaks loose if my internet gets cut in the middle which, you guessed it, happens all the time.
3) I’m very picky. I don’t like love stories. I don’t like sad movies that make me cry every time I see a character who make it a point to either deliver emotional dialogues every time they appear or need to have very emotional background music every time they appear. I don’t watch superhero movies (they’re too super hero-ey). If I don’t like the movie in the first half hour then I won’t watch it. So my fussiness eventually leads me into rejecting most of the movies they show on TV.
4) If a movie is too serious I’ll skip the middle part. As a result I will be so busy figuring out where these extra characters came from and trying to patch up the story-line with what little information I have that I’ll end up not paying attention to the climax. Sad.
5) Interruptions.  My family has decided that the best time to watch shows on TV is when I’m 2 minutes into a movie. It ALWAYS happens irrespective of the day or time. And when I finally do get to watch it, it’s either finished or a major chunk of it is over.

Now you know why I prefer to stare at a wall than watch a movie. Who can I blame?
But even after all these I did get around to watching a handful of movies in the theater(most of them were Harry Potter movies and the recent one was Tenaliraman.Oops.Too much information). But I’m going to take a chance this time. This time when 'Kochadaiiyaan' releases (if you haven’t guessed it yet, I’m a huge Rajini Fan) I WILL watch it third day itself in the theater. Yes. My left leg isn't too important anyway.


Saturday 3 May 2014

Embarrassing stories part 1

By now all of you might know how interesting my life is. But even I have some (ok ok many) ‘special’ moments where I had wished the Earth would swallow me or that I’d become invisible somehow.
Needless to say the above methods didn't (and don’t) work. So I had to face the consequences of the things my stupid self did.
1) This happened in 7th. It was social period and we were doing maps. I tore pieces of paper and put it on my neighbour’s head.  After a few minutes my teacher noticed it. I guess he was in a bad mood because he made her stand up and shouted at us asking who did this dastardly act. Come on. It was paper. Sheesh!  Being the badass that I am I didn’t own up. So he took her to the principal(?). Then I saw this guy look daggers at me. He came up and asked me in front of the whole class why I hadn’t confessed. I innocently asked him what he was talking about. Then he said he saw me do it. Then another girl said she saw me do it. Then another. I was speechless. So I ran out of the classroom crying. And now whenever that guy sees me he never forgets to remind me of the ‘bad thing I did in 7th’. Honestly people.
2) I used to go to this English class when I was in 4th. One fine day we(me and my cousin brother) went to her house as usual. We knocked and nobody answered. So we thought she wasn't at home and rejoiced at the fact that there was no class that day. So we went to their terrace and started laughing and joking loudly (not to mention running) and then we returned home. The next day she came to our house and told my mom, very angrily of course, that we had bunked class. (bunk? We didn't do it on purpose okay) And she narrated in full detail everything she heard us say in the terrace and let me tell you this-we weren't exactly talking anything good about her or anybody else as a matter of fact. The rest, as they say, is history. Needless to say we never went there again.
3) When I was about 7 my mom enrolled me in some workshop that dealt with matters 7 year olds could not comprehend. I couldn't anyway. The lady was talking about time and stuff and how it was always moving and doesn't stop for anyone (common workshop material I guess). She asked the gathering, numbering 1000, if we had any questions. So I innocently asked her ”maam doesn't time stop when you take the batteries out of the clock? ”(I was a special kid. A weird kind of special kid). Yes. I actually said this in front of 100 kids and their parents (not to mention my parents). Of course everyone started pointing and laughing and the speaker was looking daggers at me(I guess I had ruined her ‘beautiful presentation’).
Well that’s all. So now I shall go to a corner and cry silently reviewing and exaggerating all the above moments and you can slap your thighs ,roll on the floor with tears in your eyes(I’m pretty sure they’re not sympathy tears)  and laugh till your sides ache. And for those kindred souls who have experienced/will be experiencing such ‘special moments’ I feel your pain. And I assure you if you write a blog post about that I will be the first one to read it and laugh heartily.