Keep it simple, silly

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald Articulations » Keep it simple, silly

By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

A sampling of celebrity cooking: Recipe of Thai green curry. Ingredients: One packet of Thai green curry paste... Aow! Darlings, I’m Master Chef Australia! I can prepare vegemite. Preparation time: two hours.

Just pick one medium-sized jar of vegemite from the supermarket shelf. Brand not important. Every brand of axle grease tastes the same. NB: Check expiry date. Axle grease spoils too. Why the preparation time, you ask? That’s how long it may take for you to get to the supermarket and back. Accounting also for the time you’ll need to pick the 13 other things that you have been meaning to for the last 13 days.

So, on to writing cooks and cookery show hosts. Who is their target? I lap up all cookery shows and know my Aditya Bals from my Gordon Ramsays. Have graduated from the moustachioed Sanjeev Kapoor to the one without, who makes desperate attempts at humour and cooks less, to the take-home, keep-home Curtis Stone who can have me believe that the sand at Bondi beach drizzled with some olive oil and vanilla extract served super jiffy is ambrosia. I have returned to chiding auntie Tarla Dalal with a paid subscription website of recipes, which are available free on 143 other websites after sampling the fare favoured by Kunal Foodie Vijaykar whose mouth is in a perpetual whistling position. I have tried a fair bit(e) of Antony Bourdain’s street food to the well-licked desserts of Nigella. Yet, I cannot decide what to make of Padma Lakshmi’s Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet. Is it a cookbook or an autobiography?

Cookery writing has a broad-spectrum target, assuming that everyone who eats may need/want to cook sometime. The two broad target groups would be, the amateurs or Maggi-5-minute cookers and the pros, the standing-soufflé cookers.

Both have the same demands of your recipe. Both will need to know just how many grains of jeera go into the heated oil. While amateurs may get into a tizzy worrying if one spoonful of chilli powder is one teaspoon, tablespoon, or serving spoon; amateurs will wonder if it is a level or a heaped teaspoon (dear alarmed amateurs, a level spoon is just the heap of the heaped spoon flicked off it). While pros may not need to know what a spatula is, amateurs may confuse it with a spittoon that was.

Cooking food raises many questions and you must answer them all. Why ginger juliennes are not the same as ginger chopped fine, why grating onion is not the same as running it into a blender, why a paste is a paste and not batter or puree. It demands that one know that paring potatoes is not putting potatoes into pairs as Google images may mistakenly show you, but merely peeling.

Eventually, amateurs must learn that ‘frying to a pink’ must be taken with a pinch of salt. No food turns that colour, only cooks know. By and by they must learn that a dish does not ‘begin to leave the bottom’. A dish that sticks to the bottom, never leaves it. The ‘serve crisp’ remains crisp till just before serving and the roughly chopped tomatoes for the salsa have a tendency to look like spat-out tomatoes. But a cookery writer must stoop to conquer. If you described a recipe in extreme detail, specifying the 10 centimetres diameter copper bottom, one millimetre thick pan and the brand of salt but have forgotten to add ‘turn the flame on’, be ready for hate mail by a thousand and maybe a courier or two of that uncooked mishmash you wrote about. But, if some wait for the ‘season with salt and pepper’ to come so they may serve, it’s really not your fault.

Tech will tell!

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald Articulations » Tech will tell!
By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

An international food giant is launching a face scanner that will tell us what we’d like to eat! Soon they might put a beeper on tables/ plates/ cutlery/ wall that would go twice if you liked your food and buzz hysterically if you thought it was gruel.

My worry is that, I won’t be able to tell Mrs Patel that her stone-hard dahiwadas are delicious and I’m really not drinking so much water to swallow them but to create place for her stone-hard idlis that are to follow.

The viper software does not bite; it catches plagiarised content like a boa constrictor. A new software will let publishers know how many copies of your book got sold. So think before claiming three reprints. They know it was 97 copies.

As a nine-year-old, I confessed all my crimes — cutting the tablecloth with Papa’s shaving blade, polishing off the last four laddos, sneaking out into the garden during Mummy’s siesta. All because the writing on the wall filled me with dread. Satyug aane wala hai, I read during every train journey.

It was written in big, sure, red letters on walls all along the railway tracks. Satyug will come and Kalyug, into which we are born and are living, will be annihilated. But the burden of the honest life got a bit much. I surrendered to the good times of Kalyug. Till the writing emerged fresh again, now. I have no visions of any avatars descending among us. But, fast catching up on the trail of dishonest, deceitful living is technology (tech).

Technology is steadily putting the fear of the expose into us. Either tech will tell or tech-enabled sting will! Those who are caught and shamed would be our striking examples. We will be forcefully upright and before we can say holy corruption, Satyug will be upon us. The kaanta lagaa that is stinging nepotism, bribery, lies, and hypocrisy of people in high places today, and allowing us to hear and know the decibel of the sneeze of a country’s premier, and watch another’s shoe ducking expertise, will bring ‘upliftment’ when it percolates to the mango man’s life.

‘Anti-privacy’ activists wearing cellophane would demand total transparency in private life. It would be mandatory for each person to declare what they earned, colour of their socks, their dye/agarbhatti brand, if they picked their nose in public, as ‘info’ on their social networking page.

Kids who have their breakfast outside, presumably waiting for the school bus but actually feeding the bournvita-fied milk and unidentifiable shreds of omelette to plants in the garden would be forced to eat as tech-fitted plants will protest against the force feeding.

Now it’s just close-circuit cameras in convenience stores that catch shoplifters and spyware on phones by suspecting couples. Soon, if someone plucked a flower from a public garden, his hands would turn red with the help of a spy-camera-enabled-remote-dye-sprayer. Time was when if you bunked office to watch a cricket match, the chance of being caught was only if the boss was doing the same. If caught on TV camera, because your tri-colour wig was too conspicuous to be missed, you could still say it wasn’t you.

But soon you might be compelled to take a lie detector test that you agreed to on joining. Deny that? They have the clip! Watching a movie at work? Chances are that the boss has your screen replicated on his own comp and he’s quiet only because he likes your choice in films.

Jump a queue and alarms will go off. Pinch a library book and the next time you enter the library, the gates will beep ‘thief, thief!’ Sneak out without paying the bill at a restaurant and a laser will print ‘I owe Indian Coffee House Rs 53‘ at the back of your shirt.

So, unless being shamed in public becomes a status symbol like an IT raid, Satyug is upon us.

Sign of the times

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald » Sign of the times

With the advent of mobile telephony and the internet, while typewriters are a curio at best, money orders and telegrams have almost acquired the dinosaur status. But, there is a world beyond ours where these are still a lifeline, writes Shefali Tripathi Mehta

When was the last time you stepped into a post office? You probably don’t even know where one is located in your area. In the age of boombox and iPod, how the heart still warms up on seeing a curio-value, out-of-use gramophone and skips beats at the clickety-clack of typewriters passing by a court complex.

Standing tip-toe, I watched father fit all he wanted to say in ten words — the minimum charge for a telegram was for ten words. Fun as a cryptogram, I pored over to see him change ‘come at once’ to ‘come immediately’. Not that a rupee or two mattered, yet it was the done thing — reduce, save. Evolution and the need for speed necessitate change. We look back at these obsolete-for-us objects and relive the romance of bygone days.

But, there is a world beyond ours where these are still a lifeline. We have begun to take for granted that everyone owns a cell phone and the initial astonishment at the autowala or the house-help drawing out one has been spent.

Even those that you called on a PP (phone passby, nearest contact number) number after 10 pm when the STD rates were slashed to half have one, and which they use liberally too. It may be true that India has more cell phones than toilets but there is another India where people still await telegrams and money orders. With fifty per cent of our population still living in the villages, these are still the accepted and only means of urgent communication and money transfer.

Charmed, unconnected life

Today, speed is money. Everything’s got to be faster than it already is. A false sense of urgency permeates our lives. If you are late by half a minute, the waiting person calls you on your cell phone to ask. The restlessness of ‘where are you now?’ does not allow you to sit winding a gramophone. Even our radio hurls out frantic, high-pitched chatter that does nothing to calm us in the midst of our rushed lives.

While eighty per cent of Indian villages have at least an electricity line, not more than fifty per cent of the rural households have access to electricity. In these many one-bulb homes in our far flung villages, where electricity is unavailable or scarce, people still go to sleep at sundown, comforted by the silence of the night and watching the night sky that we in the lighted cities can never experience.

The country has 1.55 lakh post offices, out of which 1.40 lakh are located in the rural areas serving eighty per cent of the rural population. Rural families may be divided and scattered over towns and cities, but those that stay behind wait patiently for the postman to ride in on the dusty track to deliver a post card or a money order. Western Union is alien and credit cards are unheard of. Credit is still untrustworthy and, to a large extent, not very respectable too.

Innovate, preserve

Most city post offices have discontinued the service of collecting telegrams as it has become unviable to maintain the service. So, if you wanted to whet your child’s curiosity about this almost relic of your past, you would probably have to go to a bigger branch, if not the General Post Office. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), it is believed, spends more on a telegram than it earns. On an average, the cost of one telegram to BSNL is about Rs 40. It charges Rs 3.50 for a telegram of 10 words or less. The charge for each additional word is 50 paise.

In most other countries of the world, the telegram has already acquired the dinosaur status. In the UK, the telegram is promoted as a retro form of greeting and in Sweden they are delivered under the category of ‘nostalgic novelty items’. Frequently used in Japan, telegrams can be ordered online!

The typewriters are still used in the cities in courts and police stations for typing legal documents and affidavits. The advantages of typewriters in such settings would be very tough for a computer to contest. They do not require electricity or technical skills and are portable.

Jab we don’t meet

Robert Frost, in the wonderful poem ‘A Time to Talk’, writes:

WHEN a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

Technology has a way of pervading our lives in ways that our people-to-people interaction dwindles with each advancement. In small villages, the post office serves a social purpose. It is another place for meeting and interaction between people. Everyone knows everyone else and their ‘business’. We in cities prefer our closed doors.

We start to speak into our cell phones if we see a neighbour approaching so we don’t have to make a conversation. We walk our babies and dogs either talking into our cell phones or listening to music, leaving them to their own thoughts. Social interaction is confined to planned meetings. Chance encounters are discouraged and frowned upon.

It is not just the gramophone that sits in the curio corner of our houses. The CD players and music systems that played out music that the family listened to together have lost their place of pride in our lives. In fact, aren’t the days of listening to music together over? With music that can be stored, streamed in cell phones, iPods and other miniscule devices, everyone has their own music stuffed into their ears.

We don’t pick the ringing phone and exchange pleasantries with the daughter’s friend or husband’s colleague before handing it to them. We don’t know who the children’s friends are. Everyone talks with their ‘contacts’ on their own cell phones. There are more SMS exchanges between members of a family than face-to-face conversations. The mother-next-door tells me how her teenage daughter sends her SMS messages from the next room.

The great divide

These is an impressive list of the longest, largest. India has the world’s largest network of post offices; is the world’s fastest growing telecommunications industry; has the second largest telecommunication network in the world in terms of the number of wireless connections; and yet, not much of this trickles down to touch the lives of Indians living in remote, hilly and inaccessible areas. Whereas 50 per cent of the population uses the telephone in big cities, it reaches only two per cent people in villages.

What we have scored in the technology domain, we have lost due to infrastructure challenges. The hurdles of setting up the telecommunications networks in these areas are many. No electricity, no or bad access roads to isolated, far-flung and often sparsely populated areas, and low income customers. It was reported some time back that villagers from Karaj in the Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh walk 20 kilometres everyday to get their mobile phones charged! There is no electricity or proper roads in their village.

To overcome the electricity challenge, technology companies have tried to bring alternative cell phone chargers. Almost a year ago, a Mumbai firm launched a roll-on charger — one minute of manual rotation and three minutes of talk-time. But that path-breaking innovation which will catch on the fancy of the users and suit their pockets too, has been elusive.

Change is inevitable. Adapting to it is wisdom. But progress that is limited to some and creates more disparity cannot amount to much beyond figuring in the list of superlatives. The old will remain useful as long as there is use for it. As long as rural India has use for telegrams, money orders, typewriters and post offices, these will exist.

As for us, we must return to the ‘Search’ option on our laptops and share with our Facebook friends how, with the advent of mobile telephony and the internet, the iconic red telephone booths of London were sold off to be used as shower cubicles in homes! Quick, get a money order form. In two decades, you may like to frame it to display on your drawing room walls.

The Mystery’s in the Mail!

By: Shefali Tripathi Mehta

Everything eventually gets IT-jacked, including your friendly neighborhood advise-auntie. The one who visited at three in the afternoon and headed straight to the bedroom to sit cross-legged on the bed with her pallu in her lap to tell you that mustard oil for bhindi and saliva for pimples work best. W3 nudged her out. Wiki, Google this and that were all a screen away. I never again rang her bell to ask exactly how many milliliters of water my indoor plant could do without.

When the doctor prescribed a treatment without sharing the diagnosis, I promptly told him that I knew it wasn't an ordinary zit but a KELOID and that though he wasn't telling me I knew already that there was no treatment for it and whatever he may try, I was doomed to live with a KELOID all life. Googled? he smiled first, Try black magic, he mocked. Very tentatively, reluctantly, I let go of googling everything that whizzed in and out of my mind. But the prompts lurking in the sidelines of the mailbox continue to tempt and tease, offering their unsolicited advice as readily as auntie. The moment I receive a new mail I look sideways at them to give me some clue about its contents. They are all but bells and whistles. It’s a game more stimulating than a migraine aura or a cryptogram.

Some are barefaced, easy to read. Like when I see ‘Free Jokes, Funny Photos, Laugh-while-you-can,’ wink and blink in the wings, I know the mail must contains words like laugh, funny, enjoy. Though it can also be from someone in the ICU moaning that though he could not note the number of the car that hit him, he would recognize the driver’s smile anywhere. If a sender as much as mentions 'author' or 'book', even if it’s in the context of 'book a case' or 'completely authored' the links beckon me to ‘First-day-five-thousand-copies-sold Publisher’ and ‘Rowling or Roy – Help with Idiom’.

If the sender writes, I’m sleepy now, ‘Top insomnia treatment’ lurks in the margins and if, I didn't get much sleep – ‘Sleep Apnea Symptoms, Sleep Devices Inc’. When someone complains that the new boss is a pain in wherever appropriate, it tells me to ‘Try Dr B….for aches and pains’! As soon as the Bank statement email comes, I am sucked into virtual tours of cruises on the Nile offering caviar foot packs and diamond under-tail clips for my pet. They may spy my mails but have problems counting the zeros.

But it’s not often that I see conclusions stretch to incongruous limits such as when after a tiff with a friend I was directed to Hindi Bhajans and Hanuman Chaalisa! The exchange had been peppered with words such as sad and angry but it wasn't a Mahabharat kind of fight, so imagine my surprise when I spied one link, though last, like an afterthought, but just in case…of Packers and Movers!! For definitely fighters must be people living under the same roof! What if one of us was contemplating moving out? No business opp should be missed. One’s world may be falling apart but logistic help is always at hand.

Then there are those that hint at the bizarre. I’m cleaning windows, I write and am promptly, in highlighted font, advised that ‘Denims may guard against rattlesnake bites’. I love Curtis Stone, I confess and in all caps it warns ‘Recipe for disaster!’ Someone was late for work, I barely read when the margin glows with ‘Govt employees rejoice’. Those two sure go together! A friend shared his anxiety about visitors at an upcoming event ‘It could be a flood or a trickle,’ he wrote and I told him to organize boats because I was being directed to ‘flood warning’. A short note on this and that and nothing much led me to ‘Are You a Fresher? Let Companies Discover Your Talent’. I sifted and strained but words it wasn't. The sender had used green font.

The friend’s mail is all bold and unread. I’m looking more at the right, trying to figure out what it may contain. Curiouser and curiouser, I click. Atta, dal, kids, maid and the husband late from work. In big bold letters the offer displays itself ‘Exp:0-5yrs, Sal: 25-100K Submit Resume’. But of course! Someone working late must need a job change.

Everything that I ever want or do not want to know at my fingertips. Smug, I log in to check my mail. ‘No new mail’ it proclaims and promptly leads me to ‘Hysterectomy Via Keyhole Surgery is Less Complicated: Study’. Auntiji!

This piece was published in The Deccan Herald, Sunday, December 5, 2010 in a horribly mutilated form.  In the name of EDITING, they BUTCHERED and knocked the punch out of it! It doesn’t even read okay! Check out: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/117995/ineffectual-cyber-wisdom.html