Power of three

Okay, if I am getting too much into the baby zone, let me know and I will quietly withdraw. In any case, if you see me disappear from this page rather abruptly, I would have checked into Breach Candy hospital for the whole birthing business, just so you know. I will, of course, try to make it not so abrupt, and say my good byes nicely and all that, but babies these days seem to have minds of their own even before they come into this world. I am just keeping you, dear reader, in the loop. When you are in the nine month-zone, you never know.

There I go being batty and losing focus again (true to what they say in those books). What I actually meant to talk about was my baby shower. To cut it short, there were 20 people who showed up, the cats had a wild time with the pink and blue balloons, though initially, they were entranced by the visual, as though it was a space ship. Once they figured that all it took was one touch of a claw to render it to shreds, they were happy all over again, as also with the multiple footwear that had parked itself at our entrance, each of which displayed nesting possibilities.

So purr so good!

But, as it turned out, the auspicious day was also marked by three other events fighting for attention. Two IPL matches, the Spanish Grand Prix and Man U Vs Man City at the Barclays Premier League.

The husband hadn’t uttered any sounds of such parallel action when I first announced the date. But after he guesstimated the restlessness of the guests, most of whom arrived on time, he created a parallel entertainment zone. The fact that my shindig began at 6 pm suited the couch potatoes fine.

So there were two clear groups—one that stuck to the brief (came to the baby shower, hung out with mommy and baby, and did baby shower things, like talk to mommy, ask suitable and unsuitable questions, act interested in what you have to say, nibble at the eats, and such like)

And then there were the ones that hung in the recreation zone. So there was much screaming –the Man U husband lost all sense of decorum since best man and Man U supporter was there for company. At some point, there was an ousting of the men when the women decided that watching Kolkata Knight Riders destroy themselves (for the 12th time) was a cooler option, counter plotting by the husband, who thought our sangeet DVD with all its embarrassing moments would be a neutral entertainment option..) and finally, rampant betting against KKR—of which, it turns out, I am the beneficiary, as the spoils have been directed towards contribution for the baby cot—which, by the way is frigging expensive, as are most baby things and having a baby.

So baby or no baby, when sport wants to steal the thunder, it always can..

Jenny from the block

All a girl needs is five kinds of friends. One that knows style, one that knows books, one that knows money, one that knows food and one that knows men. If you have a friend that scores four out of five, you have hit the jackpot. Like I did, with Jenny.

Okay, so she can never give a satisfactory answer (at least according to her) to the utterly unimaginative, “What do you do?” or worse, “Where do you work?” query. She doesn’t have a real job (read doesn’t get a pay cheque which comes attached with a salary slip that constantly reminds her how much she has sold your soul for). She will probably never make it to Lotus Notes or KRAs or any such trappings of working in an organization, but she’s got what it takes.

She knows people (she has that sixth sense), clothes (she is a trained designer), money (although she doesn’t make too much of it), taxes (at least ways to get the husband to save them), food (she is the only carnivore who can make also love to vegetables) …and she knows a good deal when she sniffs one. Plus she knows men—she is as much a guy’s girl as a girl’s girl—one of the few people I can have a long (read more than five minutes) conversation with on the phone.

Her high-achiever brother, the cross-dressing son of a friend, the stubborn karigar who wants his way, the gay neighbour, the laidback husband, the cool brother-in-law, the boisterous uncle, the spirited grand-dad (who died recently), the rough-edged husband of a friend—they all rely on her for advice or just words of wisdom—though sometimes she pretends to be on the receiving end just to humour them.

Jenny has also spent a large part of her life negotiating with doctors—she is a rheumatoid arthritis patient who goes into surgery with nonchalance—each time to replace a major bone in her body. After a knee, a hip and a neck surgery, she might be scheduled for another knee, shoulder and elbow replacements in the future, but that has never deterred her from being a yes-girl to life.

So we meet.. and exchange notes—about the extremely lazy but golden-hearted men that we have married, their extreme incompetence when it comes to money or matters that involve paperwork, their extreme similarities (of falling asleep on the couch at 3 am), their extreme idiosyncrasies (being uber-attached to tattered pyjamas and cold-cuts) their extreme unreliability as far as keeping time or finding directions goes. What binds them is they love us to bits, are among the ‘few good men’ left and have never been disrespectful to women (known or unknown).

At 5’ 10, she is amongst my tallest, most elegant girlfriends. I have never seen her sloppy, or have a bad hair day, even though she doesn’t really have an‘office’ to go to. Her logic is, why dress up for others? She says it like it is. She’s my kinda girl.

Pink or blue

I am not about to join the pink chaddi brigade, nor do I subscribe to colour clichés, but I had to tell you this. For the last few months, my posterior has been the subject of much discussion amongst near and dear ones. Well, that should itself be strange, as my anterior is where all the action is—by now, I am so obviously pregnant—my belly makes an entry ten seconds before I do.

Fact is, they are all trying to predict if it’s going to be a boy and a girl. And the most ridiculous thing that I have heard—right from the mother-in-law to a radio-jockey friend is this—if your ass grows madly out of proportion, it’s a girl. If it stays as is, it’s a boy. And my pert ass shows no signs of being out of shape, so I am mortified that the illegal alien inside is a boy!

For all those who say, what difference? It’s god’s gift! (although I am still wondering at what point did god get involved?) Of course it would make a difference. Of course dealing with another man in the house (however little) is going to take a lot out of me. I am just tired of making the men in my life look good—either it’s the father or the brother or the husband or the son (if it turns out to be a boy). It seems like lifelong labour, with no perks, really!

A girl, on the other hand is a breeze to handle and pretty much grows up okay, whatever the circumstances. Okay, I am not being biased here, but how many women do you know who really really need a man to sort them out? I can’t think of anyone. How many men? Well, practically the entire population!

So, from an utterly selfish point of view, I would like a girl.

And I want her so bad that I am utterly at a loss for boy’s names. Even though my posterior says that it’s a boy. I am at a loss for imagining if he’ll have my unruly mop or the husband’s low-maintenance one. Whether he will have my bronze skin or the husband’s fair one. Whether he will inherit my dimples. Or the husband’s fetish for salami, hot dogs and gaming (shudder!).

It’s just that boys have too many issues. They have to be seen doing the right thing, playing with the right toys (usually guns or extra terrestrial objects or something equally violent), wearing the right colours, having the right friends (a smattering of alpha males that they can look up to and some that look up to them, just to keep their fragile egos under check), eating the right food (it’s not cool to eat healthy or organic—they might as well coat their intestines with garbage right from the start—an exercise the husband is eager to partner in), have the right vocation, even the right voice (imagine sounding like Sachin Tendulkar!), grow tall (even I have issues with short men, at five feet nothing), be a man… the list is endless!

Dear god! I hope you are listening….

Plaintain paradise

Recently, on a trip to Goa on our anniversary, at a seaside hilly resort called Aldeia de Goa, nesting in my friend Vasu’s house, I was struck by a nostalgia wave when I spotted what was a plaintain sapling in her garden. It stood there in all its glory, battling the sea breeze, displaying its miniature fruit already. Hmmm, I thought, you can take a south Indian to Goa, but you can never take the plaintain (used interchangeably with banana) out of a south Indian, I figured. Trust the banana to give you your daily dose of calcium and potassium, provide instant energy, and always be accessible to your wallet, recession or no recession. You can add it to milk-shakes, porridge, muesli, and start off your day on a energy-high. You can rely on it any time of the day to abate the sugar low—its form lends to the most hygienic consumption—no washing or chopping required, hence it suffers minimum damage by human hands.

Like all self-respecting Dravidians, I have done my fair share of the plaintain cuisine, and continue to do so when I visit the mother or she visits me (it’s a bit high maintenance for my patience levels currently, when my pregnancy-laden hunger pangs override the desire to work too hard to make a meal happen). But one childhood favourite which she often makes for me even now is the dry plaintain and aubergine in tamarind gravy. Yum!

It is true. Every part of the plant is consumed—the leaves are exotic receptacles for food (even though they might now be used to line silver thalis and whatnot). The fruit is eaten ripe and raw, the flowers (vazhapu) made into cutlets, pitlai, poduthuval and sambar, and the pseudo stem made into pachadi or a poduthuval.

Dad was the resident expert at growing them in our backyard when we were kids (he claimed we had nine varieties, although I couldn’t really tell the difference or the finer points of each). All we knew that each weekend, he spent hours in the backyard, figuring out innovative home-grown fertilizers to make his plaintain paradise thrive.

While raw, skinning, chopping, cooking of the plaintain is a bit elaborate and requires a certain knack and finesse. There are also certain anti-staining precautions to be taken, especially as the juices that exude are not particularly discerning about leaving a mark on your clothes or body parts. And if you are amongst the microscopic populace that can skin, detangle and chop the plaintain pseudostem to tiny bits, each a perfect cube, you are king.

“Give us this day our plaintain chips” was a regular childhood stunt when the stuff on offer at the dinner table didn’t have enough sex appeal, and had to be jazzed up with the regular, chilli or pepper laden variants. Nowadays I spot the ‘microwaved’ or ‘non-fried’ variants at super markets, and frankly, I think it’s a scam. What are plaintain chips if not fried in coconut oil? There’s a guy close to our office, next to the Sitladevi temple who used to make them every day for years, but on my last visit, I couldn’t spot him. Informants on his whereabouts will be suitably rewarded.




Banana pseudo stem (Vazhatandu) pachadi

Ingredients:

A foot-long banana pseudostem

One cup buttermilk, diluted

Juice of a small ball of tamarind (less than the size of a lemon)

Haldi, hing, jaggery, salt to taste



For the gravy:

Green chilli, rai, coconut, one teaspoonful of raw rice


Method:

Chop the pseudostem into fine bits. (This is the trickiest part, as it involves slicing into ½ inch thick rounds, detangling the threads that connect them to one another using a spiral action of your finger, and then piling up the sliced rounds and chopping them into tiny squares)

Soak the chopped pseudostem in a bowl of very dilute buttermilk to retain its whiteness (else it tends to darken)

Drain the pseudostem off the buttermilk and cook in small amount of water with haldi, salt and some tamarind juice.

Grind together one green chilli, one teaspoon mustard, one teaspoon washed rice and add the paste to the cooked mixture. Add a pinch of hing and a piece of jaggery. Bring to boil.

Temper with spluttered mustard seeds and a red chilli.

Bol Bedi Bol

I am not a cricket fan. IPL or no IPL, my life goes on at pretty much the same pace as before. But once in a while, when I take a break to step into the recreation zone (where the husband, the cats, the airconditioner and all the entertainment gadgets are housed), I can’t help but sum up the goings-on and usually make a hasty retreat, sometimes in less than fifteen minutes.

I notice Mandira Bedi, sans noodle straps and sari, chic new haircut, trying to infuse as much bubbly quotient into the insipid proceedings of the IPL (well, I know enough to tell a good match from a bad one). I like what I see. I like her hair (I always like women who experiment with their hair), I love her clothes and accessories and I don’t really give a damn about her cricket quotient. Forget what everyone else has to say—I believe that any average person watching cricket, whether it is the building watchman or the people at work or the Ranji trophy player next door is always laden with statistics. She obviously cannot compete in that department, and why should she?

I am aware of all the criticism she has had to deal with. “What does she know about cricket?” Or “She’s just a trophy on the show..” and “How dumb can she get…?” blah, blah, blah… I wonder why she is at the receiving end of so much hate mail. It’s not that the men backstage are an effusive bunch, brimming with pizzaz and repartees that Bedi sticks out like a sore thumb. They are so not.

I grew up in the era of test cricket, when dad and his beer buddies usually congregated at one person’s house and got wasted for five days while the wives bickered in the background. I was the ten-year old that passed the nibbles and water around then. It was a time when there were real men at the box—even though I was too young to sift the men from the boys. ML Jaisimha, Venkatraghavan, Abbas Ali Baig, Tony Greig, Richie Benaud, Geoff Boycott, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, Asif Iqbal ((dishy Imi was very much on the field back then) had enough gravitas, humour or drool quotient to last the entire five days of the test matches and no one was complaining. You never needed a Mandira Bedi then (noodles or no noodles).

But what do we have now? Kris (yeah!) Srikanth with his tedious sense of humour, Ravi Shastri (who incidentally loves the sound of his voice so much that he actually repeats the same thing, twice), Mohinder Amarnath (deadpan uninterrupted), Sanjay Manjrekar (less deadpan), Sunny Gavaskar (who for some strange reason is never sunny side up), Sidhu (whose Sidhuisms are also getting tedious) or Ajay Jadeja (umm.. ohh..) .

Ahem! I now understand why Ms Bedi is important in the scheme of things. No wonder then, that despite all the flak, the channel always brings her back. In any case, I’d rather watch her than any of the men off the field.

In a nutshell

Forget what everyone else says. I think nuts are a girl’s best friend. They can be packed in tiny containers and sit pretty inside the tiniest handbags, but when you need your nutrition fix, they are totally dependable. High in fibre, low on glycemic index and conservative on calories, they can provide the goodies without the ill-effects or the agony. Ask me. I have gone through most of my pregnancy armed with these potent energy sources— almonds, walnuts, peanuts, pine nuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds— practically any nut or seed that can be eaten.

But there was still a void for that one life-giving energy snack when one felt a sugar low, and didn’t particularly want to work too hard to satiate it. Fruit did the job, but sometimes involved arduous processes like cleaning or slicing, unless you were eating a banana. Nariyalpaniwalas seem to have attained cult status and are not easy to come by. Junk is out, and so are processed juices or instant snacks. Granola bars are still contentious for their glycemic index. Enter the peanut butter.

I must admit, it was well into my adolescence that peanut butter came into my life, when dad would get prized, ‘imported’ bottles full of the stuff that seemed as precious as a rare whisky, as it was hard to come by, and had to be bought from bootleggers.

‘Have it with anything’ is an understatement…. I have spooned out and consumed straight from the jar, added it to porridge, used it as a bread spread, layered it on cake, added it to milkshakes, and of course made the most fulfilling sandwiches with it. A lot of my trekking memories are about how peanut butter saved my life.

Okay, it is rich in dietary fibres, and two teaspoons of peanut butter has as much protein as 225 ml of milk. Also research has also proven that peanuts and peanut butter eaters have leaner bodies. And, it has been prescribed to fight protein deficiency and malnutrition.

That’s enough trivia to convince me at least. But I think the best part is the ease of use. No thawing, no defrosting or any such complications. Just open the jar and scoop out a dollop without feeling sinful or any such thing.

Planter’s Creamy Peanut butter and American foods were once upon a time our only peanut butter sources. Till Funfoods came along and more recently, Sundrop launched its peanut butter. Finally, you can have your peanut butter and eat it too. Or drink, if that’s the way you prefer it.

The next time someone pities you for being a vegetarian and wonders aloud where your protein would come from, tell them in defiance, “Mere paas peanut butter hai!”



High energy milkshake

Muesli

One tablespoon peanut butter

Fruit of your choice (bananas and papayas work best)

Milk

Ice cubes



Method:

In a blender, add a tablespoon of muesli (even a granola bar would work), a dollop of peanut butter, chopped fruit, milk and ice cubes and give it a whisk.

Serve chilled.



Peanut Porridge

Oatmeal

Peanut butter

Milk



Method:

To three heaped teaspoons of oatmeal in a bowl, add enough water to cover the oats.

Microwave for 30 seconds. Mix a dollop of peanut butter into the oats, and add milk as required.

Your high energy, high calcium breakfast is ready

Double decker woes

“No tight clothes, no high heels, no nail polish, no eating outside, no keeping relations with husband…” These were the doctor’s orders upon pronouncing me pregnant.

It took me 30 seconds to realise that ‘keeping relations’ meant having sex. It felt odd…why would an obstetrician need a euphemism for sex? Wasn’t that the core of his business (the fact that people had to have sex to get pregnant, so that he could deliver the babies and make money)? Why then, would he speak of it like it was a four-letter word?

Even after repeated visits, he flinched from the use of the word and I found it amusing.

Okay, I convinced myself. Clearly, he was old school and it would take a lot for him to say the word. I dare not ask him about alcohol, or late night partying or driving to work (which I still do, as the drivers I encountered nearly drove me to premature labour with their idiocies). He might just have turned blue and look aghast at my irreverent self.

I did muster the guts to ask him about yoga though. Thought he would approve. On second thoughts, he wouldn’t, if he just came to my Iyengar Yoga class and watched me hanging off ropes, balancing head-stands and hand-stands with panache. He declared without a twitch on his face, “Nothing for three months. Now just go home and rest!”

“Rest? But I feel good.. and I have a job!…” I manage to get the words out.

“Okay, take it easy then,” he said with a tone of resignation.

It’s been 29 weeks and I have done everything but take it easy.

The sonologist was another one who could come out tops in the I-will-not-smile contest. “First pregnancy?” he asked, with a raised eyebrow. What was unstated is, “Why have you taken so bloody long?”

I feel like telling him, “It took me so long to find a man worth making a baby with, I just couldn’t help it…” Or something like, “You know I have made so many, I have lost count…”

Instead I grin sheepishly and say a meek yes. I don’t think my humour would do down too well with his steely, clinical exterior.

He then divulges his goodies on a screen. “Okay here is the baby’s spine, this is the head.. blah blah…” It all looks like a blur to me, but I say, “O, how nice..!”

Think about it. Having a baby is closest to a fun time you can have with a doctor. You could laugh off cholesterol disorders, or piles or obesity or stuff like that, but seriously, being pregnant is the only time you need not ‘feel like a patient’. Rather like someone who has undertaken a mission and needs a facilitator.

Why then, do women in obstetrician waiting rooms look like they don’t have a bone of humour in their bodies? How then, are they thinking happy thoughts to make happy babies?