Hit the road, Jack!

Hit the road, Jack!, a photo by Kartik Malik on Flickr.

Thanks to Angee for the cam and uvaraj for the cycle :D

Soul Curry

Bachelors in the house say AYE!

Bachelors are staying away from home and feel very hungry yet don’t want to go get something to eat over a lazy Sunday morning say AYE!

Girls who feel the same as the bachelors on a Sunday morning say AYE!

Wives who have a hungry & lazy husband at home expecting you to make something for him to eat say AYE!

Husbands who have wives who won’t do that say AYE!

Madam TM, fellow TMs, guests and all those who feel hungry but depend on someone else to satisfy the hunger? LEARN TO COOK

Cooking L&G, is not just a necessary skill,

But a useful form of self defense,

A blessing in disguise,

A one stop shop for self dependency,

And last but not the least, it’s an art form.

Friends, it s a wild wild world out there. And even without our conscious efforts, we’re subconsciously cooking all the time.

Be it Cooking up inspiring quotes to make your argument more convincing,

Be it Cooking up excuses for the girlfriend’s boyfriends, husband’s wives project managers….

Be it cooking as a survival strategy when you’re parents go on a vacation J

OR Be it cooking that superb tasting meal to score points with the girl next door

The advantages of Cooking are many…

But the one reason that I cook for, is for cooking is a means to satisfy all 5 senses at the same time... When your spoon glides through a soft chocolate mousse on a platter covered with chocolate dust, covered with those brittle chocolate flakes and garnished with that delicate piece of milk chocolate and melts on entering your mouth and you can hear only one thing... you yourself going “hmmmmmmmmmmmm”

How many of you counted the number of senses that stimulated?? :D

Well, and now I request all of you to forgive me for bringing you all back to stark reality from those chocolate heavens, but in my defense, what I’m going to do now, is share a few tips I learnt from my experiences in the Kitchen…

And here’s how you should do it... a few simple tips!!

Tip 1: Burn the food. Burn your hands… Eat the burnt stuff.

Get in the kitchen and cook something... And believe it or not, for it may sound incredible how cooking taught me important lessons of disaster recovery and damage control. Not only did I pass off burnt chicken pieces as “strongly charcoal flavored kebab but also got the best chef in the family award ;)! True story! :D

And the other time when mom was going to be away for a week, she left me to fend for myself for an entire week. So my mom makes a run of the mill “alu gobi” (the legend from the beckham blockbuster!!) and then the next day when I walk into the kitchen to make the chapattis with the alu gobi, That didn’t seem very inspiring at all. The alu gobi didn’t seem as fancy as they make it sound in the movies. SO I took the dough, stuffed it with the alu gobi, deep fried them in lotssa oil! Burnt them of course… Loved them still.. and that’s how I learnt the lesson of “how not to make samosas"

Tip 2: Take the risks. Throw away all the cook books in the dustbin and try your own recipes. Experiment. Throw in whatever is within your reach and forget stuff that you don’t have… you’ll learn to be content and optimistic J besides Necessity mother of invention... they say ;) Shishir, a friend of mine is notoriously famous for even throwing in some beer or wine in the chicken coz that’s what he could find in the shelf!

Tip 3: Mix n Match – only then will you come up with new recipes that the world hasn’t had the honor of tasting. Fresh and new cocktail recipes. The so many kinds of Sambhar you taste when you’re home and miss when you’re not… Imagine if no one had mixed up random stuff you’d still be drinking only one variety of coffee at Coffee Day/barista. Only The standard mixture of rum and cola. Imagine the world without the 800+ flavours of ice cream at Baskin Robbins.. Argh!!! The pain of seeing the colorful world in just black and white!! Ah!

Tip 4: Have Fun! Feel The joy… listen to the sounds of the mustard seeds crackling in hot oil... enjoy the microwave beep in anticipation of what lies within… dance to the rhythm of your knife beating against the chopping board!!

Friends, the food lover in me tries to relate anything and everything to food, the kitchen and related art forms but I guess what I m trying to say in here is that there are a million skills, art forms, martial arts, languages, cultures and traditions, subjects that we’ve been wanting to learn for ages, since time immemorial ;) but have been procrastinating. So get up and get out there and learn something everyday! small big, significant or not, whether it fetches you money or not, whether your friends make fun of you or encourage you, just go out there and explore the world of opportunities

And now, Hungry ppl in the house who gonna join the KARTIK MALIK Cookery Classes after this meeting?? Say aye!!!

Stop the atrocities! Stop the killings!

It was a nice breezy evening. There was a live jazz band band playing in the background. We were all having dinner at a friend’s party on the terrace of his house. it was all just perfect! except for one little thing... the food was vegetarian !!!

Now vegetarian food doesnt suit me all that well... but sometimes you just gotta put up with somethings in life..The party went on and we all had fun. eventually the party ended and we all headed home, I was with a friend in his car. Now on our way back we were passing by residency road and outside the Catholic club I see a banner that reads, “The grill masters club…. You need not be a member to attend. Theme for today’s meeting “Stop the atrocities, Stop the killing!!” That caught my attention so thought why not go inside and have a look… and lo!behold! What do I see inside?

All the vegetables that you can think of sitting in a public speaking forum and having an impromptu speech contest about atrocities on vegetables. The eggplant was sitting there peacefully in his bright shiny purple long coat. The baby corn in his cute lil green baba suit, the peppers in their usual bright colors red green yellow. Miss Lady Finger in her gracefully draped green saree. The cauliflower was grabbing all the attention after her recently released blockbuster where she was paired with potato in the evergreen Alu Gobi pair.... and guess who walked in wearing an "I hate Popeye" at this "Stop the atrocities" meet.... Spianch...Mr potato and miss onion flirting in one corner trying to cook up a spicy gossip and carrot and radish feeling jealous. Mr Green Cabbage was sitting with his pretty wife Purple.

And when I entered, believe it or not if looks could kill I would’ve been dead. Every single vegetable in there was staring at me as if I was some murderer, guilty of genocide.

Ah and then the contest began.. topic was “atrocities I witnessed with my fellow vegetables”… And then began one after another painfully vivid and touching stories of atrocities. Did you know, baby corns are the most common victims of infanticide. Vegetable names are only used as insults –“The couch potato”! offensive jokes are made about their death - what did one vegetable say to another - I ll see you on the chopping board!! The egg plant is burnt alive to make something they call baigan ka bharta. Or sometimes even chopped and thrown in hot oil .. only to feed to some glutton vegetarians never ending hunger. But the worst is the cucumber… it is stripped naked and then chopped into little pieces. Even when they make fun of their mothers they dont spare the vegetables .. yo momma thought square roots were vegetables ... I mean who does that? How cruel can we get in the name of vegetarianism and then glorify it! And we speak of it as if we’re so considerate that we don’t eat chickens, but kill plants instead. What kind of justice is this.

I was just thinking about all this when someone knocks me from the side and says “Dude, what happened?? Vegetables haunting your dreams. ? ha ha”.

Yes that was my friend. Yes I had dozed off in the car. And yes I had a dream a rather scary one about atrocities on vegetables. And that really got me thinking about how we conveniently think killing plants is ok. So next time someone calls me a vegetarian im not going to say “proud to be”… im only going to be able to say “guilty as charged” …

What's the point???

I write this for i have a point to make. You’ve come here and I’m sure you have a point to make too. People these days don’t have conversations until and unless they have a point. If I talk for just 2 minutes, someone listening is bound to ask me “what’s your point?” A story cannot just be a story. Someone has to ask what’s the point. Nothing important is ever pointless.

Knowingly or unknowingly, whether we like it or not, whether we are willing to acknowledge it or not, we, you and me and every single soul who walks this earth has become a slave of this dimensionless entity called a point.

Yes, a point is dimensionless. No length no width, but still powerful enough to enslave us all. A speech, a movie, a discussion, a presentation, an article, an act, a gesture, the itmc manual, a point is everywhere. But now is the time to introspect, to reevaluate, and ask ourselves, do we need the point? And based on years of research and my own meandering experience, the only thing I have to say is, you don’t need the point.

Why do we wake up sometimes in the morning and just don’t feel like gong to work. Why do we want to go to some exotic place and breathe in everything tahst around? Do you feel like sitting on a swing and just go swwwwiiiiing????? Why??? Whats your point???do you have to have a reason for everything? If the point was so necessary in our lives, phrases like “chumma da” in tamil, or “aise hi” in hindi, "emni" in bangla, “just like that” all really meaning the same, wouldn’t exist! Friends get rid of the point. Throw it away.

If I were to divide 100 by say 3, you know what I would get as a result, 33.33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333 trust me I could go on and on for ever till eternity or even use the excuse of a word in the mathematician’s world “recurring” but I would still never ever be accurate. And all this inaccuracy, because I chose to use the stupid point. If I had just said 33 and 1/3^rd things would all be fine. The point is the root cause of all inaccuracy in the world that I’m sure you can do without. I repeat, we don’t need the point.

I’m sure we are looking forward to the day the world comes to an end. Are we not? Pardon my sarcasm here but do realize that none of us like things to end. We don’t like the fantasy stories that our grandmothers tell to come to an end. You don’t like good day to come to an end. In fact out worst nightmare is that day when the earth stops rotating, comes to a stand still, a full stop. And I don’t know if you see what I’m getting to already but a full stop, a poorna viram, a point symbolizes the end. Do you know why a judge who sentences someone to death breaks the nib of the pen he uses. Cause he doesn’t want that pen that put that full stop after the death sentence to announce anything that gory. A point brings good things to an end. We don’t need the point.

Have you heard of two parallel lines of thought ever having an argument? They were leading perfectly peaceful lives till they intersected at a point. A point creates clashes

and believe it or not, that’s one of the reasons for its existence.

Do you know what it feels when someone POINTs a finger at you? Derogatory, looked down upon, condemned, blamed. See how the point comes into action yet again when someone has to be blamed. A point blames.

And does it not kill us all when we see mails from our managers with action items and note the use of bullet points there. It kills us. Also notice the use of the word bullet prefixed to the point. No one ever uses a chocolate point or a flower point.

A flower point can a fragrance emit.

A chocolate point can fulfill.

But a bullet point KILLS.

A point creates clashes.

A point blames.

Can we just let a story be just a story?

Can we not point fingers and learn to work as a team?

Can we rise above the petty trivialities of a dimensionless entity and not be obsessed with it?

Just remember, If you're concentrating really hard on a point, you're missing out on the big beautiful world, right around it!

Raindrops ...

A raindrop if i could be

Born from a cloud on a wandering spree,

Where i would fall i would never know,

But the look of joy everywhere is what i would see.

I would paint the sky with colors so bright, 

A rainbow from just a ray of light, pure white, 

I could cease to exist and be re born,

But if i could be born just once again, 

I would only, as a drop of rain...

Religion...

“Religion is the opium of the masses", they say
That’s a drug to me, an addiction! Nay??
An amusement for all who can afford,
Greek & Latin for the unaware of language, or even a word!
An occupation for some and a profession for the rest,
Reason to kill for some or to take a bullet on their chest,
For the masses, eh? I ask all those who claim,
That all this insanity is to do with the name of God??

The Lord must be very patient, I’m certain
To witness what we do in his name,
And bless us still with all he has,
And we proudly let all his work go in vain…
Worship Him, that we do,
But in ways and means that men tell us to,
Doubt His ways, His presence too,
But believe words that men speak to be true!

Profanity, Insanity, Cruelty, and actions so dirty,
Forgotten words are honesty and integrity,
And apparently, all for the sake of the All Mighty!
“Kill thy neighbor”, for he doesn’t agree..
Kill him and all those who are free
Of chains we create, of walls we erect,
Of gallows we call temples,
And the devil we everyday resurrect.

Wake up man, shed no more blood,
Or wait if you want and let the world burn.
Stand up, be the wall against the fire.
Protect your brothers, and some respect you may earn.
Protect yourself from the ghost and the opium,
Clean the air, rid the water of the scum,
Trust, within you the God and the powers that reside,
All else, can forever, just stay aside.

"Just For Kicks" - A Garden Special

"Just for kicks" is my debut into the mocktail world... Conceived and blended with very simple ingredients and the outcome was a very fresh drink with flavors so distinct, you cant miss them but blended so well, you will not be able to identify them...  

I would've loved to keep the ingredients a secret and have you guess them while you try it but as this is my first I'll let you try it at home and tell me how it is. A garden special with the tangy flavor of pineapple blended with the freshness of mint, sweetly fizzed up 'just for kicks' with a little bit of sprite.. And in true Bond style 'Shaken not stirred' ...  

Enjoy your drink!!