Of Letters and Novels

How long has it been since you wrote a letter or received one? Very long is what I think.  When I was young, I used to look forward to my grandfather's letters. They inevitably contained a cheat sheet for an upcoming essay or elocution contest. He also sent me pictures for my favourite academic activity, making the fattest prettiest geography record book. I know, I am such a nerd. I was also fascinated by Nehru's book, Letters from a father to a daughter. It goes through prehistory, the industrial revolution all the way until colonial India. That book makes you wish that somebody would write to you like that. This is not an essay in defense of handwritten letters, I like them as much as the next person, but I type faster than I write. All I am defending is a good long email. We all instant message, WhatsApp, we share information in small units and expect instant reactions. It is convenient and wonderful that we can share our lives with people we care about. But we tend tp lose sight of some special quirks that communication should have. 

A letter contains a lot of its writer, consciously or unconsciously. That' s the best part of a letter. It conveys a feeling, a tone, sometimes things that you never meant to convey at all. I have often had this argument that writing is a projection and not the truth of the author. It might be true. But sometimes reading between the lines tells you much of things left unwritten. I find it difficult to understand even this, because most of the time my writing sounds exactly like me- pedantic, opinionated and with more asides than topics of conversation. While I don't write rude emails, I often have been told that I sound angry. Lots of times I do mean it, rest of the time even when I am writing a forced polite reply, the anger seeps into what I am trying to say. See what I mean about conveying things the author doesn't mean.

I have always loved epistolatory novels. I think they make great serial stories and keep you waiting for the next installment. Some of my top favorites are Daddy Long Legs, Dear Enemy, Anne of Windy Willows. All of these are romances. Daddy Long Legs is a budding college girl romance. It's a one-sided communication. That's what is great about letters right now, they are sort of unconditional. You keep it open so the other person can decide how they want to respond. Dear Enemy is a beautiful documentation of escalating clashes of opinion, wills and theories culminating in a romance.  Anne writes to her fiance while she waits to get married. The book is tilled with newsy prosy letters you wish you could write. I recently re read one of mu other favorites, The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society. Filled with different voices and styles blending to form a single story, it could be a manual for letter writing.

For all my enthusiasm on writing letters, I become rather stilted when I write a letter. I write 3 word sentences. I am funny unless I try to be funny. If I try, it makes bad reading. So if I want to write a great epistolatory novel some day, I need oodles of practice writing letters.

This week in Reading

So this was a good week for my reading. Despite various distractions I have been making headway on and finished a couple of books. So the first book on my bookshelf was Major. Pettigrew's Last Stand. Now this a book I bought purely based on the opinions of a blogger whose blog review I happened to read. Well, at one level this book made me glad that I did not buy a brand new copy. So most readers have their top lists right, books they love, like, endure. My meter goes pretty much like airport or rail book( the kind u read and pretty much don't care abt) they are sort of those short mystery thriller types, unless you read gone girl on an air trip. Then there are your well thumbed childhood favorites, either you know them off by heart so you don't buy them or you keep really old copies and hate yourself when you sell them.  Then there are the books you like to read and preserve, like if you are collecting a series. So you handle those with care. Then there are those which you just might spare cash to but the hard bound edition.  But a little annoying are the books that you wonder why you bought.

This book was definitely one of them. I couldn't quite put my finger on one single thing that troubled me. At the face of it, it claims to be a twilight romance of an unlikelcy couple which is actually an interesting subject. It' s just that I didn't like any particular person in the book at all.  The major is pompous, and a tad bigoted absolutely until the last page. Mrs. Ali is a one dimensional character who tries to break all the rules. It is interesting though that you actually like the characters you are expected to dislike, that is partly intended by the author, but it's also because they are the ones with any sort of variety.

It wasn't a complete waste of time though, some of the observations are wry and the descriptions of the English countryside are great. But for all its attempts,  it seems to me like it is a glorified multicultural catalog.

A Headstart on Weekend Baking

It is Friday morning and the hours in the morning stretch pleasantly when you decide to work from home. So I utilized my hour long commute time better today getting ahead on my weekend baking. I made an eggless cake and a cookie. The eggless cake is a repeat recipe, it is the mawa cake I attempted soon after Diwali. I generally have a strict non repetition policy so that I learn new cake and cookie recipes and so I don't get bored of my new found hobby as well. But the mawa cake had to be made primarily so I could finish up all the yummy things which could go into it, which have been sitting in my fridge for ages now. If anything, it turned out even better than the last time I tried to make it, none the worse for my abuse of the ingredients.

But the real star of my culinary chronicle today is a cookie. After a long time, I got a cookie perfectly right. I guess, I just had to try enough number of times to get it right. So when I started off, I was intimidated by cakes and made only cookies. So I made cookies very well. Then I stopped and made only cakes. When I got back and tried making any sort of exotic cookies which involved egg, like shrewsbury biscuits ( rock hard and had to be broken with excessive force), zebra cookies ( had to miraculously transformed into cupcakes) and my most basic cookie failure, rice cookies (enough said). So baking has me believing in Malcolm Gladwell's tenet that enough practice can make you an expert in anything. 

So I was happy to get into the cookie baking groove again with these awesome melting moments cookies.  They are so pretty to look at and the prettification doesn't really take too much effort. I found this recipe at Bakeclub.com.au. They had a very good video trailer of the recipe and very very detailed instructions. So this is not the only recipe I am going to be trying from this site, I have already book marked a bunch for future reference. Possibly, they have made their instructions so fool proof that even I cannot go wrong.

Now without any further ado, presenting melting moments cookies with orange icing.

On my kitchen counter: ( To make 18 or 36 halves)

250 g butter (softened and cubed)

110 g icing sugar

11/2 tsp vanilla extract

250 g flour

60 g corn flour

For the orange icing:

60 g butter softened

125 g icing sugar sifted

rind of an orange scraped

a drop of food colouring (optional)

How to make them:

1. Cream together sugar, butter and vanilla, until they mix well. The butter goes pale and creamy and sort of streaky as well, this is when you stop.

2. Scrape the mixture from sides of the bowl and mix thoroughly with sifted flour and corn flour.

3. Once you have combined it using a spoon, you can use your hands to bring the dough together.

4. Grease and line a cookie tray. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius.

5. Take heap teaspoons of the dough between your hands and form into equal sized balls. Place them on the cookie sheet about 4-5 cm apart.

6. Press down on each ball with a fork, very gently, to create a pattern and sort of flatten the cookie a little bit.

7. Place in the oven and bake for about 18 minutes, the lower side of the cookie turns golden brown while the top half remains sort of beige in colour.

8. Remove from cookie tray and allow to cool before icing.

For the icing:

Combine butter, sugar and rind and also a drop of food colouring ( use orange instead of lemon yellow like stupid ol' me). Cream together and spread evenly on one cookie and sandwich with another.

So thanks to my brilliance, I have executed one of Heston Blumenthal's Masterchef tasks quite unwittingly. When you look at it, you expect to taste lemon cream and what you get is orange cream (looks are deceptive).

Sundaes and Sunny Days

"Pistachio, please!" I still remember the first order I took when I worked at the Hampton Court Ice Cream Stand. It was a small voice that piped up from behind the counter. All I could see where a pair of round blue eyes and the beginning of a couple of orange pigtails. "Cone or cup?" I chanted sincerely from the manual I had been taken through. I looked around and didn't find the manager whose approval I was trying to get. Yes, I was a bit of a goody two shoes and in my defense, it was the first day at my first job. 

Well, how much do they cost?" went the shrill voice again. She was a bit of a curmudgeon for her age. "Ten cents extra for the cone." I replied, my voice displaying a slight irritation. Here I was trying to get my first order right and she had already spent 10 minutes studying all the colors and flavors. Now she seemed stumped by the cone/cup question. It did not seem like the debate in her head would end in a hurry. I took a deep breath of the cold air wafting from the freezer. It calmed me down as I waited for Rose's order. 

My friends would kill for this job and told me I was lucky to get it. I didn't have to trudge up muddy sidewalks in the rain delivering newspapers or break my back bending over the lawnmower. I made more money as well for every hour I worked. They came by quite often to enjoy an ice cream on my account and pass the sunny afternoon in the cool air of the ice cream parlor.

Hampton Court Ice Cream Stand had ice cream stand in its name. To call it an ice cream stand was an understatement. It was a monument to ice cream. People came in to have ice cream but also walk through a mini ice cream museum. We still had the old time ice cream churners. We didn't use them anymore, but a lot of people came in to look at them.

The only drawback of the job was that I had to be up at six and at work within the half hour.  Scrubbing the wooden floors, polishing the ice cream churners till they shone, putting up the specials were chores that we all shared. We all stood for 5 high school kids. 3 of them went to the public school in the area. I had been moved to the gifted program and had to go to another school ten miles away which supported it. The last one, Jim, was going to my school this fall. He was a transfer student to my school this year.  I had never seen him in the area before. He kept pretty much to himself as did I and all the efforts of the Roosevelt high threesome to draw us out of our respective shells went in vain.

Jim and I inevitably volunteered to clear up so the other 3 could get out early and get on with their social lives. We had to clear things up and get organized for the next shift. Nina, Beulah and Rick liked working the first shift so they could get work out of the way and enjoy their evenings. I didn't do much in the evenings, just lay on a deck chair by the pool with a book and my Ipod. My mother worried, but I lounged despite that My old friends were too far away now that we had moved. I didn't drive. So I was stuck looking for friends in the new locality. They were not easy to come by. My mom wished I made more of an effort. "For heaven's sake, you don't even talk to Jim," she stormed at me.

It was not that I did not like Jim. I liked him. Quite a lot, the little I heard him speak was good enough to make an assessment. He would be really easy to hang out with. It was a given that he wouldn't have too many friends here because he was the new guy too. My parents saw him every day when they dropped me off to work. He drove up in his beat up truck. He was quiet and respectful when spoken to. They were wishing that I would make friends with him before the school year and they would be relieved from their chauffeuring duties.

I was to see little Rose quite often that summer. She was a constant visitor to our ice cream parlor, dropping in after her Girl Scout meetings. She liked to take her time, savoring the selection of ice cream more than the actual consuming of it. She inevitably chose me, not endearing me in the eyes of the manager who swore by quick and perfect service. I'd rather she didn't choose me, but she always made a beeline towards my counter whenever she came in. Personally, I found her a bit annoying. She was too curious, always asking questions about everything. She needed to know everything, all the time. She always put me in mind of that old proverb,"Curiosity killed the cat."

That was another thing in favor of Jim. He always had a ready smile for every customer, even Rose. He was the best person you could have waiting on you. He was patient, friendly and always helpful. Which made it even funnier that Rose always picked me over him. I even asked her once, when my manager wasn't looking of course. "He has a funny smile. I don't like it! It seems off!" she responded. The cheek of that child didn't have any limits.

I had started taking the bus to work by now. But that morning, my father stopped me as I was heading out the door. " Don't leave work before I come to get you. Stay inside the shop if it is after dark OK? " Seeing my puzzled expression, he continued, "There have been some incidents lately and I don't want you walking home alone." I nodded, still not completely convinced and continued on my way to my job. My day was full and not conducive to any further brooding on the topic.

We were closing early, so we didn't have too many customers coming in the later part of the afternoon. The roads were empty of pedestrians. There were a few cars on the road. " The city of Nortonville is on high alert today." The television blared from its perch at the corner of the shop. "There have been three abductions, all of teenage girls in the area. All citizens are requested to report any suspicious behavior." I headed out, taking out the garbage. My haunches were up even though I wasn't really taking the warnings echoing around in my brain to heart. Jim was still in the shop cleaning up.

"Hey! Nina! I was just going to come and check on you!" Rose shrieked from behind me. My heart almost leapt into my throat. "Why are you hanging around the dumpsters, Rose? Or should I be scared to ask?" I said, my words coming out more cutting than I intended them to be.  Her face fell, " I was just worried about you. I didn't like the idea of you working alone with Jim today. So I came along. You know I followed Jim yesterday. Do you know what I found out?"

"No, I don't know and I don't want to know."I stalked back towards the shop. "I suggest you get back home too." "That's what I came to speak to you about. I know you are closing now. My brother and I can give you a ride back home." My foot steps slowed. I turned over the suggestion in my head. I wasn't particularly looking forward to spending the rest of the day, until my dad came to get me, with Jim. There was something about him that made me very uncomfortable. I wasn't intent on exploring my feelings this day. "Hmmmm....." I dragged out my response as I trudged back into the store. She followed close on my heels.

It was too quiet. Jim was whistling when I left. I walked towards the walk in freezer at the back of the shop. The lights were off. That was unusual. The dark dank atmosphere closed around me as I swung the door open. "No! You promised! She was going to come along. Don't!" Rose's voice shrieked. That was the last thing I heard before blackness swirled before my eyes. The last thing I saw as I hit the ground was Jim's startled eyes as he lay bleeding on the floor.

Sweet Treats and Great Conversation

This weekend was all about nostalgia for me. I met up with my old gang of friends. We have managed to stay in touch with each other post engineering college, through ups and downs and everything in between. With everyone getting busier by the day, we only now manage to meet on special occasions. Our special occasion this weekend was J having a baby. We congregated at J's house for lunch and a pre- baby meetup. We had a wonderful time, reminiscing, laughing at remembered inside jokes and feeling like we were young, hopeful and back in college again for a time.

So, since I was visiting for a special occasion, I wanted to carry something interesting for dessert. I found this on an acquaintance's blog. So recipe credits to loveisinmytummy.com. These cinnamon cakes were perfect for dessert, not too sweet, soft and crumbly inside and a little crispy on the outside. So the idea is that they are baked like muffins but the batter has a lot of similarities with donut batter. Of course, cinnamon can only make things taste better, even diet food like awful oatmeal porridge. So I used lashings and lashings of it in this dessert, especially since I didn't have to grind it, used the great tasting Keya Cinnamon Powder. This dessert with a name like Cinnamon Donut Muffins, it sounds particularly Enid Blytonish. The other reason I like this dessert is because it uses melted better (yes! no pre planning needed) and granulated sugar, perfect for last minute or in my case late night baking.

So these muffins are quite attractive after you roll them in the cinnamon flavored sugar because they shine like burnished golden brown. But when you finish baking them, they look almost like an off white. Anyway, here goes the recipe without any more ado, brought to you in a hopefully? attractive fashion, thanks to the pic monkey recipe card tutorial.

All done and ready to go!

Children's Books, Darkness among other things

I have been reading a lot this week. All thanks to the great new Scribd app and subscription package, which lets you read on your phone and computer and has a great collection of popular fiction. They even have a newly added audio book section which I haven't tried out. Now I do not prefer e books to real ones, mainly because I miss the smell of books- old, new, dusty et al. But this is convenient and lets me extend my reading time to my commute without lugging around weight and risking motion sickness and if you save books to your library you can read them on your train/bus/flight journeys. So in short, I am a fan.

Anyway the books I have been reading are mostly children's books. I read a bunch of books by Andrew Clements. They are books for tweens I would say, they are not dumbed down for children. They are very well written, exciting, have great plots and 'wait for it' are set in the real world. No fantasies well maybe just a bit,but for the most part real life problems that children face everyday and how they handle them smartly. None of the children are particularly goody-goody, they all have their faults. What they do have in common is a mix of intelligence, street smarts and courage to face everything thrown at them. This makes reading about them anything but tedious. In fact, we may learn much from them

Great Adventure story, interesting twist on small town versus large corporates. Reading second book of this series now.
Other Books by the author:
- The Landry News- Interesting discussion of rights and amendments, Great book about the freedom and power of the press
- The Report Card- An intrepid heroine, who makes you wish you thought of her rebellious ideas, talks of the pressure of grades and living up to expectations
No Talking- Simply loved this one. I wouldn't have survived a day in this no talking contest, being personally an unshushable
 
 This was a strange, strange book. Not in a good way. The premise seemed okay, a little far fetched but okay. The book was very off putting and not at all good to read. Felt they took the whole empathy thing too far, it was sort of weird. The sliding bit was contrived. The only good thing was the suspense, but it was hurried along and that ruined it for me.
Book along similar lines which was surprisingly good was 'Reconstructing Amelia' by a first time author. She handles several sensitive issues with unusual tact and there is hardly anything that makes you uncomfortable about the book. It makes several strikes against the over sharing that everyone does in social media today and it's consequences.

Reconstructing Amelia was a particularly dark book primarily because it exposes things that could quite plausibly happen in real life. Other darkness this week comes from watching American Horror Story. This show is really really scary, not because of ghosts, but because of all the scary people. It has some really great actors, who are particularly convincing. This show has made for quite a few nightmares for me. The other creepy show on my watch list is Stalker. A very under dramatized, sober investigative series, it's about a division which catches stalkers obviously. It's interesting because the characters have more depth than the usual one dimensional investigators we see. It has Dylan Mc Dermott, who also acts in American Horror Story, one of my favorite actors after being "Bobby" from the practice. I haven't missed an episode and this show is sure to have you checking your locks at night. The only movie I managed to catch last week, did not inspire any optimism either. Stonehearst Asylum has plenty of movie heavyweights- Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley namely. The movie is a little slow, but picks up pace along the second half. It treads on the fine line between black and white. The end is not as unexpected as you would like it to be. You realize it somewhere in your brain along the way. Excellent flip side view at mental illness and it's treatment.
 

Training Wheels

He let go. She fell."Ouch!"she cried. "Sorry", he said. 'It's my fault.' ' Don't blame yourself.' ' I can't ride.' ' Are you hurt?' ' Only my pride.' 'Let's try again.' 'Not today.' ' You tired?' ' Just had enough!' ' Don't give up.' 'I want to.' 'One more time.' ' I'll magically transform?' 'It could happen.' ' Stranger things have!' she said frowning. ' Never said that.' 'Didn't have to.' ' Topic change please.' ' You were saying?' 'Was I? When?' ' Yesterday night, remember?' ' Oh, that.' ' So, not important?' 'Important, not urgent.' ' Spill it!' 'Not now, later.' 'Why not?' ' Need more time.' ' Or a phone?' ' Possibly, a phone.' 'Can't take it.' ' Can't say it.' ' Course, you can.' 'Not to you.' 'Is someone talking?' ' About what?' ' Someone is talking.' 'Yes, guess what?' ' About us?' ' Sort of.' 'Are you embarrassed?' She frowned disbelievingly. ' I am here.' He frowned back. ' Trust issues much?' 'Maybe, I don't.' ' I would lie?' ' No, just asking.'

'Never just ask.' ' So you won't.' ' Right, won't go.' 'Because of me?' ' You'd think that?' ' Because of everyone?' ' Is that worse?' ' I think so.' She said determinedly. 'Decide right now.' ' I should choose?' 'Yes, you should.' 'How can I?' ' Up to you!' ' I don't know.' 'Or don't want?' 'Could be both.' 'Not sure?' 'No one is.' ' Thought you were.' 'Not a savant.' ' That's a seer.' 'Whatever, don't care.' ' Tell me why?' ' Never ask again?' 'Try not to.' 'Promise me.' 'Okay, I promise.' ' Privacy, I guess.' ' You guess.' ' Don't know really.' ' Guessing isn't enough.' ' Deal with it.' 'Sharing is wrong?' ' Just personal opinion.' ' It's messed up!' ' Stop arguing!' ' Don't make excuses.' ' I am not.' ' It's my imagination?' ' Sometimes it's overactive.' ' It's always me.' ' That's not true.' 'This time, you?' 'You got me!'

'I don't.' ' Why the need?' ' Want to understand.' ' Better a mystery.' ' A bad one.' ' Let's do it.' ' Announce it?' 'How much longer?' 'Need convincing.' ' Announcement? Something Else?' ' What else?' ' Any regrets?' ' None now, never.' 'Just need space?' ' To be sure.' ' If everyone knows?' ' Will they?' ' I won't tell.' ' It's over.' ' How pessimistic.' ' Never peaceful again.' 'It won't end.' ' What's the point?' ' Telling the truth.' ' To everyone else? ' He sighed dejectedly. ' I am happy.' ' I am too!' ' Why the worry?' ' I am skeptical.' ' Okay, not worried.' ' Hate gossip.' ' Thinking ruins everything.' ' I should stop?' 'Just relax!' ' I am trying.' ' Try harder.' ' I don't agree.' ' It's perfect timing.' 'I disagree.' 'Please do.'

'Worth it?' ' You gotta ask?' 'It's to me.' ' Only you matter.'' I know.' ' So you'll go?' ' Prom sucks!' ' Less with me.' ' You aren't scared?' ' Of what?' ' Wrong ideas?'  ' Should I be?' ' Something like that.' ' Do you care?' He said, 'No!'. ' I don't either.' ' Let's go!' ' Great, finally!' ' Get back on!' ' Ordering me huh?' ' That's impossible.' ' Hold on tight.' 'Trust me.' ' That scares me.' 'Need to start.' They both smiled.

Art Museum: Philly- An Inspiration

Poised high up on a hilly path, more often than not the Philadelphia Museum of Art is the first thing you notice as you enter the Philadelphia 30th Street Station on a train. It has become, thanks to the Rocky Movies, an icon in Philadelphia, the most recognizable landmark in this city. You can delude yourself that you are following in Stallone's footsteps as you huff and puff up Kelly Drive to reach this monument. The road from the city center is less picturesque and less Rocky like. You can only get the complete experience if you run up Kelly Drive and then confront yourself with the massive steps leading up to the museum. The steps are dotted with many aspiring athletes working out and even a "Yoga at Sunset" class proceeding on the side. In summer, more often than not you can find dogs running into the fountain and children wading barefoot into the water.

The view of the Philly skyline looks perfect from the steps, the curving Benjamin Franklin Parkway runs through right down to the city. This is the less scenic look and looks deceptively short, but is a far longer walk than the Kelly drive path you could take. Some of the flags planted along the sides of the road flutter in the wind closer to the Museum which is located in a particularly windy area while the rest of them hang limply. The Parkway has many museums and places of interest scattered along it such as the central branch of the Public Library, an interesting four sided sculpture replete with lions and other animals, humans and fountains, the Rodin Museum. The Eastern State Penitentiary and the Barnes Foundation are a stone's throw away.

 Next to the steps amidst the green foliage is hidden the Rocky Statue. You can see many people lining up in front of the statue to pose for photographs. The museum is built in a Classic style and draws heavily from Roman columns and forums. The exhibition that I had a chance to view were the plans to redesign the museum and give it a modern facelift by the architect Frank Gehry- famous for the Walt Disney concert hall in Los Angeles. It would be interesting to watch how this traditional structure transforms into its modern interpretation. The museum has a pay as you wish every Wednesday and on the first Sunday of the month. Wednesdays are a good time to visit as there are some cool activities from wine tasting to plays and performances.

Now that quite enough has been spoken about the outsides of the museum, let me do a highlight tour of the inside. There are permanent exhibits with rotating display items and special exhibits. Two of the most fascinating permanent exhibits are the Indian temple complete with stone pillars and a mock up of a medieval cathedral with carved wells and tiled roofs.

Special Exhibits generally have a large special area devoted to them. One of the special exhibits, I had a chance to look at was the China exhibit. There were rooms filled with video graphed books on the walls, showcases filled with ceremonial and everyday clothes used by early Chinese kings and common people. Specially built rooms filled with furniture displayed traditional arrangements in Chinese homes. Children were sprawled on the ground with detailed activity books in hand. The best part of all were the stand up interactive panels explaining the exhibits, every museum should get them for every exhibit, they are like a crash course in art appreciation. Finally, everyone, big and small, young and old got a chance to write their name in Chinese and take it home with them.

My top 10 favourite art installations

1. The Four Seasons - Leon Fredric

2. The Arab Chief- Mariano Fortuny y Carbó

3. Little Dancer - Edgar Degas
4. The Imaginary Illness- Honore Daumier
5. Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas-Marcel Duchamp
6. The Staircase Group by Charles Wilson Peale
7. The Crucifixion and The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins
8. Spring by John La Farge
9. The Pont Neuf- Camille Pissarro
10. Potrait of Madamoiselle Legrand- Renoir

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is not a sprawling mega museum like the ones in New York. It is a small cozy museum which you can get to know every exhibit and learn about all of the paintings, sculptures et al. But most of all, the Museum inspires awe and motivation, anyone running on Kelly Drive or driving past the museum at night can testify to that.