What has happened to debates?

Last week Ravish Kumar, NDTV anchor, registered his protest against the media in an unique way. He ran a 40 minute segment using blackened screen.  The media has become a bully, debates have become shouting matches, and I have now stopped watching news for news is nothing but pre-decided opinions aired as news.
I am saying this in the backdrop of what is happening at my university. I did not attend the student event. I do not think my students attended it. What we know is hearsay.  What I do know is that the Dean of Students welfare office gave permission for an event called as A country without Post-office to be held.  The officials claim that they did not know what it was all about. They realized what it was all about on 9th morning when a meeting was convened and it was decided to withdraw the permission. This was communicated to the students 5 minutes before the event started. The students went ahead with their event.
This much is pretty clear.
Was there slogans?  We do not know.  Who shouted them? We do not know.  Who videotaped it? We do not know. Was the videotaped doctored? We do not know.
It is in this backdrop that the role of everyone associated with the matter becomes murky. Why was a FIR filed (BTW can anyone tell me why we have a culture minister?)?  Why did the police enter the campus? Was there a need for them to enter? Given that the Jadavpur University VC has refused to let the police enter the campus on a similar matter, we could have easily done the same.  Or if there was a FIR, maybe we could not have done so.  I do not know.  The only thing I do know is that none of the parties involved have come out smelling of roses.
Given that there are so many unknown facts, why did the debate start on the issue of Nationalism? Who started it?  I listened patiently while the autodriver gave me a lecture how JNU students are being anti-national. And wondered why I am unable to explain to him the concept of Right to free speech.
Personally, I believe that the event should not have been stopped. We have it every year. And if there were students who had issues with it, they too could have held an event and explained their viewpoint. Or the two sets of students could have held a debate. After all we are famous for our debates.
We seem to believe that we can bulldoze our way through by shouting, screaming, and breaking public property.  That is why the Parliament has been stalled for these many sessions. That is why the Jats  yesterday went berserk demanding reservations.
The police has disappeared from at least one gate. But I listen with dismay as conspiracy theories are floated, rumours are spread, and wonder what happened to the academics?

Spring

Winter was really a disappointment this year. It was really cold for barely a week.  The rest of the time it was declared winter simply because there was no sun for most of the days.  And when it did put in an appearance it was the watery kind.  Today, on the other hand, the sun is really shining and the poppies in my garden have begin to bloom.  And I got to see the first dahlia of the season in my garden.

This year the nasturtiums took over with a vengeance. I did purchase a packet of seed but never got the opportunity to sow them because the seeds left over from the last year started sprouting and before I know they had taken over the entire garden. 


The other flower that has really done well is the alyssum.  The petunias have not started flowering yet.   I expect within a week they would do.
The strawberries were a disappointment to me but not to Sammy, the squirrel, who inhabits my garden. He has been gorging on them.  The rock pigeons too appreciated the strawberry plants by roosting on them in December and January, thus, destroying half of them.
The rose really excelled this year. The bush was covered with masses of pink and white roses bringing in much needed colour during the drab months of December and January.
The vegetable garden did okay. I had three crops of spinach and lettuce and one crop of argula and fenugreek. We have planted fenugreek for another round of crop before the heat sets in.  The cauliflower as earlier blogged were eaten up by the Nilgai.  We tried once more after putting in the fence.  Then the porcupines gorged on the plants so we gave up.

A seductive experience: Orange-chocolate cake

Long time back I had made chocolate brownies with a hint of orange. It had the most divine taste.  I carved for tasting that once more. Of course I lost the original recipe long time back (I discarded that recipe book when I moved from Charlottesville to Denver) but I have been experimenting with many different chocolate cakes and attempting to infuse in the orange flavor.
Yesterday, I decided to make Chocolate cake with ragi flour.  The impetus for it was that I had to return a container to my aunt and of course, one cannot return back an empty container especially if it came with food as it did.
I checked few of the websites and introduced my own changes. 
The dry ingredients:
1 cup  Maida
1/2 cup ragi flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 tblsp cocoa powder.
These were mixed together thorougly and added to the wet ingredients:
3/4 cup yogurt
1 cup  jaggary melted and filtered (this is essential because the jaggary usually contains lot of soil and needs to be filtered).  After filtering, the liquid came to 1 cup.
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup milk
The wet ingredients were beaten together before adding the dry ingredients. Once the two were nicely mixed, I added fresh orange peels (about 2 tblsp).
I baked it in a 8" prepared pan in a pre-heated oven for about 20-25 minutes at 170oC.
The cake was amazing. It had just the hint of orange I was expecting.  There was enough for me to take to the lab who of course finished it. When I went in to the lab after a meeting one of my student was eating the crumbs so I am assuming it was good.

Oh, I did give two pieces to my aunt who in return gave me banana bread. So we are now quits. At least I hope so.