Chocolate brownie- forays into gluten free baking

This year it finally hit me that I am gluten intolerant.  Maybe it was the stress of the past few years that led to this.  Maybe it is age-related.  Who knows?  All I know is that if I take any gluten containing food I am plagued by headache, nausea and other symptoms. 

It is a bummer for I had to give up everything I love- cakes, pastries, pies, pasta, bread, roti, sooji (semolina) upma...the list is simply endless. Everything had to be re-jiged.  Of course, being South Indian, our main staple is rice.  So it was not too much of a problem.  But I also now include lots millets, ragi, jowar (sorgum), and bajra in my diet.  Wheat rotis have been replaced by ragi/bajra/sorghum roti.

For the past several months I simply gave up on baking.  Slowly I am picking it up now by experimenting with gluten free flours.

Yesterday I was simply craving for brownies.  I used this recipe, doubling everything so that I can bake in a 8 x 8 inch pan.  I ground up oats and almonds in my blender for oats flour and almond powder that the recipe called for.  Instead of 4 eggs, I used 2 eggs and 1/2 cup of yogurt.  I added only about 1/4 cup of melted chocolate.  I like walnuts in my brownies so I  added walnuts and broken up bits of Cadbury's chocolate for chocolate chips.

The trick is to refrigerate the brownies after they have cooled down before cutting them into pieces.

So here it is:

 

This batch of brownies is for my students.

The bureaucracy never fails to amuse me and amaze me

So I misplaced my ATM card.  I searched for it everywhere.  Drawers, bags, and then in desperation between pages of books and finally, the fridge.  No doubt it will resurface some day but for the time being it is misplaced or lost.  To be on safe side, I blocked the card and then today made my way to the State Bank of India in the 40oC heat to get a new ATM card.  

Thus, began the saga.

There are multiple forms for applying for anything.  I picked one of the forms and filled it up.  The person at the counter told that it was a wrong form. I have to fill a form that has blocks.  I went back and searched for the form with blocks.  I filled it up.  Then as appa has been badgering me for a long time, I also filled up the form for the internet banking.  (I have the perfect excuse- I never remember the userid and password but appa refuses to accept it as valid argument).

I took it back to the counter.  The person took the forms.  He gave back the internet banking form.  Another person deals with it.  Not him.  He will do the ATM form.  Then he looked up my relevant details in the computer.  He looked up puzzled. 

"Your address is showing as C.P. Ramaswamy Road, Chennai."

"But my account is here."

"Madam, you have to get your internet banking approved.  Then change your address using the internet banking.  Then only your ATM card can be processed."

So I took the internet banking form to the relevant person.

He asked for my mobile number.  I gave it to him.

"Ah," he said, "You mobile number is not registered with the bank.  You have to fill up Know Your Customer form, register your mobile number with us, and then only the Internet banking can be activated."

"Where is the Know Your Customer form?"

It turns out that there are two forms that I have to fill.  Form A and Form B.  I also need a photo (it is there in one of the drawers at home) and a copy of my PAN card and my Aadhaar card.  

It was at this point I gave up.  I got the forms and now I have to fill them up.  I have to get a copy of the PAN and Aadhaar card (why do we need two cards for identification?), give everything to the bank, get the mobile number registered, get internet account, change my address, and then get a new ATM .

Whew!

As I was mulling on the process, it finally dawned on me as to why my address is shown as C.P. Ramaswamy Road, Chennai.

When the parents purchased a flat in Chennai to settle down after retirement, I lived with them for couple of years.  At that point, amma and I opened a joint account in the State Bank of Mysore, C. P. Ramaswamy Road Branch.  Everything was perfect as long State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of India were two separate entities.  Few years back, the two banks were merged into one.  As the State Bank of Mysore was the older account, on merging, it became the parent account, and C.P. Ramaswamy Road became the default address.  Of course, neither of the banks thought of asking me or informing me.  So there it is.  A perfect mess. 

Obituaries

The ongoing pandemic has taught me how fragile and unpredictable life is.

It was not supposed to end like this.  We met on the first day of college.  She had come with her mother for admission, I was on my own feeling very adultish.  When classes started, we sat next to each other on the third row of the lecture hall.  During lunch hour, we swapped lunch boxes.  She ate the South Indian dishes that amma prepared and I ate the North Indian dishes that her mother prepared.  We talked for hours on phone much to the amusement of my family.  After undergraduation, we  got admission to the same course and lived in the same hostel for two years.  In the final year, we shared a room that very soon, because of her vivacious personality, became the center for all gatherings.  During Summer Break when hostels did not provide food, we cooked in our room and all of us ate together.   We read novels, quarreled, made up, swapped notes, read each other's project reports.  She taught me to be good at giving seminars and inspired me to be a good teacher.  She also taught me never to bow down to injustice.  

When her father passed away, she would talk to Amma and Appa.  Even in the end, when she was admitted to hospital, all she wanted was Appa's blessings because in him she saw her own father.

For the past one week as Covid ravaged her body and as she fought back, I kept hoping for a miracle.  But as her daughters said, it was probably for the best because the quality of her life even after recovery would have been very poor.  I know but it is still hard to take.

Just a couple of days back I got know that another friend who was my neighbour for a brief while had also succumbed to the infection.   When I joined JNU, I was given accommodation in Old Transit House.  It was supposed to be for a brief period as the name suggests but it ended up as a long haul due to housing shortage.  Each apartment consisted of two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom.  The doors opened to a common corridor.  We would meet in the corridors- either coming for office or going to office.  We would stop and chat and laugh.  Being older than me, she would often give me advice on knottier problems of life. When she celebrated her husband's 50th birthday, 10 of us piled into her tiny apartment for the party.  They soon moved to a bigger place but we would keep meeting.  The last time I met her was when a mutual friend of ours, a professor of German Studies, had come down from Bombay (or Mumbai).   I went over to her place and then we all went to the mall to have Cinnabon.  When her husband retired she moved out of the campus.

Rest in peace, dear friends.

 

 

Variant of concern

 As my best friend lies in ICU battling ravages caused by Covid, and as we battle bed shortages, test shortages, vaccine shortages, among host of other shortages, I see that the Union Health Ministry has issued a statement that WHO has not associated the term "Indian Variant" with B.1.617 which has now been declared variant of concern.  Of course, this is important.  More important than addressing the concerns raised by doctors over the use of remdesivir and plasma therapy for Covid treatment.  The doctors have rightly pointed out that neither of these therapies are approved and ICMR should issue a statement/guideline regarding these therapies.  But I guess, the Union Health Minister has more pressing issues.

The second Covid wave

As I received information via my Whatsapp group about the death of a classmate due to Covid, and my best friend told me today that she was hospitalized due to falling oxygen levels, I realized that this wave was hitting close to home.  Of course we knew, last year too, that the person dying was someone's sister, mother, beloved but it was not personal.  This year it has become personal.  Every other person dying is someone you know.  Every other person getting infected is some one you know.  At this point, three of my students have the infection and I worry about them every day.  

And to think this was all avoidable.  Complacency never pays off.  As the number of cases decreased, schools/colleges/universities partially reopened, life returned back to normal.  Lavish weddings became the norm.  Festivals were celebrated.  On the campus, we had to keep reminding students to wear masks but all our admonishments fell on deaf ears.

This year, sometime late February/early March, I made my way to one of the main markets to get my curtains repaired. I was appalled.  A loudspeaker was blaring message about social distancing, people were milling about, jostling each other, masks were either not being worn or were dangling around the chin, shopkeepers were helpless and it was a mayhem.  It was almost as if people had forgotten about the pandemic.

Then came the state elections and rallies were held with no social distancing, no masks, no precautions.  None of the political leaders walked the talk about social distancing and masking.  Finally,  the Kumbh Mela was held in Haridwar.  It was only when a Mahant died that the politicians thought it prudent to shut it down.

Even if the government (Central as well as State) had strengthened the hospitals, oxygen supply, testing...things could have been done in the past one year.  It is the callousness of it all that hurts and angers.

Chinatown family- Lin Yutang

 A dear friend asked me few days back about my favourite books based on India.  As I mused, my mind went into a tangent.  My favourite books of all time.   Today as I was talking to my brother, he reminded me of Chinatown family by Lin Yutang.

Of course!  That has to be  one of my favourite books.

My father had purchased a copy of this book possibly for Rs 1/- in the old days.  My mother, whose job was to pack and move, kept all the books in a Aluminum box ready to be moved as and when required.  On hot summer days, I would poke and pull out books out of the box.  Invariably I would pull out Chinatown family at least once every summer.

The book was hardbound in red colour.  It was simply a fascinating book not because of the story but because the beginning, the middle and the end was missing.  Later, the pages began to crumble so one had to be careful while reading.  

In a way, it was my introduction to immigrant America.  A very different America that was described in Little Women, another favourite of mine.

This was the America of an immigrated Chinese family.

Poring over the pages, I would re-construct the missing bits. 

The book possibly starts with the matriarch of the family recently arrived in New York with her two younger children-a son and a daughter.  The eldest son runs a laundromat with his father.  Later, he marries an Italian girl, Flora.  The middle son was no-good, the black sheep of the family.   The younger son, Tom, and his sister, Eva, start school.  Somewhere in the middle, the father dies.  The elder son and the mother take over the running of the laundromat.  The book ends with celebration of Chinese New Year and acknowledgement that Tom is going out with Elsa.  Or at least that is what I think the end was because the pages after the Chinese New year celebration were missing.

Chinatown Family remained with us for a long time.  Finally, just few years back, I regretfully had to throw it out.  All the pages had crumbled and one could no longer even read one page completely.   My brother reminded me that  it is available once more on Amazon.  But the charm of the red hard bound book with missing and crumbling pages is something that cannot be ever replaced.

 

 

 

Between the pages

One can generally make out if I have read the book in my possession.  Between the pages of such books one can find leaves/flowers put in for drying.  One can also find money.   These articles do not act as book marks.  They are just there because the book I was reading happened to be a convenient receptacle for it.  My family, of course, laughs at me.  Amma, till she was well, would generally go through the books and other unlikely places confiscating the money she found.  She made quite a packet out of this.

I thought I was alone in this idiosyncrasy.  Till I came across this article where UVA's book traces project tracks human interactions with physical books.  Tucked into books were leaves, hair, tracings, and of course annotations.  Ah! that makes me feel better.

And maybe this is why I do not quite like e-books.  One can't tuck in things!

Looking for Miss Sargam- by Shubha Mudgal

Several years ago, my colleague and I went to meet an esteemed retired professor who holds sway over Indian science.  We wanted to invite him to a program that the school was conducting.  On the way, my colleague told me that after issuing the invitation, I should get out of the room because he was going to beg, plead, cajole, whatever you want to call it, with the esteemed professor.  My colleague wanted to become a member of one of the academies of Science in India (We have three academies.  Don't ask me what they do).  Without the support of esteemed professors, there is no chance of getting into these academies.  My colleague was willing to do whatever needed to be done to get into the academy.  After issuing the invite, I got out of the room and my colleague started his cajoling.  There was some give and take.  Some experiments do be done, a student to be mentored...my colleague agreed to everything.  Six months later when the academy announced its new members, my colleague's name was conspicuous by its absence.

I was reminded of this incident when I read the story entitled "Manzoor Rehmati' by Shubha Mudgal.  This is one of the stories in the collection "Looking for Miss Sargam".   Manzoor Rehmati wants a Padma award, the honor bestowed by Government of India every year on Republic Day, and the one person who could get it for him was a senior musician named Khan-Sahab.  Khan-Sahab, by dint of deft handling of the government and politicians (never offer any firm opinion on any thing) was on Padma committee.  He decides who should be given the award and who should not be.   Khan-Sahab declares that he would help Manzoor Rehmati.  But, Khan-Sahab wants the compositions of Manzoor Rehmati's father.  Manzoor Rehmati gives it to him.  And we know how it will end.

Looking for Miss Sargam captures the foibles, the aspirations of the New India.  Miss Sargam is a recluse.  No one knows anything about her.  Hints are dropped about her through the book and we, the readers, are to make what we want of Miss Sargam.  Meantime, there is a PR person who wants to organize Aman Bol (Say Peace) concert featuring a Pakistani Singer and an Indian Singer.  There is a Mataji, head of a devotional sect, who would do anything to help a devotee.  There is a small time swindler who manages to dupe aspirants before doing the vanishing act and leaving his collaborator, a small time musician from a small city, to face the music. 

Written in a mixture of Hindi and English, it was an engaging read because I could relate to the events/people, to the appalling dishonesty that many display.

Using fridge for experiments

After 9 months of close down when the School reopened we found that the cold rooms, which maintain temperatures at 4oC, are not working.  Some of our experiments require a cold room.   When I went to the lab last week, I found my students hastily making space in the fridge.  As I watched bemused they quickly set up the equipment on the lower shelf.  There was slight dent made in the fridge door allowing the electric wire to pop out which was then plugged to the power source.

It was a good use of the fridge.  Just for the record: It worked!