My "30 minute friends"

I don't know what to make of the weather. Days are very warm and, the nights too are not particularly cold. 

It hasn't rained since beginning of January. 

Here are is our evening walk. The F-11 Park 's swings, slides , monkey bars, etc have been renovated. 

Kavita made some more playground friends. She calls them "my 30 minute friends." 

See fun video we made: At the Park

Here is a YouTube video of Kavita trying to climb up straight up Keep Trying

A few things I learned in the kitchen

Onions frying in the oil. 

The overture. It's the intro. It's the sound of gentle cymbals at the beginning of a beautiful jazz track. You know you are in the kitchen. And, then the tempo and volume will build up from a gentle ticking sizzle to more notes and pops and bubbles. 

I thought of music, orchestras and grandness when I was chopping up onions and making enough ginger/garlic paste for the next few rounds of cooking. However mundane the task might be, however humble your kitchen arena might be, why can't we imagine we are creating something privately grand? 

After many many years of attempting mastery at cookery in the kitchen, I have come up with some ground rules: 

1. First clean up your whole kitchen. Wash any dirty dishes in the sink. Tidy up. Clear some counter space for chopping veggies and what not. 
2. Make your kitchen a joy to work in. Let it be full of pictures, light, some souvenirs, flower vases, even a nice-smelling candle. 
3. Chopping up onions continues to induce stinging tears. Very annoyingly stinging tears. Soaking onions in water reduces the fumes. 
4. I learned a trick while watching Nadiya’s Time to Eat. Soaking garlic in hot water for a few minutes makes peeling the skin so much easier. It just comes off. 
5. Plan ahead and buy veg/meat on the day you are cooking instead of filling up the freezer and fridge. 
6. Plan ahead and, designate cooking for twice a week if you can't cook every day. 
7. Trying new recipes every week isn't as daunting as it sounds. Decide on one that you think you could easily tackle, note down the ingredients you need in your 'Ingredient/Recipe Notebook', and enjoy making a wholly new creation. 
8. Spice mixes are cheating. Don't cheat. Don't get a biryani masala mix or a mutton korma mix. If you are going to step into a kitchen to cook, enjoy the friggin' cooking. Get whole spices and grind, mix them as required by the recipe. Don't be no cheater. 
9. Cooking is relaxing. A few hours in the kitchen, performing non-cerebral tasks is relaxing and rewarding especially if you have a way to go about it. I clean the kitchen. I plan ahead. I get the ingredients ahead. I enjoy chopping up veggies and, then tossing them into the pot. I enjoy the process. Many of my go-to dishes are now made with such practice, they cook themselves.

Now for some sore points. 

Working in the kitchen can also be a real drag. As much as it is rewarding, relaxing, there are some moments, days, even periods of weeks where one doesn't even want to wash a dirty cup let alone chop onions and, stand over a pot to cook something. 

These periods are an imaginative, barren and dull time. One wastes an exorbitant amount of money on take outs, ordering in and, junk food. 

Resist the laziness. One can always find time to cook a simple meal. I know enough cookery and, some dishes that take as little as 20 minutes. I have many many go-to comfort foods - daal chawal, murgh pulao, pasta with meat sauce, chicken karahi, aloo keema, steak and potatoes, vegetable soup - that take me so very little time to make because I have years of practice. It is better to have food in the fridge than to fall into deeper laziness that has already settled in. Better to rise up from the sofa, from the chair, from the computer, from the middle of it, enter the kitchen for an hour or two, interrupt, nay, wipe away the slump and, make some food. 

Cooking for friends can also break a sense of laziness. Try a couple of new dishes , telephone your friends, ask them over, ask them to bring desert and salad, and, enjoy good times at home. Maybe you can ask them to wash the dishes afterwards. 

At home

I photographed my afternoon and, all the corners I love. 

Standing in the doorway 

Sitting in the balcony 

Sitting in the balcony 

Tins, candles, empty perfume bottle and balcony gardens

My collection of coasters

Sweet worn out and faded sofa 

Floor cushions, coffee table 

Desk

Stairs

Looking out the window onto East Service Road/Agha Nasir Road

Kitchen sink and kitchen window from where one enjoys the golden sunshine of

the sunset

The photo gallery above the ironing board

The stove

The purple kitchen

My favourite tea station

Dressing table

Bags

This sofa used to be my brother's fold out bed in our house in Athens 

Bedside table

Balcony

Bathroom

Afternoon light

 

Sham ki dhoop

I love the way the golden evening sunshine creates a golden, warm glow in the upstairs living room and, casts these shadows and pools in nooks and corners.

I also love the evening sun shining its warmth and glow into the kitchen right above the sink. 

It's the perfect time to play golden oldies, sung by Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Rafi, Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar and Geeta Dutt. 

See the shadows of shampoo bottles, a small lantern and the exhaust fan on the shower screen in the bathroom. 

I'm bored

I have permanently banned the phrase "I am bored" in my house. 

2020 - Reflection Part 2

American Politics

 

After intensely following 3 American elections in my life - which entails being glued to the TV just like any other riveting thriller or drama film , taking sides, making running commentary - it's clear we consume American politics, too, the way we consume everything that is American. We know everything about the Presidential races although our knowledge of the Primaries and, other local ones may be lacking. 

We have big fat opinions. We passionately argue our cases. 

International news media vigorously covers the elections and the election year. Social media too has added another dimension to the way we consume these elections. We read analysis after analysis online. 

US Elections 2020 were yet again another garish spectacle: billions were strewn to win seats. High-school level debates were held to pass off as some time of intellectual sparring. On one hand we had the ultra ugly machinations of Trump and Co and, then we had old man polite Biden and the 'Polites.' It was at really at this point, of seeing the liberal mainstream drivel about polite and decent Democrats , that I realised how far I'd come from 2008. 

Gone are the days when we couldn't quite see clearly and, how romantic our ideas were about American Presidents coming to power. I hadn't quite grasped ideological perspectives on politics. 

I and many of my girlfriends drooled over him. In fact, half of us were fantasising about him. He kept appearing vividly in our dreams. 

"Bastard" was what I mustered when I shared an article about his new book with this headline Obama says 'took no joy' in drone strikes but 'couldn't afford to look soft on terrorism'. 

How far I've come from romanticising Obama and, seeing him for what his legacy represents as a Democrat President. Just another war monger. Just another Wall Street capitalist. All in the guise of politeness. 

I guess the problem is we saw him only as a black man who had finally come to take his place at the helm, representative of black people, long enslaved, exploited, killed, abused and marginalised. We cheered for Obama and symbolism of him coming to power. 

It's what critics of liberal feminism say : just because you got a female elected to power doesn't mean shit. Just because there's a female CEO of a big ass company, doesn't mean shit. 

I think the first time critique of mainstream feminism really started to make sense to me was a programme on Al Jazeera. I believe it was Mahdi Hassan's Upfront and his question to his interviewees was whether or not Beyoncé was a feminist icon. A woman explained to him that as a capitalist profiting from the music industry, she can't be a feminist icon. It was a little while later when I finally started to understand this fine point. 

That just because you've managed to put someone on the top of a very rotten unequal and unjust system, doesn't mean victory. Unless that whole system is re-hauled and cleaned up, individual victories are merely symbolic. Moreover, we have to look past appearances and look for ideological positions on capitalism, wealth distribution, violence against women, patriarchal attitudes, race, environment, historical injustice, the whole shebang. 

How far I've come in terms of how I now see politics. 

What lessons could feminists learn from BLM? 

And, then we have the other bleeding side of American Politics: black people protesting for their very lives. 

Polite, decent America has nothing to do with this. Polite, decent America has nothing earth-shattering to say about the condition of black people. Presidents don't come to power in the US on a platform of good old justice. Even now they are blabbering about healing from Trump. Healing from Trump. That old man Biden and his 'Polites' are going to heal the nation. 

If I were black, whether it's a Republican or Democrat, how do I feel about Presidents and 'Polites' in power? I really wonder what black people think in America. 

Well, we got some idea in 2020 when the streets were engulfed in protests after the horrific and torturous killing of George Floyd which we all saw on TV,  wincing in shock and pain, at seeing a man choke to death, literally begging for air and calling his mother. 

My best friend is Zimbabwean-Liberian-American and, she tells me she's always "in a state of simmering rage." 

During the months of following the protests , how they engulfed not only the US but Europe too, with calls to take down colonial statues of slave traders and colonial bastards, and how these protests were met by security forces in US, there was a lot to take in and process. 

I think one of the main thoughts I had was that not only is democracy a sham in the US but how important social movements are in understanding the times. These movements may be small or massive but how they pop up , how they gather momentum, how they express their demands, and how they are perceived and 'dealt' with by authority and people is so incredibly important to understand our times. 

Of course there are many right wing movements too but surely they are important to understand. 

Electoral cycles are now TV games. They are cash games. Who's got more cash? Who can get more TV ads? 

In other parts of the world which Americans usually know little of  - which their 'Polites' are regularly bombing or exploiting - elections are mired in ultra violence, blood. Elections in other parts more aptly display what elections are all about : power. 

And, Americans experienced electoral violence too now on 6 Jan. What an irony. 

So, I have derailed. 

What did I learn from BLM that can be applied to feminist activism , especially in Pakistan: 

1. You don't get to call yourself my ally. Do the work first. 

2. The movement needs allies but not for legitimacy, identity or strength.