Noodles with a difference

Dedicated to all those who are tired of eating the regular instant noodles but have no other go due to lack of cooking skills.

Ingredients:

1. Instant noodle packet (with taste maker) 1 No.

2. Onion 1

3. Carrot 1

4. Beans 3-4

5. Capsicum 1/2

6. Green peas 2 tbsp

7. Tomato 1

8. Green chilly 1-2

9. Oil 2 tbsp

10. Table salt

11. Red chilly powder

Utensils for cooking:

1. Sauce pan - 2

2. Strainer - 1

3. Spatula - 1

4. Lid to cover the sauce pan - 1

Time to cook:

1. Cutting the onion (including rubbing the eyes) 10 mins.

2. Cutting other vegetables 2 mins

3. Actual preparation 10 mins

Serves:

1 (person like me) or 2. If it does not come out nice then many people could be accommodated (:P).

Preparation:

Finely chop the onion. Cut the other vegetables into small pieces (you may whatever you have).

Take about 2 glass of water in a sauce pan. Bring it to boil. Add the vegetables and peas. Add tomato towards the end. Cover with the lid and allow the vegetables to boil.

Meanwhile, add 2 table spoons of oil in another saucepan. Add the finely chopped onion. Heat it till the onion turns golden brown. Keep stirring with the spatula to avoid the onion from burning. Now transfer the boiled vegetables to this sauce pan using a strainer. Do not discard the boiled water.

If the water has evaporated add until it is equal to one and half cups. Bring it to boil again. Add the tastemaker and noodles and boil until the noodles become soft (2 to 3 minutes). Add finely cut green chillies, salt and red chilly powder to taste to the vegetables and mix well. Now add the cooked noodles to it and mix well. Noodles is now ready to serve and relish. You may use the water left in the noodles boiled saucepan as soup or may discard it if you do not want to consume extra fat.

In Quest for a Soul Mate...

"You may like the way i look but i look the way i am like. Now would you like to know me or would you like me to know that you only like me for my looks ?? " - Brock Tully

Sometimes I wonder what it takes to love and be loved. Loving someone may not be as great as being loved by someone to the same degree and extent if not more and with a selfless motive. Today love seems to have been influenced by global festivals like Valentine's day and the media and the youth is under tremendous presure to "fall" in love. A hostile environment seems to have been created for someone who is single as most of the pubs, parties and events only let in couples. The print and visual media seems to run out of space and time giving a complete coverage of celebrity couples' romantic lifestyle. The malls and theatres are all teeming with young couples roaming around hand-in-hand. Certain web portals who claim to be doing a social service by conducting mind-boggling surveys about all possible things on earth give out fantastic statistics about how remote the chances of finding a soul mate get with advancing age. All this has led to the feeling among the young crowd that they should have a partner atleast before they get out of the college or else they will remain single forever. And the hunt for the perfect soul mate begins.

The three or more years that one spends in a college gives a good opportunity to find a soul mate. Lonliness and home sickness accelerates this process and one keeps trying to fall in love at every available opportunity. Love is blind. The lucky few do manage to find their dream mates and then they get lost forever in their own world in a corner in the library or the canteen or the reading rooms planning their future. The final year finally gets over and most of the couples are seen parting ways in pursuit of their career or higher studies. Only a handful pursue their heart and get married. Those who part ways suddenly seem to get enlightened that love is not the only thing in life. They feel they need to plan for their career first as falling in love is all in their hands and they can do so whenever they feel the need to. In this act they fail to realise that their partner might not be thinking the way they do and there is a emotional break down. Whereas one walks out of the relationship laughing at it, the other vows never to fall in love again. In most of the cases it is the female partner who undergoes this trauma. Her life takes a new turn.

The breakup and the shattered dreams put her into a state of depression and she cries day and night. Gradually she learns to live with the reality. However it is during this time that she comes across someone who seems to show a lot of care and support to her. An already weak and hurt heart finds solace in the comforts of this new man. Love continues to remain blind. The sugar-coated promises and picturesque dreams give new hopes to her already shattered dreams. She considers herself mature enough and forgets her vow and thinks she has now found her real soul mate and falls in love again. All her little things are faithfully taken care of, right from recharging her cell to booking her flight tickets, from finding her accomodation to giving her expensive gifts. But somewhere deep down inside she feels all this is artificial. The love has only remained to be materialistic. She begins to feel the suffocation. The guy seems to be totally dis-interested in her. He too is running for his career and money. She considers him selfish, irresponsible and in-sensitive. She recollects all those moments spent with him when she was happy, sad, angry and mad only to find that moments of happiness were just a handful and momentary. The guy does not seem to be un-nerved. She walks out of the relationship. She realizes he was just a material and not a mate. She becomes single again and her search for the perfect soul mate goes on.

This might just be an exaggerated story but it is not too far from reality. Finding true love, a soul mate may be possible at the click of a mouse as claimed by certain dating websites but a love that touches one's soul, a love far from the materialistics fancies, a love that lets one keep one's identity may be a little too hard to find. Quotes that say "Do not marry someone whom you love , marry someone who loves you" or "Do not marry the one whom you can live with, marry someone whom you cannot live without" seem to be biased towards one person only. Love and happiness should be felt and shared equally by both the partners.

Reading in a bus?

Reading in a moving vehicle is probably the most popular way to pass time especially when travelling alone. I see this happening regularly around me which prompted me to write on this and propagate the knowledge.

This practice of reading albeit appears to be a good way of utilizing time has its own set of disadvantages. The body inside a vehicle moving on the roads is subject to lots of vertical motion in addition to lateral. This leads to continous unperiodic oscillatory movement of the book or paper in hand. The eye produces the image by focussing on a plane. The vertical motion causes this plane(of the book) to shift continuously. The eye therefore needs to continuously re-focus on the new plane by adjusting the celiary muscles. This exerts a great tension on the ocular muscles thereby making them lose their elasticity in the long run thus impairing vision. The muscles also get exhausted thereby making the eyes tired in addition to stressing the brain. The effect is more pronounced with smaller and artistic fonts.

This is however not so much applicable while reading in a train or a flight as the motion there is pre-dominantly horizontal. So the next time you open up something to read, please think about your eyes. Afterall prevention is better than cure.

I utilize my travelling time in pondering over various ideas, things of my past and present life, in re-introspection and making plans for the day and the near future.

Many Lives, Many Masters - A book Review and Analysis

One of my friends who shares some of my paranormal and metaphysical interests handed me this book which I finished reading in a record span of three days (rather nights) over the last weekend, my fastest so far.


Many Lives, Many Masters, a book by Dr. Brian Weiss, is a verbatim narrative of the hypnotic sessions that he had with one of his patients, Catherine. Catherine suffererd from abnormal psychotic disorders, anxiety and several phobias which made her life miserable. She visits Dr.Weiss who is a practicing psychologist for treatment. Dr. Weiss subjects her to hypnotic therapy which results in her going back to her past lives and recollecting some important events that happened then. These incidents had a bearing on her present life and hence she starts losing her fears and anxiety. The book describes her various sessions with the doctor , her journeys into the past lives and the journey of her soul between two lives. The author has given her description about her past lives, experience after death and the messages from master souls, verbatim. He also mentions how this knowledge obtained from the hypnotic sessions transformed Catherine's and his life and how they used it to help others.

The whole concept of re-birth or reincarnation is a philosophy deep rooted into Hindu culture. Srimad Bhagavatgeeta, the holy book of the Hindus, describes this in great detail. Many lives, many masters was just a testimony to the philosophy mentioned in the Geeta. I recollect a person from Bangalore, in a television interview, mentioning about having met five of his wives of his previous lives in this life. We get to hear a lot about people rather children being born with extra-ordinary talent. These are probably their learnings from the past lives carried forward into this life. There are many books written by different people, saints and philosophers and the likes trying to describe the concept of re-birth and life after death. However what has been written is only the tip of the ice berg.

The book left me pondering over certain facts:

• Catherine mentioning the year of her past lives sometimes in the BC (when even calenders were not present) with precision.
• Concept of group of souls whereby people who are related in previous lives are also related in this life in some way.
• Memories associated with the soul.
• Failure of law of conservation of souls. With the population increasing at a rapid pace, the number of souls too is increasing which means so many new souls are getting created many of them without a past.
• Soul is independent of the sex, also independent of the form of body it takes. However Catherine only remembers her form as human being.

The answers to these questions are neither simple nor straight forward But we can safely assume that if we find someone interesting and are attracted to someone then probably that person must have been closely associated with us in one of our past lives. After all " तेरा मुझसे है पहले का नाता कोई, यूँ ही नहीं दिल लुभाता कोई..."

Happy New Year - 2008

The new year is already here and like always I do have valid excuses for remaining off the board, not even wishing my dear readers, there by conserving lot of valuable Google bytes :). Well before I start with my new blog, a quick recapitulation of what kept me busy during the last 4 months.

1. The festival season (Oct-Nov) put me in a festive mood :).
2. Was re-trying my hand at the (steering) wheel.
3. Revived my long lost hobby of painting. Completed 3 of them.
4. Finished reading 4 books.
5. Watched a couple of new movies including the much hyped OSO which left me wondering and pondering for another whole month. (Such movies really work !!??!!)
6. Started following some reality shows thereby exposing myself to variations in blood sugar levels, palpitation and perspiration rates.
7. Bought a digital BP monitor to check the same.
8. Involved in potted plant gardening at home.

So now you really got to believe that my excuses are indeed valid !

Finally wishing everyone a great year ahead. Hope you get tremendous joy and enlightenment reading my articles as much as I do while writing them :).