Flavors and Food (Banana Leaf Meals)

 In the very first book in Harry Potter, the children and we readers come across Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans . It is a mix of jelly beans of every possible flavor from wonderful ones like Blueberry to cringe-worthy yucky flavors like grass, earwax and vomit(I made a face too when I read about them!!) . Poor Dumbledore is pretty unlucky with the flavors that he ends up getting.

Chocolate Frogs are a common occurrence in all the books in the series. I am not sure if I would take a fancy if my candy had the shape of a toad!

I love to cook and I love food too! I am a vegetarian but I love trying out new things in my kitchen and exploring different venues to have an adventure with my taste buds!

• Steaming Jasmine rice with Thai Green Curry and a spicy mango salad on the side
• Pasta cooked nicely in a creamy mushroom white sauce
• Dumplings in soups and fried rice and noodles stir fried nicely in a big wok
• Baby tomatoes, crisp lettuce leaves, cucumber and carrot pieces tossed together with pineapple slices and a dash of lime
• French fries and yoghurt and chocolate brownies 
• And of course everything Indian

Speaking of which, Indian food has been popularized all over the world as mainly Tandoori - Naan, Roti with dal and gravy. But that cuisine is specific to a few states and  India is as diverse in its food as anything else. Every state and region has its own unique delicacies depending on the vegetation, climate, the geographical position and a whole lot of other factors.

The food eaten in the South of India is quite different from some of the states towards the North. The states that are coastal have their own cuisine. What significantly differentiates us is whether we eat more of rice or wheat!

I belong to the South of India and we are mainly rice eaters! To begin with the climate and the soil conditions makes growing rice more feasible. Do you know the type of rice we eat differs from state to state?

Dosa , Idli, Pongal and Vada our main tiffin(light meals) items mainly made using rice and lentils.

Our full fledged meal is what is referred to in some parts of Asia "Banana Leaf Meals"

The main item is rice. A three course meal is achieved by mixing the rice with three different accompaniments - sambar(a curry made with lentil, tamarind and vegetables ), rasam(a soup like dish generously spiced up with pepper and cumin) and curd. Along with this there would be some vegetable dishes on the side. Depending upon the grandeur of the occasion or whether its a simple home meal, the number and variety of sides would vary.

The food is served on a banana leaf and eaten with our hands and that is an art we learn as a child. It is very environment friendly and hygienic. In homes we have moved to plates but in weddings and functions food will be served on banana leaves. 

                               Image source: wikimedia commons

We make use of each and every part of the banana plant in our culture. We eat the fruit, the stem and the flower(Oh yes it has a flower). Cutting the banana flower is an art in itself which warrants a separate post by itself. We use the leaves to serve our food or pack the food. We use the fibers running on its stem as strings to make garlands with our flowers. 

You can check out on youtube for videos on Vazhaipoo (Banana flower) and you would be surprised. 

E for Express

 The train that the young wizarding students board to go to Hogwarts on platform 9 and 3/4 is well known to even those who do not fancy the Harry Potter series much . 

Growing up in India , the Indian Railway Network was an inseparable part of our lives. India has one of the longest and well connected  railway networks in the world and the organization is one of the biggest employers in the world .

We lived in the state of Kerala and every summer holidays, we would travel to Chennai to my grandparents place by train. It was an overnight journey spanning 12 hours or so.

There would be a magazine stall at the station outside which there would be quite a number of kids pestering their fathers to buy the latest edition of comics for the journey. Peddlers would be selling steaming tea and snacks on trays they skilfully balanced on one hand , using the other for their transactions. Porters in red uniform were labourers that helped people to carry their luggage. The sounds of the train whistle , the vibrating noise made by the moving wheels on the rails and voices shouting tea-kaapi (tea and coffee) strewn with announcements of " Train No 3224, from Calicut to Chennai will leave platform 3 in 5 minutes " in English, Hindi and Malayalam was almost a symphony ! 

People from all walks of life and all economic classes used the trains and it was the best way to go from one place to another. There are so many interesting people we meet during the journey and there is a term called Rayil Snehidam in Tamil to refer to short lived friend ships. I still clearly remember some of our co-passengers from my growing up years.  They are implanted quite firmly in my memories.

The longest train route in India is apparently the Kanyakumari-Dibrugarh Vivek express and it spans over 4000 km and takes 79 hours to complete the journey .  The maximum I have travelled is only about 24 hours . Maybe someday I should take this longest route just to reminisce the good old days. 

Photo by Dibyendu Sekhar Das on Unsplash.com

D - Dumbledore and Diagon Alley

 Ask any Potter fan "D for" and the answer would be "Dumbledore" nine out of ten times.

Dumbledore is a brilliant , powerful , experienced wizard who is the headmaster at Hogwarts school of magic and is an ideal educator. Every school going kid would envision him as dream headmaster.  ( who dreams of headmasters anyways!)  . He is fearless and the only character in the book that calls the main antagonist by his first name while the rest of the world refers to him as You-Know-Who. He is a very inspiring person though fictional. 

Diagon Alley is like the Walmart of the wizarding world . It's a street where there are numerous shops selling books and brooms and owls and cloaks. At the beginning of almost every book, the children have a day out at Diagon Alley excitedly buying what they need for the following year.

Buying new things for a new academic year is fun isn't it ? Freshly smelling new books, notebooks , stationary, calculators , lunch bags , shoes, socks , school bags, water bottle- its shopping fun. Not to mention the joy in wrapping the books in brown paper or transparent wrappers and labelling them . 

I still get very excited when I do this annual exercise for my children.  

I love browsing the store shelves picking the perfect lunchbox and the most elegant looking water bottle.

The first time I got a geometry box or a scientific calculator for that matter - my joy knew no bounds !

This is the situation for mundane Muggle(non magic) objects . What if one were to buy an owl or a broom to fly ?? 

C- Curses and Charms - From the Potter Series

With a wizard as the protagonist and magic as the central theme there is no dearth of charms or curses in the Harry Potter Series.

There are three Unforgivable curses causing control over a person, torture or the worst of all, death!

As a matter of fact curses are an integral part of most folklore or mythology or religious tales from Greek and Roman mythology to tales in India to Chinese folklore.

In fact some of the villains of Hindu religious texts like Ravana of the Ramayana are said to have descended on earth to liberate themselves from a curse.

Jaya / Vijaya were two guards to the abode of Vishnu, one of our three important deities and they refused entry to some sages who had the appearance of children. The sages cursed them to be born on earth as mortals. They had a choice to be born 7 times as good pious devout people or as enemies of Vishnu a.k.a the bad guys 3 times. They did not want to be away from the service to Vishnu Bhagawan (Lord Vishnu) for so long and so they chose the latter.

We have stories of people becoming stones, plants, animals, monsters to be later liberated.

In Greek mythology what immediately comes to mind is Medusa and her head of snakes.

Coming to charms, there are quite a few charms in Harry Potter series which I think would be very nice to have in real life. 

Oculus Reparo could repair broken glasses with the touch of a wand.

Accio was a summoning charm that could help one to get an object to fly into our arms. That's a Ctrl-F for our home. This would be especially useful with two school going kids that try to remember where they kept their homework just before bedtime. It would definitely go a long way in locating cell phone chargers and ear phones and TV remotes.

There is a hot air charm that would help melt snow along the way to help us walk.

There is a charm to cut vegetables and a charm to stir the soup.

J K Rowling let her imagination go wild and that's what make the stories so very endearing.

Is there anything you would want to accomplish through magic in real life? 

B - Boggarts and Fears - From The Potter Series

 In J K Rowling's books, a boggart is a creature that is pretty harmless compared to certain more dangerous and vile mystical creatures. It affects a person by taking on the form of his worst fear!

It can become a spider or a scene showing a loved one lying dead or even the most hated teacher. 

The way to defeat a Boggart in the books is to think of something funny and use the Riddikulus charm that converts it into something really comical. There is a scene where poor Neville sees Professor Snape when he confronts a boggart and the professor's form ends up in women's clothes on using the counter charm.

In a way this whole concept is analogous to many of the fears we all have in real life. Every human is fearful of something  and no one is an exception though what each one of us fears is different.

Fears are sometimes figments of our imagination in a negative direction which are triggered by external circumstances and internal factors like past traumatic experiences or a combination of both. It is often a bad feeling about what may happen or a reminder of an unpleasant past experience. 

When someone is scared of the dark it usually is the wild imagination in progress about what may be lurking in the corners. I remember looking at the red burning tip of a mosquito coil when I was a little girl and imagining it to be an alien that had come to abduct me.

Even in horror movies, it is those scenes that move slowly in darkness where they show mundane details in an eerie silent mode that are more terrifying than the actual portions wherea ghostly face or a zombie pops up on screen.

Sometimes what is described as fear is actually disgust like what some feel towards rats or cockroaches or lizards!

Like the Riddikulus charm, making a caricature of our fears may be a good tactic to deal with them. In fact thinking of something funny puts us in a more relaxed state and we tend to feel better I suppose!

This post is a part of Blogging From A to Z April Challenge 2021

Animagi - From The Potter series!

My son is reading the Harry Potter Series and along with him, I started reading for the second time.

On re-watching a movie that we enjoyed, we tend to notice subtle details that we had not the first time. I think the same holds true for books. Certain wordings and details and quotes touch you differently depending on how old you are as well. Last time, I was in college and now I am mother of two!

One of the spells in Harry Potter series is the Animagus curse, the ability to turn into a particular animal. Sirius is a dog, McGonagall is a cat, Peter Pettigrew a villainous rat! We do have fantasy stories in Indian folklore about serpents and mongooses that can assume human form at will! (Btw someone enlighten me, when more than one, is it mongooses or mongeese?) I wonder!

If I had that power, wonder what I would want to turn myself into? 

A dog?  I would not want to be on a leash every time I go out.

A cat? Naah! 

Elephant! They are such magnificent creatures and I have a huge load of respect for the matriarchs in every herd for the way they run the show!

Tiger perhaps? It looks so majestic and proud and fearless and bold.

May be a panda?  They look cute , are cuddly and all they do is eat and sleep! Perfect with may be Netflix access ! 

A bear ..May be a polar bear! The snow, the winter, the whiteness! Eat some fish, do some swimming and play in the snow! I know winter is hard! But trust me, for people living in tropical and hot places, snow is heaven!

Maybe a panther! A black one! Like Bagirah in Mowgli...Did you know that black panthers also have spots and they are just not clearly visible due to their dark coats?

A peacock maybe? But only the males look so attractive with all the blue and green. Peahens look like slightly bigger garden fowls! 

A unicorn?? Yeah unicorns are imaginary but so is turning into an animal! Yes, I would like to be a white unicorn that can fly with a rainbow colored horn and mane that feeds on only ice-cream and does not get fat after that!

I sound like a preschooler I guess but that's what happens when you are a mother of two and watching a lot of  My Little Pony episodes with your daughter!

So what animal would you like to be?

Ink fillers and Hero pens

 I was watching a movie today! I did enjoy the movie, but this post is not about the movie or its story or the characters or the content. Its about something that played a teeny weeny role in the flow of the story. Something one of the characters lovingly held in his hands, as he wrote something on a piece of paper in a moving train!   

A beautiful gleaming object in a lovely maroon colour with a golden cap - A beautiful Hero pen!

The first time we shifted from pencil to pen in school, was in class 4 . It is not perceived  with that much significance, as many other firsts in life that get a  lot more attention, but it is indeed a first that means a big thing at that age! The feel of ink on paper ; the first time we made an impression with the ink flowing from the pen, it was a beautiful feeling indeed! I am not sure what happens in schools today but then teachers believed that handwriting improved only with ink pens a.k.a fountain pens and not ball point pens! Today I rarely find any children  using fountain pens atleast in this part of the world. It's mostly gel pens or ball point ones! 

I remember watching my kindergarten teacher with awe as she was  filling ink in her pen from the red ink bottle in the staff room. I must have been only around five but for some reason that scene is imprinted in my memory like a favorite scene from a movie. Strange are the ways these things work! Memories!

There were pens that had to be filled with an ink filler but Hero pens were special. They came with an in built filler. Another awesome fact was that they seldom leaked! ( They still exist but I am using past tense as I am talking about memories you see!)

They usually came in two colors brown or green with a golden cap and the words Hero engraved in tiny letters on the handle. I have seen some with silver caps too but they were rare!

The choice of blue or black ink is unique to ones personality in my opinion. Some of us like blue and there are those who always prefer black like my son.  I remember there was a color called Blue Black in Chelpark ink brand. I guess that was for the ones who preferred middle paths! ha ha

These days there are fountain pen ink cartridges...more like use and throw type! I got one last year but somehow was not very impressed.

Nobody writes personal letters in this era of instant messaging but writing letters was a beautiful habit that existed a few decades ago. It was a medium for people to not only narrate the events in their life but in the process it helped them channel their thoughts and beliefs into concrete shapes. The pen and the paper played counsellors and  the writing was therapeutic in its own way. We have a lot of famous books that are simply collections of letters don't we ?

Talking of pens , typing has precedence over writing in this computer age but I am a note-it-down and make-a-list person. A lot of things I prefer just writing them down rather than relying on digital devices! Its good for the brain too, I heard. Studies prove that writing down has a stronger effect in us remembering them later or for that matter organizing our ideas or thoughts! It sometimes aids in instilling conviction and determination for our goals.

As I said before, strange are the ways these things work! Memories....So grab a pen(Awesome if you have a Hero) and write something down!!Its a beautiful feeling !