SinterKlaas exists!!!

SinterKlaas exists!!!

For all those who believe me, let me give you a good news. SinterKlaas exists!
Now for all those who think that SinterKlaas is fiction, unfortunately I have nothing to offer...

For all those who might want to re-enroll in the "believers" group after reading the post, I have a ricotta cheese cake recipe coming up in my next post......
;-)
Some background information from Wikipedia:
Sinterklaas (or more formally Sint Nicolaas or Sint Nikolaas)is a traditional Winter holiday figure still celebrated today in the countries like the Netherlands and Belgium. Traditionally, in the weeks between his arrival and 5 December, before going to bed, children put their shoes next to the fireplace chimney of the coal-fired stove or fireplace. The next day they find some candy or a small present in their shoes.

Today its a story about SinterKlaas  and a small boy....

Once upon a time, there was a small boy. He was seven years old. One day his parents (after a lot of "should we? should we not?"- type of discussion ) bought him the game Wii. The small child was very happy. (The mother thinks that the father was happier!!).It became his favourite game. However, after a few months, the small boy suddenly got a complain from school. He was not behaving well in school. He, along with a group of his friends were using "typical Potty-type words" a lot. The parents were upset. At first they tried to explain and it did work for sometime. But then the "joke" was back again and so was the complain. It was difficult for the parents to ignore it as "just a phase".One day the mother was very very angry. She did not scold him but asked his father to disconnect all the Wii connections , put them in a plastic bag and throw it in the garbage bin. The little boy was not at all ready for such a punishment. He was shocked. He could not believe his eyes when papa just went outside and threw the bag containing HIS Wii in the garbage bin!!! He cried and cried but.....
He promised to never say these words again. He realized that these words only brought trouble for him and were not so funny after all .He even told his mom one day, "I know I lost my Wii because of MY stupidity!". The father was happy.  The mother was thrilled.

Mission accomplished!!!
(Off course the father rushed out immediately afterwards to pick the bag from the garbage bin, take it inside and hide it).
The small boy missed his game very much. 

Few months later, the end of the year results were declared. The boy did very well in class. The class teacher was very happy with the small boys behaviour as well. She called the mother and praised the boy. The parents were very happy. They thought that this was a good time to bring back the Wii. BUT HOW?

The "bringing back" definitely needed some special planning. They cleverly let SinterKlaas handle the delicate situation. (A day before the Sinterklaas party the mother arranged for a small script for Sinterklaas with the story above, the father packed the Wii and gave it to the party organizers.)
Day of the party:
The little boy was very excited about the SinterKlaas party. He woke up early, dressed well and went to the party with his mom. After a few games and some refreshments, all the kids were taken to a very nicely decorated hall where SinterKlaas would be visiting the children and giving them gifts. All the kids waited eagerly. At exactly 12 o'clock, SinterKlaas came in...all started singing...cookies were distributed...the gift sacks were piled up on the stage...it was fun. SinterKlaas went up on the stage and sat on his throne. He opened his big book of records (where he keeps a record of all kids) and started reading his notes about them-- the ones who were good and the ones who were not so good..Suddenly the little boy  heard SinterKlaas tell a story about some small boy who lost his Wii because of his bad behaviour. He said that the boy has been so so good after that incident that SinterKlaas has decided to bring him back his Wii. He announced the name saying.."Arno,where are you? You have been a very good boy..we are all so proud of you. Hence I have decided to bring your Wii back. Please come up on the stage ...."
The little boy was so excited. He could not believe his ears. Did SinterKlaas really say HIS name? His feet were stuck on ground. He could not move an inch towards the stage...Suddenly his mother appeared..she gently pushed him forward with a smile.
The little boy went up on stage,  face flushed,  beads of nervous sweat on his nose, shook hands with Sinterklaas and got back his Wii.
He was so happy...eyes shining he came running to his mother..."mama, look my Wii is back!"
They went back home.....the little boy promised to continue being a good boy...The parents were very happy and they lived happily ever after....

O...what a day!! what a drama!! what a script!! what a reaction!!
The small boy is still small...does not read my blog yet... so I am safe...

Parenting is tough!! Thank God there is SinterKlaas......and yes! He exists!!..

The Rockstar...

No I am not talking about Ranbir Kapoor.I am talking about my own, very own rockstar.

All this happened a month ago.

The mother thought that its high time to infuse some music into the son.
And she thought that he might like guitar. 

And she went ahead and put him in a guitar lesson. 

I know your quirked eyebrows are saying "You call yourself a modern mother? One who is flexible and lets HIM decide things for himself?"
Actually if you go back to the last few sentences there are some flexible-modern-inconclusive words like "thought" or "might" which CLEARLY differentiates me from my mom who "decided" that I "will" learn singing, when I was a child.

;-)

Fortunately, he took to guitar as a fish takes to water...no, thats exaggeration !! The more realistic comparison would have been as a hen or a dog or a man takes to water (remember, all of them can also walk on ground?). That leaves some "ground" for me not to be shattered if he does not like it later...phew!

Anyway, this little boy just loved the guitar. He looked at his own guitar, face radiant with pride, eyes shining with happiness, a shy smile of disbelief.... it was as if he was eager to absorb the intricacies and delve into the mysteries of the stringed instrument immediately..

Offcourse I was happy. Very happy. I still am.(touch wood)

To be honest, I did not expect this kind of enthusiasm.

There must be an explanation, I thought.

I was almost getting ready to explain this super-enthusiastic-phenomemon by trying to link it to the fact that he has it in his blood (my mom is a wonderful singer)...or dedicating this to the wonderful "Mozart for babies" CD that I religiously played for him everyday when he was a baby... or saying with a know-it-all-motherly-attitude "I knew from the very beginning that he would be good"...or ..something even more fancy like nanoparticles or big bang theory that explains everything...or....whatever...till he announced proudly, 

"Mama , guitar is COOL! "

...and then he struck all the strings at once ( a bit too hard, I would say, its a new guitar!!) and said,

"I am a ROCKSTAR!!"

...and this all happened when we returned from our FIRST guitar lesson!

I have to admit, such a small person with a guitar in hand, sitting in style, one foot up on the small stool so that the guitar does not slide off his leg...looking at the notes intently....does make a "cool" picture.

 I take him to his guitar lessons every Monday. Its a one to one lesson so I am allowed to sit in the same room. I try to observe how music is taught here. I love the interaction between the young teacher and Arno. I feel good when he plays good, I  love the way the teacher playfully introduces him to the different notes, I get a bit impatient if he is looking around the room while the teacher is talking, I am tempted to turn the page for him as he plays on, I tend to smile when he asks a totally un-guitarlike question to the teacher like "do you have a cat?". In other words , I am involved.

C'mon, I am the mother. 

Actually,I "feel" like doing the things above but in reality I am just sitting and reading a magazine...really!.....lost in my own thoughts...

Memories of my music class comes back to me. With all due respect to my Guruji back home who taught me all that I know of music today, I have to admit that the classes here are more fun. When I learned the seven notes , they were presented to me as seven notes. Full stop. I was not asked to make a poem with the seven notes or draw how a note might look like after listening to its sound or try to make a song from the first three of them or choose "my favourite note"! Instead I was almost "forced" to just practise what the teacher taught...every single day...no questions. It did teach me ...but I did not learn to "love" it while I was learning..

After three lessons, Arno believes that HE can "create" music! 

He thinks that G looks more serious than C!

He thinks that playing E three times "sounds" like "jingle bells, jingle bells"!

He drums all the strings at once and THINKS that he is a rockstar!

Music here is "taught"  in such a way that the child is eager to come back for more.

...... I come back to the present. Class is over, time to pack up my rockstar and go home.

Blast from the past

Some things never change. Like college friends, butter on toast or my love for kebabs.
Some of you , I can see are already nodding in agreement. The rest of you who are still in doubt will also agree by the end of this post. I am sure.
[Promise to give you a mouth watering kebab recipe in my next post!!]
One fine morning, inspired by a get together story heard from my very close friend Bee with her school mates, I logged into my yahoo account to mail my "group". For those of you who can read bengali , I did post an introduction poem about my "group" here.
We BECAME the "group" in BHU. Apart from all that an educational institution can give in terms of degrees and stuff, it gave me my "group" which I consider one of the "blessings" in my life.
We are a group of eight.
So, my dear M,S,K,S,M,S,D,S. [Need to copyright this before Karan Johar grabs it]..this is for us! 
So, where was I?  O YES, the mail was sent ...LETS MEET UP GIRLS!!
Considering our latitude-longitudes, I think logistics was the main challenge! However,  proving that where there is a will there is a way...some mails, some logistics and some months later some of us did succeed in meeting up.  Unfortunately logistics stopped  S, M and K from participating......

We the rest (Haradhoner panchti chele) met last July in Kolkata....and literally ..
It was a "blast from the past".
Apart from the nonstop-nonsense-nonwhatever giggling, laughing , smiling, talking ...the most important message  which got reconfirmed was "Friendships are forever".It does not matter if we have not seen each other for years..it does not matter whether she regularly replies to your mails or not, it does not matter if she doesnt have a Facebook account, it does not matter ..it just JUST DOES NOT MATTER!..all that matters is that we are FRIENDS. 

Friends Forever.
We started off EXACTLY where we left it all those years ago.

1990. First time away from home. We were young (we still are!!) and homesick. Googles and Skypes were not around. Ragging was there and so was mess-food, both equally messy. Budget was low. Experience none....THAT is where and how the bond was made.This line really takes me back to our room..27..old hostel....maybe 1:00 am..tea boiling on the heater..all of us scattered here and there..books in hand..exams nearing...some giggles...some SSHHHHhh...smell of super-boiled tea in the air..I can almost SEE it.

When people stay together for 24 hrs, the friendship graduates into a family-like feeling. We shared our clothes (nonono..I cannot fit into S's ..she is half my size, putku!!!), our food (still remember Sunday night M's egg curry, yummy), our moments of fame (I sang a bhajan while S did a hijra dance with it according to the wish of our seniors on a ragging day), our sorrows ( frequent tears in M's eyes for any or no reason) , our joys ( the hostel reverberating with our laughter)...

We learnt discipline (who can forget S's scoldings when we lazed for too long), dancing (c'mon, you know how S has a copyright to her HAWA HAWA steps), romancing (remember K's kajal lined beautiful eyes sparkle when she spoke about T)...

That was the JAB WE MET part.

Now for the "JAB WE MET AGAIN" part.....

The place is called Vedic village. We booked a car and shuttled to and fro between our respective homes, vedic village, the airport and the City center 2 mall. Finally after gathering all of us we went into our room. Immediately it felt like our hostel again. I cannot explain how excited we were. My literary skills are too limited to describe what we felt. My camera did not get a chance to come out of the bag even though the intention was to "capture every moment"! I cannot even remember what exactly we talked about the first few moments. Or did we even talk?

Putku made tea and brought it over with EXACTLY the same expression.."Ekdom bhalo hoy ni re cha ta.." [Kachu machu mukh]

I told you , somethings never change.

We all sat on the couch together talking, smiling, laughing, exchanging gifts..basically just enjoying each others presence...o what a lovely time we had. Two and half days passed like in a dream....."no husbands, no kids" was a good policy. That really helped us to go back in time without bothering to explain our giggles, our PJs, our abbreviations , our expressions...just ourselves exactly like we were 20 years back.

We did miss K ,S and M very much..because it felt kind of incomplete but still.."something is better than nothing."

It is impossible to write about all that happened in those 2.5 days. On the second day, after a long spell in the room, we decided to go for a walk. There were some bicycles available for rent which gave us the idea to go cycling. "Action!!" In BHU we did cyle a lot but some of us have never cycled after that. Putku was a bit skeptic about this whole thing,but somehow she was cajoled onto the cycle by M and S. By then I had actually moved on a couple of meters ahead...suddenly I heard Putku  WHOOOOSHH past me saying.."I can only go straight, so please do not make a turn . I also cannot stop so please keep going".

The next half hour we were mentally far far away from Vedic village..I almost started believing in time machines. I need pictures to tell you the later half of this story. Believe me, my vocabulary is not enough.

The food was fantastic. To be very honest we would not have noticed it if it was otherwise !!!

There was a massage center and a spa. We did not have the time to visit it . To  be honest we did not care!!!

The pool looked cool and inviting, S did a few quick laps. We , the rest just sat at the side and carried on!!!

The apartment had two more rooms with attached baths..We just huddled in the living room with no interest for comfort!!!

We just wanted to be together....

It was such a refresher.....wish one day in future we can all do it together , all eight of us.

Lets start planning for JAB WE MET AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.......

Diwali --A festival of lights

I started writing this note some days back..but somehow managed to be late...will not go into the list of excuses I have...that needs a separate blog..but adding these two lines on top was definitely a good idea...then the rest can stay as it is...and it is never too late to send best wishes .....right?

Happy Diwali to all..............

It is such a fantastic occassion to be in touch with all the people you know. You may not be physically close to your loved ones but the moment you light a candle and the flame grows from a tiny speck to a full flame with a tiny glow around it..you feel as is you have somehow communicated with your loved ones. I am not a big fan of the fireworks on Diwali but I strongly feel  that a festival which comes with lights can only help one think positive, look positive and behave positive...

  

                                                            A tiny light, however small

                                                            still fights the dark away..
                                                            just like the mighty sun, lovely and bright
                                                            brings in a fresh new day!

 I  was trying to explain Diwali to Arno today as he was preparing for school. Just recently he had seen Durga Puja here in Holland....so I thought its good to come to the subject from that angle. so I started off by saying ,

Me:  " You know Arno, like Durga Puja we also have something called Kali Puja/Diwali where we worship another goddess called Kali.....

Arno: Does this LADY also come WITH FAMILY like Durga thakur?

On showing him the picture of Goddess Kali he went into difficult questions like "Why is Ganeshas papa sleeping under the feet of this lady?"

Valid question. Need to come up with a valid answer. Honestly quite a difficult one to tackle early morning before leaving for work. Actually it does not get easier in the evening.

So much so for trying to explain the festivities....................

Having said that, I still feel it is our responsibility to give our children a "flavour" of how we did things back home...I also think that they can in a way "relate" to all this if the flavour is "presented " in a way that makes it interesting and fun.

As a child, Kali pujo/Diwali was a favourite occassion no doubt, but it also marked the end of puja vacation. It was the final day of fun and frolic and then back to the books. But ..what a wonderful final day it was! The weather during this time of the year was fantastic.The morning started with blaring music from the street puja pandals...we were not so decibel conscious at that time....my brother would be busy checking his fireworks and trying to expose them to the right amount of sunlight so that their performance would be the best at night.....I would be carefully counting and recounting the candles that needed to go on the roof and gate....mom would be busy in the kitchen cooking and trying to finish her daily chores as soon as possible as a preparation for the evening when the whole family would be going out to visit the different pandals in the neighbourhood. My father would be at work with promises to return  "early".

Here, in Holland the day passed off without any events...at times I did not even remember its DIWALI today. However, as I left for home in the evening, I decided to do  something "different"  to make us all  "feel" a bit different, a bit more "diwali-like" . I picked Arno from the creche and told him that he has a very important thing to do today evening.  Arno was thrilled. I did put extra stress on the word IMPORTANT...

We reached home, he quickly took his shower still curious about this important thing to do...

I gave him the gas lighter (first time for him to take the lighter on his own...he felt very IMPORTANT already..) ...asked him to light 14 candles very carefully..because its Diwali today..reminded him of the morning conversation about this LADY...I also explained to him how it is important to wish good for the family and friends while he is lighting the candles...oh..you should have seen the look of IMPORTANCE in his eyes..its like finally FINALLY mom has considered him better suited for important jobs like this rather than cleaning up toys, arranging the books  etc, etc.

(The number 14 stuck in my mind from early memories of Ma lighting 14 candles on the day before diwali..we called it "choddo prodeep" . On this day she also cooked "choddo shaak"- a mix of 14 different leafy vegetables) 

About 300 kms from our house, in another household in Germany my best friend Bee was trying to do similar things with her twin daughters Ruhia. The IMPORTANT job here was to make a rangoli with flowers. What a lovely way to be creative and also expose them to the beautiful rituals.

In both cases, the final result was wonderful. Our living rooms glittered with the Diwali lights and colourful rangolis giving us a good feeling about our Diwali celebrations away from India, took us back in time to spend some thoughts on our childhood and the rituals handed down to us by our parents, our kids were exposed to Diwali and very happy with the IMPORTANT jobs they did and best wishes were made for our family and friends. What more do we want ?

Yes , I also made some Kebabs....recipe coming up.....

;-)

How could I miss the lovely colours?

Add caption

Durga pujo..khawa dawa....

Durga puja celebrations and any discussions related to the pujas is not complete without food and food related discussions. I read in a book somewhere that Indians and Italians are the only people in the world who can talk about dinner WHILE eating lunch!! On behalf of the Indians, I can vouch for the truth of this statement. We are foodies by birth. We eat food, sleep food, think food, imagine food, dream food......

The good news is that our Gods love food as well.
So offcourse we had wonderful food during the pujas.

We had wonderful menus each day ..planned according to the day of puja...tested and tasted by experts. The idea was to bring back memories of  puja back home through the taste buds as well. On one hand, we had veg menu comprising of khichuri and labra to recreate the religious ambience of Mahastami. On the other hand, we celebrated Nobomi (the last day of puja) with a rich mutton curry.

According to the puja rituals , the Goddess and her family is served lunch (Bhog) everyday. Even though its "regular" food that is served like rice, daal etc, "Bhog" , somehow ends up tasting DIFFERENT. Is it a different recipe? or the ambience? or the incense sticks? or the offerings? What exactly makes it so tasty?

I do not have the answer...but what I have is the recipe of "Bhog and Labra"..

[This recipe is from Soma , published in Kallol magazine 2011. The photo is of the real Bhog cooked by Satarupa and Satya on Mahastami,]

Bhog Khichuri 

Serves 4
Ingredients
•50 gm. ghee
•200gm. basmati rice
•250 gm. dhuli mung ki daal (skinless, split yellow Mung dal)
•100 gm. green/frozen peas + also add few florets of cauliflower, new whole small potatoes
•2 tsp. ginger paste 
•1 tsp. cumin seeds
•1 tsp. cumin powder
•1/2 tsp. chilli powder
•1-2 bay leaves,
•2 green chillies, slit lengthways
•1-2 red dry chilli
•2 small-medium tomatoes chopped
•Salt to taste
•1 tsp. sugar
•1 level tsp. turmeric
•A sprinkling of Bengali Garam masala powder, made of 4-5 green cardamom, 4-5 cloves and 1" stick of cinnamon
What to do:
1.In a dry pan or wok, dry roast mung dal. You will get an aroma of bhuni/roasting dal. When the colour becomes dark yellow, turn heat off. Add to the rice and wash together in cold water.
2.In a sauce pan, put rice and dal and enough boiled water to cover and be about 2 inches or 5 centimetre above the rice-dal mix. Now put on a high flame and bring to boil.
3.Turn heat down to simmer and add salt, turmeric and chilli powder. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally. When it is nearly half cooked, turn heat off and take it off the cooker. You can check and adjust salt at this stage.
4.Heat ghee in another, large pan. Throw in cumin seeds, bay leaves, green chillies, whole red chillies and sugar. When seeds splutter, add ginger and cumin powder and stir fry for a few seconds.
5.Add chopped tomatoes and stir fry until mushy
6.Add peas and the other vegetables and stir fry for few more seconds.
7.Now add the semi cooked rice and dal mix and stir well.
8.Add boiling water and cook on low heat for another 7-8 minutes or until the dal, rice and the vegetables are cooked,  stirring off and on. When khichuri is ready, it should be like porridge, not too dry.
9.Turn heat off. Sprinkle garam masala and cover.

LAABRA – Traditional Bengali Mixed Vegetables
Ingredients:
• 200 gms Red pumpkin
• 200 gms Cabbage
• 200 gms Cauliflower stem
• 200 gms Raddish (Muli)
• 200 gms Egg plant (Baingan)
• 200 gms Potatoes
• 200 gms Sweet potatoes (Red)
• 5 gms Panch phoran
• 6 Green chillies
• 1 tsp Turmeric powder
• 1 tsp Ginger paste
• 1 cup Mustard oil
• 1 tsp Sugar
• Salt to taste

What to do:
•Wash the vegetables and cut into medium sizes pieces.
•Heat oil and put panch phoran and red chilies.
•Fry till they turn brown.
•Add the vegetables.
•Put it over medium heat and cook it.
•Mix salt, sugar and green chillies
•Add a little water and Cook it for more 5 minutes until the water almost dries and the vegetables are fully cooked.

Shubho Bijoyar priti o shubhecha....kichu elo melo moner kotha...nostalgia..

সবাইকে জানাই শুভ বিজয়ার প্রীতি ও শুভেচ্ছা .....

What a wonderful experience! Durgapuja in The Netherlands!

We are the proud organizers of Durga Puja in TheNetherlands. I have to admit that starting the pujas last year was no small feat. This is a huge thing to arrange...four days complete with decoration, puja, food and cultural program. And we were SUPER SUCCESSFUL last year..

and AGAIN this year...........

Joy ma!



Arno with Kasor ghonta



1986: Puja vacation for me was the "best" time of the year. The day school vacation started, we were off to Jamshedpur (my parents home town) to spend puja with extended family. Back then we did not have mobile phones to inform about our latitude and longitude throughout our journey. Neither did we have Facebook to update status "leaving for vacation". I remember vividly how my cousins would be waiting for us to reach home.Even after so many years , I can clearly see our auto stop by the gate and they would come running down the stairs. I would get down from the auto only to be engulfed in the loving embrace of my grandmother and my cousins. We would rush to the pandal immediately where the artist would be giving his finishing touches to the Durga idol. I can still hear my grand mother shouting from far, "kichu kheye ja,,etota journey kore eli [please eat something , you must be hungry after such a long journey]".

Small things like hunger, thirst, tiredness did not matter anymore....actually NOTHING mattered!!

The season of unlimited happiness had just begun..............

2011: Yesterday, at our Puja hall, when Arno came to  me to ask for a pack of chips , I gave him five euros and asked him to spend it on "WHATEVER" he wants to buy. It took me back to my childhood days when during the four days of pujas we used to get pocket money from relatives. Small amounts to spend during the day on icecreams, fuchkas, jhal muri, cutlet, chop. moghlai porota.....ooo...it was like treasure...to take it out from the purse, buy something, count the change before carefully putting it back...was pure bliss!

I saw the same happy gleam in Arnos eyes...as he and his friend Piya rushed off to the small  shop in the hall. They came back with a pack of chips, munching away to glory....chatting away about some thing ...as the two of them passed by me, I heard Pia ask," is Durga ma going back to India or she is going to stay in Italy?"

..Kids.... innocence at its best!!

..to be contd....

I am back....

I am back.!!!

I am back from a very long vacation of five weeks in India.
Yes,  Five weeks.

After such a long vacation, one does have issues adapting to things like the crazy alarm clock, the crazier vacuum cleaner , the heavy jackets,  the deadly silence , the early dinners,  the..the..the, isnt it? To summarize,  its difficult settling down.

It is a culture shock!!!

Your eyes tell me that you do not believe me!! Try this...
One very simple example:

Everyday,around 1:30 p.m, I have developed this new habit of having a full fledged warm lunch (special emphasis on Bhapa Ilish, Parsher Jhal, Chingrir Malakari, Kosha Mangsho, Polao..none of which I needed to cook).
This was followed by relaxing on the sofa infront of the TV with the remote in hand, drifting in and out of a "sleep-like" thing, only to be brought back to this world with a cup of steaming Darjeeling tea 3-4 hours later.

The day after I land here, I am back at work...lost in 326 emails.

This is accompanied by lunch comprising of  a cold dead SANDWICH  (emphasis here on one slice of cheese and one slice of meat)...

Forget the remote, the TV, the sleep-like thing and  the Darjeeling tea!!!
Definitely some kind of culture shock, right?

So guys, please bear with me..
I promise I will be back to NORMAL very soon...
I have loads of story with me to tell you...I just need some time to
get over this jet-lag-like thing and fall into my original groove..
Then stories will start flowing........God Promise....Cross my heart!

Cheers!