English Breakfasts & Goan Holidays

Some of the best things they say in life are free. This might not hold true in every situation, but today, for me it did. Last year in March I went on a five day long tequila sunrise filled, bar hopping, beach walking incredible road trip to one of my favorite places in the world, Goa. I stayed at Rococco in Ashwem, in a room that had the perfect view of the ocean peeking through these pink-flowered trees that had been planted beneath the balcony, possibly to provide some privacy to the hotel guests. The chef at Rococco was from Uzbekistan and he whipped up some of the most tantalizing dishes throughout my stay there.

I had everything from Spaghetti Bolognese to Sushi and the quintessential Goan Fish Curry with steamed Rice. One particular meal I will always remember and never truly replicate though was the English breakfast. It was a ginormous platter of all my favorite things; two sunny side up eggs, the most succulent grilled sausages, crisp and perfectly fried bacon, baked beans, buttered toast and for the garnish it had fresh parsley and two slices of grilled tomatoes. These grilled tomatoes weren’t exactly the main ingredients of the meal nor were they necessary to complete it but something about the way they added the extra texture and flavor really stuck with me. Since then I’ve made several copy-cat English breakfasts just like that one and I almost always slice up a tomato, grill the slices and serve them with the dish.

This evening I was thinking about that trip for some reason and I felt like I just had to have that grilled garnish delight one more time. So I came up with one of the simplest and most satisfactory dishes I could've ever imagined. It, for me, captures the true essence of that splendid breakfast I enjoyed on the sunny and gorgeous beach of Ashwem and the six minutes it took me to devour the whole thing took me right back to it.

Here’s how you make my version of Grilled Tomato Soup

What you need

6 to 8 fresh tomatoes

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Butter

8 to 10 peeled cloves of garlic, left whole

Fresh Cream

Salt, Pepper and Sugar for seasoning

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Slice the tomatoes into halves and place in a baking dish. Scatter the garlic over it and drizzle with at least 6 tablespoons of olive oil. Drop in a tablespoon or two of butter and season with pepper. Place the dish into the oven and check back in about 25 to 30 minutes. Once they have sizzled, started to caramelize and lightly burn on the surface your tomatoes are done!

Give it a couple of minutes to cool down and then mash the entire thing down with a spoon or whatever else you’d like. From my experience, whisks are not the best answer. Carefully season with very little sugar (that’s just to take away the acidic taste tomatoes naturally have) salt and pepper.

Accentuate this amazingly simple soup with another tiny dollop of butter followed by a generous layer of plain and unsweetened fresh cream and serve with hot buttered toast! You could go the extra mile and make garlic bread but I just couldn’t wait that long.

                                                                   Craving satisfied, The End.

What is poetry?

If there’s one thing the Chikkerur family is known for it’s their collection of over a thousand books that they own, collected over decades. Many of them gifted by friends, some unreturned library books and others carefully chosen pieces of literature that the wonderful and doting patriarchal head of the family presented to his three daughters. Some of these books have been around even longer than my two older sisters and I have been in the family. So it’s no doubt an understatement to say that we find immense pleasure and joy in reading.In fact, I don’t think that there’s a single day that passes when I don’t interrupt my parents in the midst of being lost in their tranquil spaces located around the apartment, going through pages and pages of knowledge, art, culture and history.

I grew up reading a lot of books. Sometimes I would spend hours and hours in the library at Bangalore Club reading murder mysteries, novels, teen dramas and whatever else caught my eye. Over the years though my love and passion for reading faded rapidly. I’m more of a visual person now, as I like to put it. Given the choice between reading a book and watching an adapted version of it on DVD, I would most likely go with the movie.

For some reason though this morning when I was walking past my bookshelf, this brown book with gold lettering on the cover caught my eye. It’s been there for ages, but it suddenly seemed prominent. I pulled it out, read the title, strolled around the house for a few minutes gathering some essentials like my laptop and charger and headed for my room, but not before placing an order for a cup of coffee with my cook of course.

Must have caffeine in the morning.

So I scanned through the pages at first and then decided I should read it.

The book is titled “A Treasury of the Worlds Best Loved Poems.” And what a treasure it truly is.

I’m going to share the five best and shortest poems that were among my favorite in the entire collection.Before I get to the poems, here is an excerpt of a rather longish but well written introduction to the book.

WHAT IS POETRY? And, if that question can be answered, what is a good, and what is a bad, poem? And who, among those who have written rhyming lines with clearly marked rhythms, or lines, which do not rhyme, and with rhythms that may be discernible only to the author, may be called distinguished poets? How does one choose when going about the business of making a collection of “great” poems?

There have been many attempts at definition. Poetry is “the music of the soul” – Voltaire, “the art of uniting pleasure with truth” – Samuel Johnson, “the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself” – William Hazlitt, “the record of the best and happiest moments of the best minds” – Shelley. It is that which “makes my body so cold no fire can warm me”, and makes me “feel as if the top of my head were taken off” – Emily Dickinson. “Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits… a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanation” – Carl Sandburg.

Yet all these definitions, and there are many more, do not answer the question, “What makes a great poem and what an insignificant one?”

Perhaps, as Albert Einstein said of truth, great poetry is “that which stands the test of experience.”

When We Two Parted

When we two parted

 In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted

To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning

Sunk chill on my brow –

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame;

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,

A knell to mines ear;

A shudder comes o’er me –

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well –

Long, long shall I rue thee,

Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met –

In silence I grieve

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?

With silence and tears.

-       - George Gordon, Lord Byron

Music

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory –

Odors, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

-       - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

-       - William Ernest Henley

Chartless

I never saw a moor,

I never saw the sea;

Yet I know how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,

Nor visited in heaven;

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the chart were given.

-       - Emily Dickinson

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

-       - Robert Louis Stevenson
                                                                    

La dolce far niente

Clichéd as it may seem, it all began with the simple reading of a book.

“The Power” by Rhonda Byrne is only 247 pages long, but with the turn of every page I was overwhelmed with the simplicity yet power of the words written so beautifully. It doesn’t require any great spirituality or understanding of highly complex literature. It’s just as easy as reading a fairy tale written for little children, perhaps simpler.

We spend so much time overcomplicating things and surrounding ourselves with these unimaginable expectations that we’ve completely forgotten how to just BE. I mean really, wantonly, forgetting about all the annoyances, problems, worries and assignments looming over us and just taking a colossal breath of fresh air, mimicking the simple joys we used to experience as kids. I remember when I was a kid swimming used to make my day; no in fact, it would make my entire week! And to even think about going for a swim now involves tedious amounts of preparation!

So for the first time in what seemed like years, I took a 90 minute long shower, lit some candles, put on some incredibly loud music and just, excuse my language, CALMED THE F*CK DOWN!

And it felt amazing! Ever since I could remember I had always had people around me! My boyfriend(s) or my friends and whatever little time I did spend on my own, I would be so restless almost within minutes of any solitude, I would call someone over or talk to them on the phone. I had never really just been by myself.

And so it started. I spent a week re-watching all of my favorite movies! I started with The Notebook of course and yes, if you’re thinking she’s one of those girls who loves chick flicks and sappy romances and really does believe that fairy tales come true, you are absolutely right!

It then went into a whole array of really cheesy and happy movies along with a few animated all time hits.

Finally, the last one I watched just two nights ago was, wait for it………………..

Eat Pray Love. And surprisingly enough, it was the first time I had ever watched the movie! It was amazing. And thus begins my new zen way of life. I had never been the easiest person to understand but I finally felt like I started to make sense, not to anyone else, but myself! There are so many causes for this fabulous almost epiphany if you will but mainly the greatest thing I’ve discovered in the last couple of days is this…

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." - George Eliot