You couldn’t possibly remember me.
I was four and your brother’s best friend.
Four is too young to have a crush on your friend’s didi, isn’t it?

You were beautiful.
You had to be.
You had sweet multicolored saunf to offer me - every time I knocked on your door.
The saunf could not have been sweeter than the palms that held them.
How come your bangles always matched the colors of the saunf?
Those bangles couldn’t have been more delicate than the wrists that wore them.

I hope you found the man of your dreams.
I pray that your children are as beautiful as you were.
I wish you all the happiness that you gave me and more.

But dear Radha, sometimes I can’t help but wonder.
Are you sad? Now?
If the waves ever carry this message in a bottle to you …
I hope you never forget that you are Radha, beloved of the Lord Krishna.
And that this four year old still thinks that you must be
The most beautiful girl in the world.

Heard on A way with words. Supposedly, people in New Orleans say ‘Get down from the car’ as opposed to ‘Get out of the car’; the former being a ‘calque’ from French. I can see why using ‘down’ in this context can be amusing to a native English speaker, but that was not my initial reaction. That is perhaps because in Malayalam too, you would say ‘Get down from the car’.

I think it’s the same in Hindi. Gaadi se neeche utheriye, though is it correct to drop the neeche (down) altogether?

How about other languages, rantlust?

Or you lose the last game, with a record of 18-1 and go home, wondering about that 1 game that got away. It sure feels better to end the season 0-16.

What does an 18-1 season sound like, you ask? Quiet as a pin drop. My otherwise garrulous 7 year old whose entire footballing memory consists of ‘and the Patriots win again’ was speechless for the first time I can remember. I hear the clackety clack of the keyboard from the next room (no I tell myself, the office isn’t any quieter today), and I swear I hear the distant roar of laughter from not so distant New York and perhaps the rest of the country.

Life goes on. It’s just a game. There’s always next year. 18-1 must be better than 0-16.

But, why does it hurt so?

They did not have a good way to quantify loss of quality of life (they added an arbitrary $7,500), and they did not as far as I could see, take into account the ‘repugnance factor’ of paying for an organ. Not much comfort I’m sure for all those people who are waiting for a transplant.

preserve the equilibrium and integral development of the child” by preventing parents from giving newborns names that expose them to ridicule or are “extravagant or hard to pronounce in the official language,

If a remedy for ignorance is more ignorance, I am happy to report that any shortcoming in my knowledge of haute coutre has been plugged by a heretofore lack of scholarship in the life and times of Don Imus. I can’t say I feel too sorry for Don, he surely understands the occupational hazards of being a shock jock and as it turns out, this one may have been a volt too many.

I have three observations to make (three being the ideal quantum size for wisdom). I am in awe of the feeding frenzy that this story has evoked. Don Imus finds himself in the center of a storm the proportions of which he may not have fully foreseen. However, what befuddles me is why the sudden appearance of this monster wave? The content of his humor has been filled with racist and sexist allusions for a long time, none of which have been much of a blip on the cultural radar until now. But why has Don Imus now become the most universally excoriated man in history since say, Attila the Hun? I hypothesize that like the rest of us, the media occasionally yearns for a catharsis of its own soul, characterized by token self flagellation and the presentation of the Imuses of the world at the altar of repentance.

For the second third, I am amused as I watch the corporate sponsors of Mr. Imus’s show leaving in droves. Again, it is as if none of these people knew about his past remarks before this week. According to Andy Kessler, Money sloshes around the globe seeking its highest returns, on a risk adjusted basis.. As a corollary, the rate at which money leaves is an indication of very low returns on a risk adjusted basis. In other words, when you are at a morality play, you know it has become very cheap when the giant sucking sound you hear is that of money heading for the exits.

Thirdly, I am irked somewhat by the lionization of the Cinderella Rutgers team. Among other things, they:

offered a better example to all the politicians, commentators and reporters who have spent the last two days dissecting Mr. Imus’s behavior.

Quite a sweeping statement I thought, by the NY Times editorial page. As far as I am concerned, it isn’t that difficult being gracious to Adolf Hitler after he’s blown off a gun in his mouth and he has been drawn, quartered and left to the vultures for dinner time.

For the fourth third, besides being unable to count, the media whimper that is the coverage of the exoneration of the Duke Lacrosse players fills me with irony. The most Reverend Al Sharpton who set off the latest Don Imus crucifixion is as I recall one of the chief stone throwers at the earlier Duke controversy. I would say that the rest of the media was also complicit in this. I think it is far more difficult to deal with having been wrongly accused by a still mostly remorseless afflictor than to offer pity to the barely twitching corpse of a now universally loathed buffoon. Perhaps the Duke players deserve less sympathy because they are white, male and presumably rich.

So gentle everyone, once we are done picking our teeth at the Don Imus lynching luncheon, and snorting his ashes (with some blow if you swing that way), lets look for some morality with possibly lower returns on a risk adjusted basis. Like the firing of the handlers of the now defunct Don Imus. Like having the corporate sponsors make financial amends for their affiliation with his shows for so long. Reverend Al Sharpton kissing the feet of the Duke Lacrosse players. I could go on, but perhaps that is a start.

Besides being humorless and filled with bromides, (”And the notion that anyone would watch a game that, in its highest form, could take five days and still end in a draw provokes widespread disbelief among results-oriented Americans.”), the piece also demonstrates a blissful ignorance about baseball while making a facile attempt at comparing it with cricket.

In describing the futility of interesting Americans with cricket, he states:

Why try to sell Kiri Te Kanawa to people who prefer Anna Nicole Smith?

Pray tell, which ‘people’ prefer Kiri Te Kanawa to Anna Nicole Smith? Being too much of boor to have heard of Kiri Te Kanawa before this piece, I’d rather not make the acquaintance of these splendid people myself.

My own attempts at making chapatis started off as complete disasters. Over the course of time, they became passable. Was it a problem with the flour? The timing? The amount of oil? The kneading, rolling, thickness? The warmth of the water? The permutations were enough to drive a man mad. There was a secret these North Indians had and they were simply not sharing. Either that, or chapati making was so ingrained in their DNA that it would have been akin to explaining the notion of beauty or a joke.

There is a secret to juggling. Obviously, a good juggler has to be able to catch things before they fall to the ground. However, once that basic skill is mastered the more important skill turns out to be the toss. A poorly tossed ball means that you will be running after it instead of preparing for the next toss. So it is with the chapati. The sine qua non of kneading and rolling needs to be known, but the secret lies in the cooking.

And it comes down to one simple factor. The griddle must be as hot as possible. The final part of the cooking involves placing the chapati directly on the gas flame - I’ve never tried this on an electric oven so I am unsure if the final step can be performed there (perhaps you substitute that with pressing down the chapati on the griddle with your spatula). The basic goal (as I see it) is to cook the surface of the chapati as quickly as possible without drying out its insides.

So without further ado - I present the chapati who shall be called Nadia.

Ingredients (note that I’m not specifying exact amounts, it’s not crucial like in bread making):

• Whole wheat chapati flour (higher the fiber content the better for taste and consistency).
• Pinch of salt for taste (about 1/2 tsp for a cup of flour).
• Touch of oil (about 1/2 tsp for a cup of flour).
• Warm water (1/3 cup for a cup of flour).

Knead all the ingredients together until you get a soft, consistent dough. I don’t add the water all at once. I keep adding until all the flour rolls into the dough easily without sticking. If it sticks a little bit, do not fear - just use some extra flour while rolling the dough. Once the dough is kneaded, very lightly moisten the surface of the dough. Let the dough rest for 10-15 minutes in a covered bowl.

Split the dough into smaller balls (say 1.5 inches in diameter). Roll out the dough, using flour as necessary, to prevent sticking. Roll until thin. The dough doesn’t have to be ultra thin - if you see that edges are so thin that they start to tear, then you are rolling it too thin.

Heat up the griddle on high heat. Place the uncooked chapati on it. Resist the desire to flip, lift or move the chapati at all costs. You are simply increasing the cooking time and the chances of drying out the dough. You will see the dough bubbling up. Flip the chapati over. You will see that the top side is not quite cooked. Let the bottom side cook (on high heat it shouldn’t really take more than half a minute) - you should see more bubbling up.

Now for the grand finale. Place the top side of the chapati on the flame. It should puff up in about 5 seconds. Sometimes it does not happen because a hole prematurely forms on the surface, letting the steam escape. I don’t think it really matters.

Brush ghee on the top (you can skip this step as I do for day to day eating) and eat it piping hot. If you plan on keeping it, make sure it is kept covered to avoid drying.

The first word Hindi meaning Indian derives from Al Hind, the word for India in Arabic. As I recall, every time I was called a Hindi it was at worst with the tone of voice one would reserve for a slug or at best for a stray dog. Chapati is of course that simplest of Indian breads, a staple of every North Indian meal.

This phrase got my goat every time. Being from Kerala and not much of a Hindi speaker, I did not much like being called a Hindi, even though I knew the word meant Indian generically. The cluelessness on my abuser’s part of the food habits of typical South Indians further infuriated me. And then there was the fact that I loved eating chapatis (which would lead to a quest for making the perfect chapati in my adulthood) and only an ignoramus would think to use it in a derogatory manner.

I had a rejoinder, Phelestini Khubs (meaning Palestinian bread, pretty much a Pita bread) at the tip of my tongue every time. But it was something I never uttered for many good reasons.

First, it was not really much of a comeback, just a weak copy of the original insult. It did not have quite the oomph I hoped for.

Second, to my fragile ego, the chapati did not compare well with the khubs. The former was small, thin and scrawny, unleavened and cooked in under a minute on a hot griddle. The latter on the other hand, was big and thick, leavened and perfected in a kiln. The comparison seemed at the time, a symbol of the relative worths of an Indian and an Arab.

Third, saying something like that was probably the surest way of getting soundly thrashed. The way the demographics worked out, as an Indian you were surely outnumbered 3 or more to 1 and on top of that you were mostly much younger. Rare was the occasion when a fair fight would have taken place.

It was thus that I swallowed the insult along with my pride. As for my love for the chapati and how I perfected it, that is a story for another day.

When I was a kid, we used to visit India quite regularly for summer holidays. In my grandfather’s house we used to have cows that my cousins used to milk. Now, that was fresh milk. The hen would cluck and before you knew it, the eggs were served. I recall the yolks were more orange than they were yellow.

Then there was the killing of the chicken - the faint hearted can skip over the next couple of paragraphs. As I watched on, my cousin would catch a chicken (or I would catch one for him). He would immobilize it by laying it on its side and stepping on its wings. Then he would slit its throat all the while keeping it pinned - for everyone knows what a headless chicken does. When the bird was dead, we would dip it into a pot of boiling water and then proceed to pluck out its feathers. It was a lot of fun as I recall, except for the slitting the throat part.

My brother once decided to try his hands at slaughtering a chicken. But in the process, he did a poor job of keeping it pinned down. It went bouncing all over the place and he was never seen in the vicinity of a chicken slaughter again. I hear that people who butcher the larger mammals like buffaloes typically get drunk to steel themselves for the task at hand. Having grown up, I no longer have the stomach for such a primal connection with my food. A hypocritical carnivore as I like to think of myself, without the courage to look my food in its eyes (I think I can kill a fish easily, though I would chop its head off and not let it asphyxiate).

Getting back to the goose. I don’t particularly like to eat goose or duck, but it would have been rude of me to refuse the gift. The domestic help (servants as they are referred to in India) stuffed the hapless bird into a bag. I also lied to my daughter about the whole thing. I claimed that the goose was for someone else and that it was sleeping in the trunk of the car. On the ride home, my daughter kept telling me to speak softly so as not to wake up the goose. I kept wondering (and hoping a little bit) that it had actually died.

At home, we handed over the goose to our ’servant’ who carried out the thankless task of killing the animal. At the dinner table, I couldn’t help but notice how clean and soft the palms of my hands were. I don’t think anyone particularly cared for the goose curry, but I made it a point to finish every last bit of it.

• The Black Mountains Smokery will soon have to rename their Welsh Dragon sausage to Welsh Dragon Pork sausage. The powers that be want to protect unsuspecting customers who may assume that their succulent sausages are made of dragon meat.

  Jon Carthew, 45, who makes the sausages, said yesterday that he had not received any complaints about the absence of real dragon meat. He said: “I don’t think any of our customers believe that we use dragon meat in our sausages. We use the word because the dragon is synonymous with Wales.”

• At the other end of the spectrum, Brenda Lifsey is suing Kraft Foods of fraud in the selling of one of the contry’s best selling brands of guacamole dip. It turns out that the dip contains less than 2% avocado.

  Unlike peanut butter, which by law must contain at least 90% peanuts, the Food and Drug Administration has no legal standard mandating how much avocado should be in guacamole. The FDA requires only that the labeling be truthful and not misleading, agency spokesman Michael Herndon said.

• Last is the sad tale of the death of writer Sherwood Anderson. He died in 1941 from peritonitis, brought about as a consequence of swallowing a toothpick at a cocktail party. An interesting note - a “collateral manifestation” of pertonitis is a washboard ab. So now we know Janet Jackson’s secret. She has a helping of toothpicks after every meal.

The book is a reprinting of an earlier edition with some new updates. The author Michael Walzer among other things is a moral philosopher. He is particularly concerned with practical philosophizing and avoids the metaphysical. For example he presupposes the existence of a moral world about which rational people can reason about using a shared vocabulary. He does in the beginning expound a little bit about this, but moves on to the main topic of the book.

I’m not going to say much more about the book because in all honesty, I think I’ll be doing an injustice to it. Why is the moral world and the arguments we make so maddeningly frustrating at times? Is there such a thing as a good war? Can a good war be fought badly and vice versa? What are the rights of guerrilla fighters? What are the rights of civilians who assist guerrilla fighters? What is wrong with terrorism? Can one morally be neutral with respect to two warring parties, one in the right and one in the wrong?

If you find yourself harassed by these questions, this book offers thoughtful, passionate, well reasoned arguments and positions. Whether you agree with the arguments and positions, it provides one with a vocabulary for further reflection - hopefully a foundation for a sturdy building one day.

A middle aged woman. Friendly. Reading an article. It was entitled something like “Why I am against prayer at games - an Evangelist’s story”. Must be from Kansas or something. Probably hates Boston.

An elderly African American couple. Flying to Atlanta so they said. The man had a newspaper in his hand and he was doing a crossword. I am irrationally surprised.

On the flight. A guy in his thirties. Fit. Good looking. Wearing some kind of high tech North Face jacket. Reading a book on Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics. Obviously a Boston resident. Wonder what he thinks of the mid-west.

Another guy in his thirties. Fit. Has 3 magazines - Wired, Economist, GQ. A nerd after my own heart. Has a Nintendo DS with four games I think. I wish I had the time to play video games. Keeps moving from magazine to magazine and game to game every 15-20 minutes. Looks like he’s playing wirelessly with his traveling companion who has a DS too. These guys really ought to get themselves girlfriends. I eventually see that his companion is a girl.

South Asian guy. Stubble. Nerdy looking. Reading a book entitled ‘Just and Unjust Wars’. Must be a terrorist.

Well the last guy is actually me. Needless to say, I tried real hard to conceal the book’s cover from curious eyes.