Sunday 28 September 2014

Shopping For Sarees At Ushnakmal

We decided to spend a day shopping for Sarees at the very famous Ushnakmal in Varanasi. It was to be a day out for all of us and we would probably also squeeze in a very delicious lunch of the famous Kachori and Aaloo. I was really looking forward to this day as I had decided it was time to buy myself a contemporary Saree, one for everyday wear if required.

After a rather uneventful journey, we reached the very crowded, and often a very dirty city of Varanasi. As you may all know, Varanasi (also known as Kashi or Banaras) is a rather favourite tourist destination, specially for those not residing in India. It is one of the oldest cities in the world and has a lot to offer to everyone that visits it. It is a city steeped in culture, religion, heritage and throngs of people that hint at what the "real India" is. If you have not been to Varanasi, I strongly recommend a visit, specially into the old city. Walk through the narrow streets, visit the Kashi Vishwanath temple, go for a boat ride on the Ganga and stop over to watch the evening aarti. In contrast to the hustle and bustle of the old city is the very peaceful Sarnath, which is a Buddhist place of pilgrimage. It is another site that you must visit if you are in the city of Varanasi. And when you tire of it all, Varanasi also offers a variety of places to eat and drink in in various price ranges, starting from street food and going onto some lovely high end hotels. 

However, sightseeing was not our objective on this day. Being a set of very goal oriented women (shopping being the goal of course) we headed straight into the old city and to our first stop at the Ushnakmal fabric shop. This shop is a later addition to the very popular markets of Banaras and offers a very wide variety of fabrics and dress materials for sale. From silk to cotton, from embroidery to brocade work, this shop meets almost everyone's taste in traditional shopping. You can purchase material for salwar kameez, cloth for Kurtas and even just Dupattas in a variety of colours and designs. 

This too was not our final destination. After purchasing various fabric pieces from here, we set of walking to the original and most famous Ushnakmal shop - for traditional Indian sarees. This is one of the very old shops in Varanasi, and is famous in many parts of the country for the exquisite sarees they sell. Whether you are looking for traditional sarees or contemporary designs, in Crepe, Georgette, Tusser silk or cotton, this is the place to go to if you want quality work. We managed to spend about three hours just looking at their wares. The people who own this shop are consummate sales people. The lady tending to us could, within a matter of minutes, assess each of our tastes and showed us sarees accordingly. By the end of the trip we had all managed to exceed our budgets and were very proud owners of several beautiful sarees. To add to the entire experience, they treated us to a very sumptuous meal of kachori, aaloo and jalebis. 

Thoroughly stated with all the food and all the shopping we set out to go back home. I was dying to show my family all that I had purchased. I went to bed that night dreaming of what other mouth watering sarees I could have purchased and hoping there would soon be an occasion for me to return to Ushnakmal! 


Tuesday 16 September 2014

The Day I Cooked A Meal.....

Cooking is new territory for me. The only reason I started cooking in the first place was because I got tired of the Indian food I was eating daily and craved a variation in cuisine and flavours. Once again, this is a limitation in a small town. I can't opt to go for a pizza or a coffee simply because there is no place to go to ... no "joint to hang out in" so to speak. So the next best thing to do -- make what you want to eat at your own home. 

In the days and the world of Google, looking up recipes is no big deal. I find that you get very easy to make and easy to follow recipes of a very wide variety on http://cooks.ndtv.com/ and http://allrecipes.com/. These are my go to sites for any cuisine that I want to try out, my favourites being Italian and continental. Ofcourse, when I am looking for a specific dish anything that pops up on Google will do as long as it is easy to follow and the ingredients are available in my little town. 

So when I decided to host a party I decided that instead of the usual North Indian fare I would try something different. I decided to serve Chinese! Unbeknownst to my guests, they were going to be the Guinea Pigs in my experimental Chinese cuisine. So after a lot of research on the net, I decided on a menu that included cauliflower manchurian, crispy fried spinach, crispy chilly lamb, chicken in lemon sauce, noodles and rice and finally end with my mother's recipe for hot chocolate fudge (always a big hit at parties thrown previously at my home). It does sound like a rather complete menu doesn't it? Now the task at hand was to actually make these dishes edible! 

So after a long long day of slaving over the stove (yes it took me the entire day and I finally understood what my mum went through every time she had to cater to parties!!!!! I am amazed how people manage to make food in  such short periods of time!) I finally got all the dishes ready just in time to have a quick shower and be ready to welcome the guests.... and for the final moment of truth! 

Well of course, no guest was going to tell me how terribly rotten my food was. I also believe that I can be quite a strong and accurate critic of my own work. In my humble opinion, the dinner was quite a decent success. The lamb was the lowest point of the meal (too tough to chew even though the flavours were okay) and the dessert was the high point of the whole do. Well, I had expected the dessert to do pretty decently. The recipes I got off the net were obviously not be blamed for whatever the meal lacked. I, after all, did not have the experience to pull an entire meal off with complete success. It was a good first attempt though, if I do say so myself. The cauliflower manchurian was pretty good and so was the spinach (not very crispy by the time it was served I do admit!). Everyone was kind enough to praise all of it though. 

At the end of the day, it was quite a high to be able to cook an entire meal and serve it to people outside of family. It does increase confidence levels and left me wanting to try more out. Of course my dad is right in saying that if I keep trying the same dishes I will get better at it. So here is hoping for another chance to try it all again. 

In the meanwhile, there are so many more cuisines to try out when I get bored with the regular hum drum meals that I eat every day. I am thinking Russian next.... just a thought.... 

Saturday 13 September 2014

Re-visiting Asterix And The Likes

I must confess to a certain weakness for comic books and cartoons. It brings back all the childhood memories where a lot of my leisure time involved either reading comic books or watching cartoons on television. Even before I started to read I would go through this collection of Walt Disney comic books with Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Goofy and make up stories looking at the pictures. I strongly believe that I read comics before I read the fairy tales (Lady Bird books in my case) and enjoyed every minute of them. Of course the natural progression was Snoopy, Tintin and Asterix. However, belonging to a small town meant that I did not always have access to all the Tintins and the Asterix that I would have liked to have.  When we did go shopping for reading material, my mother ensured I moved on to more "age appropriate books" and hence the introduction to the Five Find-Outers, Famous Fives, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and the other millions of Enid Blytons and many more authors in later years that have now become an indelible part of my growing up years and continue to accompany me as time goes on. Thanks Mum, for opening up the magical world of books to me. 

Over the years, however, I have not been able to let go of the fascination I have with the cartoon world. As a result I, recently, decided to start collecting and reading some comics that I have always wanted to. It's simple really, everytime I decide to fly from one city to another I make it a point to buy a couple of Asterix or Tintin at the airport. What follows is an hour and a half of complete immersion in the world of the Gauls and the Romans or  "ten thundering typhoons", "billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles" and several other such alliterations sprouting from Captain Haddock. I can't seem to get enough of the insanely named characters in Asterix or the crazy humour in the banter between various characters, whether Roman or Gaulish. Not to mention the crazy adventures and scrapes Tintin gets himself into wherever he goes. It is so easy to lose yourself in their world and wonder what it would be like to actually be present there when they set off on one of their adventures. When I read books, I am usually lost in the plot and feel as if I am part of the world that I am reading about. These may be comic books, but I feel just the same when I am reading these. There is a reason after all, for people wanting to own complete collections of these comic books.

It feels like I now have another advantage of travelling by air... I can buy another comic book, and for the next couple of hours, lose myself in a world I would definitely like to be a part of.