Life without chicken is death!!

Oxygen and chicken are the exact same thing for a non-vegetarian. They are both indispensable and life without both are impossible. The idea of killing bird after bird for someone's evening snack might sound crude for the vegans. But I guess tasting is the new 'believing'. My best friend's family is strictly vegetarian or so she claims. But when she first tasted chicken upon my insisting, she flew straight to cloud9. Since then she has never looked back. Though consuming chicken only in my company, she doesn't seem to mind the eating at all. Chicken in any form is sheer bliss- whether it's cooked in Chinese, Indian or Continental style; whether its main course or an appetiser; whether its boiled for a stew or shredded for a sandwich; as long as it's cooked, it ethereal. I ate chicken in many forms for lunch yesterday after a long time and it made my day. :D

Aftermath

The earthquake rocked the most pristine place in the country on 18.09.2011 and ruined its placidity in seconds. It filled the minds of millions with trepidation. It killed, crippled, disrupted and demolished. Hundreds were injured and several faced the death penalty. It was probably the most horrifying experience in my life. The main tremor started at 6:15PM, lasting for about 45 seconds and shook several parts of the country - Sikkim, Bihar, West Bengal, Delhi, Rajasthan and even Nepal, since the epicentre was in Sikkim-Nepal border, just few hundred kilometres from our college; followed by several minor aftershocks continuing up to the next day. It affected around 100,000 buildings. Water supply and electricity was at standstill and still so in many regions. The quake also brought with it several landslides which caused roadblocks on both the North Sikkim highway and the Gangtok-Siliguri stretch of the NH-31.

Back in our college, the roof of the boys' hostel collapsed. Tiles, bricks, lights, walls broke everywhere. Quite a number of individuals were injured, luckily none were serious(even though a helicopter flew into our college the next day and took away few who needed medical attention and everyone was fascinated for obvious reasons). These are just the physical effects it brought. The amount of mental dilemma and nervousness is several times as much. We hardly slept that night, pledged to spend the night on the open ground, it was raining unfortunately. Due to congestion in the mobile network, we were unreachable by our family. The next morning, those friends and family who never usually called, called. There was no bound to everyone's tension.

Nowadays, every time I go to bed, my heart beats faster than ever in fear of a bigger tremor. Rumours, false alarms, fake predictions add to the stress. A minor earthquake hit Sikkim again yesterday. Tourism is down the drain as Sikkim will be the last choice among the list of general public's holiday hotspots. Software companies for placement of jobs are hesitating to visit our college, anticipating future tremors. North Sikkim, a region known for its scenic beauty, will now be known for the hard-hitting damages by the quake. Daily life has been hampered. Students and workers from other states are desperate to flee the state. It's going to take quite a while to bring back everything to normalcy.

Big Brother

Who is an elder brother, exactly?

He is the one whose discarded clothes you get to wear, irrespective of your gender. He's the one whose thrashings are more fatal than ten escape convicts put together. He's the one whose condescending behaviour gets on each nerve of your body, well, most of the time. He is also the one for whom you spend considerable time searching for the perfect bride and he rejects them all in a second. He's despicable, he's despise-able, your problems are none of his concerns, but life without a big brother isn't worth living as:

He is the one who'll hug you and almost break your ribs. He's the one who'll buy you all the unnecessary gadgets you'd like to show off to your friends.He's the one with similar taste in food and will take you to the right places to 'hog'.

He's the one to tell you, 'Studying is not a piece of cake, but it isn't as difficult as reading Salman Rushdie's books either.;)' Above all, he's the one who exactly understands your feelings when Mom or Dad scolds you. All in all, He's you, just older and wiser.

Meat Lasagna

Ingredients

6 pasta sheets
1 small brinjal
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup grated cheddar/mozarella cheese
Salt to taste

For the meat mix:
250 gram minced mutton
3 medium tomatoes
2 tsp tomato ketchup
1 finely chopped onion
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sugar
chopped parsley leaves
salt and chilly flakes to taste

For the white sauce:
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
1 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Place the pasta sheets individually in boiling water and simmer till soft. Heat 2 tbsp butter and add the brinjal in the pan. Sprinkle salt and fry till half-cooked. For the white sauce, mix molten butter and flour and mix well so that no lump are formed. Place it on the flame and add the milk. Stir continuously and add salt and pepper to taste. Cook till it comes to a boil.
For the meat mix, heat olive oil and the the chopped onion to it. Fry till it becomes translucent. Add the minced meat and cook for a while. Pour the tomato puree made out of the three tomatoes. Add salt, chilly flakes, sugar and tomato ketchup. Cook for 20 minutes. Add parsley leaves in the end.
Preheat the oven for ten minutes. Grease the baking dish with olive oil. Place 2 pasta sheets at the base of dish. Cover partially with meat mix, brinjal, white sauce and at last with cheese. Repeat the process twice and place it in the oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Serve hot.

Everybody loves Gaga

My theory is that- everybody either already has or eventually will fall in love with Stefani "Lady Gaga" Germanotta. Lady Gaga known for her unconventionality, has horrendous fashion sense (Lady Gaga wearing her famous meat dress is stark evidence) and her music videos are plain outrageous. Also, she has been in the limelight for quite some time because of the controversial themes of her singles. Despite all this, she has been the apple of every young individual's eyes and just at 25, she's become more popular than Madonna or JLo. I guess, it's her bizarreness that make people go nutty as a fruitcake for her.

Since her very first single 'Poker Face', Gaga has been invincible. And though she's in second place among the most popular music artists on Facebook (Rihanna's on first), I like her more. All her songs have a very strong theme and many can relate to them. For example: 'Bad Romance' talks about her failed relationships. 'Just Dance' is a very happy song and is the ideal one to be played when you're having a hard day. 'Judas' hints about Lady Gaga being in love with someone who is/has been unfaithful to her, taking Judas, Jesus's disloyal disciple as reference.

My personal favorite is 'Born this way' because of the lyrics (Lady Gaga supposedly designs her clothes by herself and writes her lyrics on her own). It encourages everyone to be confident in who they are irrespective of their religion, race, physical appearance or orientation. I especially love the following lines:

"There's nothing' wrong with loving' who you are
She said, 'cause He made you perfect, babe
So hold your head up, girl and you'll go far
Listen to me when I say

I'm beautiful in my way
'Cause God makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born this way!"

I don't know about others but I love Gaga!

Should Euthanasia be legalised?

Funny thing- In the past, when I wasn't aware of the term 'Euthanasia', I used to wonder why mercy killing is called 'Youth in Asia'. Funnier thing- I have observed that this phenomenon is most common among 'youth in Asia', so in a way, I was never really wrong. On a more serious note, should Euthanasia or mercy-killing be legalised?

On medical terms, euthanasia has been defined as the deliberate intervention undertaken with the express intention of ending a life, to relieve intractable suffering. So my verdict is that- only voluntary euthanasia should be decriminalised ie. only those individuals who themselves want to end their life should have the right to carry out such abnegation. E.g. A paralysed man who has lost all hopes of moving any part of his body except his head or a cancer patient with malignant carcinoma which is nowhere near recovery or an AIDs patient who has been condemned by the society and both pains-physical and mental, is unbearable, would rather prefer to die than to live.

Currently Euthanasia is considered as criminal homicide. It may be so for cases of non-voluntary euthanasia, namely child euthanasia or honour killing when two individuals in love are killed by their own family members if they are of different castes or same gotra of the same sub-caste. But for cases like those mentioned above, most certainly not!!

Tarquin Hall just became one of my favorite authors

Tarquin Hall, a British-American writer and journalist is now one of my favorite authors. He is not 'world-famous' nor has he received accolades and critical acclaim for any of his works, but he manages to glue the readers' eyeballs to his books. He is after all the creator of India's Most Private Investigator, Vish Puri (also known as the Indian Sherlock Holmes). Currently dividing his time between Delhi and London, he has traveled across U.S.,U.K.,India,Turkey,Kenya, Pakistan, middle-east and south Asia and has based his writings on these countries and is married to Indian-born BBC-reporter Anu Anand.

The first book I read was To The Elephant Graveyard, a true story about a mentally-ill rogue elephant who goes on a killing spree, trampling to death more than forty individuals in and around the Kaziranga National Park in the state of Assam, India. The elephant is originally a Kunki (a domestic elephant under a mahout) but becomes crazy after ill-treatment by a previous owner. The book describes how Tarquin Hall, travels from Guwahati with a professional shooter into the deep forests of Assam and tracks down the elephant who is later shot by the shooter, Dinesh Choudhary. Adventurous and thrilling, though the book is supposed to be a serious read, some depictions are so hilarious that they make you laugh for several minutes.

The second one was the Case of The Missing Servant, the first book among the Vish Puri Murder Mysteries. A young maid servant in the household of a well-known lawyer in Jaipur goes missing and he is blamed for her murder. Vish Puri, stereo-typically Punjabi and obese, residing in Delhi, takes up the case and travels as far as the Jadugoda mines of Jharkhand, to prove the lawyer's innocence. Both funny and mysterious, this book is a good read.