Chapati, my eternal nemesis :P

How can a soft round chapati mess up your life? I mean seriously you have been married for what 5 years and still your chapatis are not done with. Clearly, born with no chef skills whatever, I rely on my memory of cooking. So if the cabbage is to be done till this crisp, I do it.

Chapati somehow confuses me all the time.All the indian breads were invented by people with hatred for women. Then they made sure no invention would ever be made to life easier.  In all the blogs, they say it should be soft and pilable. What the fuck is soft and pilable? Is there a consistency to it? Five days of me trying with different versions and nothing. Even a chimpanzee would be rolling them perfect by now. It just doesn't happen.

First I try it with milk and ghee. Then hot milk and ghee. Then half water, half milk, ghee. Then half hot water, half hot milk. Then just hot water. Then oil. Then half hot water half hot milk ghee salt oil. Nada nothing.  Now what it needs is my blood. Its soft but its not puffing up. Its puffing up but its not soft. The temperature needs to be hotter. The chapati needs to be thinner. So many permutations combinations. Makes me want to get a construction job instead. I have seen recipes from manjula to banjara. I recede bitch.


I know all you experts are laughing at my exaggeration of failure. You don't even have to think about it, do you? You just roll sing and your family is like pilsburry ad. Mine is the before using pilsburry ad.

Gosh, yesterday in yoga class my instructor came and his wife instructor is also taking class. They are making jokes on each other. He is teasing her like you know guys italian wives. My wife is so hot. How do these people get such kind of fun expressive relationships? Born in wrong country, may be if I was european or italian, some communication skills would be bang on. I just have no way of venting out except this blog. Its like my online therapy.

Damaged souls find blogging soulful. Haha I do feel better now.


Thanks

Namaste

Must Watch Netflix :)

Like most of us living a cable free life, our house relies on monthly subscriptions of netflix or hulu or showtime whichever has a nice series out there. So when Black Sails comes, starz comes back, with Shameless showtime and then cinemax was for banshee, strike back. Out of all these options, netflix stands out with this amazing quality of documentaries and series from bbc.

Here goes my favorite ones :

Blackfish: Blackfish is one of the soul evoking documentaries. It encapsulates the torture we inflict in the name of entertainment on whales in sea world business. This is the story of Tilikum, how we converted an intelligent species to a psycho frustrated captive business model. Zoos and organizations like sea world who keep animals in small cages for shows affect them in several ways. Its time to stop this. Do watch this one and you will never ever go for animal shows. There is one more called zoochosis.

Fittest on Earth: To me, fittest on earth is all about what we humans are capable of. Our body can endure so much, lift  run perform even in the harshest of races. This one is a closer look on people who participate in cross fit race, what kind of preparations they do. Its just marvelous to see. It makes you proud and inspires to aspire more.

Life : Well life is all about plants and animals evolving to survive this planet. How a plant evolves to catch an animal in its trap? How a monarch butterfly travels across generations to mate and hang on trees in mexico? The answer to each and every of those life's puzzles is here.

The True Cost: I wrote a whole post inspired from this Don't mention the garment maker. When I started shopping in US, it became apparent almost every piece of article was from China or India or Bangladesh which amused me. The documentary shows exploitative conditions of our clothing makers and organizations fighting for their rights. Humans are insensitive to humans.

When hari got married: Ohh this one is a whole fun perspective on indian weddings. Honestly, these are the kind of weddings I have witnessed while growing up. My mom dad migrated from a village so all our cousins got married like this. They were poor, girls didn't know guys and still they celebrated. It was their normal. I like how Hari talks about his wife. It shows that not all of the poor people are ignorant. The rich carry more arrogance ignorance sometimes.

Dhanak: Do you want to see the real India? Watch Dhanak, its the spirit of india in one movie. This is a gem of 2016. Nagesh kukunoor is famous for directing movies with their own mark. There is some sort of liberation even when tied to traditional roots. I love the journey this sister and brother take to get his eyes back. In 2 hours, it summarizes india.

India's Daughter : Hmmm, I could only watch it once. Every time I restarted, it would scare me. It kills me to think of living in a country where these kind of sons are raised. They blame girls for rapes and punish them by pulling out intestines with a glass bottle. Monsters dwell in the poverty unnoticed and with our increasing population, there is no way to catch them. Sometimes, girls are lucky no one paid attention to them so they just studied and got out. Don't go out after dark, don't wear short dresses are literally the suggestions you get after your parents watch this or pink movie.

The lion in your living room:  Ohh I love cats. They are funny, curious, inquisitive, mean and sooo independent. To a cat lover, this is such a information bomb on their feline friends. The fact that they are so differently secretive attracts humans even more. Our ninja pets.

Champions : This documentary starts on a serious note where dogs are rescued from a fighting ring run by affluent player. Then amazing transformations happens while these dogs recover from their abusive upbringing into beautiful loving friends. Puppy breeding mills, hoarders should be caught and punished like they subjected a human to that torture. Life is life.

The human experiment : Human beings are the most selfish species on earth. If it was allowed by some glitch in law, they would be selling human meat in wholefood for christmas dinners. To be close, companies are adding chemicals to our everyday products that increase infertility and even lead to cancer. This is ultimate degradation. What china rejects, USA accepts. Be aware of your rights and remove these products from your home.

Gleason : Warning , carry a box of tissues before starting this. I think its on amazon if not on netflix. This one is all about living life to fullest. The conversations between gleason couple are inspiring. Their love and spirit to fight it out made me feel like nothing. What would you do if you knew you were dying within a year? How one person's disease changed several other lives? Witness a grand life.

Earthlings : Before this documentary, I was a vegetarian with milk and eggs. After this, there was no way we could ever look at them the same way. Having seen many movies around veganism, I thought it will merely touch and leave. Nah it reaches deep inside somewhere, makes you feel guilty. For days, you see animals in their torturous cages. Like we love dogs and cats, we must learn to appreciate each species. Every species is unique. Don't eat them.

Happy : Our concepts of happiness are so varied. After struggle, you get the true appreciation of happiness. There are people who don't have a care in the world when they are really poor while the richer care so much about the most puny of things. Happiness is easy to get and thats what this one teaches.

Your body will let you know :)

When I am pushing through my power class grunting at my instructor for adding extra twists, she merely says don't give up, your body will let you know. So my body does let me know when that miracle of the month is about to happen.

Yep some call it miracle,I call it lady trauma, punishment of birth all your life. Its even less significant when you have no intentions of using your oven for anything but monthly pouring. With yoga's entry in my life, most of my pms problems vanished only to come back 5 months later and hit me harder with other issues.

The bitchiest thing your body does to you is getting used to hardcore yoga. Its so damn difficult and comes the voice, you have to start doing cardio. Hmmmmm I hate hate hate it. Or may be better its not hardcore yoga, learn ashtanga, your instructors are like archana what is wrong with you, this is for beginners, straighten the leg suffer :P

For like 10 days before periods, I was getting heavy headed, dizzy, sleepy and a real non fun person. My dad says its the low bp. Eat more salt ghee sugar dates figs. Hehe so while world has to diet, I get to eat rice sugar ghee. Most of you are thinking eat healthy, why are you listening to non doctors. Well, it pleases me.

You realize this is the lightest my body has ever been so might be probably hormones need more love too. Dates, figs, almonds all my favorites are stacked up and I feast like a king. Salads alone will not suffice.

So this is how my body let me know it was being over worked. Next month I have to add cardio so more diet more carbs to get the machine running. Eat almond poppy halwa. Drink coffee.

Sometimes I wonder why I talk to old people around me. Then it strikes they know more, they have seen more, they might be overbearing over indulgent over interfering but apart from all that, they care they love and thats all that matters .

Blogger has killed my dreams of ever making money. They say my blog is of no use. Hmm to them I say....


NAMASTE

P.S. Lets move to another domain.

Questions you can ask almost all indians :)

When I first walked in my yoga studio, instructor or any other person in general didn't really know how to approach me. It being a new place took me enough time to warm up and be confident . And then I realized they couldn't think of a single conversation topic. Now indians are everywhere, some of us are friendly some of us look rude some of us look insecure but then most of us get treated the same. Approach with caution. Hehe. So like a knight in shining armor, I am going to rescue you all. Enter our world.

So here's my list of conversation starters for indians:

You can totally ask us how our day is going and sometimes we won't know how to respond since no one really has ever bothered to ask this one. So we will say good and conversation is a dead end. So instead of this ask heyy what an exotic name, what does it mean?

Second one could be how do I say your name which happens to me a lot lot more. Once they nailed my name, they couldn't stop saying it. Hmm names are sounds and we got pretty different sounds in ours. We love the fact that you try it. We do.

Next I know this sounds a bit intrusive but you can totally ask us if we are married. Then the conversation can go to their work blah blah.

My hairdressers always start off with the question hows your day going? Then most of them presume I had an arranged marriage and my haircut has been approved by my husband which doesn't really bother me because for most of my friends it is true. They do go with their husbands because they are shy or naive or they can't explain themselves well. But then I have friends who are pretty independent and would never allow their husbands to interfere. Its difficult to spot but just ask do you always keep your hair like this. If she mentions husband in conversation, yes she is still not that open. If she describes her style, she is open minded.

If she is open, you can ask her how they got married? How long she's been in states?

My hairdresser once asked me a weird question. You don't look indian, your complexion is different. Well, I appreciated her curiosity and told her how north and south india are different. Then she started the whole discussion on culture and how we thought which turned into a 2 hour conversation that ended me knowing her whole story. So just ask which part of india we are from? Is it important to keep long hair? I absolutely get its kind of beyond the line but we are so open to answering all the curiosities.

Another one that you can pop up is food. If you are into food or curry, ask us what we normally eat. You will be surprised to hear salad soup from most of us. We are changing.

You can ask us if we love dogs or kids or none. Most of the indians would say they have kids or love kids. Me, I hate kids love dogs cats nature. So now you can ask me where I go hiking whether I have dogs cats. See there is so much to know.

One time my hairdresser asked if meat was not a part of the culture and we discussed live in relationship, marijuana hehe I got real wild ones. Everything was apt. Because even though I am a vegan, I know meat is not anti cultural, it just caters to people's tastes. I have nothing against eating with people who order it. So yeah, try us.

Then of course if you meet us in yoga studio, you can ask us about our practice our favorite spots our teachers anything. You know what the fact is, we would love to talk about anything but boring indian yoga schools. At least I don't want to talk about it most of the times. I think western yoga is awesome tiring with a purpose to expand motivation.

You can ask us our favorite cuisines and most of us would end up saying chinese or thai.

Well, just start with these and you will find so much more to talk. We do have a different culture and country in us so if you can get it out, you will get some pretty interesting stories. :) Heehaa big topic indian weddings.

When art scared us :P

As hard core indians, you know you are culturally sound & biased when you enter a home with different culture, slightly unknown gods, altars with herbs and that gives you a chill in the spine.

We booked this overly famous bnb in portlan with the best ratings possible and amazing view. Everyone described it as a peaceful house with wonderful decor. Literally reviewers went overboard and crazy. So we booked and packed. Ooh one tip for all the indians, if an american describes something as cultural, it could be a very scary one for you. I mean who knew some houses should come with a warning for indians.

As we entered the house, house was like a herb on fire. Turns out it was just sage. See if it was an incense stick that smelled like cheap indian store one, we would't mind. In fact we might have even said what a holy scent. Guess what even camphor would have worked for us. Yes, that dreading strong scent too. But not this rosemary sage new world bath body remedy.

Okk its just the herb, move on crazies. Hmm then we see the altars with candles, demi tribal gods blessing kids, some native indian costume and worst of all nazi gas chamber replicate. There are animal skins used as rugs. Now I fully understand that this can be a whole different culture. So aware of it and acknowledging the effort of his religious practice, we check our bedroom. There is a whole red cloth like it was used in some cult ritual. There are 5 head costumes just on the closet top. At least, we get a closet.

Bam, the closet has mannequin heads hmm wonderful decor. Lets not even touch anything in this house. So what if pillows have mary and jesus. So what if there is one stand with some kind of killing practice. So what if there is a bedsheet with some ancient language hanging on you. Its just decor.

Then you check out kitchen. Hmmmm yeah there is a dead crow body stuffed used as a show piece. Weird drum that says clean water. Okk and just to make sure he's not eating people alive, when you check freezer yeah there is freshly packed home made meat.

Nope not okk for us. We indians were raised with gods looking like humans who looked peaceful or at least manageable. For us, this all means we are in some crazy black magic house where our blood will be taken at full moon by a strange group of obese cult followers.

As we lived there next two days, hate bnb cancellation policies, I was chanting om whole time around. We never used the living room and to make it worse, the place was always cold around kids photos like it had some souls trapped in it. The shoe closet was a major costume closet with more scary indian repellant stuff.

Oh god its so weird growing up believing you are not a culture freak and then you realize you do belong to your roots and other cultures make you super uncomfortable.

It might sound like an overwhelming description, this is what it felt like to us. Somehow , when you are raised to be a vegetarian, you can't step or sit on animal skin or even see them lying around. You do not understand the concept of candles and pikes and scary illustrations. You don't want to share refrigerator with half meat products.

For all we know, our gods might be mythological and these scary looking gods are the truly existing ones. We hope not. To this day, it is unacceptable to talk about that home when we are drunk or high. It invokes a real scare like someone trying to enter your realm . I couldn't sleep in that house or walk alone. Our faith and upbringing defines us. This was the solid proof.

 If you are perfectly brought up american, I think you will love the place.

My New Year Yang Resolution :)

One of my rules after marriage is don't get too friendly with anyone related to your in laws. It always works , you keep safe distance from them, don't share a lot about your life, just wish on festivals , talk about food health and bam keep the phone.

Even the experts get caught up some time and that was what fortunately landed me in yang class. Mystery mode is now on for forever. No matter what, I will not fall in these traps again.

Here goes the story.  So got up some morning, while my husband was feeling bad for not attending a more richer wedding ( better food drinks) I saw some cousin's picture in a yoga setup with some kind of certificates and americans. Well, it was all to pool me in. Inquisitive me asked where the picture was from, she told me she did a  one month yoga training. Bam, more questions popping up in my mind. What did they teach you? How was the session? What poses blah blah?

Before any of my questions left my brain, to make her more comfortable and open to sharing , I started saying how good yoga is how it improves your flexibility strength. All of a sudden, she flipped, are you drunk? Yeah, this is what you get for breaking in law rule. Never over estimate the intelligence maturity of a small town girl.

Well, I am not drunk so ease her off with a joke i said it was 8am in morning. She fired do you know yoga? To be honest, the real me knows whatever I think I know is just 0.5% of the knowledge pool. So just mentioned my 6 month practice again trying to not flaunt so her ego didn't suffer.

It was done, she caught bikram word then the whole sexual assault and even if I met him came up. So if this guy does something wrong, whole bikram is at fault. Fine, relative go easy go easy. I tried to end up conversation and this is how she did.

I can do all poses in bikram
I am a certified one month teacher
Do you know head stand
Shoulder stand
.....
.....
Plow pose

So yeah keeping aside her arrogance, yogi me decided it was time to leap in and learn the yang of yoga too. Not to please her or show off, it just fueled a challenge to kick off and go deeper into the strength aspect. Motivation is all around you even in people who underestimate or diss you.

Thanks to her I am gonna improve. Love your life, take only the good parts and forget the bad moments by venting out in the blog.

Haha #vindictiveyogi


Don't be an arrogant yogi. Vindictiveness I don't know its cool if it pushes you in the right direction. Just there is no grudge against her, she made my life better.

Thanks,
NAMASTE

Respect strippers, beautiful acrobats :)

Me and my friend husband decided we had to step out after 10 days of staycation, it was not normal to just stay in our cave all the holidays when all the people were desperately partying celebrating end of the year.

The nearest place that train took us was portland and of course there is added incentive of seeing strippers. What could be more celebratory than seeing a beautiful creature up there? We never really went to strip clubs so our expectations were not that high. 

Then came the moment when this funny sexy woman walks in and dances on pole like its the natural habitat. There is this confident dancer doing all the yang moves perfectly. She is super comfortable and proud of her body which makes the experience amazing-er and makes me invent a new word. Hmm these women are the god's angelic creations, some of us are blessed to witness this in person. Gosh, it was holy. Their conversations with front row people, the exuberant glow of the skin, perfect flowing hair and I am not even a lesbian. 

We sat there for 4 hours and more angels came after 9pm. The show got more wilder with more performers. Stripping is just a part of the job but all the rest of it is so much effort put into their body flexibility strength. If there was a parallel universe, this would be one of the most respected professions. 

As I went for first tips, I kind of blushed and one of the front row guys was like honey its cute. I just made strip club sound like a perfect outing. At the end of it, we were tipping complimenting, if time was more both of us would be in front row talking to them. There is always something for next time. 

Thanks america for being this open minded. We do admire the modern women who work hard to look so perfect and perform flawlessly. Its not just desk jobs that shout feminism with burger in tummy. Low blow. 

Respect strippers, they are perfect yoga acrobats. 

Yoga break is good :)

Every one who hates planning knows how much troublesome it can be to be on a vacation especially if it involves missing your favorite yoga time. I know it was with a super heavy heart I accepted to miss 6 days of my practice.

Turned out that was the best investment on my strength and flexibility. See when you make it a routine for months, your body gets used to the pattern of it. What it expects is a little burn everyday but never gets time for fast healing if you push more. Also, stagnancy comes in poses. You are not pushing enough and doing the same level of stretches everyday. 

When we returned from our portland vacation, my 45 days challenge was on. To make up for lost days, I decided to plunge into it with 2 classes every day which is difficult for someone like me who loses all the energy in that one hour.  Guess what, it worked. In fact, more determination rolled in. In my first two day yoga  second class, I literally fell in forward fold haha silly me was like fuck you weak body. As you tell your brain you are not going to back off, brain prepares body to put up with more :) Thats how you win.

Break helped me in kind of resetting my body brain to prepare for war ahead. I slept all the 5 days, ruined my vacation a bit which is a different post all together. 

As a new trying yogi, my advice would always be to take at least a week break after 5 months and then jump into yoga with thousand times more energy and enthusiasm. It will kick off your practice, trust me. 

NAMASTE