The embrace

She stood alone on the silver shore,

Beneath the sun's demanding light

Not the wind dared nor the sea moved

As if in reverence of her silent mind

Her unseeing eyes poured her vast journey

like diamonds polished bright

There was but one question in her heart,

"Aeons I have waited my love, Will you come tonight?"

She stood alone on the silver shore

under the dark shadows of the night

The sea kissed the shore with gleeful abandon

The stars danced on passionate hymns

Her eyes aflame with the love she sought

The universe a joyous cry

Her lips quivered with wonder as she said

"Aeons you waited for my embrace, as you walked by my side"

The human condition...

This is a strange phrase...."the human condition"; typically used by philosophers, either to define the deplorable spiritual state of humans or to paint a dark picture of how humans are caught up in their own web of sorrow and suffering

For me the meaning is the state of the collective soul, a soul that is still a fledgling and not allowed to develop , or to be more philosophically correct, to manifest. This is most evident when you stand back or travel to a different country, where you are forced to be the audience, and you see people as a mass, and not as individuals you react with. You immediately get a sense of how the "mass" suffers, you see a dreary depressing reality, people almost like automatons, running through life, with a weird inhuman force or compulsion that makes them go through the motions day in and day out.

Life almost becomes a repetitive script written by an unseen hand that's not quite divine, but not quite human. And that unseen hand is the mind. It programs the body, drives life, and creates a veil of security that in singular rare moments of reflection feels "odd", like chains shackling something more important. But we do not investigate, we are slaves to our own minds, we are lulled into sleep so that the mind can exist at the cost of suppressing the soul.

And that according to me is the human condition, a malady more than a condition, where we pervert our naturally curious minds outwards, to take unholy pleasures in others sufferings; instead of using this nature of discovery to discover who we really are; and what we can be.

Maya

She walked on the pavement

Cold dust in her face

The autumn leaves swirled listlessly

With the desolation she felt

Life felt so empty,

no meaning to it all

a cruel twisted fate

slaved to an arid desert land

The seasons driven by passions
Like bright eclipsing stars
Technicolor dreams
on the wasteland dark

Sometimes, it all seems so pointless, the existence of humanity, our clinging to daily routines, desires, our passions

A sudden loss or going away of strong emotions creates a void that scars the soul, until another illusion comes along, of joy. Every single illusion is stronger, and more destructive...

The woman on the bridge

On the bridge across the river
stood a tall woman of might

She had blood on her hands
and a chill in her eyes

An ascetic calm grace
on a countenance so white

Her heart was of fire
Her blood was of ice

On the bridge across the river
stood a tall woman of might

She jumped off the wall
into the rivers' cold night

Tis said that even the dark warriors
the slayers of light

Have ever reached their end
Coz love was their plight

Burma...

I could describe this country in the warm romanticism and mysticism of a benevolent traveler, who has something important to describe about quaint places, breathtaking nature, people, their warmth, beauty and other things. But maybe because of preceding events that will not be recounted here as they would defer from the theme, and maybe precisely because I had no emotion either of excitement or foreboding about this trip, I feel the urge to be true to myself and the thought that compelled this article. Sometimes the most abstract things explain more than the gloss of articulate words that mean nothing, except make the reader happy, feel in awe and live through the writer through his selfish pleasures and inconsequential dreams

It could not be a coincidence that I lived through the soul of Howard Roark, at the same time that I reached this country, in all its beauty and glory, so innocent; that you expect all the struggles they have to face. It is peaceful and terrible in its beauty and serenity; an almost childlike and tragic wonder at change and progress. You immediately want to protect everything in this country, even the brutality of the strife, just to feel the rawness of human life frozen in one endless moment.

You want to keep experiencing the simplicity of treating everyone through how they know to live life, their poverty neither a badge of self righteous honor, nor a shameful yoke to slink from. I do not know if I love this country, most of us anyways make the mistake of defining lust and desire as love, love turned to a stamp of approval for the baser desires. But I do know that the country touches you, not in a beautiful postcard kind of way, but in a more basic impersonal understanding and grave recognition of humanity.

Red Velvet!!

I finally found the color and courage to make red velvet cupcakes!!

I used this recipe at Pinch my salt : http://pinchmysalt.com/red-velvet-cupcakes-with-cream-cheese-frosting-recipe/

The only change is I added a tablespoon of yoghurt, while mixing the batter, and I also substituted some of the red with rose red coloring!

Bread...

 I've been meaning to put this recipe down for quite some time, it's been more than two months!!

Guess Im not yet done getting over my habit of procrastination....but I guess better late ....

Anyway, so I've always struggled with bread, never really got down to making awesome bread except for the pizza bread variety....so I decided to give it one more try with a lot of trepidation...But the bread gods did decide to finally smile upon me and the results(and recipe) are below...
 
 

 

Ingredients:

All purpose flour 1.5 cups

Wheat flour 1 cup

Warm water 1/4 cup

Milk(warm) 1/2 cup

Yeast 1.5-2 tbsp(crumbled)

Sugar 1.5 tbsp

Olive oil 2 tbsp

Pinch of salt

In a mixing bowl add the flours ,crumbled yeast, sugar and salt. Make a well and add the oil, and milk and start kneading , adding water as required. Knead for about 8-10 minutes until dough is warm. Leave covered with a damp thin cloth in a warm corner(I normally put mine on top of the fridge) for an hour, until dough rises to almost 2ce its size.

Punch the air out of the dough and lightly knead into the shape required(I put mine in the loaf tin), and leave covered for half an hour. Brush the top with milk/whisked egg and bake at 175 deg C for half an hour(or until base of the pan sounds hollows to tapping), in a preheated oven.

 

 

An attempt at making fondant..

I had been meaning to try making fondant for quite some time now, but due to a moody oven, and different websites telling me fondant doesn't taste good I had kept putting it off for quite some time.
However, a couple of weeks back I finally picked up a bag of marshmallows, and decided to give it a try...

To cut the taste of the fondant, I decided to make a slightly bitter cake, by adapting my "Tiramisu cupcake" recipe that was featured on "Savour the senses" here

However, in this recipe Ive added a bit of Cocoa.
(Note: I don't remember all the recipes exactly, I just generally dump stuff and end up forgetting exact measures. The following recipes are an approximation)

Back to baking....

It's been a difficult few months, to put it mildly...I am struggling with a lot of things, and at this point of time, I cant say if the stress is going to get better, or if the struggle is going to cease any time soon...

But with every such phase in life, I become stronger, and understand myself better, and I believe thats a good life's lesson learnt :)

But let's not get all deep and serious, not when there's a weekend where I finally decide to reward myself with a happy break, and indulge in my favorite activity...baking.

I made Baklawa this weekend, which was to my surprise, quite a simple thing to do! The only part I didn't really care for was the cleaning up afterwards!!

Steps for making Baklawa:

The destiny of friendships.....

It's funny...I was scrolling through my phone list, and there are these thousands(who am I kidding)... 100s of people in it, that were at one time so important to me, that I would sleep in front of a bus or a train for them.
And now as I scroll through, they are just memories from the past, of times shared, moments stolen from destiny. The people I rely on now, are not those from the faraway past, but those from my recent now.

It's strange how we believe in the eternal moment, how we believe that time wont move on, and neither will we.
But that is hope, hope of a future where we are still happily comfortably enclosed in our equations, relations and friendships. Hope that even if things change, there will be that one friend you can call on and share your life with...hope that makes me skip through a whole list of numbers to reach those 3-4 that are happy to share my life.....

My first guest post!!

Ive written my first guest post, and it's about the two things I love, coffee and cream cheese!



There is this wonderful lady called Jenny, who has a really awesome blog "Savour the Senses" and she has put up my recipe here: http://savourthesensesblog.com/featured-foodie-friday-oblique-rays/

Also do spend some time on her blog and check out all the other mouth watering recipes she's put up....!!