Birds

I don't like birds. And i dislike immensely the homing ones -pigeons ! I'm fairly tolerant to birds primarily because one really has no control over all those crows,kites,hawks,pigeons flying about.I even admire the raptors viz eagles ,vultures ....from afar.Tell me to caress a lovey dovey pigeon i'll probably freak out.

I'm not an animal hater however I'm not even a petter.Pigeons mess my balconies and i've to clean it. A most particular pain ! Pigeons lay eggs in the balcony [they'd lays eggs in the house too if they could enter and stay inside for long] and i have to worry about what to do about those eggs. And i hate that.

I very much mind the way pigeons messed up my wheatgrass plants and ate up my methi seedlings. They are extremely intrusive ,stubborn and i suspect dumb too !

I hate the way they give me evil side glances when i try to shoo them away. I don't like the way they perch on my wet laundry ! I wish someone would make a pigeon repellant !

Crows just caw caw and they never enter the house. Mynas are nonchalant about humans and don't even look at us. Sparrows are non existent in Pune- I just came back from kutch- gujarat trip and i saw sparrows there ! I wish for sparrows..they were plain little busy things and not intrusive of my space. Where I stay, i see a parrot probably once a year...i see more kites, hawks and eagles. That reminds me- I have never seen a bat in real life -only in movies !
I saw peacocks and peahens in kabrastan in ahmedabad where i went to pay respects [ziyarat] to all those great people ! And peacocks don't care about humans either ! He didn't even look once at me though i stared and examined him from near for almost 15 minutes.
So i think most birds don't like humans too.

Maa

I'm terribly missing the food cooked by my mom. The last time i ate what she cooked was one and half years ago. Then she fell sick only to never get up and make that chicken manchurian or that khichda !Instead she ate what i cooked for her for  6 months while she could still eat it and another 4 months by feeding tube through her nose.

She never cooked pasta - that was my thing ! She gave up trying to make gulabjamuns when they came out ruined the umpteenth time.She stopped making idlis and dosas - i soaked the dal and chawal and ground the batter and works from last 10 years or so. She always made khichda, biryani and kaadi chawaal and manchurian.Hence i am not fab at those.She made the rotis.

I miss her meals - those quick ones conjured out of nothing. Or those leftovers transformed. I remember the days she wouldn't want to cook but would eventually go to the kitchen before Dad came back from shop.

I miss the bhajiyas she made most sunday evenings. My dad has stopped asking for bhajiyas now.

I promised her i wouldn't cry and i don't except when i remember her sufferings and her last days. When will that day come when i don't remember her sufferings  but just good old school days  when i used to throw my bag on the bed and run to the kitchen to see what she had cooked that day !

I'll never get to eat that food again !

Noodles

I  belong to the Maggi noodle generation so when i came across this article it confirmed my worst fears. There goes a last minute saviour of a growling stomach !.
In our house we didn't eat Maggi everyday while growing up -  it was a someday thing, 'mom is sick' day thing and 'nothing to munch at home'  thing.
Mom and dad made sure we didnt grow up on staple diet of Maggi. However when i met some out of station friends at college - they lived on Maggi. And i 'm talking about  a time when ' low salt' ,'low fat' ,no trans fat ' didn't even exist in mindframes of people. It provided a cheap filling for a hungry stomach with just added water. Who could beat that ?

Nowadays i eat noodles with lot of vegetables thrown in along with some garlic,pepper and ginger  and yeah the tastemaker is really salted so more water  to make it soupy.
I also came across a way to prepare noodles by which wax and other chemicals can be removed . I don't know if it would help but no harm in trying. Just cook the noodles as mentioned with some extra water  and tastemaker then drain the broth. Just use noodles on pile of vegetables to assuage the guilty conscience.
Do you think this would help ?