My Family and Other Recipes

My family has always been a bunch of foodies. My maternal and paternal grandmothers were superb cooks. My paternal grandfather also cooked. My father and I sometimes cook together. My mother also cooks.

It should be clear by now that we- my mother, my father and yours truly-are foodies to the power infinity. Cooking is easier than some people think. You just need to know a few basic steps and after those steps you’re spoilt for choice. Take a dish I made- mutton, marinated with curd, onions, ginger and garlic paste, tomatoes, two scored green chillies and a peg of whiskey.

Yes you read that right- a peg of whiskey, Signature to be exact. I’ve also cooked mutton in wine and using marmalade. So I think we’ve established that I am the crazy cook in the trio.

My father is a versatile cook. He knows his ingredients and how to substitute one for another. My mother is by the book, and though she claims her dishes are total disasters; they actually come out very well.

For me personally, cooking is a relaxing hobby. It’s fun to do, interesting to view the end result and taste the pudding so to speak and it also makes me happy. I try to cook on Sundays because my father is at home on those days and we can knock back a few beers and then head over to the luncheon.

Unfortunately I’ve not been in the kitchen for a while because I am sleeping a lot these days. However tonight my mother is attempting chicken bharta which is a shredded chicken dish flavoured with tandoori masalas and containing eggs. We love this dish and we inevitably order it when we have naan at a returant. Naan is an Indian bread which is long and served with butter.

I always tell my friends to come down sometime so I can cook for them. A few have tried my stuff and lived to tell the tale so I suppose I can safely say my dishes won’t cause distress ( xD )

Anyhow, off to the kitchen I go!

PS- try the mutton with whiskey and let me know how it turns out. You just need to cook it after soaking it in whiskey for about an hour and a half.

The Bilge Master

Nannie's Story

There was once a house in a village

And a cow that refused to moo it had

Also there was a duck that would quack

On the night of the new moon

In this house lived a lady

 She knew certain spells

A spell to cure fever

A spell for aches and pains

And so on

The woman was a jolly soul

The other folk liked her a lot

They called her Nannie

And sought her counsel

In times of need

But then one day

Something happened

Nannie had been casting spells for too long

And found herself in the grip of one

A spell that caused addiction

It changed everything and

From a jolly soul, she became one

Who was harsh and unsightly

The house suffered too

A great shadow remained suspended

Over it and in its garden nothing would grow

The other people then came to her aid

They read to her, to make her forget

They cooked for her, for she didn’t have a maid

But, Nannie’s addiction was a fierce one

It fought back against these attempts

Thus, the battle raged

Between Nannie and a spell

For many moons, they fought

The other people came by a lot

They spoke words of comfort and of reassurance

Then, after many a year

Nannie was able to listen to the other people

Their words gave her strength

Strength enough to overcome her affliction

Nannie still lives in her house

With her duck and cow

She still helps the other people

In this way, life goes on in this town

Under the light of the magical Sun

The Bilge Master

Gasoline

He had loved cars ever since he was a boy. The smell of gasoline, the hum of the engines and the smooth motion of the car attracted him like a moth to a flame. He remembered that on his 18^th birthday, his gift had been a second hand Chevy Camaro. It was orange with white stripes vinyled on it. He loved that car. He drove it to school, he drove his mother to work or to the grocer’s and he drove his friends to their respective homes at the end of the school day.

When he joined college, he found a new love- racing. It was the adrenaline rush that made it so rewarding for him. He raced around the city at night, sometimes getting chased by the cops; but never getting caught. Racing turned the purr of the car to a roar, like a lion being released from it’s cage. He was a good racer. He set impressive lap times on the road leading from the college to the city. He had never lost a drag race in his life.

After college, his love of racing made him take to the tracks. He participated in rally races and again his lap times were superb. People started calling him the next phenomenon. When he was not out amongst the racers burning rubber, he would be inside tuning his car. Cars were always attractive to him as I said earlier. He would tinker with the suspension, brake pads and even tweak the engine from time to time. He made sure the coolant in his car was always there, that it had adequate power steering fluid and he always kept his gas tank full. We were not unsupportive of his desire to race and we would turn up at the track from time to time to watch him race. He was good, weaving his way in between cars, shifting at the right times and generally staying within the top 3 in every race.

My brother was in a car on the day he died. He was out on the track, cruising at an even 80mph when it happened. He didn’t see a brick or some such object on the track I’m told. He drove over it and his rear tire exploded. His car spun out of control, did a backflip and rammed the divider. We dragged him out of the wreck. He was still breathing, despite having sustained serious injuries. The irony is that he died in our car on the way to the hospital.

You see, though he loved racing; racing never loved him back. He was always a car fanatic and it is only fitting that he died doing what he loved, in a machine that he loved.

This is the story of my brother and today he would have been 32.

The Bilge Master 

Thank You for 50,000 Views

I stared at the keyboard for a long time, trying to figure out what an appropriate start to this piece should be. The silent keys did not help, and so I decided to start typing and see what happened next.

Writing for me was a selfish hobby. It was born out of the realization that the answers I wrote in English were pretty good and the support of my then English teacher, Ms. Jhuma Ray helped me a lot, as did the support from my mother and father.

I used to scribble stuff down in diaries and then lose the diaries so one day; I decided I was going to write on the computer instead. 

While I was typing out some article, I forget now what it was; I got an email from my sister Susrita Sen, which had one line and a link. The line said “Read my blog” and below that was the link to her blog.

About a week later, I wrote a critique on Harry Potter and decided I would put it somewhere and so, in November 2010 I founded From Life to Me, which at the time was called Revolution Roulette. I posted the Harry Potter piece and then I forgot I had done so and the blog didn’t see another post until later.

From the second post to now, it has been a phenomenal journey. I have discovered so much about writing. I have had tremendous support from my family and friends. I realise that perhaps this can be taken further and I might write a book (if ever I get the patience to)

It also would have been impossible without YOU. Yes YOU, who are reading this now. I couldn’t have done this without YOUR support. YOU are essential to this blog’s existence and I hope YOU will accept my heartfelt thanks for letting me reach 50,000 views. I hope YOU will stand by my side for the next 50,000

Who are YOU? YOU are the person reading this. YOU ROCK. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I remain, yours truly

The Bilge Master

Of Photos That Make a Comeback

Have you ever seen a photograph that was deleted?

What went through your mind?

Have you ever seen that deleted photo,

Being brought back to life?

Line by line one pixel at a time

It returns.

They say that some memories make us forget

Some memories make us happy

And, then there are some memories

Those do nothing, but cause harm,

Now

Can you see the picture forming?

Is it a place?

Is it a photo from high school?

Or is it a photo of the person you used to be?

The smile that left your face

Has come back to you

And so has the laugh

Which you hadn’t heard for a

Very

Long

Time

In time, the rest of that photo

Will be restored

You’ll become the person you really are

And permanently delete

The person you are now

The sad, trapped version

Who is afraid, and has lost his way

To him I say,

“Hold on, coz everybody hurts sometime”

Everybody Hurts is a song by the band R.E.M

The Bilge Master 

Papyrus

I

3025 AD, Mars. Prof. Liam

I teach history at the Greendoor University, named for the fact that all its doors are green. My family moved to Mars in the year 2099, when the Earth was no longer habitable for us. This colony has been around for quite some time though and to be frank, there is enough material here for me to do a thesis on.

I’m currently headed to the library, because one of my classes got cancelled, so I figured I’d kill the time reading up. I have taken quite an interest in the 21^st Century, particularly about the years 2010-2045.

I had to use the fingerprint scanner to gain entry to the library which is also a library card of sorts, because it’s linked to the databases in the library and allows the people with proper levels of clearance to access the necessary books. I am a researcher, so I head off to the research wing and pick up one of the free tablets there.

I’m currently in the year 2011.  Apparently in the year 2007, an e-reader called a Kindle was discovered and since then many iterations of the device have been used. Our ancestors used these Kindle devices to store and read books on the fly. You could store far fewer books than now of course, because the tablet I am holding contains an entire library in it.

This is not what interests me. What is a “book”? Digging a few years back, say about a century- I came across a word- “novel” and through the ages these “novels” were categorized as “books”. They had physical form, you could open them and you’d have to turn the pages physically in order to progress with the story. I find this fascinating. These “books” could be what led to the current tablet devices being used here on Mars! The possibilities are endless, but this will need more research.

I‘ll have to upload this to Urmi back at home and see if she can help with it more. Urmi has been a capable AI enabled robot who came shipped of course with firmware allowing her to work also as a super computer. Urmi can definitely help me gather more data on “Novels”, “Books”, “Tolstoy” and “Wilde”.

*****

II

3055 AD - Neil

This is the last thing that my father wrote before his sudden death on 4^th June 3025. I’m told his heart guard (pacemaker in the 21^st century) exploded because it somehow overheated. My father died an untimely death and had I stumbled across this research before, instead of quite accidentally while giving Urmi a tune up, maybe I would have been able to help him finish it. Naturally, since nearly 30 years have passed since this data was uploaded to Urmi, I had to do some deep root scanning to find it.

I find my father’s research to be quite fascinating to tell you the truth. “Books”, “Novels”. What are these things? What is a “Tolstoy”?

******

III

3055 AD- Neil

I have delved deeper into my father’s research and I have found that in the previous millennia there existed devices called printing presses which were used to manufacture these “books”. Apparently, just as my father said, a “book” was a construct that you could hold in your hand, like our readers today, but you’d have to physically turn the pages. The story was something to find, rather than the reader you were holding finding what you want. “Books” did not have search engines like readers in this era do.

I have also come across the following names- Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, Twain and Oscar Wilde. Apparently these individuals were great authors of the time and apparently an “author” is someone who writes “books”.

The more I delve in, the more complex this data seems. What is “writing”? We use styluses to trace alphabets on our Noters. Is it possible that, just as “books” existed, something called “writing” related directly to a “book” existed?

I have also come across the words “word processor”. Apparently, these were primitive programs in which you had to physically press alphabets to form words. Over here, that is done by voice or else the AI is pre pre-programmed rendering such activity null and void. I can command my light to turn on by just saying “On” I can turn on my Viewer in a similar fashion. I do not understand how to operate a device that has a “switch”

I wonder what life was like in the 21^st century. I think I could use a new pair of eyes on this. I’ll invite Sam and Bran to dinner and we can discuss all this.

A possibility I have recently begun to consider has also been on my mind- was this a delusion that my father concocted? What if there was no “book”?

IV

Neil Continued

Another new term in the research I am doing. “Pen”. Apparently these were used to physically write and they had a fuel called “ink” in them. This is obviously what preceded styluses.

Sam seems to think that my father’s work raises many questions about the life in the previous millennia while Bran thinks my father was senile and refuses to believe what I am showing him. If only I could get hold of one of these “books”. I am told the first “novel” was called Pamela.

The people wrote these “books” using pens to scratch alphabets on “paper” which they obtained by cutting down trees and synthesizing paper from the wood. The trees on our world are different. They have wood, but I doubt that we will be able to make the same paper the research talks about.

At this point, I am willing to carry this forward. It can teach us something from our ancestors. We can teach ourselves to write and to read. Maybe one day, I will physically “write” a physical “book”!

Sam thinks a few minor modifications to a stylus will be enough to get us a “pen”. As for the “ink”, I have been able to isolate a chemical formula to create a synthetic variant of the fuel. All that remains now is the “paper” and here we are unsure how to proceed. 

We do not have the wood to synthesize paper. There are no trees on Mars like the ones in the 2011 period so we need another alternative. The pens we have made will not work on our digital devices. We are so close, and yet we have hit a roadblock.

Sam has a suggestion. The thermostat in a room at the university can be adjusted and some of the red clayey soil on Mars itself can be used to grow a tree. It will not be like the trees from 2011, but it will have to do. We do not have the resources our ancestors had and they did not have the resources we have.  A tree can grow in clayey soil, or so it is written in a “book” about something called “geography”.

V

3056 AD- Neil and Sam

We have spent a year trying to reciprocate the materials from the last millennia. We have pens. All we had to do was sharpen a stylus and add a slot for the fuel. The paper took us so long, because the trees in the nursery took this time to grow. We have managed to synthesize a bluish-red hued paper from them.

I am holding a “pen”, an archaic device from the last millennia. I am staring at “paper”. Sam has managed to get hold of a sheet of paper from the 2011’s on which is written “A is for Apple. B is for Ball. C is for Cat and D is for Dog”

I write these words on the paper using the pen

A is for Apple

B is for Ball

C is for Cat

D is for Dog

We can write again. This means we can have books again. We can have shelves of them. We have managed to remove the cold screen that restricted the reading experience on our readers.

We will not need readers in the coming years. We will have books! I hope I live long enough to see that happen.

A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cat and D is for Dog.

The Bilge Master

Closet Space

I

The things we lock up in closets

Aren’t necessarily skeletons

Sometimes, they’re important things

For a closet traditionally acts

As a storage space

So why can memories not be a part

Of the content in a closet

The memory of graduating school

The memory of your first kiss

That feeling you had

When you put your first pair of jeans on

Imagine locking these memories

In a strongbox, and

Throwing the strongbox into the ocean

II

What you’re experiencing right now

Is a concoction of my own making

 I took a spoonful of your silence

Added a little paprika to your anger

And boiled you in a vat of depression

Making you act in ways you never thought you would

III

I did act in certain ways

And I destroyed some memories forever

And the adults around me made mistakes too

But, no more

No more subjugation

No more giving in

No more despair or anxiety

Or whatever the fuck else you toss my way

You have overstayed your welcome

And you have forgotten that

There exists a person in this vessel

That person is asking you to leave

And you will leave

It is as simple as that, my friend

You forget that empires have fallen

And buildings once built can be torn down

And that is what I am going to do to you

Tear you down, brick by brick

Until you cannot hide in my closet anymore

The Bilge Master

Masks

“We are all wearing masks. That’s what makes us interesting. There are stories about the masks and the people we are underneath them”

~Neil Gaiman

This quote got stuck in my head and it is also the cover picture on my Facebook and my twitter accounts. Masks protect us from the necessity to talk and to mingle. When wearing a mask, you have a chance to let just a portion of yourself participate in a conversation, while the rest of your mind is occupied with killing dragons and rescuing princesses.

I wear a mask too. Apart from my parents, only three people have seen beyond that mask to the real me. I like it that way. I’m not an extrovert, unless it’s with people I am totally comfortable with and my mask lets me be able to interact with the other people in the world in peace.

Then there are those people around whom I can totally be who I am, without having to apologize for it and I am extremely grateful to them for accepting me as I am, as opposed to making demands from me to be this, smile here, cry there and so on and so forth.

Is it easy to wear a mask? Yes it is. The world outside sometimes demands you wear a mask. It’s your only defense against it. A mask gives you mystery. It lets you reveal just  enough so that you tell the person there is more to you under the mask. The question is, will the other person be brave enough to take that plunge and see 

what I am without a mask?

I wonder about this sometimes. My personality is not one which everyone can attune their personalities to, so in truth I am actually extroverted, but selectively so. I do not talk very much, unless it’s with people I am comfy with. I prefer to observe people in a room and maybe go and say “Hello” to one or two. I have the gift of the gab so most people end up liking the version of myself I project.

And as I said at the beginning of this writeup, only three or four people have seen me without my mask. Thankfully, they are not judgmental and are very good friends

Now answer me this- do you have a mask too?

The Bilge Master