Author Archives: memoriesandsuch

In My Hands Today…

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Ganesha Goes to Lunch: Classics From Mystic India – Kamla K. Kapur

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King Kubera was the greediest man in the world. Hated and feared by many, he schemed to win the love of the beautiful goddess Parvati . . . but learned an important lesson when he invited her elephant-headed son Ganesha over for lunch one day . . .

So goes one of the many delightful tales in this decidedly grown-up book of traditional Indian stories, retold for the modern reader. Author Kamla Kapur is well known in her native India as a poet and playwright, and her connection to these age-old stories is the reverent yet individualistic one we might expect from someone whose introduction tells of her hometown, where naked, dreadlocked holy men speed about on motorbikes.

To collect these stories, Kapur relied on ancient sacred texts, modern scholarship, and chance encounters with interesting people who just happened to know a really good one about this time that Vishnu sank into the ocean, was incarnated as a pig and had a really wonderful time. Like myths around the world, these are teaching stories that offer both a window into a fascinating culture that has endured for thousands of years, and a code for living that can be applied to the modern world.

Recipes: Berry Smoothie/Milkshake

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Most mornings GG has Museli for breakfast while BB does not eat anything before going to school. So we usually have a selection of berries in the fridge as GG loves them in her museli. Earlier this week, I felt some of the berries would spoil if kept long and so decided to make a smoothie/milkshake with them. It was quite tasty and is a good quick breakfast, especially if you can’t eat solid food in the mornings or are in a hurry.

Berry Smoothie/Milkshake

Ingredients:

  • 1 ripe banana
  • 6 medium sized strawberries
  • 15-20 blueberries
  • 1-1.5 cups skimmed milk
  • 1 tbsp honey or 1 tbsp sugar (optional)

Method:

  • Wash and dry the blueberries, remove the leaves and wash and dry the strawberries, peel the banana and keep all the fruits inside an airtight container and freeze overnight. You can also hull and chop the strawberries if they are big before freezing.
  • The next morning, blend all the frozen fruits along with the skimmed milk to a smooth paste. Thin the smoothie to the consistency you like. Add the honey or sugar if you feel you need to add some sweetness to the drink.
  • You can drink it as it is. You can also add some drops of vanilla essence to enhance the flavour or even add some plain vanilla yoghurt or icecream to thicken it up.
  • If you want to make this vegan, just substitute the skimmed milk for some nut milk like soya, almond or cashew or even some light coconut milk

In My Hands Today…

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Tail of the Blue Bird – Nii Ayikwei Parkes

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Sonokrom, a village in the Ghanaian hinterland, has not changed for thousands of years. Here, the men and women speak the language of the forest, drink aphrodisiacs with their palm wine and walk alongside the spirits of their ancestors. The discovery of sinister remains; possibly human, definitely ‘evil’; in a vanished man’s hut brings the modern world into the village in the form of Kayo; a young forensic pathologist convinced that scientific logic can shatter even the most inexplicable of mysteries.

But as events in the village become more and more incomprehensible, Kayo and his sidekick, Constable Garba, find that Western logic and political bureaucracy are no longer equal to the task at hand. Strange boys wandering in the forest, ghostly music in the night and a flock of birds that come from far away to fill the desolate hut with discarded feathers take the newcomers into a world where, in the unknown, they discover a higher truth that leaves scientific explanations far behind.

Harry Potter

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I first read Harry Potter nearly twenty years back when the books first came out. I remember buying a bootlegged copy (Mumbai is quite famous for these kinds of books) and remember quickly getting hooked on to the series. I read the first three books before I moved to Singapore and remember when book number 5, The Order of the Phoenix, was released, I was pregnant with GG & BB. I was ordered bed rest by my doctor around my eighth month and it was around this time, I got hold of the book. It was a heafty book and I remember thinking it will be a good companion to my week-long bed rest. I finished the book in less than two days!

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Around the time BB & GG were 8-9 years old, I started selling the series to them, but faced a lot of resistance, especially when they saw the size of the books. After about a couple of years, during one holiday, I decided to bribe them at the airport. I forced them to buy the first two books of the series and told them to try and read it. If they didn’t like the series after reading the two books, I will give up trying to force them to read. GG got hooked almost immediately and finished both books by the time we were back in Singapore. BB took longer to get involved in the books. I had to compell him to read at least 50 pages each day and by the time we were back in Singapore, he was also hooked in the series, not as much as GG, but enough to fight with her to read a new book first.

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GG is a true Potterhead and knows so much more about the world that J.K. Rowlings created than i could ever hope to know! She has a Potterworld account and has been sorted into Ravenclaw. She knows all the trivia and facts and corrects me on more than one occasion. She wants to go to the UK and visit the places where the books have been set, including doing the studio tour, visiting platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross station and visiting Alnwick Castle which was used to film Hogwarts in the movies.

Both GG & BB have moved on to other book series now, but I suspect that the Harry Potter series retains a special place in their hearts.

Are you a fan of Harry Potter? I would love to hear which is your favourite book in the series.

In My Hands Today…

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Dance Lessons – Áine Greaney

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A year after her husband’s death in a sailing accident off Martha’s Vineyard, Ellen Boisvert bumps into an old friend. In this chance encounter, she discovers that her immigrant husband of almost fifteen years was not an orphan after all. Instead, his aged mother Jo is alive and residing on the family’s isolated farm in the west of Ireland.

Faced with news of her mother-in-law incarnate, the thirty-nine-year-old American prep school teacher decides to travel to Ireland to investigate the truth about her husband Fintan and why he kept his family’s existence a secret for so many years.

Between Jo’s hilltop farm and the lakeside village of Gowna, Ellen begins to uncover the mysteries of her Irish husband’s past and the cruelties and isolation of his rural childhood. Ellen also stumbles upon Fintan’s long-ago romance with a local village woman, with whom he had a daughter, Cat. Cat is now fourteen and living with her mother in London. As Ellen reconciles her troubled relationship with Fintan, she discovers a way to heal the wounds of the past.