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Red hot and sticky - this was how it was where I was last week.
A week ago, I
was sitting at the exit of a sprawling resort in Goa, waiting for a bus to take
me (and several others) back to my own hotel. By my own hotel, I mean the hotel
I was staying in, about 20 minutes away, not that I own a hotel in Goa. My
modest, homely, compact hotel, as opposed to the venue of the conference, where
all the proceedings were held in tents, and only one of them was
air-conditioned.
I trudged
and trudged between tent and tent, carrying my computer, my bags and myself,
cursing myself for being inhibited and formal. For all around me were delegates
young, old, thin, fat, obese, interns and CEOs alike, wearing beach shirts and shorts
and mini dresses, strapless or with spaghetti straps, looking cool as cucumbers in the heat. I
was the only one, perhaps, in a salwar-kameez. Why oh why hadn’t I been more relaxed and
taken my limp Fabindia cotton trousers? They would have afforded me better ventilation and I
would still have managed to remain formal (and inhibited).
Our bus
trundled in at midnight but it only carried us as far as an isolated spot
five minutes away. Ringed by coconut trees, it contained many other, bigger
buses, and after scrambling down one and up into another carrying computer,
bags and myself, we got to our own hotels. Once in, a shower and the
air-conditioner revived me, but not
quite – the memories of the heat of the last two days had seared themselves
into my consciousness – and I had the same temperatures and
far-away-from-each-other tents to face the next day.
What would I
have given for a glass of light, chilled buttermilk (actually, we did order one
on the first day, it was pretty nice) to be brought around at regular intervals
during the conference? I don’t know, but today I tried making some of my own,
going by a rough recipe a nutritionist told me about a few months ago.
And at this
point, let me tell you that the red pepper/capsicum above is a red herring – it
has not much to do with this post. My photos are going from bad to worse and
rather that to draw in the eyeballs than the one I’m going to present below. It
has to do with this, but as I had to leave for the airport early, I gave it
away to my help S and told her to chutney-fy it. (I hope she didn’t dump it
once my back was turned.) I made the linked recipe with green capsicum/peppers
earlier and it turned out great – though the colour wasn’t anything to write
home about.
What I do
have to present today is this:
Exotic
Indian drink with herbs (and spices, you read automatically – but barring salt,
there are none) and indigenous vegetable. Now that sounds a bit over the top, doesn't it, exotic Indian drink with herbs and indigenous vegetable?
I took it to
work and tried it on my colleagues, the first of whom looked a little alarmed
at the trickle of green near the mouth of the bottle it was in, but she said it
was fantastic. She couldn’t identify it, though. Another one did. Then I tried
it on others, all of them loved it.
Then they
asked me how I made it. So I had to tell them that I had turned some uneaten
cucumber raita (cucumber being the indigenous vegetable) into this, by adding coriander and curry leaves.
It’s one of
my as-you-like-it recipes, a couple of tablespoons of curds/yoghurt thinned
with lots of water, some cucumber pieces, maybe a handful, and a fistful of
well-washed coriander and curry leaves, all blitzed together in the mixer, and
salted. Feel free to add a bit of ginger, asafoetida, cumin powder and pepper.
Have it strained, or have it unstrained. Have it unrestrained. Then, maybe, you can dump the salwar-kameez, slip on a short, short dress, and feel as cool as a cucumber.
Have it strained, or have it unstrained. Have it unrestrained. Then, maybe, you can dump the salwar-kameez, slip on a short, short dress, and feel as cool as a cucumber.
