The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin

Author: Idries Shah

This is in line with the previous two books on MN. It has longer anecdotes than the the other two and like them they're witty, hilarious and silly!

I simply adored all three books.

Bottomline: A very good read.

Tomato Pickle

Out of nowhere I'd this sudden urge to make tomato pickle, andhra style. So I got about searching a nice recipe and found this by Indira. The pickle came out pretty good. I used only 5 tomatoes to make it: firstly, because that's all I'd and secondly, I wanted to start it small. Here's the recipe reduced for 5 tomatoes:

What you'll need:

5 Tomatoes
1 tsp Tamarind extract
3 tbsp Oil
1 tsp Red chilli powder
Salt to taste
1/4 tsp Fenugreek powder (I dry roasted fenugreek and then ground it)
For Tadka:
1 tsp oil
3 curry leaves
1/2 tsp ginger-garlic paste (original recipe calls for garlic, but I'd this paste at home so I used that)
pinch of asafoetida

Let's make:

1. Wash and wipe the tomatoes. Chop coarsely.
2. In a big, non-reactive pan, add and heat sesame oil (I used ordinary oil that I use for cooking).
   
3. Stir in tomatoes.
   
4. Add red chilli powder, salt and tamarind pulp. Mix and cover the pot. Cook on high heat, stirring in-between for about 10 minutes. Tomatoes will be mushed down and you will be seeing lot of tomato juice trying to splash the counter-tops.
   
5. Add the fenugreek powder. Reduce the heat to medium, partially cover the pot and simmer until the tomatoes become thick but spreadable like jam. It takes around 30 minutes.
   
6. At this stage, fine-tune the balance and adjust salt and chilli levels to your liking. The next step will be adding the toasted ingredients.
7. In a skillet, heat the sesame oil for tadka. Lower the heat to medium.
   
8. Add the garlic paste first and then the curry leaves. Toast to pale gold color. Turn off the heat.
   
9. Stir in asafoetida. Mix and immediately add the toasted skillet contents to the tomato pickle.
10. Stir so that everything gets well combined. Simmer, uncovered for about ten minutes, gently mixing. I continued heating till it reached a consistency that I thought was how a pickle should be. It was almost dry. Turn off the heat and let the pickle cool. Do not cover the pot.
11. Store the completely cooled tomato pickle in a clean glass jar with a tight lid.

Rangoli

A sneak peek at things that I made for diwali. I got the rangoli design from Diwali Festival. They've a nice collection of designs. The dot-grid wasn't clearly visible on the online designs so I generated a graph paper, drew the design on it and then made the rangoli (with Crayola color chalks!).

Another item that I made for diwali was kandils/kandeels. Like Rangoli, they're also my favorites for diwali. I like small colorful ones as they make your home look really beautiful.

Happy Diwali!

Wish you a very happy diwali!

P.S.: What better day than the most auspicious day of Diwali for my 100th post :).

Happy Choti Diwali

"Choti diwali" falls on the day before Diwali. There are two legends behind this festival.

One famous story behind the celebrations of Chhoti Diwali or Narak Chaturdashi is about the demon king Narakasur who was ruler of Pragjyotishpur, a province to the South of Nepal. During a war he defeated Lord Indra and snatched away the magnificent earrings of Mother Goddess Aditi who was not only the ruler of Suraloka but also a relative of Lord Krishna's wife, Satyabhama. Narakasur also imprisoned sixteen thousand daughters of Gods and saints in his harem. When Satyabhama came to know about this malevolent act of Narakasur she got furious and she prayed to Lord Krishna to empower her so that she could destroy Narakasur. The legend also tells that Narakasur was under a curse that a woman would kill him. So Lord Krishna empowered Satyabhama to fight with Narakasur and himself became the charioteer of her 'Ratha' in the battlefield. Thus by the grace of Lord Krishna Satyabhama beheaded Narakasur on the day previous to Narak Chaturdashi and released the imprisoned ladies from Narakasur's harem and also recovered the precious earrings of Mother Goddess Aditi. In order to save all those imprisoned ladies from embarrassment Lord Krishna accepted them all as His wives. As a symbol of the victory over Narakasur Lord Krishna smeared His forehead with the demon king's blood. Then Lord Krishna returned home with His new wives early morning of the Narak Chaturdashi day. The womenfolk massaged scented oil to His body and gave him a good bath to wash away the filth from his body.

Another legend is about King Bali, who was king of the nether world. His power and increasing influence posed a threat to the security of all 'Devatas' so they prayed Lord Vishnu to help them out. To help Devatas and to curb King Bali's powers Lord Vishnu went to King Bali in the guise of a short-height 'Brahmin', who is known as incarnation of 'Batu Waman', and begged to give him only that much area of land that he could cover with in three steps because King Bali was well known for his philanthropy. King Bali saw just a short-height 'Brahmin' asking for a little piece of land so he proudly granted him his wish. That very moment that short-height 'Brahmin' disappeared and there was almighty Lord Vishnu in place of him. In his first step Lord Vishnu covered the heaven and in the second step the earth and asked King Bali where to put his third step. Then King Bali offered his head to Lord Vishnu. Lord Vishnu put his third step on his head and pushed him deep into the underground. But at the same time being impressed by his generosity Lord Vishnu gave King Bali the lamp of knowledge and allowed him to return to earth once a year to light millions of lamps.

The mother of Narakasura, Bhoodevi, declared that the death of her son should not be a day of mourning but an occasion for celebrations. Since then people celebrate diwali with joy and fun every year.[Source: I love India]

The pleasantries of the incredible Mullah Nasrudin and The subtelties of the inimitable Mullah Nasrudin

Author: Idries Shah

These are two different books and, as the name suggests, on the same theme. Mulla Nasrudin is a a folk character of middle-east. He is sometimes silly, sometimes funny and sometimes beyond my understanding! His constant companion is his donkey. Many countries claim to be the progenitor of this character and hence it's hard to pinpoint which country he belongs to.

I was first introduced to this character through a serial aired by Doordarshan by the same name. This was long back when cable television hardly had any roots in India. Recently, one fine day I remembered how funny his tales used to be and so I searched and found that there are a couple of books on him. Lo and behold! I issued almost all these books from the library.

Coming back to the books, they contain Mulla's anecdotes some of which are not even half a page in length. You can't help but smile at the end of each tale. This is not to say that all the tales will keep you glued. The first book has a better set of anecdotes than the second one.

Bottomline: A must read.

Aarkt

This story illustrates the devotion of an aarkt devotee.

Draupadi was the daughter of king Drupad and was born as a result of a yagna. She was very beautiful, talented, devoted to her husband, ideal housewife and a true devotee of God. She considered Krishna as the supreme God and Krishna too didn't hide his supreme powers from her. On the orders of Duryodhan, Dushasan tried to insult her by dragging her in front of everybody in the court and unwrapping her saree. Seeing that no one was coming to her rescue, Draupadi found herself totally helpless and prayed to Krishna. She believed that on hearing her faithful plea, Krishna would definitely come to save her. When Krishna heard her prayers he took the form of her cloth. So that her saree became a never ending piece of cloth. Hence, by being there at the right time Krishna saved Draupadi from the humiliation and Dushasan finally got tired and gave up.