Word Attack!!

All the fun…..is now somewhere else!!

Ok guys…sorry for this confusion, but I am moving lock, stock and blog to a new location on wordpress. Its www.andaleebwajid.wordpress.com. Why did I do this? I wasn’t having much fun with my existing blog, that came through my website. I wasn’t able to change the theme or add any widgets, and it was getting boring to see the same old page. Also, RSS wasn’t working properly on it, so now that I am in this new place, you can subscribe to my blog through RSS! Nothing has changed. Its still called Word Attack!!, only I now linger in a new location. See you guys there!!!! Add me on right away in your blog roll!

Azhaan Speak!

I play this game with Azhaan every day to see how much he knows about his family. I sit with him and tell him the names of people he knows and he tells me what he calls them. Here’s how our conversation goes:

Me: Azhaan, Andaleeb kaun hai?

Az: Mummy (mimmy, mammy, or ammi depending on his mood)

Me: Saboor

Az: Bua, Bwa

me: Ammi

Az: Nanji

me: Sidra

Az: Yaya(chaya also sometimes!)

me: Parvez

Az: Chacha

me: Anjum

Az: Chachi

me: Rayaan

Az: Baby, beebee, beebwee

me: Papaji

Az: Paeppaja or Peja

me: Junaid

Az: Mama

me: Shazu

Az: Phuppu

me: Dadu(what Sab calls my mil)

Az: Pa, or Apa(he calls her Apa because thats what my mom calls her…:D)

me: Abbu

Az: Jaea…from Jee, its evolved to Jaea, or sometimes Jaeee…I have no idea why he calls his father that…

me: Mansoor

Az: Chacha! (I keep telling him, your abbu’s name is Mansoor but he doesn’t understand!)

And lastly,

me: Azhaan

Az: Mai mai( and he taps his own chest!)

And this is something I had better record before he grows up and forgets it!!

I love this stage of kids growing up when they are learning to speak! he’s growing up so soon, mashallah and soon this will just be a memory.

On shaami…and why I took it for granted all these years!

I must say, I’ve always been thankful that Ammi is a great cook. When I was in school, our maid Rambha would bring hot lunch for me and drop it off at the school gate and I would take it back to my corner somewhere and eat it. I just took everything for granted. Even on days when I got shaami in my lunch box, I would nibble it, share with my friends and wish Ammi had put cheese in the middle like she sometime does.

In case you don’t know what shaami is, here’s a quick byte on it: Shaami is made by cooking boneless meat pieces(some use kheema) with channa dal(not kabuli channa), coriander, chopped onions, a little bit of ground coconut, some adrak-lehsun, garam masala powder, dry red chillies, salt and a little haldi with some water. This mixture is cooked until the water dries and then, when its still warm, its ground into a dough like texture in the mixie. (In my grandmother’s house, I remember seeing her grinding the shaami dough on a traditional ’sill-batta’. I used to watch her roll the heavy oblong stone across the mixture on the flat stone surface, bring it forward, then back and then the whole process repeated until the shaami mixture was ready. All this was eons ago of course. Now, no one uses the sill batta for anything anymore I think.) And then the dough is shaped into round balls, flattened into circles or oblong shapes and then deep fried. The result is crisp, golden brown and because of the perfect marriage of the meat with the chana dal, the shaami’s come out a little firm, a little crisp and very, very tasty.

So everyone does know what shaami is right? Yes, after school, I’ve always assumed that everyone makes shaami as beautifully as my mother and it was a surprise for me when I got married and saw that my MIL’s shaami was not the same. It wasn’t bad, but the dough was not firm enough and hence when it was fried, sometimes they would become too crisp and the taste was different.

Many times I’ve done some part of the shaami work for my MIL. I might have watched over the mixture as it dried on the stove, or I might have ground it for my MIL…or shaped it and fried it, but I had never done all the work for it by myself. Today I wanted to make it and Ammi had come home to drop me off, as I had stayed there last night. She suggested I make kofta but I wanted to make shaami.

Today also, I didn’t do the initial, most important part of putting the ingredients together. Ammi did that, and she put it on the stove to dry. She also painstakingly removed every little bit of fat from the meat, because unless we do that, the shaamis sputter a lot in the hot oil and tend to break.

After the mixture got dried, I wasn’t able to grind it when it was still warm because I had to put Az to sleep. I came back, and got to work, and the mixture was slightly cold. Anyway, I ground it, and realized that there were a lot of the chana dal bits that were not getting ground. Ammi always told me not to use too much water while grinding and although I followed her edict, somehow, the dough was not too firm.

At 2 pm, both kids were hungry and I went to the kitchen to fry the shaamis. I shaped four of them, and dropped two in quick succession in hot oil. Disaster. The shaamis first got stuck at the bottom of the kadai, then when I tried to pry them out, they disintegrated completely. There was nothing left to flip over and I had to drain the oil of all the small shaami bits in it.

SOS call to mom and she said that not everyone can get shaami right. ‘It takes practice’ was all she said.

‘Ok! But what do I do NOW?’ I asked.

Her tip was that I either mix egg white in it, or powdered ‘putane’(Fried gram dal). I did the latter and then took new balls of dough, and fried it. Luckily this time, nothing untoward happened. Believe me…it is one of the most distressing sights you can ever see… of shaami disintegrating in hot oil. Making the perfect shaami is like a test for making good pickle in some cultures I think. I probably failed miserably, but then, I’m not going to give up. Right now however, the shaami I made today will last one more day. The next time I make it, i’m going to be a little more careful. And I won’t take good shaami for granted ever again!!

Just a regular week!

So it was a regular week for me…nothing out of the ordinary happened, except that I have started my new job and I am really enjoying it! I went to office for the first two days and now I’m back to working from home.

At home, there are still a few things that need sorting out and I don’t know when we will get around to it. Now that life is somewhat settled, I think I can take up my writing again.

I started writing the new novel again, a couple of nights ago, and I am really enjoying it. The thing is…when I write, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I make absolute ’spur-of-the-moment’ decisions on making some character do something, and it surprises me too! So, I’m waiting myself to see what will happen to the protagonist!

I also updated my website and changed my home page. I don’t know how many of you have seen it now. I have to sit down and think of a way to make it more interesting. Maybe I’ll do it this weekend! Have a great weekend guys!

First Day at Work

Today was my first day at work, and it went pretty well! I had been introduced to the team members when I went in last week. Aparna is no longer there, so it feels strange but I guess we should be able to manage. The work is great, my colleagues are nice people and I enjoy writing here. What more could I ask? And yes…an update on what I call the earl…:D

We all call him LB, short for Lord Bradford. I wouldn’t want to talk much about LB or my new job much, because, he reads my blogs sometimes! He read the ‘Moving on’ blog…where I was wondering what to call him…gosh…was I mortified or what! And he’s going to have a good laugh if and when he reads this blog!

Work is great! Hope it continues that way!

Anniversary Blues

Ok so my 11th wedding anniversary was yesterday. It went pretty lame and I’m not in a mood to talk about why it was not so great. The only thing I decided that next year, inshallah, I’m NOT going to make a big deal out of the anniversary. I’m not even going to remind Mansoor about it. I’m going to spend it like any other ordinary day and if Mansoor wants, he can make a big deal out of it for a change.

The only saving grace was that by the end of the day, we resolved our problems and we didn’t have many arguments after that. That’s it for now.

Mr. Andaleeb Wajid???

Ever since my articles on computers, and keyboard shortcuts started getting published in Open Sesame, I have been getting emails from people who have read the articles, and liked them very much. Every single email reads, Dear Mr.Andaleeb Wajid.

I always forward the emails to Daksha who gets very excited because it shows that there are people out there who are reading what we’ve written. And we always rue that apparently not many kids are reading the articles, because I get mails from people who are well into their forties and once there was an email from a man who was 82! There could be a couple of reasons as to why kids are not responding. One - they may not have internet access….two - even if they have, their parents probably don’t let them create email IDs(yes…that is a possibility!), or three - they read the articles, but they’re just too lazy to respond. The worst possibility is that they aren’t reading the articles…Saboor never reads Open Sesame, even when I thrust it right under his nose! Whatever it is, I’m glad that someone is reading the articles, and people are responding. Now to just tell them that its not Mr. Andaleeb Wajid.

Sheesh! Just imagine what they’re probably thinking. Some bespectacled man, sitting at a computer, fervently typing out articles on keyboard shortcuts….and what is actually the scenario? Me, sitting with my laptop on my bed, with clothes strewn around me, baby powder lying here and towels lying there…and of course, Azhaan sleeping, because that is when I write!!

School starts tomorrow!

Saboor’s school starts tomorrow. I’m relieved like anything. Two months of having him at home all day is enough to turn your hair gray! Add a distended larynx to that…from screaming at him constantly. Whew!

I suppose Az and Rayaan will miss him most during the day. I’m waiting for the day I can pack off Az also to school! God…How I dread the time it will take for him to get acclimatized to school! Saboor cried from June, right till August! And only then he kind of settled down in his kindergarten. Az here is more clingy and I dread the hard time we’ll have when I enroll him in pre-school next year, inshallah! Some people think 2.5 years is too young for a child to go to preschool. Someone ask the harried mother!

And now I got to dig out that uniform and press it and everything….Sheesh! And what to make for lunch for him tomorrow…he always brings back whatever I send him almost untouched!

Got it right finally!

Yes! And to think that I didn’t even realize it would be so simple. I wanted to link my blog on my website directly. From days whenever I’ve had some spare time I’ve been scratching my head over it. But no matter what I did, I wasn’t able to do it. Before I continue, let me clarify. I am not a supremely technical person. I like technology, but code and other such things just fly over my head. So I have been a bit hesitant to look up the help feature in Yahoo Site Builder to check out where I was going wrong.

Today while putting Az to sleep I was just looking at the help section in Yahoo Site Builder (YSB). I had given up the possibility of bringing my blog directly to my website completely. Then I found out something about these things called iframes. I learnt that I could use them to accomplish what I wanted. After a little tweaking around with sizes and frames, I finally got it right!! It will be most weird if I put the link to my blog on my website here….:D

But I do want you guys to check out what I did…so go to www.andaleebwajid.com and click on Word Attack! You’re most likely to see this very post…:) Only the header will be the pink flower thingy thats there on my website….one more grouse about YSB…I don’t know how to change the theme of the pages…maybe some more investigation into YSB’s help ought to help me out too!

Back from Vellore

Got back from Vellore last night. It was tiring and we were all feeling a little under the weather. I put the kids to sleep and contemplated switching on the laptop but was too tired for it. I met a lot of people at the housewarming ceremony yesterday, but for some reason I sleepwalked through the entire episode yesterday. I didn’t really speak to anyone and these were people I was seeing after a long gap. Much later, in the car I was wondering what they would have thought of me. Its no wonder that people think I’m aloof and snobbish But it wasn’t something I did deliberately. I guess I just wasn’t up to socialising yesterday. I met a lot of people, but there was no one I could really connect with. At times, it feels like there’s only one person I can connect with, and the non-availability of that person at most times makes me feel a little out of sorts. Ok, I’m not going go too deep into that. Its something I have never blogged about and I didn’t intend to start now.

So, my Sunday passed by peacefully and passably. How was yours?