Let go

I read it somewhere, in 9 out of 10 times, happiness is synonymous to "letting go". It's time to be happier.

Perhaps it is the valentine day after effect, of seeing too much of reds and pinks. Or just that I'm having the withdrawal symptoms of not having talked to you for over 15 days. Not that we talked everyday, but I knew you were always around. A text, call, ping or DM away. Now, you are not.

You have always known I've loved you. And despite the fact that you never shared similar feelings, you even lead me on. I knew this would leave me heartbroken, but you were the best friend I've ever had. I wanted to cling on to you, because it just felt if you're around, everything will be all right.

But now, after so many years of knowing you, for the first time, I have decided to let go. I revoke the power I had granted you to control my happiness. I know it is going to be tough for me, and that it does not matter to you, but, I'm sure I'm giving myself more chances to be happy.

I will stop looking for you in every person I meet.

But I still love you, will always do.

Yaksha Prashna

Disclaimer: No offence meant, yo!

@Baba4U

stick missing, urgently need to find it, pls RT.

@YoYudi

a big shoutout to @B4Bheem, @Arjun, @Sahdevrocks and @Lukan #comeoffraa, lets go find @Baba4U's stick.

@Sahdevrocks has checked into random lake in the jungle @4sq.com/paani with the bros.

@Sahdevrocks

Dude, a talking crane! FTW! says water poisonous, can't drink if i don't answer questions. #OK

@kkraainn

in reply to @Sahdevrocks dude, i'm the talking crane, i'll crapblck you. Answer now or die.

@Lukan

So @Sahdevrocks can predict future, but can't find water. I'll have to fetch water and bro, both.

<@kkraainn favourited it>

@Arjun

Looks like those twins have disappeared into thin air, every time I end up working for them. pffft.

@B4Bheem

+1 RT @Arjun: Looks like those twins have disappeared into thin air, everytime I end up working for them. pffft.

@kkraainn

*rubs hands gleefully* oh wait, i'm a bird.

@YoYudi

@B4Bheem @Arjun @Sahdevrocks @Lukan wtf, bros, where are you? what's taking you so long to bring water?

@YoYudi checks in to random lake in jungle @4sq/water

@kkraainn

Welcome my dear @YoYudi, answer questions i post on @IAmYaksha and first prize, you can get any *one* of your 4 crapblcked brothers unblocked.

@YoYudi

Dafaq! What sorcery is this! I know *everything* ask.

@IAmYaksha

How does a man become secure?

@YoYudi

Use https.

@IAmYaksha

Aapne pehla padaav paar kar liya hai. Aage badhte hai, How does man become wise?

@YoYudi

Get him married to a woman named Varsha. He will become Vice Versa. #Lulz

@IAmYaksha

ROFL. Okay, moving on, What is the best for farmers?

@YoYudi

No income tax on agricultural income. \m/

@IAmYaksha

What is the world made up of?

@YoYudi

Soul. #Profound

@IAmYaksha

What is righteousness?

@YoYudi

Righteousness or Riotousness #YouPrefer cc @narendramodi

@IAmYaksha

What does one who has many friends get?

@YoYudi

He ain't #foreveralone

@IAmYaksha

LOL! Dude, you're awesome. Which one of your brothers should I unblock?

@YoYudi

Y U NO UNBLOCK @Lukan?

@IAmYaksha

why him? he's kinda useless, no? @Arjun is so hot. #Gay4Arjun

@YoYudi

Dude, so @ArjunsMamma (yeah, he is her favourite too) has me alive, but @Mmmadri's both sons are blocked. So.

@IAmYaksha

#AapBholeHai Ok, fiiine, cos you gave awesome answers to my questions, I'm gonna unblock all of them.

-The End-

(idea came out of conversation with @mishrashiv one fine evening. .. the Yaksha Prashna details were obtained from here. )

My Tryst With Google Maps

I have a phenomenal sense of direction. Sometimes I tell people I love to explore new routes, the reality is that I sometimes, very confidently, take wrong turns.

Look, it is not my fault the blue house suddenly has blinding yellow walls.

So while an outing to this resort some 90 kms from Ahmedabad was planned, I was quite confident that I'll be able to manage without any assistance. I also looked up Google maps the night before, just to see how to exit the city.

Hmm. All set, so we exit from this industrial area, touch the national highway from there and hop on to the expressway and in less than an hour, we'll be there. Of course, that is how I had imagined it to be.

Our departure was delayed by some unplanned visits to some relatives place and so instead of the intended 11:30, we ended up leaving an hour late. Hmm. So, what happens is, I take a turn before the intended one so that we could, well, avoid the busy crossroads traffic. That led us to the wonderful view of a huge mount of garbage collected from Ahmedabad over the years. Yeah. Fascinating place. The fine texture of plastic sticking out from blackish brown unidentifiable substance. Aah, and the wonderful, wonderful smell. We were caught in a catch 22 situation - whether to roll down the window and let the fresh air come in or keep the ac on and die of carbon monoxide poisoning while driving. (ah, maybe I'm having this headache/feverish feel right now because of that!!)

Anyway, the 1 km stretch got over soon and we reached the roundabout which said, go straight for Delhi/Jaipur and left for Ahmedabad - Vadodara Expressway. Aah, the wonders. Followed the directions to the T. But, ended up reaching the National Highway instead of the Expressway. I kept waiting for the expressway to turn up till I saw the board, "welcome to Kheda". (our route was - Ahmedabad - Kheda - Nadiad - Anand). Okay, then. We had missed the Expressway.

On reaching Nadiad, we were left clueless. We entered the city, for god knows what reason (well, technically, there was no other road, we *had* to enter the city) but there was no damned direction on which way to Anand. Immediately, 3 people furiously turned on Google maps. Sister thought it would be a good idea to ask the locals. Of course, the locals appeared drunk in the morning because they kept showing us way back to Ahmedabad instead of Anand. Okay, then. We decided Google maps are more reliable. Google Maps showed us the way, and the landmark given was "Paras Cinema". (please Google map Paras Cinema, NH 8) Since it kept showing over and over in the directions, bro in law exclaimed, this Paras Cinema must be some bigass, hard to miss landmark. Of course, when we did reach it, we realised we crossed it when the blue dot on route showed us going past it. We missed the landmark, because in place of the landmark was an old abandoned building where an older uncle was sitting on a rickety chair. I had even joked, 'this must be Paras cinema' - wish i'd asked for something else. Sigh.

Anyway, coming back, we reached Anand, and kept going in circles. I was on the right road, in opposite direction. So, well, I bloody could not find it. Ah, well, 2 hours of trouble later, we finally did reach the resort and had some good food, and since we were expecting guests, we had to rush home quickly.

On our way back, I was determined to go on the National Expressway. All Google mapped - i announced, there are three roads, which go parallel, first exit is state highway, second is national highway and third is expressway. don't ask me to take any other exits, i said. All confident.

We crossed state highway and then something which i thought was national highway, and to my horror, we were on a bloody flyover which went above the national expressway. what the fuck. how are we supposed to get on the expressway? jump off the bridge?? GOOGLE MAP? Y U NO SHOW ITS A BLOODY FLYOVER? AND NOT AN ENTRYPOINT?

And then, last week, I was in Bangalore, visiting the sister. Sister's sense of direction in bangalore is phenomenal. I think she follows the North Star or something to navigate her way, because, dude, she can go lost even on a straight line. (heh, I hope she doesn't read this). Anyway, so I had one day to myself, and sis told me she'll take the bus to the work and handed over the car keys to me. I was going to lalbaug (for the flower show, dude, I *LOVE* flowers) and meeting a few friends later. So instead of haggling with ricky martins of bangalore, taking the car was better.

Now, here I have clear directions to lalbaug, but after that, i'm on my own. Once it was over, I looked up directions from lalbaug to MG Road. Very clear directions. Except. Wait, let me put up a screenshot.

Click on the image to see it clearly. The purple route is the route I was suggested by Google Maps, Green is the one I took and red is the one I should've taken. Dude, I went around the friggin garden more than 4 times that day.

Google Maps should totally change its name to Troll Maps.

Tough Cookie

Lately I've discovered the joy of baking.

I started out with a disastrous attempt at chocolate chip cake, which tasted more like burnt chocolate pieces in baked floury brown coloured something a few months back, and have now turned into a more confident baker, having successfully made choco lava cake with awesome molten chocolate oozing out and cookies.

There are thousands of recipes available online for the eggless cookies and cakes, and it would not make much sense if i were to write one more recipe. But one annoying thing i found in such recipe was no one told me where i could go wrong. or what do i do if the dough is not firm enough? and if they said, they've tweaked the recipe a bit, they never mentioned how they tweaked it? or if they're giving tweaked recipe, which was the original? what nonsense, i say. not everyone here knows how to bake. if we knew, we wouldn't be looking at your damned recipe, no?

So i'll talk about my three attempts at cookies, and how differently they turned up. First the ingredients. This was mostly passed on to me by DesiKhichdi

1 measure butter (i used regular amul butter, you could use white butter)
2 measure all purpose flour (today i substituted this with whole wheat flour)
1/2 measure cocoa powder (add more if you like more chocolatey)
1 measure sugar (i used brown sugar for chocolate ones and regular white granulated for other cookies)
1/2 spoon baking powder

now, what i did was, i reduced butter quantity. i used about 70 percent of required quantity. instead of 2 measure flour, i used little over 1.5 measure. and sugar too, i used about 70 percent of said quantity.

Method

Mix butter and sugar together. Sift the flour and baking powder 2-3 times and cocoa powder (if you are making chocolate cookies) Mix all ingredients to make a firm dough. if you are making plain cookies, don't add cocoa powder, and add 2-3 drops of vanilla essence instead) If you have used less butter like me, you may need to use some 3-4 spoon of milk to make the dough firm.

Now put the dough in cling wrap or ziplock bag and refrigerate it for 30 mins. Roll the dough.. about 1/2 cm thick. cut with cookie cutter and bake them. Now since i used microwave with convection option, i'll tell you the temperature there - 200 degrees for 15 mins.

The first time i made, the dough was too soft, and the cookies spread :| and i kept it for 40 minutes because, i read everywhere 40 minutes. Well, the OTG takes 40 minutes, but microwave takes lesser time. The cookies were charred and there was no way to eat them. I was disheartened. Also, since the dough was so soft, i could not even cut it properly. But then i looked up some youtube videos, and i realised, if you couldn't roll the cookies, you could just make small rolls of the dough and put it at some distance in the tray and eventually, it will spread itself because of the heat and well, it will take a proper round shape of a cookie. this happens when the butter is more in the dough.

in my second attempt, i used less butter, and some 3-4 spoon milk to knead the dough. Hence, the dough was firmer, and i was able to roll it properly. and was also able to cut the cookie properly. Yeah, my Dabangg cookies :-) I kept them in for 10 mins, but later realised they could do with 3-4 mins more, and about 15 minutes was the time required in my oven. You may want to have a trial and error with this.




In my third attempt, my mom said she wanted to taste plain cookies, without any chocolate flavour (i know, how can anyone choose anything else over chocolate) so this time, i used whole wheat flour, white granulated sugar and vanilla essence (i may have put in more than 2-3 drops because i almost dropped the bottle, so they smell very vanilla-ey, but 2-3 drops should be good) 15 minutes of baking later, i felt the cookies didn't look as brown as i'd like them to be. so i put them in for 5 more minutes, and came out just perfect :)

I'm not a cooking expert, and so I am not very sure of substitutes of ingredients, and i do look up the internet quite often for all my queries. You may want to look up other places before you try them out!


At the end of it, I was very happy with the outcome. My mother was never into baking and is a bit possessive about anyone cooking in her kitchen. But over past few months, she has come to let go of her inhibitions and is being supportive in my cooking adventures. The plain cookies were her 'farmaish' :-) I was really happy when she asked me to bake them, almost served as a seal that she not only trusts me with cooking, but likes it also. When your mother appreciates food cooked by you, it gives you a tremendous high. :-)

Oh, and next on her wishlist is an apple pie. :-)