Author: Stephanie Booth

Pune de tous les jours en photos [fr]

Cet article a été initialement publié sur le blog de voyage ebookers.ch (voir l’original).

Quand je suis arrivée en Inde pour la première fois, j’ai été frappée par le fait que l’Inde quotidienne en ville n’avait pas grand chose à voir avec les photos que l’on peut voir dans le National Geographic. Alors bien sûr, les photographes du National Geographic sont excellents, et leurs photos aussi, et une belle photo, c’est aussi un peu par définition une photo qui fait rêver.

20040202_street_life_113

Ce choc initial m’a donné envie de photographier les choses qu’on ne photographie pas. Les choses banales, les rues banales, les choses auxquelles on s’habitue parce qu’elles font partie de la normalité. Les prises électriques et interrupteurs, par exemple.

La plupart des photos de mes trois premiers voyages en Inde ne sont pas en ligne. Mille dias et quelques films pour mon année passée ici, et une bonne dizaine de films pour les visites subséquentes. J’ai trié un bon bout, j’ai fait un album ou deux, mais scanner, c’est cher ou ça prend du temps. Ça viendra. Lors de mon dernier voyage, j’avais un appareil vidéo numérique avec moi. Beaucoup de séquences vidéo dont je n’ai encore rien fait, et une bonne pile de photos quand même (de qualité douteuse selon les critères d’aujourd’hui).

En 2011 (bonne année!), munie d’un appareil numérique et d’un iPhone 4 avec instagram, j’avoue que la tâche m’est grandement facilitée. Je sors rapidement et discrètement mon téléphone, je prends la photo, j’envoie, et hop, c’est sur Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook et tout le reste. Je ne me limite pas à mon iPhone, bien sûr, mais c’est un outil précieux.

Allez, je vous fais visiter un peu.

Un immeuble en construction:

20040202_street_life_125

Stand de fleurs à Laxmi Road (si seulement je pouvais vous faire sentir!):

Pune Laxmi Road at Night (India 2004) 2

Des amis étudiants qui jouent au tennis:

20040201_tennis05_2

Stand de légumes et de rickshaws:

20040202_street_life_131

La lessive des voisins du dessous:

Pune 47 Rickshaw Ride Back to IUCAA.jpg

La maison où je loge en ce moment, mon ami Shinde et un de ses chiens:

Pune 45 Rickshaw Ride Back to IUCAA.jpg

Vue typique lorsque l’on voyage en rickshaw, ici dans le campus de l’université (magnifiquement vert et calme):

Pune 44 Rickshaw Ride Back to IUCAA.jpg

Loto de nouvel-an:

Pune 14 IUCAA New Year.jpg

Nisha qui rajuste une de mes kameez (en sept ans, disons pudiquement que j’ai pris un peu d’épaisseur ;-)):

Pune at the Shindes 8.jpg

En train d’attendre un rickshaw (avec effet de filtre instagram):

Waiting for a rickshaw

Et pour terminer, vous sauterez bien dans le rickshaw durant deux minutes? Petite séquence vidéo 🙂 — on entend d’abord le conducteur demander si on va jusqu’à l’intérieur du campus (c’est le cas), et Shinde dire au chien de rester tranquille derrière nous (on rentrait de chez le vétérinaire). L’Inde, c’est aussi ça!

Nisha's Prawn Bhaji [en]

[fr] Crevettes!

Another recipe! Yes, we eat more than once a day here 🙂

Week-end delicacy: we had fish and prawns for lunch today. I’ll post the fish recipe separately. The prawn recipe is pretty easy if you get the prawns already prepared — otherwise it’s quite a lot of work taking the shells off, as I got to see.

  • remove heads, tails, and everything you’re not going to eat from the prawns
  • mix the prawns with lemon, salt, haldi, ginger-garlic paste; leave to sit for a few hours
  • in a flat pan (Nisha says to use a tava, not a non-stick pan!) fry curry leaves, onion (quite a lot) and a little salt (the prawns are already salted so not too much salt)

Getting ready for the prawns

  • add a chopped tomato (not too much because there is already lemon in the prawns) — let the onions brown a bit
  • add a teaspoon of tandoori chicken masala and one spoon of red chilli powder (Nisha tells me she’d put two in if it were just for her and Shinde, they like it spicy)
  • stir the prawns in and cook slowly (no water!) — stir once in a while but mostly leave it alone until the prawns are cooked.

Pune - Prawn Bhaji in Tawa

Eat with chapatis!

Giving Yesterday's Daal a Second Life [en]

[fr] Un petit truc pour ressusciter la daal de la veille en y ajoutant d'autres épices.

Here’s what Nisha did the other day to give a second life to leftover toor and mung daal. Take a small pan and fry the following in oil, then add to the daal:

  • cumin and mustard seeds
  • garlic (crushed cloves)
  • red chilli powder
  • coriander leaves
  • goda masala

Add the coriander leaves and goda masala near the end, you want to roast the rest for longer.

Nisha's Toor and Mung Daal [fr]

[en] Une des deux recettes de daal que je fais régulièrement.

So far, when I’ve been making daal in Switzerland, I’ve been doing either Aleika’s masoor daal recipe, or this one — which I’ve had for some time but never written up. Time to do it!

  • boil toor daal and a little mung (roughly a quarter) to a paste
  • add chopped tomatoes, mix and cook a bit
  • in a separate pan, heat oil, half a spoon of black mustard seeds, half a spoon of cumin seeds, curry leaves, 2 green chillies (chopped if I remember correctly)
  • add turmeric (a quarter spoon)
  • add to the daal (or add the daal to it, but be careful, it will spit! the daal is water and the oil is hot!)
  • add a teaspoon of salt or to taste, and lots of chopped coriander leaves

I usually make a lot and freeze it in handy portions — comfort food!

Nisha’s Famous Sweet Sheera [en]

[fr] Une autre recette de Nisha à base de rawa, sucrée cette fois.

Here’s another rawa dish of Nisha’s — a sweet one (see upma for the salty one). I really think I need to get myself a karahi, because pans with flat bottoms just don’t seem to cut it when it comes to making spices and stuff swim in oil or ghee. I’m just wondering if a karahi is compatible with an electric stove like the ones we have in Switzerland. Anybody know?

Nisha's famous sweet sheera for breakfast

  • heat quite a lot of ghee
  • add half a cup of rawa and mix them together — the rawa absorbs all the ghee
  • mix in half a small banana cut into little pieces, and mash everything up
  • add in cashew nuts (broken up), raisins, and pine nuts (I think they’re pine nuts)
  • heat half a cup of water and half a cup of milk separately, then add them in
  • heat for five minutes, add lots of sugar, and some green cardamom powder

Yummy!

Love the Chaos [en]

Shinde and I took a rickshaw across town today, and as soon as I was in the streets of Pune, I was gripped by this now-familiar feeling of elation I get when being on the road in India. I get it on the ride from Mumbai to Pune — despite the stink of the slums we drive through, I can’t stop smiling and want to jump up and down in my seat.

What I love here is the chaos, and nowhere is it more present than in the streets and traffic. Vehicles, roadside shops, painted signs all over the place. It’s ugly, but it has some kind of rickety beauty in my eyes.

Hard to say if it’s just because it represents a lot of what India is to me, and I have a bond to this place because I lived here, or if there is also a more personal dimension in play: being a pretty controlled (controlling, ouch!) and organized person, maybe I find some fundamental excitement in this seemingly disorderly sprawling mass of life.

Pune at the Shindes 1.jpgPart of this chaos: Flickr is acting up, so I can’t upload the photos and video sequence I took for you from the rickshaw. They’ll be online later, when I manage.

In the meantime, keep an eye on my “India snapshots” album (photos I’m taking on the road with my iPhone and instagram) and on the growing collection of Pune photos taken with my proper camera (which I’m still learning to use, so forgive some technical clumsiness).

Happy to See You, 2011 [en]

Let me say it clearly: just like Nicole’s did, my 2010 sucked raw eggs. I won’t go over the details of the bad stuff — suffice to say that losing Bagha was just the last of 2010’s rotten offerings to me, right when I was starting to feel back on my feet again and thinking that I was done with this crappy year.

There have been good things, though: more work opportunities than I can handle, finances back on track, good health, sailing, friends, a judo 2nd dan, better organization as a freelance professional, and of course… growth (gotta love them bad times, they make you grow like nothing else does).

Enough looking back. What’s important is what’s ahead. I don’t make resolutions, though I try to give my year a direction or objectives — a bit in the spirit of 6changes, though it’s not exactly that.

So, what’s to look forward to in 2011?

  • my holidays are set — stick to them and travel more with my friends (one of the advantages of being catless, it makes traveling simpler)
  • keep up the good job with my work, and free up more work-time for research, reading, writing, and generally fooling around online (my “food” if I want to continue being as good at what I do)
  • get an aquarium for eclau
  • look after my plants better, get orchids, grow veggies on my balcony (Jamie Oliver style)
  • more cooking and inviting people (good food, and nurturing my tribe)
  • go sailing, hiking, sing, and do judo

There will probably be more or less to this year ahead. But that’s what comes to my mind as I look forward.

Lunchtime: Nisha’s Sweet Aloo [en]

[fr] Encore une recette indienne de Nisha.

Another recipe! I already have one of Nisha’s aloo recipes from my last or previous visit (aloo = potato) — I have it in my notes but haven’t published it here yet — here’s another, more saucy one, and somewhat sweet (not that sweet, though).

So, here we go:

  • in enough oil, add mustard and cumin seeds, curry leaves, and salt (the mustard seeds start popping when you put them in if the oil is hot enough, and the curry leaves will fizz — give them a few seconds before continuing)
  • chopped onion: add and let it soften
  • then, add red chili powder (quite a bit — Nisha added a teaspoon and a half for two smallish potatoes… a good handful when chopped up), garlic/ginger paste (Nisha liked my idea of freezing it in an ice-cube tray), coriander powder, and goda masala
  • add in the potatoes, a tomato, enough water, and cook
  • after a while add in some jaggery or sugar

Goda masala, which I’m discovering for good today, is a typically Maharashtrian spice mixture. There are of course multiple variations if you want to make your own (see one, two, three for starters). I’m going to buy some to bring back (hear that, Raph?)

Here’s the dish, somewhere in the middle of the cooking process:

Cooking

And jaggery, if you’d never seen it.

Weird sweet thing Nisha doesn't know the name of

Bon appétit!

Breakfast of the Day: Nisha’s Upma [en]

[fr] Recette de l'upma de Nisha (petit-déjeûner indien).

I promised myself I would steal all of Nisha’s recipes during this trip. Here’s the first one: her upma. This is what it looks like:

Nisha's upma for breakfast

And here’s how she made it:

  • heat enough oil in a karahi (maybe I should get one? I wonder if it would play nice with my electric stove)
  • throw in mustard seeds, cumin seeds (half a spoon or a spoon each), curry leaves (give those 15 seconds before continuing), a spoonful of urad (urid) daal (you can replace the daal with whole peanuts) — let the daal go brown
  • add a green chili broken in half, onion, salt, and let the onion soften for a bit
  • add two small cups of water, chopped coriander leaves, a little sugar, and bring to a boil
  • add rava (roast it when you buy it before storing it in an air-tight container), turn the heat off, stir well, and let it sit for a few minutes
  • remove chili and fluff it up before serving

You’ll have to figure out the exact quantities through trial and error 🙂

Enjoy!

On Grief and Losing Bagha [en]

I’m in India. I’m in Pune. I’m in IUCAA. I’m where Bagha was born, where I started to love him. It’s also the place where I spent a short year with Aleika, Somak and Akirno, and the Shindes, and all the other people and beasts who were part of my Indian world. That world is gone forever.

So as I grieve for my cat, I also grieve for these other pieces of my life which are lost and gone, never to return. Being here makes it all the more raw — also because I’m so happy to be here.

Pause à l'eclau 7

I’m still terribly sad about losing Bagha. I’ve been crying every day since he died. I didn’t have much time to myself between packing and traveling and arriving here, and it’s all been piling up, because I’ve been forgetting. Completely forgetting, because there has been so much positive excitement these last two days.

But now I’ve been remembering. Remembering that I miss Bagha not because I left him at home to go on a trip, but because he is gone, gone, gone. And it hurts like hell.

I don’t believe in any afterlife. I don’t believe in any spirit hanging around. There is no more Bagha, except in our photographs, our memories, and the changes he might have brought around in our lives. In mine, in any case.

I hinted that I would be telling you more about what I’m going through and learning these days. I actually started writing about what I was discovering about grief the other day, but got lost somewhere in the middle.

Grief is a weird state: it goes back and forth, up and down.

The first days after Bagha’s death, I would find myself going from a kind of numbness in which I’d “forgotten” he was dead to the horrible realization it was true even though I “couldn’t believe it”, and then devastating sadness in which my world seemed to have come to an end, and from which I had the feeling I would never emerge. And back out and back in again.

I would wake up crying in the morning and go to sleep crying at night. I had no trouble sleeping, however, to my surprise: I discovered that it is not sadness but anxiety which keeps one awake all night, mind spinning, too wired to slow down one’s thoughts enough to fade into sleep. For me, at least, grief seems to tire me out.

I put most of his things away over the first few days. Not in an attempt to make all traces of his presence disappear — more as a way to try and accept that these bowls, pieces of string and old expired meds would not be needed anymore. It took me a long time (until my imminent departure, actually) to touch his spot on my desk, though: I could still see the shape of his body on the pillow, and feel myself hanging on to this very physical trace of him.

Cleaning the flat was very hard. Tidying up. Removing the subtle remains of his presence in my life. The first time I hoovered without him trying to run out of the flat. The first time I changed the sheets without him trying to get under them. The first time I washed things in the bathtub without having to worry about him drinking the soapy water.

That cat was everywhere, all along my days. Watching TV: a break comes up, where’s the cat? I get up from what I’m doing, “to find the cat”. All these reflexes which are now meaningless.

My one consolation right now is that my grief is simple. I did everything right with this cat. He was a wonderful pet. I have no regrets. He lived a long life (14 years is not exceptional, but as Aleika put it, he probably outlived all of his litter-mates by at least 8 years) and even died pretty well (if one can die “well”). I don’t feel guilty, there’s nobody to be mad at, I knew he was going to die someday, and I treasured the time I had with him, specially these last few years.

It doesn’t make things easy, but it makes them simple. Even when it hurts as much as it does right now, I know that what I’m going through is normal, and that it will get better in time and tears, and that I will probably be ready at some point for new feline companionship.

So here it is: the one pain I’ve spent my whole life being so afraid of. I’m in it, it’s dreadful, but I’m still alive and happy to be. I have plans, I want to do things, I laugh and I smile. Life goes on, it really does, I know it for good now.

It hurts, but it goes on.