If you have ever been to Qutub Minar, you must have noticed this lonely structure across the road. Shrouded in the mystery of its own past, this is the tomb of ‘Akbar’ Azim Khan.

Although, there is not much written about him, but what we know, tells us that he was a general in the army of Mughal emperor Jalaaluddin Muhammed Akbar (the Great). After serving Akbar for many years with his valour and loyalty, Azim was awarded the title ‘Akbar’ (the magnificent) by the emperor himself.

But after the emperor died of dysentery in 1605, Azim gave up his rank in the royal court (after serving Jehangir for a few years), and arrived in Delhi to follow Hazrat Nizamuddin’s teachings of ‘Chishtiya’ Sufism. From then he began on his path of spiritual enlightenment and gave up his rich and luxurious lifestyle. And after several years of following the path of Hazrat Nizamuddin, Azim became a sage for the people. The locals came to him looking for guidance. Soon, he garnered a flock of his own devotees who would look upto him as a Sufi Saint. But Azim never wanted this popularity, and so he decided to go and live at a place where seldom anyone would come and find him. This was the tomb that we see today. Constructed on a steep hill, Azim wanted his home/tomb to be less accessible, so that he could live in peace (alone). Surrounded by pointy and smooth rocks and shrubbery, sharp enough to give you hundreds of paper cuts, this structure served Azim just as well how he hoped.

After his death, the structure remained empty and after the British colonisation, the Sahebs (Englishmen) used this place as a hang out spot, where they would trek to the tomb, party and spend the night, looking over the magnificent view.

After independence, the tomb fell under the jurisdiction of ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) and was restored moderately. The graves were repaired and the sharp rocks were cut into wide steps that now lead to a safe and convenient passage to this tomb from the road. The tomb is now easily accessible to anyone and has no guard or supervisor, but you still wont find many visitors here. As if Azim is still watching his beloved abode and wants it to stay just how he liked it — isolated from the world.

So next time, you see this structure from the road, just think of this powerful general who turned his back on the world and became a hermit.

 

Image: The Glass

Once a troubled farmer went to a sage and complained, "Please help me, I have a really small hut that hardly accommodates me and my family, and now my in laws want to come and live with us. What can I do ?"

Sage asked, "How many cattle do you have?"

"5 Goats, 1 Cow and 2 Oxen.", the farmer replied.
"Bring the Goats and Cow inside your hut with your family and come back after a week." the Sage replied and the farmer left, baffled.
 
The farmer came back the following week and now he looked even more tensed than before.

"How is it going?", the Sage asked him.
Upset, the farmer replied, "Its not good at all. Its so crowded and noisy inside now. I cant even hear myself thinking, let alone my wife's complaints."

"Bring your Oxen inside the hut too and come back after a week." said the Sage. The farmer was dumbstruck, but he knew about the sage's reputation and so left without saying anything.
Week later, the farmer came with dark circles under his eyes."What are you doing to me?" he yelled at the Sage. "My in laws are coming tomorrow and my wife is going crazy everyday. My life is a hell now. Its like living in a zoo."

The sage calmly answered, "Go back, send the animals out and come back after a week."

The farmer left with a raging temper, and came back after a week. But this time, he looked calm and serene. The Sage looked at him, smiled and asked, "How are the things at home now?"

The farmer oozed with joy, "Wonderful! I never knew my hut was so big. After I sent all the animals out, my house looked enormous. My in laws are living with me now but I hardly notice them. Me and my wife are really happy now."


The Sage smiled and said, "As long as you see the challenges of your life as a problem, you will suffer. The only thing that makes you suffer is not the event itself, but your perception about the event. Nothing on the outside can make you suffer; suffering comes from within and so does inner peace."

When I first moved to Delhi, I was introduced to the city's favorite evening snack Momo.

Till date this little packet of deliciousness does not seize to surprise me.

There is so much you can do with it, veg, non-veg, steamed, fried or grilled. It is delicious every which way.

I have had momos at all the places famous for momos in Delhi, from Kamla Nagar to Chanakya Puri and Brahmaputra market in NOIDA.  However my favorite plate comes from a very small street in Gurgaon. This guy has the juiciest filling and the thinnest cover that makes the momo much more succulent. I cannot forget the taste but living in noth dist., do not get much chance to go and eat my fav snack when I crave for it.

So I decided to make some at home. After a few trials and errors I finally got the mojo and got the perfect plate of momos home made.

Here is my recipe

For the dough

Maida – 1 cup

Water – ½ cup

For the filling

Cabbage – ½ head grated/minced

Peas – ½ cup minced

Ginger – ½ inch grated
Oil - 1 tsp

Salt and pepper to taste.

To Boil/Steam
Water - 1ltr
Oil - 2 tbsp

Method

1.       Kneed a soft dough with Maida and water and keep aside to rest

2.       Grate or mince cabbage, peas and ginger

3.       Heat oil in a frying pan

4.       Add the minced veggies and seasoning and stir till veggies loose some moisture.

5.       Let the stuffing mixture cool down to room temperature.

6.       Divide dough into 4 parts and roll out a very thin roti with help of little dusting of Maida.

1.       Cut out little puries from this roti.

2.       Fill each puri with small amount of filling and seal whichever way you like it.

3.       The momos are ready to cook

4.       Boil about 1 ltr water in a saucepan and add 2 tbsp oil to it. Bring it to a rolling boil.

5.       Put all these in the boiling water and boil for 5 minutes on high flame.

6.       Take out of the water and rest on a mesh/ strainer for a minute and get ready to hog. 

I am a foodie in all aspects. I love to eat good food and hence I love to cook. Since I was a little girl, I am always happy in the kitchen. Nothing fascinates me more than a beautiful kitchen and a shelf full of different gourmet cakes and pastries in a bakery. So I learned baking.

I've been baking for quite some time and think that I have mastered my cakes, with no cracks on top, even rising and beautiful sponge. Having said that, this also gets to my head sometimes. In one such incident I registered myself for a gourmet baking contest. Off course I didn't win and that was clear after looking at the other entries for the contest.

However I still stand by my creation. It was very old fashioned, rustic yet amazingly delicious.

Here is the recipe for anyone who is interested in trying this one out.

Ingredients:

Carrot Cake

Eggs - 2

Flour - 1 cup

Sugar - 1 cup (Powdered)

Carrot - 1 cup

Oil - ½ cup

Baking soda - 1 tsp

Baking powder - 1 tsp

Salt - ¼ tsp

Cinnamon Powder – 1tsp

Frosting:

Butter – ½ cup (softened at room temperature)

Cream Cheese – 85 grams (Followed Priyanka Sirohi's recipe)

Almond extract – 1 tsp

Icing Sugar – 3 ¾ cup

Pistachios (roasted, salted) – 50 grams (crushed)

Method:

Cake:

1. Separate the yolks from egg white.

2. Mix egg yolks and sugar and cream them together till the sugar dissolves.

3. Slowly mix the oil in this mixture till well incorporated.

4. Mix all dry ingredients together and sift a couple of times. 

5. Slowly incorporate all dry ingredients into the yolk mixture. 1/3 dry ingredients at a time works for me. Mix into a loose batter.

6. The eggs I used were large and so the liquid was enough for all the dry ingredients. If you find it too dry use some milk at room temperature to loosen up the mixture. 

7. Grease a 9'' cake tin with some oil and dust some flour. Put a parchment or cake liner on the bottom of this pan.

8. Start preheating your oven at 180 degrees Celsius.

9. Beat egg white in a separate bowl until soft peaks are formed. If possible use a hand whisk instead of electric beater. That will give you smaller air bubbles and so no big air pockets in the finished cake.

10. Fold the whites into the flour mixture again 1/3 of the whites at a time.

11. Add carrots to the cake mix.

12. Pour the mix into the prepared tin slowly to remove any big air bubbles from the mix.

13. Tap the tin gently on the counter top to make sure any remaining big bubbles are removed.

14. Bake for 45 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. If a knife poked in the center comes out clean its done

15. Leave it out to cool down completely.

Frosting:

1. Mix Butter and Sugar together till the mixture is smooth and creamy.

2. Add almond extract and cream cheese and mix till its smooth and shiny.

3. Put the frosting on top of your cake that has cooled completely and smooth with a knife or spatula.

4. Coat the top with crushed salted Pistachios.

Here is the original recipe and the one above is a little twist on the original one.

I know I come across as a diehard Romantic and so this day is special to me.

My very first memory of Valentine’s Day is exchanging gifts with my siblings and cousins to show affection. We then grew up and understood that you really do not need a day to celebrate affection. But to this day I enjoy the time around Valentine’s Day and wait for this one. I am madly in love with my Husband and he reciprocates my love. However in our everyday routines we end up wanting to do something special for each other and just postponing it for one thing or other.

But days like our Birthdays, Anniversary and Valentine's give us the reason enough to go out of the way, bend our routine and do that something special for each other.

I am sure this is the case with most couples and I am talking not just for married ones but also the ones who have just started their Journey. Married or not all we wants is to spend a little more time with our Mate.

Days like Valentine's gives the perfect opportunity to show how much you can go out of the way to accommodate a loved one.  There are so many days we spend seeing people hating and killing each other and there is just one for love.

Then you come across moral police like the Hindu Mahasabha which says that couples found celebrating the 'foreign festival' in public will face a variety of punishments. While a prompt Arya Samaj wedding will be forced on Hindu couples, inter-faith partners will have to sit through a 'shuddhikaran' (purification) ritual.

"We don't know who you are but we'll find you and we'll marry you off." ~ Hindu Mahasabha
Picture: Swapnil Narendra

Now, if this is a 'foreign festival', then so is Mother's Day, Father's Day, Women's Day and so many other days. And since when India stopped celebrating the differences and diversities and accepting what did not belong here originally. I mean Hindi as a language has adapted many words from foreign languages (remember the components of Hindi; Tatsam, Tadbhav, Deshaj and Videshi?).

I am a staunch Hindu. I mean as Hindu as one can be. Mahabharat has been my favorite book since I was 10. Krishna for me is the Ideal Hindu Man. He never married Radha and yet their story is the holiest love story in our culture and they dated and did Raasleela.

The statements like the above from Hindu Mahasabha make angry. I as a Hindu never approved of their narrow minded actions. Why humiliate me by using the word Hindu for your narrow little obscured society. Being Hindu is being progressive and tolerant. The main philosophy behind the religion is “to each his own”, probably that is why we have 83 crore deities.

No one can stop me from celebrating what I want to celebrate. And to Hindu Mahasabha if you have problems with all things western think a million times before you take any of your family members to a hospital next time as Alopathy is a foreign form of medicine. And think before you switch on the light at night as electricity was not invented in India. 

Promises are meant to be broken. That is what happened to the promise I made to myself 4 years ago.
I did not write. Not because I did not have things to share but because I was playing, "too busy to write".

Now when I read the last articles I am sort of filled with Joy and pride that I recognized my gem in time and did not let him slip by.
I am married to "My best friend" and am a mother of our 2 year old. And they both are quite a handful.

We travel a lot and stay home together and it’s blissful. But things were not the same always. We had to work towards it.

Quitting Job is always a difficult decision but we had a plan. My son needed me so I wanted to be home all the time and my husband was working on some good writing projects. But things collapsed when his producers decided to shut the project.

By this time staying at home also started getting the better of me. I was working for 8 years and now suddenly all I am doing at home is cooking, cleaning and nursing. I was doing all this when I was working too but now it all just seem like taking up all my day. I was home bound for 6 months and all this started wearing me out .

So we decided to gear up and take some Free Lance Projects that were related to our hobbies like writing, travelling, photography and food. That turned all that negativity and frustration around.

Now I finish all my work in the grove as I would if I had to go to work. My sons therapy takes about and 60 to 90 minutes at times. Now this leaves a whole lot of time to sit, relax and think and experiment.

It gave me some me time that I was missing on for years. I am learning baking. I tried my hands on some old dishes that my Grand Mother use to make for us. That is so refreshing and reviving.

Through this blog I want to share my life and experiences and experiments with my friends and anyone who takes time out to read this log for lots of love and for a wonderfully fulfilling life.