DIY – garden chair
In 2004, I bought a folding chair. That was the only piece of furniture you could sit on other than the bed in my single room studio-ish place. It survived through multiple moves; the cushion was torn, the paint faded, but I still kept it. Now that I have a…
Balcony Garden – Flowering plants
When I first started my garden, it was only flowers. I had a few pots I picked up from the nursery, with the plants still in them. Then it so happened that I planted one red amaranthus plant in one of those pots. It was a puny plant when I…
Kerala Mutton Stew
Stew or "ishtu" is a breakfast favourite in Kerala. Usually made with potatoes and carrot, these savoury side dish has the distinct taste of pepper and coconut milk. Stew is made with chicken or mutton as well, and goes well with puttu, noolpuutu, appam and neipathal among others. My mother…
Balcony Garden – Bitter gourd flowers
I have a very messy garden going on in my two tiny balconies. I have two pots of curry tree and a moringa as permanent fixture, even though the moringa plant I have now is my third one. When the moringa grows too big for my balcony, I usually take…
Beau Sabreur – P.C. Wren
Back in the day, I had every intention of being a Legionnaire. The country, colour and gender were all wrong, but then I would be a master of disguise of course. Today I read the sequel to Beau Geste, and I am afraid I do not remember Hank and Bud…
The Archangel Project – CS Graham
So I am back to pop fiction with CS Graham's 'The Archangel Project'. It is a fast paced book. The protagonists are October Guinness and Jax Alexander, and I believe there are other books with them in it too. This looks like the first one though. So we have a…
The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great – Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding is a favourite author. I read Tom Jones sometime in my early youth and it was a revelation. Till then I assumed old English books were going to be prim and proper. Heroes were going to be heroes in the traditional sense. Tom Jones, with his eye for…
The Bad Girl – Mario Vargas Llosa
I have had this novel for a couple of years, but never got around to reading it in my reading slump. Being somewhat outdated about world literature, I hadn't heard of the author till he won the Nobel price. I picked it up mainly because of that. Still, I didn't…
Soilless Gardening – Tomato forest in trays
Just outside my bedroom window is what I call my tomato forest. It started out as this. Shallow trays filled with cocopeat and compost. It was only supposed to be for herbs and leaves and the like. I just happened to have four types of tomatoes at the moment, so…
Punathil Kunjabdulla 1940-2017
Marunnu was the first grown up novel I read. I was quite young when it was serialised in Mathrubhumi weekly and it must have been really grown up for me, but I did love to read it. Then later I was told my great-grandfather was mentioned in Smarakasilakal, so off…