rOsOgOlO

One favourite sweet dish of mine is the Bengali Rosogola. Its a milk sweet which cant let your mouth go unwatered . You do not be a culinary expert to know abt this dish. The first time I had tasted this was when Banerjee aunty gave us the dish for Durga Pooja . I was just 4 then . Aunty had come back from Calcutta ( now Kolkotta ), she gave us a tin of Rosogollas . Aunty had a tough time convincing Young Madhu that this was not made of egg and I could eat it which would not make me a Non Vegetarian. Amma too had a great part in making me eat this .
The first golla went into my mouth then amma's challenged polled across . She could not let me stop eating the remaining of the gollas. it was just amrit ...Aunty promised me that she would get me a tin everytime she came back from Kolkotta. But I am not sure if she ever kept her promise . My tryst with Rosogolla had just begun .
Scene 2 , Calcutta to Sindri , Black Diamond express , morning 6:00 Am . We were travelling to Sindri . I was just spell bound to see the bengali babus taking Rosogullas for breakfast . Sweets for Breakfast was just not acceptable to me . It could only be a Dessert. It started to sink in only then why the dish is more a Bengali dish .
SOmetimes I used to ponder why bengali people's accent had a lot of O's . For example , "Chakravarthy" was "chokroborty", etc . Could it because of eating of the O shaped Rosogollas . The bengali girls are sweet girls probably for same reason of eating rosogollas in the morning . I should start advising my Tamil girl friends to do the same thing for them to get sweeter .
Recently I read an article in TOI , saying this is an Oriya dish and not a bengali dish. This I would say is patent violation. All these years Rosogollas have gone synonymous to bengalis . One fine day a guy does some arbit research and publishes some article on which falsifies the the birth of Rosogolla.
Who cares about the birth of Rosogollas as long as its a sweet dish and keeps people happy . Would you care ?

Madhu
- Mouth watered thinking abt Roshogollas

Madame Prez

As I write this post India should be proud to have its first woman president , Madame Prathibha singh Patil . Its such a great development in India that even developed countries like US cant boast about .
I have been seeing people talk about equality in gender, caste ,creed etc . Having been born and brought up in a cosmopolitan place like kalpakkam, i have seen that educated ( Not literates ) people are always broad minded . They dont care all these . They just care for good humanity .
I should also bring to a point that as we got our Prathibha singhji , we also see a tug of War between another able police office Crane Bedi and the system. Here the system has won over her and she couldnt get to the post of Delhi Police Commisioner even after being the senior most .
I just remember a small incident even in my life . In my 12 th Std , we had a school election where my (she) class mate won over my ( he ) classmate . We ( the Hez) couldnt just accept that we lost to a She. We did a lot of pranks to digest the loss . if i think backof it I feel ,How silly of us .
Though we fight for reservations for ladies , the system( including me) is just hypocratic . Are we ?


Cheers,
Madhu

Kalyani---

Kalyani if I remember correctly is of 65 th Mela. The arohanam and avarohanam goes as
S R2 G3 M2 P D2 N3 S
S N3 D2 P M2 G3 R2 S
Obviously the speciality of Kalyani is the Madhyamam. We wouldnt have missed kalyani and we cant afford to miss this sampoorna ragam. This is one ragam any singer would prefer to do a Ragam Thanam Pallavi (RTP) in his concert . If you have even learnt a few geethams or varnams, I challenge that you would have learnt " Vanajakshi"..
Ilayaraja, one of the greatest musicians of our era has been the best exponent of this raagam in film songs. If a listener has not listened to "Amma endru azhaikadha" - ( Mannan) the I am sure he has not listened to Tamil songs at all . Illayaraja has composed innumerable songs in Kalyani .
Some of them are "Sundari Kannal oru seithi - Dalapathi" ," Janani Janani - Thaye Mookambika" a small piece in Sethu , I think it starts as "Sharanam bhava", "Nirpathuvae nadapathuvae "These are some of the gems I could remember just like that. There are many more . I just have question raja ...Why do you like Kal + Aani ?

Madhu