Blue Moon of Food Network

"Are you ready to see your restaurant? Didn’t I tell you that I’d give you a second chance? Here is your second chance. Open your eyes.” And the restaurant owner and the family opens their eyes, and they scream in excitement.

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Thisis a usual climactic moment from the top show in the Food Network, Restaurant Impossible. A drop of tear appears even in the viewers’ eyes at this peak emotional moment. Next is the ritual of introducing the designer and builder to the owner. After this done, the chef, goes into a jovial carnival of sorts and partakes in the excitement of the owner and staff. Occasionally, the chef too gets involved with the service. Finally, the restaurant that was failing a day before was left with a new hope to the owner and staff.

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The unforgettable part of each show in Restaurant Impossible is the shouting, screaming, creative, hard working, successful, and tough, man with a sledgehammer, top chef, Robert Irvine. Born in Wiltshire, England, Robert Irvine successfully made his way into the green flame of the art of cooking after completing a successful career in British Royal Navy. Restaurant Impossible has completed five seasons and it is onto the sixth. It is one of the most viewed shows in Food Network with the highest rating.

What does Restaurant Impossible and Robert Irvine mean to me, someone from Kerala, South India? Robert Irvine’s towering personality is one element that keeps my interest in the show. Mr. Irvine shines like a blue moon throughout the show. Another element is the food and restaurant part. Many creative ways to realize a restaurant makeover can be learnt from each part of the show. Also these makeovers are brought to effect through the usage of cheap materials, making it possible for middle class and poor people to dream big within an affordable range of price. Small-scale business owners and restaurants with a bend to learn things and an open mind can learn plenty of techniques from the show. (This is sort of a multi-use mechanism).

      

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The second element that attracted me was the Indian reality of compulsive customer dissatisfaction. Almost every restaurant, (excluding a few star hotels, which I have no experience with, whatsoever) in India, especially in Kerala serves on a daily basis only to provide misbehavior, harmful food, and unclean circumstances to their customers.

The worst restaurant shown in Restaurant Impossible has the quality and standard for being one of the top most ones in Kerala. This shows the alarming state of things down here. However, it will be interesting to investigate into the reasons of survival and success, for these humbugging restaurants throughout Kerala. Often the result might surprise us.

In Kannur town, most of the restaurants survive based on necessity rather than quality. The large population density makes it impossible to avoid the presence of a restaurant at a particular area. The quality of the food they cook seems to be the last thing of concern. The nearest restaurant is mostly the only priority. Also the large number of people, workers, office staff, bureaucratic officials, students and others throng into restaurants, good ones or otherwise. If you didn’t like food from one place, by the time you found another restaurant fighting for a seat, either the food would be over, or you would die of hunger. In most cases, one just never finds that ‘good restaurant’ anywhere. This just is the reality.    

 

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One of my friends sent me the link to a show of Restaurant Impossible, a year back, for the first time. From then onwards I am fan of this show. From Kerala,YouTube is apparently the only way I could watch Restaurant Impossible. I watch the show often in weekends, and occasionally in the evenings, after a particularly hard day at college, where I work as a Lecturer. Largely, I feel connected with Robert Irvine due to his appeal as a teacher and a guide. What I see in Robert Irvine, as one of his greatest qualities, is his ability to make people realize their own worth, a concept that adores the Objectives in my Curriculum Vitae as well.

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Small Talk on Ghost Stories

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I have a question for those who love ghost stories. How does a person’s soul or spirit get the superior strength? Does the soul come from without or some other place outside of his or her body after death?

To the second question, I am sure one might answer, no. I did get your point. The point is that the question is stupid. Spirit exists within the person and when the person’s body dies, it come out and sometimes haunts the place of death or people that caused his or her death. At least, this is how it happens in ghost stories.

Whether it is a superstition or not, ghost stories fascinate everyone irrespective of age group. However, this is not entirely true though.

When I was a young boy, my parents thought that reading ghost stories might give me nightmares and influence my rational thinking. Great rationalists are they; however this young boy of five or ten had seen much irrational deeds committed within the vicinity of his family by his parents. The direct impact of such a familial restriction proved to be devastating to the boy who loved ghost stories and especially Dracula at the age of five-ten. This universe is full of things that are more than what meet the eye. Similarly, the statement that ghost stories entertain people of all age groups is a statement without any grounding in reality. Everyone says so, though, so did I. As a child, I could not read ghost stories.

The question from the first paragraph still stands. How does a person’s soul or spirit get the superior strength? Strength and metaphysical powers are normally attributed to non-human entities throughout most of the dominant cultures in the world. Why does a human being need to die in order to realize his or her metaphysical powers?

I took up the excuse of using ghost stories as a ploy in order to explain the concept of the ‘Internal Powerhouses’ in human beings, because I wish to bring in those people, whose brains are wired in rational mode, too. Those who believe in life after life may not need such an indirect addressing of the topic. They often agree with the idea that a soul or spirit exists within the human physique.

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Rationality often appears to be a hurdle in understanding ideas that exist beyond the strict borders of normal thought. A human being, who possesses the spirit, the same spirit that exhibits agitated behaviour after the person’s sudden death, in fantastic ways through powerful deeds, already exists within the person. Whether the spirit exists inside the body or if it exists inside one’s thoughts, is another question. Let us try to solve it on some other occasion.

Think about the idea of a power house located inside every human being. A metaphysical entity, with the same thoughts, same likes, loves, hates and tastes, exists within you and works alongside your body, each day. This thought enables us to shift a part of the burden of the mundane we carry each day, on to this entity. If a ghost after the death of the person can have all the fantastical powers we normally attribute it with, why can’t we while alive utilize this hidden ‘Internal Powerhouse’ as a solution to our daily problems? But how does one achieve this?

Repeated reminding that you are not just your body, but an entity that is beyond the physical form, enables one in achieving the awareness. The awareness of a metaphysical energy within you means that you can manifest its energy in any form you imagine.                             

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Usher’s Daughter

The story of how it came to be

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Iwon’t take much of your time. It wound not take long, since I understand, your mind, the trickiest of mechanisms ever to exist on the earth is bound with the laws of practicality and sturdy short-attention. I bow. Talking about what happened yesterday becomes very important now, as I exist in the present, in order to let you know how I feel at present, and how the condition of my life is, at present. It’s your turn to choose whether you want to know.

It doesn’t matter. I will tell you anyway. I had seen this man whose name I did not know, at the Courthouse complex near Tellicherry. He was a middle-aged man and whenever I saw him, I felt that he had a story.

It was only yesterday that I tuned myself to the frequency of his story. It came out in a gush and I wrote it all down in a single sitting. I titled it “The Usher’s Daughter”. However, I was not very sure of the duty of the usher in a court in the present time. I am not an expert on the matters of court.

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Back in the old days, ushers announced the arrival of the judge. They were a species of bureaucracy that came down from the royal courts in historical times. After our brief self-introductions, on one evening at a wayside eatery near the court, he had told me his name. I used an imaginary name to my character in the story, though.

He had told me that modern day ushers in courts inside Kerala are a type of attenders who helped the judge handle files and related documents. Although after a short research, I found that the profession of the usher is a serious one and has the following definition.

“A court usher is a position in a law court. Tasks generally performed by court ushers involve escorting participants to the courtroom and seeing that they are suitably hydrated, as well as ensuring the secure transaction of legal documents within the courtroom and deciding the order of cases. Courtesy: Wikipedia. [Although, I found many other pages and sites that explain this, I decided to include Wikipedia definition here, because of its free availability. I support free content distribution through the internet, and so is TIC a free blog.]

Writing in a single sitting was hard. My back was aching like anything while my mind was racing with the story. I also felt my stomach muscles ache, due to the long hours of sitting. The dream was alive, the aim was visible. The story of the Usher and his daughter kept me going. I promised myself that I would surely spend some time listening to songs, take a bath in warm water, and relax myself, once I finish writing “The Usher’s Daughter”.

At about half past eight in the evening the alchemy was over and I stood up. Stretching my body to the maximum lengths I could, I breathed deeply.

I closed the word document in order to keep the story rest for some time, before editing. A Johnny Cash song came across in Youtube.

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“Melinda was mine
'Til the time
That I found her
Holding Jim
Loving Him
Then Sue came along
Loved me strong
That's what I thought…”

Johnny Cash was singing in his soulful voice. After almost four hours of hard work on the story of the Usher and his daughter, I was tired. ‘Solitary Man’ kicked in. I relaxed in the shade of the guitar that touched the chords with the rustic Southern music.

“…Don't know that I will
But until I can find me
The girl who'll stay
And won't play games behind me
I'll be what I am
A solitary man
Solitary man.”

I felt the same too. After our short acquaintance, the Usher, whose name I called Mohanan, his daughter, and some other interesting characters left me a solitary man.  

Anu Lal: During one of those fortunate free hours, at college, in writing.

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Cricket, Films and Love

Warning: This article is fictitious enough to appear real. Read it with a pacifist.

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One day in a classroom…

WhenI mentioned reading books in front of the first semester students, they laughed at me and asked; “Last week a student broke his neck by reading a book, sir.”

I enquired what happened, actually, and they said the student had fallen asleep while reading from his textbook and that caused a cramp in his neck. It became a college legend and the student was revered as the wise one, the nerd, the intellectual with a broken neck. Although his neck was not broken really, this metaphor stuck. I tried to tell them that I was not talking about reading textbooks alone. Reading indicates a constant interaction with any book. It could be a textbook, or a novel, or poem, or short story collection. It was a pity how narrow their understanding about reading was.

However, right then, I observed their drooping eyelids and suddenly changed the subject to movies. From my experience, I knew this could energize them and wake those who fell asleep with renewed enthusiasm. Films have magic, indeed. “How many of you watched Harry Potter movies?” Yeah! Most of them did! I was happy. I moved on to books and made the shocking revelation that Harry Potter is actually a book. The movie was made out of a story written by a writer called J. K. Rowling. For this, the class responded with exclamatory OH!s and AH!s. Grand! 

Another classroom candy is cricket. Suppose, as an English teacher, one has to teach ‘Critical Thinking’. Well, to tell you the truth, there is nothing to suppose in it, ‘Critical Thinking’ is part of the common course in one of the universities in the Northern part of Kerala. English teachers are pitted against the task of scrambling the pieces of quasi-critical thinking strategies from a poorly edited and misguiding textbook and puke it all in front of the poor students. So the matter is thus. I was teaching Critical Thinking, and had to tell them about ‘questioning attitude’.

At first, I explained the idea, and substantiated the whole concept. “You see…umm…when someone asks you to do something or teach you something do not blindly accept their words. A mere acceptance of what others say, without questioning the ideas or concepts, should be intellectual irresponsibility. In order to be an “intellectually responsible adult”, one has to question ideas, concepts, people and thoughts.”

For a moment, I forgot myself under the impact of the words I was delivering. Man, I was rocking!

 

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That was when I noticed, a boy in the backbench was nodding heavily. I thought, in the beginning, that he might be enjoying my class. That was the reason even after noticing his behavior I kept quiet. Watching his demeanour for a moment carefully changed my perspectives. He was not exactly nodding to my class, he was nodding at the fairy of sleep, and he was dozing off.

I changed the gears once again. Cricket is insanely popular in India. Even though, the recent spot fixing frauds in IPL (Indian Premiere League) has caused some damage to the ‘gentleman’s’ appeal of the game, the game of millions, still survives. So I said, “When a batsman gets LBW, what do you do?”

The boy, who was dozing off a moment before woke up suddenly, and shaking off his lethargy, started getting curious about the class. I was laughing internally, but showing any of my whims in expressions would be disastrous. Therefore, I managed my countenance at an emotionless angle. “When an Umpire is reluctant to give OUT sign to the batsman, the bowler and the other members of the opposing team would appeal to the Third Umpire. This is how we should be in life too. We should question others, but without being hurtful.” They all nodded in understanding.

I could not have explained ‘questioning attitude’ any better with any other example. There was an inherent possibility that the students might misunderstand the ‘questioning attitude’ as an aggressive stand against ideas and towards people.

“You see, it is all like falling in love with a mannerism in thinking, just like we fall in love with people, in real life.” I said. I was pushing my next strategy to keep them interested—Love. A hand went up. One of the students stood up and asked, “Sir, do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Well, I am afraid that question is out of purview with our current topic. We can talk about it on another occasion,” I said.

“No, sir, my question is…uhmm…uhmmm…that why don’t we use strategies of critical thinking in this matter?”

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“Ha!” I got the point! Love is another magnetic idea among the young adults we teachers deal with, in graduation classes. This is not just limited to the Indian cultural context nor within a particular age, it seems. Everyone happens to be in an urge to get intoxicated by love’s sweet tendrils.

Anyway, I am sure my students understood the point I made, as they successfully derived the idea that critical thinking can be applied in every aspect of life.         

NOTE FOR HOTHEADS****

Every event, person, university, idea and place mentioned in this article is either fictional or the conjuring of the quirky mind of the author. Consider him inflicted with a serious bout of insanity and spare yourself the pain of filing a petition for libel against him or this blog page. 

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Reverse Quotes on Friendship Day

The Gritty Part: These thoughts are to be understood in converse to their exhibited sense.

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A friend in need is someone to turn away from. Otherwise, you’d have to buy him lunch from your meagre salary. 

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The nastier you behave towards some people, the better they appreciate your value.

 

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The more you quit on friends, the more you are benefited.

 

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Every good friend is the Devil’s proctor, sent here to make sure we get our heartaches.

 

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Friends help us lose our girlfriends/boyfriends.

 

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Friend’s mother is a woman to fear.

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Friend’s brother is a moron. Keep him away.

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Friend’s sister could prove fatal to your good friendship.Keep a distance.

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When your friend says you are good, you are actually a step behind from that person.

 

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You must be wondering why exactly did I publish these reverse quotes after this year’s “Friendship Day”, the first Sunday of August. From behind these words, I am peeking at you. I could see your complex maze of darker thoughts, a wicked smile, and agitation that could surpass both the darker thoughts, and the idiosyncratic wicked smile. 

I am glad that I could invoke these ripples inside you, especially that agitation that is evidence in itself of the depth of the relationship you keep with your companions.

 

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Good day, dear friend!   

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