Big Hole of Security in US Schools

An interesting question was put to me by my sister, "America, a land of opportunities and a dream destination for many, how could schools there after 31 school shootings don't have their security level strengthened a bit that anyone can enter a school premise at any given time and randomly shoot children and how could guns be accessible to any Tom Dick and Harry that any psychopath can target children and innocent people to vent his outrage?" Isn't a school supposed to be one of the safest places in the world so that mothers while sending their children off to schools don't feel fear of their children returning dead or injured riddled with bullets?

The school where I used to work in Kolkata was a very ordinary government run school but it too used to close the gate of entrance the moment the school started its session for the day. At least one security guard was placed in front of the gate throughout the time the school was in session to ensure that anyone entering the school did have proper reasons for a visit. The big renowned schools are all guarded with security personnel to keep constant vigil; every car is screened before passing the school gates. Thanks to almighty, till now we have no incident of school children being randomly shot at point blank range to their deaths. Despite a lot of law and order problems in our country, India is safe at least so far as killing people randomly on roads with guns is concerned.

Why these minimal security measures like screening people before allowing entrance in schools are not put in place in US schools to ascertain safety for children? Instead, most of the people are here talking about training teachers in gun usage. Is it a viable option for teachers to enter a classroom with guns making a school turn into a potential field of battle? Is there any guarantee that not a single student will be harmed caught between the exchange of gunfire between teachers and the assailant? What if a naive student out of curiosity taking the opportunity of the teacher's moment of absent mindedness clicks the trigger in the classroom shooting someone, may be accidentally, fatally? There are a lot of risk factors involved in introducing guns to teachers, rather, what could have been a very simple action like strengthening security in schools is totally out of discussion. The schools instead of giving guns to teachers could install armed security personnel at the entrance making sure every unknown person is frisked before allowing entrance in schools just like they do in airports.

 

 

Baking Gone Wrong

Cooking/baking mishap is a common phenomenon everyone cooking or baking in the kitchen must have encountered at least once (in my case pretty often) in their life. Sometimes out of unmindfulness we botch up a dish that we might have cooked umpteen times earlier by missing out on some key ingredients or blundering a crucial step. If while cooking, I enter a serious conversation with someone, chances of my forgetting something to add are ample with the final output turning awful in taste. Hence usually when I invite someone over to my place, I keep everything ready beforehand so as to avoid culinary disasters.

As if precautions are not all the time useful in keeping hazards away, sometimes, troubles come uninvited when a slight oversight in calculation can put a damper on all your efforts and hard work as it did happen yesterday while I set myself to baking a lemon pie.

Hours’ worth of pain in baking a lemon pie went down the drain when unknown to my knowledge the lemon rinds settled to the bottom of the bowl I used for mixing the ingredients and the turnout, denuded of the sweet lemony yellow color was looking pale white, to my absolute frustration. The thing went wrong from the moment in order to give scalloped edges to the pie; I changed the baking dish twice.

I admit I am still an amateur in making pies. It will take some time for me to get comfortable with the entire process of pie making. However, today I was determined to make the go successful until the shortfall in the amount of butter required caught my notice. It was too late; I didn't want to send my hubby rushing to the grocery store, third time in the evening. So I adjusted the flour and the remaining ingredients for the crust in proportion to the butter; still everything turned amiss for my one single mistake in using a pie dish smaller in size.

The crust came nice, thankfully, but the topping was in excess of what the pie dish could contain, so it spilled over. Panicked, I backed away from pouring the remaining topping batter into the pie dish and quickly putting my presence of mind into action decided upon baking a batch of lemon muffins with the residue. So I added baking powder and baking soda into the batter and just as I started spooning it into the muffin molds, my hubby gently reminded me of the muffins I baked few weeks back that were completely parched and chewy in texture as a result of my being forgetful to add butter. As luck would have it, I was forgetting butter this time too, but due to my hubby’s timely reminder I saved myself from a pang of throwing another set of muffins into the garbage bin. Since butter was absent at home on that day at that time, I used canola oil instead and voila, lemon muffins turned out really cool with color shimmering between orange and lemonish yellow. Gorgeous!

Alas! I can't say the same for the lemon pie, which to my utter dismay was pale white, the top a tad over baked. The reason for the distinguishing difference in color between the two goodies that were baked using the same batter was due to the lemon rinds accumulating at the bottom of the mixing bowl, the last dreg of which went into the muffins lending them a beautiful color whereas the lemon pie, to my oblivion, received a miniscule of the lemon rinds, the agent that lends color and flavour to lemon goodies and resultantly ended up looking drab.

On hindsight, I realize I should not have taken up the baking project at all for I was not feeling well that day since morning. You cannot expect perfect turnouts with half-hearted effort. Some pics of the baking gone wrong captured for your view:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Housemaid and A Newly Wed Wife

Life is a long road trip that puts us through a lot of hardships to test our perseverance, determination and courage and along the way we collect pebbles of memories; the pleasant ones bring smile to our face each time we cut back to those moments and those, not so pleasant, are pitched away to the farthest corner of our minds.

Immediately after marriage when we shifted from Pune to Kolkata, I encountered adversities galore in terms of managing household on my own. One after another maids came and went, each giving me tough time regarding regularity of coming, cleanliness and most important of all 'reliability'. Nevertheless, the girl we hired to cook made a favourable impression on me. For the convenience of understanding, I would address her as ‘B’ through the rest of the article. So 'B' was very young, few years younger to me and unlike other maids who were all older and hence tried means to put me down, she easily made her way to my heart by her obedient and friendly nature. In fact, within a matter of few months, she managed to earn my absolute trust and I began to rely on her completely for every small errand.

At that time I used to be pretty careless with my stuff which I kept strewn all over the place. But not for a single time the thought that 'B' could pick away anything without asking me crossed my mind. I found her completely trustworthy and to some extent as I already used to give a lot of things away to her unasked, I never felt that she would breach my trust by stealing. My mother, however, heckled by and tired of her maidservants cherished a different opinion. She warned me a lot of time to remain watchful with my things when maids are around, but I, used to the habit of throwing every caution to the wind, ignored her advice most of the time until one day when a big burglary took place in a neighbouring flat two floors down in our apartment builidng that I first thought of being cautious.

We used to stay in a 2BHK at that time. Most of the days, 'B' would go slow in wrapping up her work that I, in order to reach my workplace on time, was forced to go to the bathroom keeping my home unsupervised to her advantage. The idea was while I busied myself taking bath, she would be finishing off the last minute cleaning of the kitchen and the washing and drying of our clothes. Fortunately, I was a tad wise to keep my bedroom under lock and key. The other room with the attached bathroom had to be kept accessible to her for her need of rinsing clothes.

Many a time when I would give her something, clothes or foods, she would neatly tie them up in plastic packets which were aplenty in our house, thanks to our weekly shopping at the nearby supermarket and would place that at the entrance door of our flat. Most of the days I would find her squatting on the floor of our hallway waiting for me to get out of the bathroom and as soon as I would come out, she would hurriedly walk away, with the packet tightly held under her armpit, in the direction of the lift in our 12 storied apartments. Although many a time I was pinched by a sudden desire to see inside the packet she was carrying, I withheld myself every time from doing so on account of bad manners.

One day I completed my shower in less time than usual and came out of the bathroom early while the sound of clothes pounding against the marble floor of the bathroom in the next room came to my ears. That day I gave her an old salwaar of mine, which although was in pretty good condition lost my favour among the host of new dresses I got as gifts in my wedding, not to mention the ones dearly presented by hubby. So I gifted that dress to her in the morning of that fateful day and she loved it instantly, the expression on her face betraying her pleasure. Standing in front of the bathroom, I saw the plastic packet neatly folded up at the corner of our entrance door across the hallway.

Somewhat driven by my mother's constant counsel to practice caution, I suddenly felt the urge to check into the packet to verify my mother's speculation against my goodwill. There opened a Pandora's box when I pulled out one by one a lot of items including food and a bed sheet stashed away in a clever manner inside the salwar several folds under, out of the packet. What unfolded to me later on that she had been doing this, I mean, sneaking items from the kitchen and from my house under my nose ever since I reposed my absolute trust and began depending on her. That I never felt the need to check into the things she was carrying in the plastic bag only strengthened her confidence on my stupidity and gullibility and emboldened, she went on pulling off her stunt until caught red handed.

I remember one day while helping me with the pleats of saree, she casually enquired of my ornaments coffer, which though surprised me a bit didn't arouse any suspicion then. Now that I have become seasoned in the matter of keeping home well managed, I sometimes look back and feel surprised that for some people, it does not take a moment to betray someone's trust. As my goodwill fell flat before my mother's years of experience, I am left to wonder whether people economically deprived may ever establish a good sustaining rapport built on trust with the economically privileged ones. The question is open to discussion.

Kutch Work and Satin Stitches : Two Astounding Salwars

It's been quite some time when I made my last entry. With so many changes going around in my life, I got busy all of a sudden. Recently, only in last week on this day, my hubby became ill and passed out in the morning, scaring the hell out of me. In a foreign country where I have not yet been a month, if such unexpected thing happens for which you are not prepared either mentally or financially, it puts a lot of pressure on your nerve. It was one nerve-wrecking moment for me when I saw Debu lying unconscious on the floor taken by a sudden seizure. It's only in USA that quick help arrives at a phone call and I am lucky that this thing happened here else if the same would have occured in India immediately after relocating to a new place away from my hometown, I don't know how I would have coped up.

 

For a long time, I have been thinking of entering a post on the recently finished embroidery projects but somehow could not make enough time. Just at the start of every year, I undertake several sewing and embroidery projects and along the way I get bored with the whole thing only to put them on the back burner for an indefinite period of time. As the news of Debu's onsite deployment came, I went into a mad rush to bring my unfinished and half-finished embroidery projects to a close for lots of raw materials bought at the cost of hefty amount of money would go to a waste otherwise.

This snapshot is of the one I stitched for my sister in law. The entire salwar kurta has been embroidered with kutch work or what is popularly known in Kolkata as "Gujrati stitch".

Well, embroidery is my passion, but upon shifting to Bangalore, once I got myself occupied with a hectic schedule, I hardly could manage any time to pursue my hobby. Corporate jobs are too demanding of your time. So just when the time came to pack things up again to relocate to a new place, my sense suddenly reminded me of the unpleasant experience during out last relocation when I lost quite a valuable important items. I didn't want the same to be repeated again and so was the rush to finish the ones which are in half-finished state.

That way during our trip to Kolkata prior to flying to USA, I could have some salwars stitched for myself and some to be gifted away to my relatives. However, despite my painstaking effort, only three embroidery projects were done and dusted with on time. One is the salwar where I did kutch work and presented to my sister in law. Another is a bed cover done with the rare palestrian knot stitches and gifted to my mother. Unfortunately, my hubby forgot to capture the pics of the bedcover so can't upload them till we visit Kolkata again. Last one is a salwaar kurti for myself. I have used very fine satin stitches along with sequins to add an extra resplendence.


The photo above and the ones below are of the salwar kurti I embroidered for myself with delicate satin stitches, fishbones and seed stitches accentuated further by a line of sequins. It has been tailored into a salwaar now paired with a baby pink pant and baby pink dupatta. I am looking for an occasion to wear it. I promise to upload some pics of mine wearing it.

 While working on the motif, I was planning to gift it to someone when completed, but greedy me, I fell in love with the turnout. Hence, I kept it for myself :D

Now, some more projects are underway, one of them is a silk saree. My sister in law gifted the saree to me on my wedding registry. The saree is beautiful, but with a thought to add some more blings, I am doing mirror work on it. Just can't wait to finish it, but 12 yards of saree is not dead easy.

Deadly Piranha

Today in the evening I was watching a programme on Animal Planet about piranhas where the fearless wild life enthusiast Jeremy Wade with nerve made of steel embarked on a venture to find out the truth behind piranha stories of eating humans alive within minutes. In his quest of finding out the truth, Jeremy threw himself into an Amazon river filled with piranhas to see if they would attack him or not and what triggers their feeding frenzy. But interestingly piranhas didn't attack him. Next in a swimming pool, a cluster of piranhas were made to starve for a day. The next day Jeremy threw a piece of meat into the pool to see their reaction and piranhas devoured the piece of meat within minutes. He then dived into the swimming pool but to his astonishment not a single piranha showed any interest in him. He probed deep into the case of an accident that occurred in the 70s when a bus spun out of control and headed on to the Amazon River. Around 40 people were dead and eaten alive.


The revelations he came across during the investigation is quite amazing. Piranhas don't attack their victims unless they are hungry, of course and unless the victims are hurt and bleeding. When the victims are in helpless condition or someway catching their attention, like in an incident piranhas attacked a group of 8 people swimming in the sea and their flailing arms and legs in the water during swimming caught notice. In the event of about 40 people eaten alive after an accident, the victims, injured and stuck inside the bus were desperately trying to come out and this helplessness alerted them about potential victims. If you stay still in water swimming slowly without thrashing about unnecessarily, chances of piranhas attacking you is slim, so I presume upon watching the programme. Hats off to Jeremy for his bold dare devilry and what's amusing he calls himself a "human guinea pig" every time he takes a risk upon himself.


Curiously enough, prima facie piranhas look quite cute, just like other small fishes but a close view revealing their razor sharp teeth give a hint of their murderous nature. Those of you interested in catching glimpses of the programme may check out the following videos:

http://animal.discovery.com/videos/river-monsters-piranhas-devour-a-duck.html


http://animal.discovery.com/videos/river-monsters-swimming-in-a-piranha-pool.html