Banana Bake Fest

Given that I (and the rest of my family) love bananas, we inevitably buy too many and then wind up with a bunch of really ripe, really sweet bananas. Usually, I make smoothies, but when I'm in a mood to munch, I bake banana bread. The recipe is really easy - it was the first thing I ever baked -and the end result is sweet, nutty, crunchy deliciousness.

Today I decided to try something different and made banana crumb muffins. This is my first try at baking muffins and they wound up going perfectly with my afternoon coffee. This is a quick and easy recipe, though I did make two changes: first, I used brown sugar throughout; second, I used half a cup of sugar in the muffin dough instead of three-quarters of a cup. You could probably reduce the sugar even further and still get a delicious muffin - the bananas themselves will be pretty sweet and the crunchy crumb topping is even sweeter.

Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

Now Playing: Frances Rose - Vampire

I have a long list of I-shoulds -  “I should take up handicrafts! I should devote myself to writing! I should learn to skate!” And every year as September rolls around, “This year, I should watch a movie at TIFF!” This year, I finally bit the bullet and bought tickets to a TIFF movie – specifically, Joss Whedon’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. I watched it at the Elgin Theatre (crappy cellphone photos below) along with a huge crowd. The internet informs me that the Elgin seats upto 3,559 people and the auditorium looked pretty full to me, not to mention the line to get in circled all the way around the block. Most of those 3,000+ people were clearly Joss Whedon fans, judging from the snippets of conversation one heard in line and the massive cheers during the movie.

Whedon filmed this movie right after he’d finished filming The Avengers;  he assembled a cast of actors, most of whom he’d worked it on previous Whedonverse projects, and shot this movie in twelve days, at his own California home. The movie is funny, engaging and - probably because all the action is set in and around one house - oddly intimate. I thoroughly enjoyed the film – gushed about it on twitter –and rushed home to write a glowing review. That was a week ago. I’d started writing, mind – I described the movie, the environs, etc – and then I was stuck.  I was shtum where I should have been gushing. Why? Writer’s Block? Possible, even probable; but why? And then it occurred to me: perhaps I couldn’t write a glowing review because I no longer felt the film deserved it.

I should mention that the first adaptation of Shakespeare I ever watched was Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing. Now, I’d watched that movie in high school (a rather long time ago) mostly for Keanu Reeves who played Don John, but a lot of it stuck with me, in particular the iron in Emma Thompson’s voice as she says, “Kill Claudio.” It sent chills down my spine. When Amy Acker, who is otherwise fantastic as Beatrice, said it, the audience laughed. Now, this was an audience of Whedon-fen, clearly primed to laugh at anything, but still. No one would have laughed at, or with, Thompson in that moment. 

Whedon’s adaptation differs from Branagh’s firstly by being filmed in black-and-white, rather than colour and then by being set in modern-day California rather than Ye Olde Italy. In addition, Whedon adds a prologue: it begins in the aftermath of a sexual encounter. A man puts on his clothes, and looking back at a woman, leaves an apartment. No words are spoken. This works on two levels; first, it saves Whedon the trouble of writing a morning-after scene in Shakespearean prose; and secondly, it makes sense that Beatrice and Benedick, who ceaselessly engage in verbal combat, would resort to a silent cease-fire. Yet I can’t help but wonder if this really makes sense in the context of a play in which a character’s supposed lack of chastity is cause for her being jeered at and jilted. Besides, Benedic k and Beatrice are one of the prime examples of UNrequited sexual tension; once you find out they’ve been, er, requiting all over the place, the sexual tension becomes a little less tense.

I think though, the biggest problem with Much Ado About Nothing is the fact that in cinematic terms, it’s a meringue: fluffy, sweet and light and completely lacking in substance and any real sense of tension. I enjoyed the movie, but it left no strong impressions past funny and pleasant. Maybe it’s because Whedon made this film as a sort of cinematic palate-cleanser post The Avengers, but that film left more of an impression on me than this one, what with all the Sturm and Drang. (Yes, I preferred the comic book movie to the Shakespeare adaptation. Sue me.)

On balance, despite all the aforementioned caveats, I’d still recommend this movie; it makes a lovely introduction to Shakespeare, it’s well-directed and the acting is wonderful. (A quick aside – Nathan Fillion, aka my Imaginary Boyfriend No 5, was hilarious, and the crowd loved him. I couldn’t hear some of his lines for the cheering!) If you do watch the film, you’ll leave smiling – we did.

Amor Fati

Author's Note: The following story has real-life elements, but still, mostly fiction. Enjoy, and constructive criticism is always welcome!

“ELEANOR!”

The trouble with attending the wedding of an old classmate was that one ran into other old classmates, Eleanor Button mused. She’d already dodged several so far. Perhaps she could pretend she hadn’t heard and make her escape?

“ELEANOR! It is you, isn’t it?”

The voice sounded older – fifty-something, not twenty-something –and regrettably it was close enough that a graceful escape would be impossible. “This is what comes of dilly-dallying over dessert, Eleanor Button,” said an inner voice, which sounded disagreeably like her Auntie Florence. “And what were you doing at the dessert table, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be on a diet?”

Better the unknown voice than Auntie-Florence-In-Her-Head.

“ELEANOR!”

It – rather, she - was right behind her now. Eleanor turned, and was faced with –

“It’s Mrs Harefield! You were in my grade 12 English class, Eleanor… Don’t you remember me?”

How could anyone forget Old Harey? Swathed in multicoloured scarves, well-thumbed copy of War and Peace in her hand, Old Harey had established herself as the intellectual authority of Monsignor Ryan High School. She had taught English Literature and History, and considered herself an expert in the performing arts as well, which had led to many highly entertaining confrontations with the drama teacher, Mr Carton. Eleanor had been one of her favourite students.

“Of course, Mrs Harefield. How are you? Still teaching?”

“Oh wonderful, my dear… You know, I so enjoy working with young minds... They come to me as unformed masses of clay, and I give them definition!”

Eleanor supposed that any definition that happened to Old Harey’s pubescent charges was due to the uncomfortable process of growing up, but she kept that thought to herself.

“But of course you, Eleanor, were different! How you loved to read! If only your classmates had followed your example – but of course teenagers are teenagers, no matter how much you highlight a good path to follow, they insist on doing as they please!”

Eleanor barely suppressed a grimace. Old Harey had been assiduous in her highlighting of Eleanor’s good example.

“How many of you have done the reading? None? Eleanor, what about you? My dear, is that a twitch or a nod? God did not give us the gift of speech so that you could twitch, child. Now speak up, have you done the reading? Yes? Now why can’t the rest of you be like Eleanor?”

In hindsight, Eleanor knew she never really had a chance of being popular in high school. She’d always enjoyed being a geek too much to ever hide it. But there was still a small part of her that thought, “If only Harey would have shut up about what a paragon I was, perhaps more people would have liked me.” Given that this was the same part of her brain that thought tequila should be an integral part of a healthy diet, Eleanor tried her best to ignore the thought.

Old Harey was still speaking, “Nevertheless, so many of my former students are doing terribly well for themselves… Denver Choi appeared in an off-Broadway play last year, Jeremy O’Leary is doing something financial in New York, Sarah Black is a surgery resident…”

Eleanor was nonplussed. “But I haven’t seen any of them tonight?”

“Oh no, they’re not here… facebook, my dear! I mean, of course it’s deplorable, centuries of letter-writing tradition to be replaced with pokes and lols and what have you, but still, I can’t argue, it’s a remarkably effective way to keep in touch. Which reminds me, we must – what is the expression – friend each other as well! But my dear, I’m being stunningly rude. I haven’t asked about you at all! What are you doing?”

“Well, I temp mostly.”

Old Harey’s expression froze. “Temp? But – but, Eleanor, you went to Columbia!”

“I dropped out. I figured college was just a practice run for the bigger rat race, and I decided that’s not what I want to do with my life. So I temp here and there, and when I have enough money, I travel.”

Judging from Old Harey’s face, she’d have been less appalled if Eleanor had told her she made sculptures from elephant dung.

“My dear, you had so much potential…”

Eleanor didn’t quite know what to say to that, so she shrugged.

“Anyway, I’ll catch up with you later, child. Must circulate, you know!” Old Harey fled. Eleanor looked after her, looked down at her dyed satin wedding shoes and sighed.

Two months later, Eleanor had still not received a friend request from Old Harey. She could live with that.

Girl. City. Confused.

Things I have learnt after two weeks in Bangalore:

• Trying to find your way around a new city can be trying if you have no map, no clue re: the city layout ("Indiranagar? Gandhinagar? Stop confusing me!") and no grasp of the local language (though knowing Hindi helps.)
• The autos here are insane. Either they don't want to go where you want to go, or they want to charge you an exorbitant flat fee for their services ("Meter? What meter?")
• The buses are cheap and fairly frequent, except there's no such thing as a route map at bus stops. So unless you know the bus routes offhand, your best bet is to ask the bus driver, "Majestic?"
• Traffic is abysmal (though this is probably true of all of India's major metros.)
• You will not endear yourself to the locals by going, "You know, x is so much better in Bombay!" - even if it's true. :)
  

More to follow.

Silence at the dinner table is highly underrated.

Now Playing: Agnes Obel - Riverside

"Oh, she eats with her left hand?"

I'm used to getting that question from Indian aunties and uncles, usually in a disapproving voice, so when someone asked my mother that over dinner, I said, "yes, she does" in a tone of voice that most reasonable people might take as a sign to retreat.

"You know how you can fix that?"

"Uncle, I don't want to fix it!"

Mum intervened, "We never felt it was necessary to force her to use her right hand. What's the point, really?"

Uncle still didn't take the hint. "But you know, if you wanted to change, how to do it?"

I looked at Mum. Clearly Uncle was going to have his say, regardless of our feelings. "How?"

"You take a knife - oh don't worry, a very small one will do - and you cut the... what are they called, ligaments? tendons? Well whatever it is, you cut the ones on your left hand, and you'll wind up having to use your right hand by default! Ha!"

We stared.

Thankfully, there was no knife in the vicinity - very small or otherwise - or somebody would've gotten hurt real bad.