Band of Brothers

The husband insisted, for 3 years, that I watch Band of Brothers. I resisted. I am not quite sure why but the entire description of war and documentary did not sit too well with me. Then we found the entire 10 DVD set for a steal at Planet M and S had to pick it up. The rants of the stupid wife were not going to work today.

With the masterpiece on DVD I was forced to finally watch Band of Brothers. I am not quite sure whom to thank for it. Planet M or S. Maybe both.

Band of Brothers is an HBO original televisions series produced in collaboration by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. This came soon after the runaway success of Saving Private Ryan. Band of Brothers documents the true events and actions of American soldiers in their campaign across northern Europe to destroy Hitler's reign of terror. It tells the true-life story of the soldiers of Company E of the 506th Parachute Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The fighters of Easy Company. The Company of Heroes.

The entire story lasts over 10 hours. It begins with the soldiers’ rigorous training at Camp Toccoa, Georgia and ends with their capture of Hitler’s lair – The Eagle’s Nest. Between this, we follow the heroes through D-Day landings behind enemy lines off Normany, into Holland, Belgium and finally onto Germany.



Each of the DVDs begins with excerpts from interviews with living members of the Easy Company recounting short memories of what was covered in that 1 hour. Each of these experiences anonymous, goading you to make the connect with who they might be. Lieutenant Dick Winters, who makes Captain before the Holland Campaign and Major after the Campaign in Hagenau or Sgt. Bull Randleman, who takes a shrapnel to his buttocks with dignity or Captain Nixon, Lt. Winters' friend.

The company faces deaths, hardships of all nature and many live to tell the tale. Some characters remain constant through the 10 episodes. Yet, each episode has been told from the viewpoint of different persons – one each time.

There are glorious details, gory scenes that can be described as part of this review. But that will not be doing justice to the story being told. Though it is only a story retold, Band of Brothers helps you relive their experiences. The characters paint the picture in front of you with emotion and with a truthfulness that most War movies lack. In most war movies it is difficult to discern the identities of the various soldiers, but not with Band of Brothers. It creates a personality for each soldier and it is hard not to cry when one of them dies or dance with joy when a campaign is successful. Band of Brothers brings about a greater amount of connect with the entire series by placing the true war heroes at the beginning of each episode. It lends a sense of realism to the entire viewing - if the living members chose to connect themselves with it, it must be true. Having them say in their words what actually happened, warrants a more serious outlook to what the Company of Heroes endured.

The final disc contains the final episode a documentary, We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company. It includes footage of Easy Company and interviews of the surviving members. In this it identifies the soldiers of easy company. The most moving but of the documentary was the visit by two Easy Company soldiers to the Ardennes forest on the outskirts of Foy, Belgium. This was where Easy Company had held the line against the Germans, in what later came to be known to military historians as The Battle of the Bulge.

From this day to the ending of the world,
we in it shall be remembered,
we band of brothers.

-William Shakespeare

Watchmen

Watchmen is a graphic novel scripted by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. According to me, the two complimenting each other have created something which can well compete with the best known literature in the world.

It is an alternate reality set in the mid 1980s. Prior to this, superheroes existed in the world who altered the course of reality the way we know it. By 1985 the superheroes have become unpopular and a law has been passed which forced them to shed their masks.

1985. Two of the superheroes - Dr. Manhattan and Edward Blake - have been recruited by the Government and Rorschach, another superhero, continues to work alone outside the law.

The novel begins with the murder of Edward Blake, the Comedian. Events that follow lead Rorschach to believe that there is someone who has plotted to execute all masked adventurers. With this becoming the loose thread connecting it all, the various superheroes are introduced and the readers given a glimpse into their worlds.

Moore's writing is flawless. He presents the entire story through narrative boxes or sound bubbles. Every single word in the book is either spoken or thought by a character. The complex nature of the book with it moving between times and characters would shout out the need for narration. But Moore does such a masterful job of keeping each character's voice distinct that you will hardly notice absence of narration. Moore's writing is classy and mature in a manner that helps paint a complete picture of each character. The troubled Rorschach, the cynical Comedian, the understated Nite-Owl, the aware Dr. Manhattan.

Gibbons uses nine equally sized panels on most pages wasting not a single panel. He manages transitions between scenes rather well. Within panels the story could shift from Rorschach in NYC to Dr. Manhattan on Mars back to Rorschach in NYC. But Gibbons does not let you lose the story line and Moore's scripting keeps you connected with the multiple distinct thoughts being presented in such few panels. Gibbons' artwork is subtle though hard hitting. It does not ever dilute the seriousness that Moore has presented. His artwork is almost cinematic in nature and the reader can easily imagine seeing all this happening in front of them.

Between the two of them, Moore and Gibbons, have managed to make every piece of the rather convoluted plot make sense.

The suspense starts from page 1 of the novel and continues right till the end keeping one hooked and on their toes. The novel ends with a satisfying close.

My choice

If I can break down the various cuisines of India, I would broadly break them into four. North, South, West and East. All cuisines have spread to all over India. One can safely say the most popular is North Indian food.

Personally my preference is as below.

1. East Indian (primarily Bengali)
2. West Indian (Goan, I am going to ignore Gujarati and Rajasthani)
3. South Indian (Biryani and suchlike)
4. North Indian

Rajma and chawal at home can hit just the right note, but naan and butter chicken...no.
I have been told this is because I have not been to the right places. I was taken to the right places, but they still did not deliver. The food is filling alright, but far from satisfying.

My PERSONAL choice has hurt the sentimentalities of my North Indian husband. Who, if I may add, loves Bengali food himself. He is a great fan of Andhra meals and Hyderabadi biryani. I have rarely heard him wax eloquent about North Indian.

I tried to understand what it was that made me put North Indian cuisine right at the bottom. I believe it is because of two reasons.

1. North Indian food banks on richness rather quality. Cashews in a gravy is expected to liven up a dish.
2. Spice means garam masala which overpowers the intrinsic taste of all other igredients.

The reason for this post is a restaurant S & I have been frequenting in the recent past. 6 Ballygunge Place. It is my current favourite Indian restaurant in Bangalore and Mangsher Chop my favourite item on the menu.

Inception

One of the latest movies I saw and it was nothing short of fantastic. With Inception Nolan has created a movie beyond brilliant. The movie makes the audience exclaim, raise their eyebrows, sit up on their seats and most importantly... it makes them think.

Inception requires extreme concentration as it presents complex ideas and situations. Now, it may be complex to understand, but simply put it is one of the most amazing movies of this year and maybe many more before that.

It was only Nolan who could have made this movie. It is not for the idea alone that I give credit to Nolan, but more because he was able to explain the movie within the 2 hours allotted to him. I would expect other directors to hand out brochures to the viewers to help them decipher the plot. The movie creates a lot of ambiguity, raises a lot of questions and leads to many a discusssions. But that is what Nolan intended to do anyway. The plot is clear, it is the piecing together that is left to the audience. The director made sure that the movie did not leave our minds for a long time. Heck! it has been almost 2 weeks since I saw the movie and I am still here. I plan to watch the movie again. He creates magic similar to The Dark Knight but with an entirely different cast, plot and direction.


The protaganist of the movie, Cobb, is an Extractor. His job is to enter people's dreams and steal their sub-conscious thoughts. He is wanted by law for murder. He is given a task, by Saito, to enter a person's dreams and put in an idea - Inception. Doing this would get him freedom and he can go back, free, to his children. The movie explores controlling dreams, designing their layouts, shared dreaming and the most powerful concept... of layered dreams. In the movie, Cobb creates 3 levels of dreams (dream within a dream within a dream) to be able to successfuly plant an idea in Fischer's mind. To design the dream scenarios, one needs an architect who would create the dream worlds. She would be the only one who would know about it. Also, there needs to be a dreamer for each level. When the participants in plot move ahead a dream level, the original dreamer needs to stay back. The story revolves around the entire execution of this plan.

The ending of the movie though not twisted, twists the viewer's mind. It was a bold decision that Nolan took. The ending is not concrete. For a second, one is not sure if the movie is indeed over. But the sheer magic that Nolan has created through the movie takes over and just leaves you in awe.

Inception is a movie like you have never seen before and it will make you want to see it again and again and again.

Chicken Hakka Noodles

This is all thanks to Finely Chopped. I have tried making Hakka Noodles before at home and i have always managed to make the noodles squishy. I have also, at times, managed to make the noodles too bland or too salty. This time I was taking no chances and hence I wrote a quick message to Finely and asked him how to boil my noodles. Al dente prompt came the answer. With that and one of the recipes from his blog, I began. The steps I have followed are from Finely's recipe.

I decided I would make chicken hakka noodles after I did not get any other fresh meats while I was out shopping. I had already bought the noodles earlier on so it had to be noodles for dinner and nothing else.

I bought boneless chicken. I cut about 250 gms of it and boiled them. I added no masalas. Once they were done I shred them and set them aside. I cut one capsicum, one carrot and a few sprigs of spring onion and set all this aside.



I boiled my noodles al dente which basically means leaving them a little 'kachcha'. For this, I took a ton of water in a huge pan and boiled it. I added 250 gms noodles and swirled them around (so they would not stick) and took them off the burner within 2 minutes. I immediately poured all this out into a strainer and ran cold water all over it. This is to stop the cooking process instaneously or else the noodles can become really soggy. This is the step that I used to overlook on all my previous attempts.



I took some oil in a pan (well quite a bit of it) and added sliced garlic to it. When they were brown I added in the sauces, about a teaspoon - some soya, chilly and little vinegar. This splutters a lot so I dumped the chicken in almost immediately. Once the chicken looks like it has soaked in the sauces, add the cooked noodles. Here also add in a little ajinomoto (it does not really affect the taste), salt and pepper along with more vinegar. I mixed all this together so that the meat was spread out and the sauces had coated each strand of noodle.

I added the cut vegetables at the end so that they retain their crunch. And voila!

Ender's Game

I just read my first Sci-Fi novel. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Fantastic is the word I would use to describe it. The story is on the brink of the impossible but yet you can see the sense behind it all.

The story revolves around the possible attack on the human world (Earth) by buggers whose primary agenda is complete annihilation of any other intelligent race. The protagonist of the book, Andrew Wiggin or more popularly known as Ender, begins his journey in the war against the buggers at the tender age of 6.

The book captured me because of the enthralling descriptions of the author of the unknown. I could almost envision the scenarios that he wrote about. What really blew me away was that S, who too has read the book and in fact made me read it, had almost similar notions of the sets that Orson Scott card wrote about. Now, I think that is powerful writing. The story runs through Ender’s life beginning at 6 and going upto the destruction of the bugger planet by him at the age 12.

The book deals with the training that Ender receives at Battle school and Command school to be able to become commander and manage squadron leaders his age or younger to eliminate the threat of the buggers. There were computer games one only dreams about, simulated battle sequences which were too fast for my regular human mind to comprehend and much more. In the book Ender is shown to be a fair human being with extra-ordinary learning capabilities. In my opinion, he comes across a compassionate person who reacts only upon being harmed and never by a desire for power or jealousy. These are true qualities of a leader.

But the task at hand was utter and brutal destruction of another intelligent race. Can a ‘compassionate’ commander achieve such? The trainers at the command school thought not. Though they also realised that Ender had extreme mental capabilities and the tenacity for surviving the inhumane training required for commanding a team of squadron leaders.

Ender destroys the bugger planet, not entirely knowingly, but most definitely skilfully.

There are a few more twists in the tale that follow. But for me the book was the expert writing which made the training of Ender Wiggin. A must read.

Pasta in red wine sauce... but not quite

I have been cooking regularly at home. I have been making regular Indian dishes made at regular Indian homes. I am a very lean kid and I think I know now why. I do not like regular.

I decided I would make a mean and unregular pasta for dinner tonight. I went out shopping for the works.... wine, rosemary, oregano, basil, cheddar etc etc. As luck would have it, before I could begin shopping I had to rush back home to let S into the house. I had no ingredients but the pasta I wanted to make and have. In no mood to get out of the house again, I decided to improvise. And I did.

The only alcohol I had at home were tequila, whisky and vodka. I decided vodka was the most food friendly. I run a very basic household... sometimes so basic that the only food to be had is bread with cheese slices. With this in mind, I rummaged through the refrigerator. No onions, no vegetables... only tomatos, olives and jalapenos.

• I took a little olive oil in a pan and tossed in sliced garlic let them brown a bit and added my champion ingredients (olives and jalapenos).
• When these were about done, I poured in a generous quantity of fairly expensive vodka. I took care to take the pan off the burner before I did this, lest the sloppy but good cook in me made me spill some and create a fireball.
• To this strong smelling concontion I added pureed tomatos (it is very difficult for me to list out the quantities I used as I never follow a recipe).
• I let this mixture thicken for about 20 minutes (that is how long it took).
• Add in some pepper as it will give the base a nice healthy colour and taste.
• Toss in pasta boiled in salted water (penne, fusuli...not spaghetti)

In case you realise later that the sauce is not enough to cover the pasta evenly, you may want to save some of the salted water you boiled your pasta in and add it to the sauce. Do not add too much as the water is very salty and you risk losing the flavour of the sauce due to watering it down.

Place the pasta on a plate and grate some cheddar cheese onto it. Serve it with warm garlic bread (I had neither the cheddar or the garlic bread).

To everyone's surprise (S & I) the pasta was pretty good.