Pressure of the Cooker

I was lying on the cot in the outside room which had a door open towards the street. My mind was blissfully empty of any productive thoughts when my mom came over to me from the street side “This one or this one?”

 “What?” I had to get up to see what she was on about “Wow, they are pressure cookers?”

 The two items she was holding looked like miniature versions of alien spaceships but in fact were pressure cookers. Not surprising then that they were the new Hawkins model – sleek black bodies with curves in the right places.

 “How much is this one?” I asked.

 “Five litres.” Mom said.

 “And this one?”

 “Two litres.” She said “Take this one.” She pushed the five litre one at me.

 “No, this is too big.” I objected “Two litre one is fine for me.”

 “Are you sure? Or come and see more. Pammi has more options.”

 Pammi is our neighbour, wonderful guy, worked in this kind of merchandise for years.

 “No, this is fine.”

 “It’s not too small?” Mom asked “What if you want to make pulav?”

 Have you ever noticed how mothers are obsessed with the eating? They feel like their kid is just going to starve himself to death if they don’t force the issue. But you can’t blame them, they have seen you in that phase when you used to prefer playing in the dirt to having a proper meal. Maybe you grew up, but she doesn’t believe it.

 “No, mom,” I declared “two litre is enough for pulav also. I need space in my suitcase to carry this.”

 And that was that. Two days later I flew back to UK with the pressure cooker safely wrapped in my clothes.

 That was twelve years ago.

 Since then I have kept this trusty little pressure cooker with me every time I moved. It has been doing a good job of feeding me well. Kind of like my mother. May be my mother made it promise before I left India. I have made pulav in it, and mutter-paneer, chana masala and lots of other dishes.

But then last week, while performing its duties on the hob it started leaking steam. I quickly guessed that the gasket was gone. I had a spare gasket (the rubber ring that seals the lid to the body) so it was no problem. Only I could not find it. It was in one of those “safe” places where you store everything. I have seen it 10,000 times when I didn’t need it but not now. So, I looked at the lid again. No, the gasket seemed fine. But there was a hole under the handle. Oh, that’s that thingy...er....yeah, the safety valve. Correct. That hole didn’t use to be there so obviously it was blown. Fine.

Normally, when something goes kaput I am happy because I can buy a new one. But this was a different case. I lost my mother eight years ago and this pressure cooker has been my connection with her even when she’s physically not in my life. Yes, I know, it’s stupid, but I am a sentimental fool.

These days everything is available on Amazon. The safety valve must be there as well. It was. I could buy a Hawkins safety valve for a couple of quid. Great. It arrived the next day. Out comes my toolbox (Yes, I have one, I am a macho man.). But the nut holding the valve would not budge. Well, as I mentioned, I am a macho man. I keep WD-40 in the house (machine oil). I took it out and sprayed some on both sides of the nut. After two applications and some wait, the nut moved, but now, it moved on both sides. Drat!

I tried holding the inside nut with pliers but it just slipped out of the grip. The message was clear, it was time to become super macho. I went on Amazon again and ordered a set of spanners. That arrived the next day. After that it was simply a matter of finding which one fit the nut. Using a spanner and the wrench I was able to get the safety valve off. Replacing it with the new valve was a piece of cake. Funny enough, the new valve was bigger and needed a bigger spanner but it fit perfectly in the hole left by the old valve in the cooker lid.

Once the replacement was in place, I put the handle back on. Then I put some water in the cooker and tested it. It worked perfectly.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Well, there isn’t one. Or may be we can say something about perseverance. Or you can’t solve everything by brute force, get the right tool for the job. Or don’t replace it, if you can fix it.

Do you like to replace things or tinker with them until they work?

 

[Note: The links in the post are affiliate links. They will not cost you any more but if you anything from those links it helps this blog.]  

 

The Value of a Gift

I like to give useful gifts. Something that the recipient can use and employ in their job or hobby. So flowers are out, at least on their own, no show pieces, and not even clothes, they get worn and torn. It has to be something useful and durable that will remind the recipient of me for a while.

So, what are these things in the picture? They are two little figurines given to me as a gift by my niece Santosh on one of my birthday. They are two little matching angels. I don't remember how long I have had them or which birthday she gave them or even my other kids were in on the gift or not. They would remember better.

What I do remember is that I either still lived in India at that time or had recently moved to the UK. Santosh was not married at that time and now she's married and has her own little daughter who goes to school. So, a long time ago. Considering that I have been living in the UK for last 10 years, they are at least 7-8 years old in my possession.

In the 10 years I have moved several times within the UK. Every time I move, they move with me (obviously) and they are the one of the first things I unpack when I get to a new place. And they always end up in front of my telly. My telly may sit on a table, a desk or a dresser but they always end up on that piece of furniture in front of the telly.

Sometimes one of them would fall down and I would pick it up. Sometimes a wing may bend and I will pull it straight. But other than that they have lasted the test of time.

Every time I look at them, every single time, they remind me of Santo and my other kids!

So what's the moral of the story? The moral is not for you but for me, "The value of a gift is what it means to the receiver, not the general world."

Yes, I do love my kids! 

Eating in a tree

From A day with animals

[For once no copyright infringement, I took this photo myself.]

No, I haven't suddenly turned into a monkey, I am just recounting a small part of my life in my Slice of Life series.

The story is from a long time back when I was just a boy. I don't remember how old exactly but in my teens around 14-16 most likely. My parental village is in U.P. and I used to visit there oftener than I manage to do now.

I remember this one visit very clearly when I was staying at my aunt's place for a few days. Just me, my parents were back in Delhi. If I remember correctly it was part of the summer school holidays. In my aunt's front yard there was a tree. Don't ask me what it was, maybe just neem, but I remember it was branched low so that even a city boy like me could climb it and sit in that lowest branch.

One of my aunt's daughters, my cousin sister, was called Kumma. Just a nickname, her real name was nice and beautiful. She was very nice and our ages were close enough that she used to treat me like a younger brother even though she was a couple of years younger than me.

So I would spend my hours up in the tree, enjoying lazy afternoons with no specific plans to do anything at all. And Kumma would ask me if I wanted something to eat. If I said yes, she would offer to make my favourite and I would agree. And what was my favourite? Read on!

She would take red chilli and grind them fine by hand on a stone "sil-batta" or pastel and mortal for all you "angrez" types. Adding a little water in it, she'd would make a thick sauce. And this pure red-chilli sauce she would put on a thick chapati and ask me if I wanted to come down or eat in the tree.

Of course, I opted to eat in the tree! She would hand it up to me in the tree. No plate, no cutlery, just the chapati and the chilli sauce on it, a lot of sauce like a sandwich filling. And I would roll it up and eat like a monkey in the tree. In those days I could handle the spicy sauce without running for water afterwards.

Since then, I have had many different kinds of meals in many countries, in fancy restaurants and modest cafe's, in dhaba's by the roadside and in coffeehouses where they didn't even speak my language but nothing can compare with that simple meal made by a loving sister! 

My teachers: Mr. Chauhan

Teachers come in a variety of types, some who would rather be left alone, others who like to take control and drive things. And there are a few, extremely few who actually like to provide intellectual stimulation and make their students really think for themselves.

Mr. Chauhan was one such teacher. When I was doing my computer course we had a situation when we lost our teacher to another job. This, I should clarify, was a very small institute, owned by one person and usually staffed by one teacher. I was hardly in a position to criticise as the fee was very low and even then we had the option to pay in monthly instalments. If I told you how much it was, you wouldn't believe it, it was so low.

So, we had our computer teacher and suddenly he got another job and decided to leave the institute. The owner/manager of the institute, who also taught some classes, got Mr. Chauhan to fill in. We were learning PLT at the time (short for Programming Logic Techniques). Mr. Chauhan came in, and asked us some questions on what we had learnt so far in computers and in PLT. And he had this infuriating habit of saying "Why?" after every answer we gave him. His contention was that you should know the reason why something was so, not just say "That's what we've been told." This did annoy me because at some point that's what you have to say. No, not really. Now, I understand that the chain of answers should stop not at "So we've been told." but at "It's a fact provable by experiment." But we didn't get into that then.

Next we started on PLT. He started to quiz us first.

Mr. Chauhan: What do you need to write a program?
Class: Computer.
Mr. Chauhan: Wrong!

Oh, God!

But that's the sign of great teachers - their words can change your life, and you NEVER forget those words. He told us the "A program is written on paper, not on computer." This might seem blatantly obvious or even flippant but any computer programmer worth his salt would know exactly what it means. When you start writing programs on computer, you do shoddy work and make more mistakes. When you write a program on paper, you do your best work, and that way lies excellence.

He told us that the best paying job in computers (at the time at least) was a Systems Analyst and he hardly ever needs to go near a computer.

In that same class, he asked us more about programs and I was giving an answer when he stopped me and said, "No, not a program, algorithm." Arrgh! That almost sent me into a rage! They were the SAME thing! No, they are not!

Years later he told me that after the class he told our centre manager to keep an eye on me and forget the rest. Hehe, yes, I am proud of that. No way I am NOT going to mention that! But that day I was pissed off with him. But that was always his style, he never believed in spoonfeeding his students. I did very well in PLT, so what did he do? He didn't praise me or anything, he just gave me MORE problems to solve than other students in the class. The result is that I have very strong PLT skills and love to debate with people on the merits of "OR" and "AND" in a line of code.

After PLT he taught us COBOL. Yes, it was that long back. COBOL was on its way out even then but this was before the year 2000 so it was not completely out yet and did make some programmers rich when the Y2K work came. Alas, I was not one of them. Still, I did very well in COBOL and got 93% in the test,  which was not only the highest in the class, it was my highest score in any computer subject.  A year later the centre owner asked me to teach a batch there and guess what subject he asked me to teach - COBOL.

Then there was the incident when Chauhan Sir taught me MS-Office in 5 minutes.

This was a couple of years later, I was a software faculty by now and was teaching in a small institute other than the one I studied in. I was teaching DOS, Windows and a few other things, but not MS-Office. That was new at that time. It was version 4.3 I still remember very vividly. The nice lady I worked for wanted me to learn MS-Office so I could teach it as well. She and Chauhan sir were friends so I could go and learn with him at his institute which was in the same city.

I remember it like yesterday. I went to the pay phone near the institute and called Ds (that’s my code for him) to arrange for classes. He was in office and we talked. I explained what I needed. Here’s how the conversation went:

Ds: Toh MS-Office seekhna hai? (You want to learn MS-Office?)
Me: Yes, sir.
Ds: Kya karoge seekh ke? (What would you do with it?)
Me: Sir yahan padhaoonga. (I will teach it here).
Ds: Wordstar aata hai? (You know Word Star?) (Word Star was an older word processing software, DOS-based, and quite popular before MS-Word came along.
Me: Aata hai, sir. (I know it, sir.) (I was very confident, I was very good in WS).
Ds: Phir? (Then?)
Me: Sir, MS-Office nahin aata na. (I don’t know MS-Office).
Ds: To MS-Office seekhoge. (So you will learn MS-Office.)
Me: Yes, sir. (I was getting a bit annoyed by now.)
Ds: Phir? Naya aa jayega phir woh seekhoge? Kitne word processor seekhoge? (Then, when the new one comes out you’ll learn that? How many word processors will you learn?).
That shut me up and made me think.
Ds: Usko khol lo, help file kholo saath mein, aur karo. (Open it, and open the Help file, and use it.)

The whole conversation took less than 5 minutes, but he taught me MS-Office in 5 minutes. Alongwith that he taught me all other word processors and all programming languages without a computer in sight! Never felt the need to go for a class to learn a new application after that. And I ended up learning many other software and programming languages after that. I started teaching MS-Office later that week and have taught all versions. I pride myself on my Word and Excel skills and even though they are not my primary tools the knowledge has been extremely useful to me in my career.

That’s the kind of teacher Ds was and is. He knows how to kindle the spark and let the student learn instead of crippling him with spoonfeeding.

I am still in close touch with him. Whenever I go to India half of my vacation time is spent with him, either visiting his business or home, or debating something in technology or society.

One thing I really hate  is that he never taught me Chess. He was a state champion in his time and I really wanted to learn to play better Chess from him. But the only time we played together it was like him playing with only 10% of his mind on the game and he beat me, no, actually crushed me without even bothering to “play”. I hated that. But I haven’t given up, some day I’ll trap him into teaching me. ;)

There was a great time, a wonderful period of my life when I was working in his own company. Even when I had a problem in a technology or language that he didn’t know, I would still go to Ds for solutions. And he would sort me out. Without knowing the language and without learning! His logic is just so strong that he always knows what questions to ask.

He had written books on COBOL that were used in schools as textbooks, but he never mentioned it to brag. I found out just by chance. Same thing about his Chess skills. He never brags, never needs to. But anyone who meets him, cannot forget him. I am very proud and privileged that I met him and that he is still in my life as a guiding spirit.

My dream is to one day collaborate with him on a project! Amen!

Slice of life: Swimming

This is an incident from long time ago when I used to live in Delhi and still had the desire to learn to swim. I still have the desire, I just don't bother to do anything about it.

So, I took membership in the local govt.-operated sports complex and started learning swimming from this teacher who I suspect was just a guy who knew swimming and thought this was an easy way to make a quick buck. I say this because his teaching methods were not all that good and my progress was slow. Having taught for a few years myself, I know when someone is cutting through the crap and when someone is just passing time with the minimum of instruction. Since then I have learnt from other people that that's not the best way to learn.

Despite that I was still making progress and had learnt how to float, face down, using my feet to propel me. I could do it as long as I could hold my breath and could float from one side of the pool to the other side, widthwise.

Then one day, he told me to stand mid-way down the length of the pool on the edge. I should explain that this pool was regulation size with the maximum depth 12 feet and the minimum 4 feet. Where I was standing, I was abreast of the middle section about 7 feet deep.

My instructor told me to dive from there and then swim towards the shallow end. He reminded me several times, "Use the feet. Don't forget to use the feet like I have taught you." I nodded and dived in!

I floated using my feet as long as I could but soon ran out of breath and tried to stand up. Blurghhgh! What? No ground? I prodded with my feet but try as I might I could find no solid ground to stand on! And I panic very easily in water. No, not in the shower, thank you very much. But when I am out of my depth (literally) I lose my wits.

If I had tried to be sensible about it, I could possibly have taken a half-breath and managed to float further to the safety of the shallow zone. As it was I flopped around, arms flailing, feet kicking around a commotion underwater, like a drowning man, as a drowning man, for technically I was drowning. I was scared!

My teacher was right there and when he realized I wasn't gonna do it myself, he pulled me by the arm to the shallow zone. It was only a foot away!

He asked me, "Why didn't you use the arms?"

And I replied innocently, "But you didn't tell me to use the arms!"

He shook his head, "This time use the arms AND the feet!"

He didn't have to tell me twice! This time when I dived I used both arms and feet and swam like hell! I was literally swimming to save my life!

This time not only did I make it into the shallow zone, I almost head-butted the end wall!

Moral of the story: While it's good to follow instructions faithfully, when you are in deep water, use your head!

Slice of life: Lockout

Last night I had a class. It was not a usual class, it more like work. But hobby work. I'll actually explain in another post what the class was about since I have been keeping that under wraps for a while.

We were supposed to work together from 6.30 till 9.30. We were all pretty engrossed in our work when around 8.30 someone closed the door to our room, probably not noticing that we were inside. One of my team members cried out, "Are we being locked in?"

That panicked the others and one of the other guys went to the door and shook it. He couldn't open it. He knocked loudly on it from the inside with, "Hello? Hello??"

Then he tried the handle again and lo, it was open! Phew, what a sigh relief we all breathed. Could you imagine being locked in an empty London office at night!?

I should explain that this was not the usual venue for our class. Our class had overrun its time so we were using the institute's own offices to finish the over-budget work.

Well, anyway, we knew the work we had wasn't going to be finished tonight so we scheduled to meet again another evening and decided to call it a night about 9.45 since almost everybody had plans.

The teacher needed a hand with his equipment so laden with all his stuff, computers and whatnot we went down the stairs. Only to find that the main door was locked!

Well, the first impulse was to jiggle and jangle and pull and push and twist the doorknob. Nothing happening. I went up and tried the buzzer that opens the door when someone rings the bell. It worked but the there was another bolt operated by a key that was locked!

Next we started looking for a fire escape. We wandered around in the recesses of the building with our cellphone camera flashes for illumination but there was nothing we could use.

We were officially locked in!

We went upstairs and in the office where we were working found a couple of large windows that were not barred or locked. It was only an 8 feet jump to a hard pavement. Two or three of us were confident that we could jump that much. But it wouldn't help the others and what about the computer? So that was not even discussed.

Then started the hunt for information. A phone number. Any phone number that could get someone with a key to come and rescue us. We started calling people, direct, indirect, in-indirect contacts who could help. Finally, we found a business card with a mobile number of a person we knew would have the key.

The call was made. The estimate was 20 minutes of wait. Whew, not so bad!

Now where is the point of all this? The point is this - even though were locked in and almost everybody had something or someone to go to there was no real panic in the room. We were total 6 people and not one of us said, even once, "Oh, I am starving!" though we all were.

Nobody complained, nobody said, "Oh God! Why me?"

Instead we just settled back down into our chairs and chatted. One girl found the coffee and milk in the fridge and she made coffee for anyone who wanted. Not me, I am off caffeine as you know. And we all chatted about the projects we had done or we want to do and all around it.

One thing that was mentioned several times was that if we had just carried on working, we could have gotten more done. :)

Calls were made to partners, girlfriends, boyfriends and the situation explained.

And I was thinking, "Wow, these people are cool! They are not a bunch of grouches!" Indeed all of us just took it in our stride and enjoyed a chat with colleagues.

That's my whole point - circumstances happen to all of us, how we react to them decides what we take away from them. Personally, I benefitted immensely from that lockout, I learnt some more stuff, I got some networking opportunities that I would not have gotten had we just walked out and gone our separate ways. I wouldn't be surprised if in the recent future I get some wonderful opportunities that can be traced back to this one instance!

In the end, it was not 20 minutes, but finally at 10.55 that person came to rescue us with the key but did we mind it? Nah!