In Lieu of a Rose, a Chocolate Cupcake

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
 By any other name would smell as sweet.”

-       ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (II, ii, 1-2)

Let’s twist Shakespeare a bit to begin with…: ‘What’s in a gift? That which we choose for one occasion, could be replaced by another as sweet.’

With a wince, I admit its not as pithy as that quote of Avon’s bard, but a mere shred of hubris. I hope my take on those lines will not fall as Icarian waste into the sea, but at least flit about on waxen wings near terra firma. Having said that, let me point out that I aspired to create a gift from the heart that would soar towards caelum celesta. So a moist, dark, intense, heady chocolate cupcake it was, in lieu of a rose on Valentine’s Day. Not gifted to me, but baked by yours truly for her valentines at home.

It was a recipe I had discovered while googling for an eggless, dairy-free, and nut-free cake a while ago. As always, I wasn’t happy with the original and so sat about tweaking it, adding and removing some.

I present to you that chocolate dome with its chin upright, bursting earnestly out of its paper skirt, rising up on tip-toe to kiss an unsuspecting valentine on the lips. A swoon-worthy cocoa kiss.

Cocoa Smooches (makes 12 cupcakes or 1 8*8 cake)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (or 175 degrees C). Pop the paper cups into a lightly greased muffin pan, or grease, flour, and line a standard square cake pan.

In a large bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 cup brown sugar (or white, if you've run out of brown), 1/3 cup cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda.

In another bowl, whisk together 1 egg, 1/4 cup vegetable oil (or butter/ margarine, if you like), 1/2 cup applesauce, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, whisking lightly, and moistening the whole with 1 cup cold water. Ladle the thick batter into the waiting paper cups or pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool and consume.

And Miles To Go Before I Sleep

While we slept last night, the snow drew its white blanket over our neighborhood. Very early this morning, I awoke to a brightness glowing through the blinds at an odd hour. I peeked out to look upon a winter wonderland! Absolute still, grand beauty. The soft wet snow rested upon branches like jewels and embellished the ground like a carpet of diamonds. Where the light came from, I do not know. It wasn't dawn yet, and still the sky was cloudy white, a bowl turned over. The snow flakes were picking up light from miles away and bouncing them off one another, like miniature disco balls in a soundless celebration. I went back to my soft, warm bed filled with visions of this beauty.

This morning, while my First Mate was clearing the driveway, the children and I spotted 3 deer watching him.

It seemed the right time to read Frost's 'Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening':

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.


My son and I have been reading about the American Presidents this week, and he was thrilled to know that Frost was called the President's Poet, for having read a poem during the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. I love Frost for his simple and effective language, and the matter-of-fact manner in which he depicts rural American life. The 4 time Pulitzer Prize winner's epitaph reads "I had a lover's quarrel with the world"...

When I was a child - like all school children in India - the last paragraph of this poem was dinned into my head..."...And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep". We had to recite these as a class, repeatedly. Often, this poem was a hot favorite for Recitation contests, closely followed by the next all-time favorite - Wordsworth's 'Daffodils'. India's first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is said to have written down the last paragraph of this poem on a slip of paper, found by his bedside upon his passing in 1964. Nehru is also said to have quoted these lines when speaking of an independent India. India has truly travelled miles from that dawn of independence on August 15 1947. 

Osho, the Indian spiritual teacher, interprets the lines thus: "The woods are lovely...' Everybody has to go alone; you cannot keep company. Because you have to go inwards you can only go alone. ‘The woods are lovely...' because the woods are of your inner being. If you go for an outer pilgrimage, you can have company; somebody can be with you: a beloved, a friend, a relative, a fellow traveler. But the woods are lovely because the woods are of your inner being – you have to go alone..."

A Sailing We Will Go...

It's Valentine's Day...a celebration of love all over the 'civilized', 'known' world. I say that because among the tribals and such, this would be...well...just another day....and they would love each other or should I say one another (depending on whether they are polygamists or polyandrists) regardless. Is there a start or stop to love? Perhaps they would laugh at the thought that one needs to decorate one's love with tinsel and showcase it in a restaurant replete with roses on this one day of the year.

Those of us who live in jungles need one another to survive. There is no time for sophisticated expensive romance, but more an expression of love in child rearing, household management, and other mundane practical concerns that life is colored by. This brick-solid love sinks right down to the bottom of a tub of glassy-eyed glamour. This love is that which is expressed in a matter-of-fact manner, point-blank, blunt, stated simply - as Margot quietly says in Wes Anderson's 'The Royal Tenenbaums', "I think...we're just going to have to leave it at that Richie"...Perhaps the obscenity we impart to our Valentine's Day bash's is really the threat of being stranded on an uncharted island of conventionalism and mediocrity, a black hole of no return.

I am therefore content to spend Valentine's Day in any way that it unfurls before my S.O. and myself. If it will be a day of routine - so be it, if a visit to the doctor for a bad cold and cough is in the offing - so be it, if the doors to a restaurant dinner open up like a shark's jaws in the approaching sea - so be it as well. I will willingly be swallowed - and spat out, hopefully. I will sail our ship of marriage across the seas of love, guided by the star of good sense and faithfulness. My ship will chart the uncertain swells of contentment, and plumb the valleys of bitterness and fury to emerge with its pennant flying high. In that adventure lies the romance.

I hope my S.O., as First Mate, will stand by me, endure me, in this adrenalin driven enterprise. Can't help punning here that the S.O. is indeed my 'first mate' - I, having studied at a convent through school and college, and us, having had an arranged marriage. I know my First Mate sometimes looks upon the journey as a contingency...as I do too at times...but isn't that what life is all about? A shivering amateur thrown into a goosebump-inducing cold vat of life while the universe yells at us , "Swim!" And swim we do...most of us with our partners, sucessfully...some of us thrashing about, while our partners hold us up or yank us down...not unlike the 'managed floats' I'm reading about in my management program...a sort of speculation. Hopefully, we will all reach the threshold of old age intact in mind and body, and rock on azure gentle seas our last days together with each other and with our families, in warmth, our eyes lit by rosy skies and the resplendent setting sun.

Here is a song to celebrate the utter loyalty and faithfulness of love...I like it because I can relate to it completely, being a woman, and also because of the unshakeable determination and resolve it expresses...thank you, Sade:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR5_rTCi-Bo&ob=av2e

My son the Sweetheart

My older son waves this over-sized, fake, arrestingly green $100 bill in our faces after dinner.

"What is it?"

"It's a wish list for One Hundred Dollars!", is the excited answer, with an impish smile.

"You're rich!"

I open the dollar bill and read on its blank inside - Things I WILL buy for $100...A toy (my son has drawn a picture of an indoor remote-controlled helicopter under this pronouncement). This is followed with - Things I WILL NOT buy for $100...A cat. (???)

"Sweetie, cats needn't cost $100," I point out. "You can give a stray a home, or pick one at the Humane Society."

"But I DON'T want to buy a cat," he insists, with a nod to make his point.

"Why not?"

"BECAUSE...Daddy is allergic to them," comes the quiet answer.

What else does one do upon hearing such a reply but embrace this litte soul and draw him close?
This boy - whose big brown eyes fill up when watching ads for animal shelters and the broken animals who wait to be adopted and to be showered with affection...who cares for those weaker and younger than himself (such as his younger brother and toddler friends)...also cares for those older and physically stronger than himself.

The last pet we had - a much loved tomcat - got lost in September 2009. We haven't given up hope that he might come back, but my older son has recently begun asking to adopt a pet. Yet he doesn't want one that sheds hair (his Dad would start sneezing), is slimy (I would run more than a mile), and that needs to be taken on walks, etc (he knows both his parents are struggling to cope with the current routine). He is content to wait for a tortoise we have promised him. More than being his mother, I think I am his student, learning to be a better person from his example.

God bless you, darling.

Mi Amor

Here is something amazing from Pablo Neruda ('One Hundred Love Sonnets: Midday', XXXIX)...

"... I am like a scorched rock
that suddenly sings when you are near, because it drinks
the water you carry from the forest, in your voice."