Good Morning Panwalla

Betty's been obsessed with mastering Kuku Paka, an Ismaili chicken curry dish. Ismaili cooking incorporates the flavours of Arabia with its northern Indian origins.

The definitive English-language Ismaili cookbook appears to be Volumes I and II of Noorbanu Nimji's A Spicy Touch. Betty recalls seeing both volumes many years ago at a discount book bin but picked up only the first volume. So the hunt was on for volume II to complete the set. Sadly, volume II is no longer available at Amazon. Zilcho at Chapters. And even AbeBooks and Alibris came up empty. Fortunately, Betty was told by a co-worker that a store by the rather amusing name of Good Morning Panwalla on Main Street carried the titles.

We got there first thing last Saturday morning, too early, it turns out. While waiting for the store to open, I snapped the shot of the blue-eyed redhead you see here. In the end, the store didn't have the book in stock. The owner said to come back next Saturday.

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On the subject of India, I had lunch with the contemporary Bengaluru philosopher S. Sathyaprakash. The proper life, he posited, adheres to

Simple living and high thinking.

I've been thinking exactly along these lines for the past while. A spartan, uncluttered life leaves a small environmental footprint, and more importantly, affords (at least in theory) the time to enjoy and contemplate what we do have. In one sense, a quiet, modest, contemplative existence versus a loud, vain, exploitative one. To be or to have. To sweep or to vacuum.

Ironically, the few individuals I know who seem to live by these precepts I can only describe as Zen masters in distress.

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BTW, here's a shot of Kuku Paka as served at the Samosa Garden restaurant.