Ingredients:

1. 1 cup Urad dal
2. 2 cups Chana dal
3. 2 cups dried coconut (Copra). Can reduce if you like hot and spicy chutney podi.
4. 15-20 dried red chillies. Or equivalent hot chili powder.
5. Optional for more red color: 2 Tsp Bedige/Kashmiri chilli powder.
6. 20-30 curry leaves. Wash and pat them dry. Equivalent dried curry leaves or curry leaf power is also fine.
7. 1/2 tsp Asefotida (hing)
8. 1 cup Jaggery. Kids will like if added. Reduce to 1tbsp otherwise.
9. 1 tsp coconut oil to fry chillies. Pressed oil is best. Anything else will also do.
10. 1 golf ball size de-seeded tamarind.
11. 2-3 cloves garlic. This is absolutely optional. I love this flavour and do it this way sometimes. You can retain the skin.
12. 1 tbsp salt. Tata salt :).

Process:

Dry roast Chana dal on a medium flame. Do this first as the dal is bigger, more volume and takes times to cool down. The dal should turn a light tan in colour and should’ve lost all moisture by now. Spread it out on a large plate or baking tray. Newspapers will also do just fine :P.

Dry roast Urad dal on a medium flame. You can used urad with or without skin, split or whole. Just note that skin on the dal will burn if you don’t constantly attend to the roasting process. The aroma of roasted urad dal is just amazing. When done, drop the roasted urad dal on the previously spread chana dal. Air it out so all the moisture escapes.

Reduce flame to low and roast the copra till it gets oily and slightly brown. Collect this copra into a separate steel plate. This is where you’ll also collect chillies, curry leaves, hing and garlic.

Warm(just warm) 1 tsp coconut oil, reduce to a low flame. Roughly crush(not cut/paste) and drop in the garlic cloves. Keep stirring till the garlic stops sizzling. Take the garlic out and set aside. If you want to add the garlic to the powder mix, the powder should be finished within a month. I use this garlic as garnish on jeera rice or dal within 2 days.

If using fresh curry leaves, in that same garlic infused oil, drop curry leaves and continue heating on low flame. Be careful as the oil splutters on contact with leaves. Wait for the splutter to stop and take our the leaves, set them on roasted copra. Leave the oil in the pan.

If warm chillies make you sneeze or cough, rub some fresh ghee(clarified-butter)/oil on your nose and eyes. The fats help trap/dilute capsaisin build-up and preserves your chef-ly dignity. Steps in the next paragraph need to happen quickly, one ingredient over another. So keep the ingredients handy, read the next para fully and just dive into it.

In that same oil, heat the dry red chillies. Constantly stir to prevent burning or smoking. Believe it or not, you’ll actually smell an aroma from those chillies when they turn dark red. Drop in the Bedige/Kashmiri chilli powder, hing and stir for 5 seconds, all the powder should have roasted. If you’re using dry curry leaves or curry leaf power, drop that in at this stage and stir for 5 seconds.

Clear out the pan on to plate with copra. Let both sets cool to room temperature. Use this time to crush and clear the jaggery. Jaggery may have small pebbles that can be felt on fingertips. Also de-seed the tamarind and remove as much fiber as you can. Drop both of them with salt into a mixie jar. I use the small masala jar so the job is quick. If you use the bigger mixie jars, you’ll run it for longer to work all the dal but heats and cook the powder while running the mixie. Especially with the copra, there’s a tendency for the mix to form lumps. So use the small jar and quickly finish in small batches.

Drop some of the chana/urad dal on top and grind this into a coarse powder. Don’t make a fine powder. Fine powders don’t add any texture. But if you don’t like dal sticking to teeth, go ahead and make it a fine powder. Next, powder the copra and oily stuff(chillies, curry leaves, hing, chilli powder) with some chana/urad dal. Finally powder the remaining chana/urad dal. Mix all the powder as evenly as you can.

Don’t bother testing for salt…. Chutney podi isn’t about the salt. It is about the sesame/peanut oil that you’ll lace with this powder and then coat on your idlis.

Happy Chutney podi folks!

Between my previous post and this one, this happened:

• My wife and I gave birth to our second kid. Now we have a son and a daughter.
• My son started going to school.
• We shifted houses.
• Govt around the world went into multiple Covid-19 lockdowns. Many vaccines and many variants of the virus.

In this context I’ve learned and grown a lot. A lot of it happening in my time alone, early mornings when I wake up hours before everyone else or while driving to/from home. Now that my son started going to school, I’m back in the cartoons-children targeted ads-finances-responsibility cycle. The last time I was in it, I was a kid myself. And I see how my parents had to navigate. A lot of conversations with my son are about how he’s having fun in school. He’s not. Not all the time. In the 6 months since he started going to school I can see changes in what he’s happy/upset about. What he can cope with and what excites him to take the lead. And every transition has happened because of rejection or acceptance by his peers. We did take him out to parks and playing with kids at their houses long before he started going to school; but he being in school with other kids and none of them having their parents aound to approve/disapprove of their actions, has really catapulted his personal growth.

This is inline with how I’ve been growing personally. Trying out stuff by myself, finding my own footing, understanding every weakness and temptation. Professionally and personally. Seeds of every change were planted during thoughts in those me-time mornings.

My daughter loves to watch her brother playing, jumping, shouting, reading, running, everything he does. I often wonder what’s going on in her head when she’s watching him. Is she going to imitate his actions or find her own self by refusing to do what she doesn’t like in all that behaviour. That’s just about the entire gist of personal change in the context of individualism. But the point isn’t about what she’s observing. It’s about what she does during all those periods of observation. She does nothing. Nothing while watching her brother, nothing while playing with us except smiling or short shrieks or trying to bite our hand/clothes. All her changes are when she’s unsupervised and left alone… in the play mat/pen when we’re going about household chores. Rolling over, push ups and side planks, trying to sit, trying to crawl.

Makes me wonder… the worth of my approval or the lack of it towards what my kids do. With my son the level of communication has really grown. He’s sitting in the child seat right behind me when he’s talking excitedly about all the stuff he did in school that day. The games they played and all the mischief with mud, sticks, toilet paper, etc, etc,… He can’t see my face while I’m driving and I can’t see him. He has understood what pauses mean I’m giving all my attention to driving or considering a response. And he knows by the length of a pause if I’m about to ask a clarification or go along with his story.

A thing is considered to be living if it can respond to stimuli. I starting to think… our ability respond, the will to do so and the nature of response are developed only when unsupervised. #ātmā, #paramātmā, #FreeWill.

There’s another point to consider. What about the role of a guru/teacher/role-model/leader in inspiring change? Don’t we all learn and emulate? Don’t we follow instructions and repeat actions based on a set process? And this is what I think… They’re all only different types of parents. They approve/disapprove. Their actions can affect our experience but what we choose to do is still our own. Our own journey to find meaning, purpose and success.

So here’s a quick list of things that are very normal for a Kannada/Tamil/Telugu Brahmin family. This might be the case for Brahmins from other regions as well but I can only speak to what I know. Many of these practices are still followed in today’s day and age in Urban and Rural India. Now these are just put here in no specific order. I could add more as I recollect or am reminded of them.

• Leave your footwear outside. Don’t wear them inside the house.
• Wash your face, hands and legs when you get home. Do the same when you go to other people’s homes(basically help them also stay clean).
• Have a full bath (including hair) on: birthday, every haircut or visit to doctor/hospital, after returning from a cremation/grieving family.
• Don’t touch anybody.
• Don’t touch anything that’s not yours.
• Don’t touch anything unless absolutely required.
• When in the market, don’t touch something if you’re not sure of buying it.
• Don’t spit in public places and open areas.
• Don’t clean your nose in public places and open areas
• Don’t piss standing up(for men).
• Wash you hands and legs before and after a piss/poop
• Greet people with a Namaskaara 🙏🏾
• Don’t enter the kitchen if you haven’t showered.
• Don’t touch any stored food items with damp hands or wet spoons or wet ladle.
• Strict quarantine with separate room, utensils, mattress and clothes for sick/ill people at home.
• Clear indication with neem leaves outside home where anyone is seriously ill or recovering.
• Wash before prayers. Take a bath if possible.
• Strict quarantine for women at home during their periods.
• Don’t let anyone else come and lift newborn infant in first month. Similarly, don’t ask to hold another person’s infant in it’s first month.
• Don’t touch a bed that you don’t sleep in. Especially, don’t get on a bed that a married couple uses (unless you are their child and you aren’t yet married).
• Don’t wear wet or damp clothes.
• Don’t carry wet or damp clothes while traveling.
• Don’t use another person’s comb or towel.
• Drink water without touching the glass… by pouring it into your mouth or trapping it with cupped hands instead of sipping at the glass/utensil.
• Don’t share cutlery after you’ve started eating.
• Don’t share food from your plate after you’ve started eating and similarly, don’t take it from another person’s plate after they’ve started eating. Kids whose milk teeth haven’t yet started falling off, are exempted from this rule.
• Don’t wear unwashed clothes.
• After touching fermented or pickled foods, wash and dry your hand before touching any other food items.
• After touching food items with gluten(boiled rice, dal, etc), wash your hands before touching anything else.

Definitely controversial and almost dead practices:

• If dirty people come home, restrict them to outer visiting room. Note… If you are restricted in the first visiting room by the host, it does not mean than you are seen as “dirty”.
• Wash the floor and surfaces that visitors have touched when they came to your house. Even if they are relatives. If you have been the visitor, accept that the house will be cleaned after you leave. Don’t take it personally. It is only in rare cases like a teacher or royalty’s visit that the place they visited and items they touched/used are actually worshipped.
• Always keep a separate set of clean washed bed upholstery for visitors to use. Host family should avoid using this same set as much as possible.
• When traveling, carry your own bedding.

Today my usual 5-minute-silence-after-waking-up lasted about 20 minutes and I thought of some things for the first time in many years. Especially about ownership. Today is my friend’s birthday and I wanted to wish him but since he is in a different timezone I chose to wait until after sunrise in his timezone before giving him a call. Thinking of him and our conversations, I was recollecting a wide period from high-school to college. My dreams, ambitions, goals and choices. Needless to say, he’s a pretty close friend who has been a good sounding board and rooting to reality. Showing me a mirror or a finger, whichever was appropriate in response to my eccentric imaginary journeys. Happy birthday to you we-has-us.

Looking back, I’ve pretty much landed where I wanted to be. I wanted to be ‘dad’ by 30, it was delayed by 1 month and 7 days. I had started learning 1 foreign language other than English (on second thoughts, correct classification would just be one-more-language). I wanted to own a car and a house. The first lost steam because the second didn’t pan out as planned. I now repay a housing loan for a house that doesn’t exist and for money that was borrowed and just disappeared (basically charity to the bank). For all those that did happen, I am very thankful to my family, friends, colleagues and adversaries (feed for a later thought: declining usage of enemy, adversary and rival over the centuries).

The undercurrent of all these thoughts were I want to have/be/become/get <thing>. And that is the train of thought for this blog.

Accumulation

At the outset, have and get are clearly acts of assimilating ‘things’ from outside while be and become seem aligned to self-realization. Or is it so? Everything I’ve had, got, attained or become, was a result of selfish pursuit. With just a thin line differentiating selfishness from greed, I’ve managed to stay clear of greed. Or have I?

Many things that I once planned/hoped to own, I did own and later they also got discarded pretty unceremoniously. Heck! I don’t even remember those things to name as an example here! Some of them got unpopular (phones, laptops, hairstyles). The only evergreen avenue has been ‘travel’ which after 16 Indian states and 18 countries, still feels like just the tip of the iceberg. So yeah… Travel experiences are the only accumulation that don’t feel lost or wasted. All the rest seem ready for the garbage dump.
The clothes I wore, wear or will wear in future will all go to the garbage and this holds for all my possessions and me too.

Then what is it that I work for all my life? I sure do want a pleasant future for myself and my people but hasn’t that been the same pursuit all along? A pursuit whose means I don’t remember and whose end I don’t see? I guess nirvana is the next target. Not to be, have, own, get or become but to attain. A long journey that starts with myself and ends within myself. Everything else I own and am attached to or associated with, will only be a peripheral accessory suited for its specific purpose and duration.

Home based online business

For a first year fee (AUD 549) and from the next year an annual fee (AUD 165), I acquire franchisee of a web based platform to match or beat rates of utilities and services used at home and by small businesses. These are:

• Electricity (with or without solar)
• Gas
• Phone (fixed line)
• Mobile (postpaid, SIM-only or new)
• Home broadband
• Home and business security
• Small business payment systems (EFTPOS, online payment gateway, etc)

Highlights

1. Sell or convert essential home/small-business utility bills to operators providing packages through ACN. Usually the discounts and offers are better than what you can get directly from the service provider.
2. Residual income through customer acquisition.
3. Will-able, transferable, saleable business
4. Direct marketing and also network marketing but not a pyramid.
5. Business can be performed in 26 countries through a web storefront which can be obtained on a franchise basis.
6. No imposed time-based targets. You can decide the speed at which you acquire customers.
7. Income is a percentage of personally acquired or partner acquired customer’s monthly bills. Additional customer acquisition bonuses are provided depending on number of customers acquired and the number of qualified business partners working with you.
8. Income is good enough after 3-4 years of operating. Some of the business owners who initially started out by treating the ACN opportunity as a part time additional income stream, enjoy the freedom to quit their day job and continue on the ACN opportunity whenever they please.

Not a pyramid MLM scheme

Commissions earned depend on number of customers acquired personally and on the number of customers acquired by partners in your team. Benefits are not passed on or curtailed to upper tiers if the upper tiers haven’t acquired sufficient customers directly or in their team. There’s no income if customers are not acquired, so this is not a fraudulent system.

What you can do for me and for yourself (one or more of below)

1. Share details of your home utilities bills or business utility bills and business EFTPOS details, all that are applicable to you. I will compare rates and let you know if I can match or better the rates of your current providers. If you are satisfied, you can become my customer.
2. If the opportunity to earn commissions from your bills and also on bills of others is exciting, you could become my business partner(called an IBO… Independent Business Owner in the ACN universe). The ACN support system operates in 26 countries, is very active, helpful and insightful.
3. Share this link with your friends and family. Maybe they’ll be interested in (1) or (2) above, or maybe, they will pass it on to their friends and family.

More info

All this is definitely a lot to digest on a web page and will take a lot of writing to explain all the details. If you think this is too good to be true or if you are looking for more information, feel free to write to me(leave a comment below) or call me (you probably already have my phone number if I sent this post to you).

Cheers! Have a great day.

EDIT: Few months later. IT IS A PYRAMID SCHEME

I don’t do this anymore. 8 months into it(Feb 2019) and I stopped. This definitely is a cash-grab pyramid scheme. Commissions from bill payments are very very low. Commissions from adding people under you are the biggest component of income. I have no doubt that money comes from the money those people are paying to enter this scheme. The products are not competitive enough to be retained by customers and you’ll forever keep trying to add people in your pyramid(down-lines). I’m ashamed I failed to see through this in the beginning. My failure to catch this sooner was probably because the share of income from bill commissions wasn’t made clear from the beginning. With many people continuously leaving ACN, it was always a challenge to keep up the points required to receive maximum commissions. ACN led people to prey on their friend and family networks and grab money from their hands.

Examples:

For an electricity bill of $100, I would get $8 commission only if I had 75+ points(gained by adding customers or down-lines). With fewer points, I would get only few cents. Click Enery advertised great discounts but was always dodgy. I used their plan, the same plan that I recommended to others. They didn’t read the electricity meter properly, quaterly bills meant that I had to wait 3 months for a correction and any discount would be in the form of deductions from my next bill. Oh! And the commission was on final amount, not the original usage. ACCC penalized Click Energy (https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/click-energy-to-pay-900000-for-misleading-claims).

I actively marketed the ‘Anovia’ payment processing product for retail outlets. First things first, Anovia don’t make the equipment themselves so they don’t have control over equipment faults and feedback. The device they provide is very old and uses more paper to print a small bill. Shops don’t like changing paper rolls that often. There was also a sneaky ‘termination/cancellation’ fee of $330 at the time. So if a shop owner wanted to switch over to Square or Tyro, they’d have to first shell out $330 to Anovia. It also didn’t help that the vendor couldn’t offer good rates to close a lead. So many times I’ve had to walk out on leads because Anovia couldn’t offer better rates and wouldn’t pay out the $50 to me if they couldn’t ‘meet or beat’ an existing bill. There was always some minor clause they quoted. And there’s also the limitation on which businesses they’d provide their services to. Tobacconists, pharmacists and a couple of other businesses were totally out-of-play. Above all that, I found out the hard way, that my commission was 1% of the charges paid to Anovia. So on a $150,000 monthly sale by a shop, Anovia’s charges would be $120-$140 and I would get commission on that. Finally, for all my trouble, I got a $500 Quantas gift voucher from Anovia for generating many leads. That really was nice.

After all this, when I called it quits and asked ACN for my commissions to be paid into my bank account, I was told that the total commission amount needed to cross a certain threshold for them to process the transaction. I didn’t even bother calling them again.

One one of the ‘business meet’ events hosted in another ACN business owner’s house, the VP of marketing was talking about how ACN rescued him from financial ruin. About how he used this last $500 to invest in ACN and vowed never to force his family to “eat rice”. Woah!! He was speaking in a community of people that predominently ate rice as the staple food. After that meeting, many people quit this scam.

Learned a lot for $49 (considering I got $500 voucher from Anovia). Made some good friends too. I let it go.

Supporting links 2021:

• https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/03-10-2019/why-you-should-be-wary-of-acn-the-next-multi-level-marketer-to-hit-social-media
• https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-51742824
• https://www.glassdoor.com.au/Reviews/ACN-pyramid-scheme-Reviews-EI_IE31927.0,3_KH4,18.htm
• https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-relationship-acn-mlm-company-lawsuit-2020-10

Timeline of events:

1…
11 June 2018, 8:45AM UTC

Rahul Gandhi says “Coca-Cola company ko shuru karne wala ek shikanji bechne wala vyakti tha…” (Coca-Cola company was started by a person who used to sell Shikanji).

Reported with video coverage.

For those of you who don’t know:

1. Shikanji is an Indian version of lemonade. This word “Shikanji” is used in Hindi-speaking parts of India.
2. John Pemberton was the inventor of Coca Cola.

2…
11 June 2018, 9:28AM UTC

Rahul Gandhi bhakts vandalize the Wikipedia page of John Pemberton to make it seem like Rahul Gandhi’s claim was legitimate and recorded in Wikipedia.

The last valid edit on John Pemberton’s wiki seems to have happened on 9 June 2018 at 0035 UTC. After this, the next change made on 11th June 2018 at 0929 UTC is this:

Why is this important? Well.. if someone wants to back the claims made by Rahul Gandhi, they can show Wikipedia as reference. Like @Malikmohdtalha has done below…

Goes without saying, those who don’t know that Wikipedia pages are prone to vandalim, will believe this claim. Maybe @Malikmohdtalha was one of those victims.

Luckily, good netizens spotted this fraud and reverted the page to its previous state, thereby reversing the vandalism.

If you thought it stopped there, you would be wrong. As of this writing, the page was vandalized several times and moderators are having a tough time keeping the wiki truthful.

Who will bell the cat? Wikipedia is the latest fabric of truth that Rahul Gandhi bhakts want to soil, stain, contaminate and finally taint.