A Course in Applied Homelessness

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it must feel like to live on the streets, help is at hand.


Mike Momany, a 62-year-old freelance computer programmer living in Seattle, USA, has launched his “Course in Applied Homelessness,” to enable people to truly empathise with the homeless.


On the face of it, it seems like a noble venture, capable of teaching people to be more sensitive to the plight of those who are deprived of one of the basic necessities of life. But Momany, it appears, has another agenda.


He is charging a whopping $2000 for what he describes as the “sub-URBAN experience,” the opportunity to spend three nights as a homeless person. Those interested will be interviewed to make sure that they understand exactly what they are signing up for, and also to ensure what Momany refers to as “compatibility.”


In order to fully comprehend the abject reality of homelessness, Momany will at first strip you of your identity, to enforce the sense of soulless and vapid existence that often characterizes their situation, in a world where the homeless are seen as no better than criminals. He will also give you a disguise to prevent you from being recognized. Men who enroll will get a nickname and a simple life script to help them to more easily inculturate themselves as the homeless. Women cannot avail of this experience as shelters are strictly divided by gender.


His website, Real View Tours, declares, "You will see the seedier side of Seattle in a new light and have an experience that you will never forget.” Momany has spent 44 years in Seattle, only two months of which have been spent on the street, ostensibly to gather material for this course.


The itinerary has been indicated on the website. The first night will be spent visiting the “favoured homeless spots” before retiring for the night in a homeless shelter. On the second day, he suggests trying “panhandling or sleeping on a park bench” to get a real feel of how people view the homeless. Free meals are also a part of the offering. The experience closes with cocktails to chat about one’s own interpretation of what one has gone through.


Expectedly, there are no takers for the course, but Momany’s course has piqued a lot of interest, a lot of it critical. His tour’s Facebook page has disabled negative comments. Only one negative comment, the least accusatory, has been retained. Melody Burson has commented, “This is horrible. It is one thing to bring attention and awareness of the homeless situation in our community, but to charge $2,000 AND take away a bed from someone who has no other choice? Repugnant. I also can't find where you are licensed to do business in the State of Washington." The less polite criticisms accused Momany of exploiting the homeless and treating them like exhibits.


Responding to her, Momany has stated that he will give a 25% discount to churches and social service professionals and that he will donate to the services that are visited as part of the experience.


I personally think that it never hurts to see a situation from another person’s perspective. There is enormous merit in the idea from a life skills point of view. Seeing how the homeless live can be a lesson in gratitude and sensitivity. We might also feed a sense of grudging admiration for the sheer forcefulness and determination with which the homeless struggle to live.


Whether our own homes are spacious mansions or tiny little spaces that end before they begin, at least we have a space of our own, with a roof and four walls that can keep the rest of the world out.


Momany’s idea is not a bad one. It is the execution of that idea that reeks of tackiness and insensitivity. Even as he protests that he is trying to be a voice for the homeless, he is showing that he is nothing but an entrepreneur who is trying to make money out of others’ misery.




(This post has been written for the Ultimate Blog Challenge, October 2013.)

My first cupcakes

I almost didn’t upload these cupcakes. Uploading these cupcakes on the blog is an act of bravery.

Even as I type these words, there is an Auto-Correct mechanism in my head that is screeching into my ears, asking me to replace the word ‘bravery’ with ‘stupidity’.

You see, I spend a lot of time scouring food blogs, searching for recipes that seem doable. Recipes whose ingredients are easily available, where the ingredients are a kirana shop or a hypermarket away. I spend a lot of my Internet time, especially after the kids have been put to bed, admiring food photos and wishing I had that kind of magic at my fingertips.

At some level, I cringe to upload these pictures. My younger brother, Merwyn, of Merwyn’s rucksack fame, has done a good job of capturing the images. But there was only so much he could do, considering the general appearance of my treats.

 

The Delicious Dozen

In a world in which food photography is an emerging new discipline, where food is a thing to be fantasised about and gawked at, my creations are completely homely.

In a world in which the two words food and porn have begun to hang around together, my creations look like the edible equivalent of the boy/girl next door. Well brought up, courteous and nice, but definitely not someone whose posters would adorn your walls.

Certainly not worth uploading on a blog. Especially when all blogs worth their salt have such drool-worthy pictures. Pictures that make you hungry. Pictures that make you want to put your hand in through the screen and pull the dish out.

And yet, after all that nay-saying, here I am, and here is the blog, and here I am on the blog, uploading pictures that no self-respecting baker would dream of putting up. Simply because the longer I thought of it, the more advisable it seemed. After all, I’m no well-known baker. I have no reputation of excellence in sugary goodness to protect. Then why hide these pictures? Especially considering the fact that hiding these pictures would mean hiding the joy that these goodies brought to me.

Because just like food is never only about the food, dessert is never about the dessert alone. There are so many stories that piggyback on them, stories of calories not counted, of the laughter and delight of children, of the pleasure of doing something special for someone dear. Not to forget, the thrill of watching the cakes rise, the anticipation, the aroma that pervades the house and the sheer pleasure of baking.

I had woken up at 5 am, while the house was still asleep, to bake this batch. Once the kids woke up, I’d be too busy washing, bathing and feeding them. The baking activity went off well, despite the minor hitch encountered during the mixing process. The recipe, provided by Maria’s Menu, promised to make a very large quantity of the cake. Since time was of the essence, I decided to halve the quantities of all the ingredients and finish the task faster.

Now where any other inexperienced baker would have taken a little pencil and jotted down the exact quantities, as necessitated by the halving exercise, I decided to do the calculations in my head seconds before adding the ingredient in – all in the interest of saving the afore-mentioned Time. Big mistake!

For a while, all went well. Then just before closing time, I forgot about the cutting down and added as much water as the original recipe called for. Suddenly the pan began to resemble a flood-ravaged city. Water, water everywhere.

There are many moments in life when I long for an Undo key or at least a Last-Saved version. And this was definitely one of those moments.

The tension was released only after I succeeded in carefully scooping out the water. A mini-crisis averted, the rest of the baking went off without a hitch. The batter had been enough to bake twelve cupcakes and one round chocolate cake.

Next I prepared the icing and packed it into a little container. The cakes and cupcakes were meant for my brother’s birthday. Since I had to be on the road for an hour and more to get there, I thought it made sense to do the icing at his house.

Unfortunately, disaster struck, despite all those precautions. By the time we had traversed the 15-km pothole-ridden distance, the cake had folded up. Not folded up as in failed, although at first glance it seemed like that to me. Half the cake lay on its back, while two-thirds of a quarter of the cake had sat up, presumably to get a good view of what the rest of it was doing. The other quarter, meanwhile, had fallen face down on the sleeping half.

If, while sitting on the floor with your legs stretched out in front of you, you attempted to touch your toes, you would succeed in attaining the position that my cake had attained at this moment of time.

Meanwhile, there were bits of the cake that remained unmoved by this attempt at performing Yoga and they distanced themselves from the mainland. The sight was enough to drive me to distraction and I groaned. Not to be outdone, the cupcakes had attempted their own brand of acrobatics. Fortunately, they were a more hardy species, and they survived the activity.



Plated, not quite to perfection

My sister-in-law, mother of two sons, succeeded in untangling the mess that the cake was in. By the time she was done, the cake looked almost as good as new. We slathered some icing on the cake, and then garnished it with a generous sprinkling of tutti-frutti.

Next, I attempted to decorate the cupcakes. Having managed to quell the rioting on the part of the cakes and the cupcakes, now it looked as if the icing was in the mood to create trouble. My original plan had been to decorate the cupcakes according to the high standards set by Maria. I strove to attain the perfection of those swirls as they pirouetted upon the top of the cupcake, starting from the outer edge and nearing the centre.

But it was not to be. The icing stubbornly resisted my attempts to coax it out. A thin streak came out of the nozzle, but the bulk of the frosting congregated at the tip of the frosting bag, and refused to budge. Maybe it was too thick. Or shy.

Tutti-frutti saves the day

So then we did the one thing that I had managed to get a grip on: we loaded the cupcakes with tutti-frutti.

But no matter what it looked like, and I never judge a book by its cover, three of the little people in my life, and the grownups too, gave my goodies the thumbs-up. My daughter and my two nephews, loved the cakes and the cupcakes. My daughter even liked my creations better than the infinitely-better looking store-bought cake.

My younger nephew came up to me and said, “Aunta, your cupcakes weren’t nice,” and then as my face fell, squealed in delight, “they were SUP-ERB.”

My older nephew's feedback particularly warmed my heart. He said, "Aunta, the cake was very yummy. And the cupcakes were supradelicious (his own contribution to the English language. Mirriam-Webster, please include it in the next edition of your dictionary.). The tutti-frutti gave a nice flavour to the cake. The chocolate icing was also very nice."

But no matter what they look like (Hope springs eternal: a well-decorated cupcake is just one batch away), what is important is that these sure did taste really good. Maria,  take a bow!

The Jugaad of baking a cake

With the first bite of the cake, my four-year-old daughter brought together the thumb and forefinger of her right hand to indicate just what she thought of Mama's cake. Her mouth was full of cake, and she couldn't wait to empty it before digging her teeth into yet another bite. Feedback had to be given, meanwhile, but there was no reason why she should call a halt to the eating process while doing so.


Her little mouth, all smeared with icing and crumbly cake, brought a broad grin to my face. For this Proud Mama, it was Mission Accomplished all the way. Of course, there were miles to go in the cake decorating department, as you would see if I had the courage to upload the pictures, but for someone who had been hoping and praying that the baking effort would yield something edible, it was extremely heartening to know that the result was so delightful. My spirits, like the cake, rose wonderfully.


Baking a cake had been on my mind for a long time now. The kitchen and all the adventures it promised had begun to take centre stage in my life ever since the birth of my daughter. The thought of cooking something for her gave me a great deal of joy. Then as she grew older and I discovered that she had a very sweet tooth, I began to take delight in rustling up sweets for her. The desire to bake grew as a natural offshoot of that.


In my childhood home, birthdays were given special treatment. Mum and Dad tried their best to do something special for the person whose birthday it was.


We would all go for Mass to pray for the health and well being of the birthday baby. Mum would cook the favourite dishes of the child whose birthday it was. It was only when I grew older that I realized that I didn’t really have any idea about what dishes she and Dad liked. Even on their birthdays, we got to eat our favourite dishes.


One of the birthday treats that we really looked forward to was Mum’s cake. It was a no-nonsense crumbly sponge cake that would fill the house with its special aroma. I would inhale deeply of that redolent air, gulping by the lungful that precious scent which offered such a foretaste of the treat that was in store for us.


We didn’t have an oven back then. So Dad, ever the resourceful one, conjured up a provisional oven for her. I am using the word 'conjured' because even then it seemed incredible to me that something so heavenly and fragrant and crumbly and moist could come out of a whatchamacallit like that.


A large vessel would be placed on the gas, the burner knob stationed at Simmer. The base of the vessel would be strewn with a one-inch-thick base coating of white sand. Upon the sand would be placed an old rusty trivet. And upon that trivet Mum would place our lone aluminium cake pan, all greased and floured, with the cake batter in it. Then Mum would cover the large vessel with a lid and pile a few burned-out embers of coals upon it.


It was hard to imagine that such a contraption, so makeshift in appearance, could produce such a euphoric feeling. Modern Indian corporate literature on innovation has a word for this. It is called ‘Jugaad.’ Using one’s creativity or imagination to make do with whatever apparatus or conditions are available at hand to produce the desired result.


Dad was always good at doing this kind of Jugaad at home. Thanks to those attempts, so unbelievable to other people, we children would have our very own birthday cake.


For an hour or sometimes more, the cake would bake. There was no transparent glass, as is provided by modern-day ovens, through which we could view the spectacle of the rising cake. At length, Mum would check the doneness of the cake by gingerly removing the lid, complete with embers. Then she would hold her head back for the first gush of steam to dissipate, then poke the cake carefully with a knife. We children, encouraged by the aroma of a baking cake, would wait eagerly for that moment when we would have our cake and eat it too.


After my daughter was born, there was simultaneously born in me the urge to re-create all the little treats and traditions that my parents had so willingly created for us. But I was only able to do so most recently after the purchase of my brand new oven.


Today I realise that in spite of not having so many of the appliances that make life convenient to us, Mum and Dad managed to do so much for us because they wanted to. Maybe successful parenting, like successful anything else, cannot do without its fair share of jugaad.