Making the healthiest Lauki/bottle gourd/doodhi Raita

Lauki or doodhi is a nice, easy to grow, inexpensive and healthy vegetable. The english name of Lauki is bottle gourd and the botanical name is Lagenaria siceraria and it belongs to cucurbitaceae family(Family of gourds/pumpkins) . Here are some names in different languages:

• India: lauki
  
• Indonesia: labu
  
• Japan: hyotan, yugao
  
• Malaysia: labu ayer
  

• Philippines: upo
  
• Sri Lanka: diya labu
  
• Thailand: buap khaus, nam tao
  
• Vietnam: bau.
• Chinese:  po gua, poo gua, kwa kwa, dudhi, hu gua, hu lu gua, opo

While it has a large number of health benefits that can be found else where, this vegetable can be very delicious also. We have a garden and these vegetables just grow and mature in a weeks time and I really like to cook variety of things with Lauki since the supply is very high. Not to mention the freshness and the organic nature of the vegetable. After browing for suitable recipes, I decided to go my own way.

Ingredients: 1/2 a Lauki(Fresh is better).
3 green chillies
1/2 table spoon of Panchpuran(has a mixture of jeera, dhania, black cumin, mustard and fenugreek seed)
4-5 curry leaf(Murraya koenigii) either fresh or dry .
1/2 cup yoghurt (home made is better)
cooking time : 10 mins.

First peel the gourd and wash it in water then scrape it in a wide scrapper. Get the steamer on and start steaming the vegetable. Meanwhile heat a small pan, add 1/4 spoon oil and first add the panchpuran till the seeds burst. Then add the green chilli and the curry leaf to it, stir it for 10 seconds, then switch off the stove. Mix little bit of water in the yoghurt and add salt to your taste. Within 5-7 minutes, take out the lauki from the steamer and add it to yoghurt. Then add the saute and mix properly. If you wish, add little bit of jeera powder. A very healthy lauki raita is ready for you...

The G's of Indian politics

India is going through a very revolutionary phase - a combination of awareness among younger generation, information explosion and honest chief of public offices and social actvists and NGOs are driving this movement. I am truly awed by this mass movement and feel extremely fortunate that it is happening during my life and time...
The lethal combination of a honest supreme court chief justice Sarosh Homi Kapadia, Chief of CAG Mr. Vinod Rai, social activist Anna Hazare, Prof. Subramanyam Swamy, Social activists Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan et al just to name a few, have unearthed a large number of scams that would have gone unnoticed. Last but not the least I would also like to mention Ms. Sucheta Dalal also for her awareness spreading campaign that makes all the difference. Then the medium such as twitter, facebook, blogspot, wordpress etc. are just the best thing that is happening to the country right now. Long live the whistle blower tribe and hope someday I can contribute to the cause. As someone just mentioned in the tweets that it is all 'G' now make news in India. That is; 2G, CAG, madam G and now Huji... Now waiting for more Gs...

Did you know this guy??!!

This morning started rather in a very anxious mode. Got up really early(4 AM) and thought shall do some quality work. As usual began checking my office email, and there was a mail by one of my ex-colleagues with whom I worked little bit before. The mail began with standard exchange of pleasantries followed by a link [Here] asking me if I knew or was in touch with this guy. I did not understand much, but opened the link and to my horror, it was about a murderer who killed an Israeli girl after an altercation. It was an extra-marital affair!! There was a photo of him on the news item with a Virginia Tech jacket on. What the heck!! This guy is from Virginia Tech?! I muttered to myself. Trying very hard to remember, I could barely have any recollection, but I think I may have seen him at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. As we don't interact much with the students, I may not have talked with him. Now I am beginning to think what is going on? In the last 4 years, at least there are 3 incidences where I know students have turned into Psychopaths and went on in a killing spree. The first one was the infamous VT shooting in 2007, followed by a Chinese student decapitating a girl in a cafeteria in 2008 and this is the third one! This is very alarming and the trend does not look very good at all. Are these incidences occurring by chance or there is something big associated with it? Could there be a factor? Are we producing Psychos in our campuses? Hope not and hope the disturbed people get some help on time...