I haven’t blogged for nearly a month and there’s a reason for that. In December, I took a break from work to stay at home and look after my brother, Karan, as my mother was forced to go went on a holiday to India. This meant fewer places for me to go out and eat at, and less time to blog anyway.

Then, I left for India on January 2, 2012, for a week to attend a wedding. And what a gorgeous wedding it was. That’s the bride and groom at the altar

I came back with around 800 RAW photographs, out of which nearly 600 have now been sent to the family. So when I returned, my time was spent in finishing those.

Two or three days after I returned, the newlyweds and family came to Dubai for the weekend (the groom’s family was based here) and I spent the entire time with them. More photographs followed; I still have to edit those!

I also have been working on another project, which took up most of my nights. Details on that to be posted soon, once it’s ready to go live.

And then there is the reason for these photographs, which also took up some time. After seeing my photographs for BakeFestDxb 3, I was contacted by one of the bakers there, Layal, asking if I would take photographs of her creations.

I demurred at first; I’m not a professional. She didn’t care; said she loved what I’d done then and would I take more? Food and photos…put them together and I’m game.

These are just a few of nearly 200 photographs I took over three days, of her work.

To check more of them out, see her Facebook page, Loul’s Sweet Treats, and let me know what you think.

(Disclaimer: Just to point out, I don’t classify myself as a food photographer; only a food blogger who likes taking pictures of food. I’m well aware I’m not as talented as some other people out there I know and I think there’s something to be said about honesty upfront. Whoever has contacted me for similar things, I point out I’m not a professional and cannot deliver what only professionals can. Also if I think there’s no way I can give decent photos across, I decline.)

Regular programming to ensue.

This post is to inform everyone the books we’ve been collecting for Manzil are finally going to be put on sale. It’s also going to be combined with the school’s Sports Carnival, which will take place on Saturday, February 11, 2012 at the Khalifa University, Sharjah.

Normally, these events are a bit low key, with just the parents and families involved. But this time, the Manzil Sports Day has evolved into the Sports Carnival.

Here’s the event invite; do pop by!

If not to cheer the adorable students while they compete in various sports, but to buy some books and play some games? Come on, it’ll be a fun day out. The event invite says 10am-5pm; from 10am-12pm are the sporting events and then onwards is the fun fair activities, including the booksale.

Anyone want to help them out? Read on, thanks!

Also, if anyone is interested in supporting the school, here’s how you can do it:

1. The school is selling spaces/tables for firms and/or individuals with businesses who want to showcase their wares and sell their items on that day. Participation for this closes February 2, 2012. Do spread the word.
2. They need a photographer and a videographer from 10am-1pm that day. Anyone who’s up for some pro bono work, drop me a line at contact(at)devinadivecha(dot)com.

Thanks again to everyone who supported the collection of books!

Previous posts you might want to read:
- Participate in a special Sports Carnival + #manzilbooks update
- The #manzilbooks update
- At #manzilbooks at @wildpeeta
- Donate books to help raise funds for a special needs school

People often plan what they’re going to do for New Year’s Eve. Many often tell me about awesome concerts, cool parties and in Dubai, they also tell me about being stuck in traffic (yes on NYE).

I’ve never done any of these things on the 365th (or 366th) day of any year. Most of them I spend at home with my family. Earlier it used to be because they wanted me to be at home (reason given was that I was too young), and now I stay out of choice.

It was odd – last year I was in London at this time. Know what I chose to do? Both my flatmates were off on holiday…and I sat in my pajamas, switched my heater on and watched a movie and listened to drunk people screaming down my central London street.

This year I wanted to go for a tweetup at Bu Qtair but decided against it at the last minute – it was the thought of being stuck in traffic that dissuaded me.

My Mom decided to make banoffee pie. She was in India in December and was at an uncle’s house for dinner, who is quite an awesome cook. He made banoffee pie and gave her the recipe.

She made it on NYE and we ate it quite happily. Hope you enjoy making it and munching it too! Have a FooDee-licious year ahead

Mom’s NYE Banoffee Pie:

Ingredients

• 1 tin condensed milk
• 8 digestive biscuits
• Softened butter or margarine
• 2 bananas
• Cream (Dream Whip) 1 sachet [Can also use Nestlé Cream or fresh cream sweetened with sugar and whisked]
• Milk (amount according to cream prep)
• Chocolate powder for dusting or sprinkles 

Method

• Take tin of condensed milk and put it in a pressure cooker (make sure you fill enough water in the cooker). Cook it for 15-20 whistles. The milk has now become toffee.
• In a baking tin/serving dish, crumble the digestive biscuits and mix the softened butter into those crumbs and make a base by patting it down tight.
• After the tin is cooled, open up the cooker and take out the toffee.
• Spread this over the biscuit base.
• Cut the bananas and arrange on top of the toffee.
• Make the whipped cream and apply on top.
• Stick this in the refridgerator to cool.
• Once it’s cold enough, dust chocolate powder or sprinkles on top. Serve cold.

Many who have grown up reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes may not recognize the character in the movie version. Holmes in the movie is snappier, more prone to action, and so much more debonair.

When the first installment in the series came out in 2009, it enthralled. The second one is interesting, but in a different way. Game of Shadows has no substantial story to speak of (the movie’s storylines have nearly nothing to do with the ones we have read in the books). It’s basic: Professor Moriarty is unleashing himself on the world, with the dastardly plan of causing the first World War before its time and Holmes takes it on himself to stop him.

The actors slip into their roles easily. Robert Downey Jr is still the rogue-ish Holmes, and his banter with Jude Law’s Watson still making us chuckle. Rachel McAdams is wasted in her miniscule appearance as Irene Adler. Stephen Fry steps in to Mycroft Holmes feet and has his moments. Noomi Rapace is cast as a gypsy whom Moriarty is trying to kill for various reasons but fails to impress. Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan) appears…but you blink and he’s gone. Kelly Reilly rounds up Holmes’ supporters as Watson’s wife. Which brings us to Jared Harris as Professor Moriarty. When you see the trailers, he does not look like he can be menacing at all. He’s not. I was yearning for Mark Strong’s eerie and chilling portrayal of Lord Blackwood. Don’t get me wrong; Harris does his job well…but I’m not scared of him. And I want to be.

Guy Ritchie picks up the pace from the first movie and runs faster. The slow-motion sequences are aplenty, but the most eye-catching and attention-grabbing being a chase sequence set in a forest. Its direction lends a different viewpoint and indeed, a clearer idea, of what happens when the guns are blazing and people are running for their lives. By one point though, the amount of slow-motion shots in the movie make you want to close your eyes and wait for it to be over.

It’s not really a detective story by this point, but more an action adventure. There is a quick nod to The Final Problem but that’s as close to the books as you’re going to get.

As Holmes himself said: “It’s so overt, it’s covert.”

Moving on from facts that have no relevance to the food whatsoever (I can only explain it away by the last few days having been dedicated solely to watching Doctor Who)…

We end up in the Al Barsha area near Mall of the Emirates and I find myself inside Harput restaurant.

We decided to order two items and then see if we were still hungry. First up: Tavuk sis/skewered tender chicken cubes.

See the full gallery on Posterous

And…Beyti Sarma/minced meat kabab roll served with yoghrut and tomato sauce.

See the full gallery on Posterous

What did I think? For me and for Shruti, the meat won hands down. The chicken was good, don’t get me wrong, but personally the meat dish had more juice in it and I was thoroughly enjoying getting down and dirty with it. Dip the tomato sauce-drowning meat and khubz into the deliciously cool yoghurt, swirl it a bit, and then pop it into your mouth and I guarantee the juices will just make your taste buds tickle and heave a sigh of relief.

See the full gallery on Posterous

With the chicken, I decided to combine everything on the plate. Placed the chicken in the khubz, dolloped some yoghurt, then stuck in the spiced chopped onions, coriander and the radish, rolled it up, and went nom nom om nom.

See the full gallery on Posterous

With indoor and outdoor seating and no frills interior, you get what you ask for. Good food at extremely reasonable prices, why wouldn’t you try this place out?

Allonsy!

See the full gallery on Posterous

Helpful tips: It’s between the Ibis Hotel and Holiday Inn in Al Barsha, so very close to Mall of the Emirates. You generally do get parking in the area and parking tickets are Dhs 2 per hour. If you want to try public transport, it’s smack in the middle of the MOE station and the Sharaf DG station, although I’d recommend this walk only in the winter. 

Read the past posts here:

• Mission: Two Weeks Without Mom
• The One Where The Autism Siblings Were Alone Together
• What I experienced with my autism sibling as his caregiver

Devina’s Final Thoughts
I’m exhausted. And I’m only 24. Every day, mostly the only thought I had was: “I cannot wait to feel that soft bed underneath my body and rest.” It’s tiring. It’s draining. And when you have no help, it’s even worse. You’re assaulted by feelings of not having enough time for anything other than your responsibility to your child and to your house. You end up feeling guilty for not having enough time. You feel alone. Sometimes you doze off on the sofa, or your eyes feel scratchy when you’re driving on Emirates Road because the monotony of that route definitely doesn’t help your sleepiness. But you do it anyway because you have to and nothing is too much for your child (in this case, my brother, but he feels like my baby most of the time!). It hits you that what you would’ve normally done only for a few years of your child’s life, you will do forever. It’s not exactly uplifting but when you sink into bed every day having gotten the job done, there’s a sense of satisfaction and the hope that when you wake up the next day, you’ll do it well, all over again. When you wake up, yeah you’re worried today is the day you’ll collapse and just not be able to do it anymore, but…you soldier on. Because this is your child. And if you don’t support him/her and don’t fight for him/her, then no one else will.

Adita’s Experience
It was a nice change though in the beginning I was feeling very stressed and not getting sleep because I was constantly worrying about both my children. Then slowly I got used to it. Since every day I normally do things with and for Karan, throughout the trip I was feeling very empty, like I didn’t have anything to do. I felt lost quite a bit because of that. Even towards the end of the trip, I wasn’t getting sleep properly, not because I was worried but because I’m used to waking up all the time to check on Karan. It was nice to meet people and just go wherever I wanted without a second thought because otherwise I always have to think about what Karan will be happy with. So liberating in a way. Everything is always according to his routine, but here I was free to do as I wished. I was going out for movies, staying out for dinner with family and friends…but I think I’m so used to this life, I missed my routine too! After 16 years, because I’ve been doing everything according to him, even though I went out and did everything that is fun, I don’t miss that sense of social life I think. I was sort of waiting to get back to my routine life. But it was definitely a nice change to get a few days off.

Same advice as last time…read in parts or keep 10-15 minutes aside. Or 20 if you read verrrry slowly.

The One Night Where Dee was Dancing
One evening, Karan decided he was going to cry his heart out. Now he has these rare moments where he cries properly with a quivering mouth, real tears and his ears go red. He started crying. For real. I freaked out, called Mom and asked her what could be wrong (he’d eaten, gone to the loo…everything). “Put on his favourite songs,” she said. I paused Dollhouse, and looked and found a CD of…Dabangg. Yeah, really. And so that evening for one hour, if anyone looked through our windows, they would’ve seen me jiggling away to Munni Badnaam Hui. Seriously. I decided since he couldn’t see Salman Khan and Malaika Arora Khan, by the billions of blistering barnacles, was I going to give him a show (to be clear, I was channeling Salman Khan in my moves)! I couldn’t move him upstairs and play it on my laptop since it’s generally a bad idea to try and bug him further than he already is at the moment. After a while, he calmed down and could be found rocking to the tunes of the song himself.

The One Where Dee Wakes up at 5:30am. Every Day.
When he finally got better, the week starting December 18 (a Sunday) was when I started sending him to school again. His school is in Sharjah, off the infamous National Paints roundabout. I live in “new” Dubai (Springs/Meadows). Yeah. That. Mom says she wakes up at 5:30am and advised me to do the same. I do. I wake up, brush and all the usual morning stuff before heading down to make Karan’s snack for school. Right now he’s in a pasta phase (apparently he’s been refusing his sandwiches) so pasta it is. Every day. Fresh. Little bugger. Once the pasta is made, dishes are washed and all that, I wake him up. Brush his teeth. Give him breakfast. Get ready. Get him ready. Jet off between 7:30am-7:45am. On the third and fourth day of the week, my alarm fails me (read: it correctly follows my “snooze” button instructions) and I wake up only by 6:30am. I don’t know how I manage but I do (in a rush) and leave by 7:45am or 7:50am max and make it in time for school (time = 8:30am). Then I wait till 1pm when I have to pick him up. Then drive back home and go back to work (feeding, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, dishwashing, clothes washing, vacuuming, bathing, feeding). 

And the dishes?! Where do all these dishes come from? There’s just two of us, for crying out loud! I shudder to think of how many dishes there are when four of us are in the house. I’m very sporadic with my dish washing otherwise. To be fair we have a dishwasher, but for some reason, the day after my father left…it stopped working. Ummmm. Yeah, I didn’t do ANYTHING. It stopped on its own on the day of the height of my flu situation. Poor, sick ol’ me washed EVERYTHING.

The One Where Dee Feels Lonely
Wow. It’s lonely here. You have no idea. I knew Mom felt alone but I experienced it first-hand now. It’s insanely bad. There’s nothing, you know? You wake up, take him to school, either finish grocery shopping or quickly have some breakfast while you wait, drive back home on the same, deserty stretch that is Emirates Road every day, cook, clean, wash, try and put your feet up for a little while and sleep. Rinse and repeat…forever. You feel so tired at the end of it, you don’t feel like doing anything else. The thought of even blogging for me was repugnant during this time because I was just so bloody pooped. And I love to write; I make my living by writing, for heaven’s sake! And to be honest, no one else was there. I don’t know how to explain it…I was still tweeting for example, talking to friends/chatting…all that. But there’s this sense of isolation that prevails when you take care of a child with special needs. Two friends visited me during the 16 days I was alone…one to bring me cake because I was having flu-cravings (she claims this does not exist…I do), and the other drove all the way from Deira to my place to pick up a very heavy water bottle to place on the water dispenser since my back issues prevent me from doing so myself (thanks Shruti and Ayub!). Every one else is busy…I don’t blame them. People have lives to lead. But when you are caring for a special needs child, they lead their lives as it was with no thought for you (as it should be…no one else is responsible for you or your charge. Never expect. EVER.) and it just makes you feel more alone than before. Bear in mind most of my friends have cars and I would’ve liked some company sometimes… but you know. Shit happens.

The One Where Karan Goes Out
I was very conscious of the time that he was sick and I was sick that we didn’t go out very much. As soon as we both were in varying stages of flu recovery, I tried taking him out. Once I ended up at a café on Sheikh Zayed Road with a few friends…he ate a bit from my plate and I left in time to get him home for his dinner. He was alright during that time…apart from wanting to grab the food off my plate without waiting for me to cut/scoop/feed. Impatient boy. Another time, in an impromptu fashion, I went to a tea joint near my house after a friend tweeted and said why not come over. I demurred at first…what if Karan didn’t like it? Friend said come anyway. I was still divided. Called up Ayub and asked his opinion…he said gooo! I went for about 40 minutes. Karan was alright…didn’t want to eat the cake I ordered though. He scratched the beejesus out of the rattan chair (he likes the texture) and eventually I left when I thought he was nearing the end of his tether. I’m glad I went both times though…my way of thinking is he needs to be exposed to different things and if people have a problem (ie other people at a public venue), then I am there to fight for his right to enjoy the same things they are. Innit?

The One Where We Eat Popcorn
Movies. I’ve talked before about how I want to get cinemas in theatres to have special needs showings like they do in UK and I haven’t been able to follow up on this yet, but this is still something I want to work on and I think I’ll have more time in the new year to do that. But till then, I brave the crowds and hope I find people in the theatre who will be understanding. But even so, why make it harder on myself? I pick an animation…Puss in Boots (or Cat in Boots as it’s called on the posters in the UAE). I pick the first morning show on a Friday. As empty as it can be, the better. Still, there are about 6 people in there apart from us. Karan devours that popcorn bucket like a starving man (he wasn’t Mom, I WAS FEEDING HIM I SWEAR!) and watches, closes his eyes, then watches again. Towards the end, he decided he was going to join Puss with the dialogues and went “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm” and “AAAHHHEEEMMMMMM” for extended periods of time, but most of this was during action sequences so no one heard him. He did try it during a dialogue-y scene, and while a few kids did look back, they didn’t say/do anything since Karan wasn’t making it so that they couldn’t hear anything. He did seem to like the music though, which is only a good thing.

To be continued…

Read it in parts, or settle down with a cuppa for a bit.

DAY ONE (9/12/2011)

Okay 6am…why is Karan awake? Okay. He needs to use the toilet. I wonder if I can go back to sleep after this? I dozed off for a bit but my grandmother called a few times so we had to wake up. Karan is disoriented by this point. He looked confused about being in my room, for one. Then spent the rest of the day walking in and out of Mom’s room, trying to find her. He still hasn’t got the hang of grabbing the iPad to show me what he wants so when I gave it to him, he quickly navigated his way to the Grace app and selected Mom’s face. I couldn’t bring her back from Bombay in a minute, so we settled for Skype and a phone call. He just got more annoyed. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s left to look for her in all the rooms of the house and has come back to where I am, looking utterly disappointed. He’s still got a bit of a cold, leaving him slightly tired. 

DAY TWO (10/12/2011)

Karan’s still looking for Mom. Going to her room, sitting on her bed, waiting for her to appear. He refuses to talk to her on the phone or Skype. He’s angry, that’s for sure. I cook today…scary! I watch nervously as Karan bites into my chicken curry. What if he turns up his nose at it because it doesn’t taste like Mom’s? But he eats and seems to like it. Whew. But this is insane…I look at all the dishes piling up and how much I’ve to clean and it seems insurmontable. Why are there so many dishes?! Why does my father not help clean up?! Oh wait, he never does. But…I now see how much work there is in the house. I’ve even put the dishwasher to work and empty it at the end of the day. I’m pooped by the end of the day and just want to sleep!

DAY THREE (11/12/2011)

Karan wakes up again around 6am. I can’t handle it…I go back to sleep and he walks up and down the room as I probably snore my way through for a few more hours. Today I don’t cook; there is enough left over from yesterday. I do walk downstairs to piled up dishes…what a surprise…my father hasn’t done anything. Again. I clean up behind him and after Karan’s dishes, go out to the garden to pluck some tulsi leaves to make a homemade cough remedy. But then I have to put the clothes in the washing machine. For this I’d written down instructions on how to use it (yeah I know…I knew how to use the washing machines in Sheffield and London but those seemed far simpler!) and followed them to the T, hoping nothing funny would happen to the clothes. But everything seemed to go well. The clothes were clean at the end of it, which is great. Karan has stopped waiting in Mom’s room but he still asks for her on the iPad. Uh oh…I’ve started coughing. I hope I don’t fall sick…when I’m sick, I’m pretty much useless.

THE NEXT 10 DAYS

I give up trying to write every day. I’m just so knackered all the time! I told a friend I didn’t mind tweeting because outbursts in 140-characters only seemed much less of a task than actually doing any work. I did fall sick…Karan essentially passed on his cold to me.

He eventually stopped looking for her constantly. Although he did occassionally ask for her by navigating to her picture on the iPad. Then there was the massive meltdown night.

To be continued in next post…where instead of days I write down incidents that I want to share.

Not many people understood. “I’m taking two weeks off from work in December,” I said. “Oh where are you going?” they asked. “Nowhere,” I replied. I was staying in Dubai and planned to spend these two weeks off looking after Karan while my parents went to India. It was hard as it was to get my Mom on the plane to be honest. “I’ll be more stressed out leaving you two!” she said to me. Go, I told her. I kept forcing her. Telling her that once she went, she’d have so much fun she’d want to leave us all the time.