February 2024

Issue #51
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 Food Memoirs
If I think about food, the first thing that comes to my mind is Malatang. A Chinese street food.
I was living in China for one year before covid started. We would always eat dinner outside, because
China is well known for delicious and varied food and we wanted to try as much as we could. Once
we were too tired to go anywhere so we went to a shopping mall behind our house.

When we entered the shopping mall there was this unique smell, spicy and making your nose hurt.
We found out where it was coming from and we saw the Malatang shop. It was a conveyor belt shop.
There were three types of soup that we could choose first the plain one(not spicy), second medium
and last the very spicy one. We ordered the medium one.

When we got the soup we could just pick any toppings you want from the conveyor belt and put it in
your soup and wait until it gets cooked and ready to eat. There were vegetables, meat, noodles, tofu
and more…
When I tasted the soup it was oily and spicy at the same time and I
could feel a tingling in my tongue but it was very delicious. I put noodles
in and meat and vegetables and anything that I could see. It was winter
at that time and It was snowing a lot so it was perfect timing to eat a
warm spicy malatang. I was sweating while eating it. And when I finished
eating it my tongue was completely numb.

We needed something to cool down our heat so we bought ourselves some ice cream and started
walking back home. I really liked that moment walking after having a good warm meal and walking in
the snowy streets. And It felt like I had real Chinese food. I don't know why. After that we would
always go there every week to eat malathang. Now I want to visit China again just to eat Malatang at
the exact space and the exact weather, I really miss that place.
-Lea
******
Everyday in France after school, when I was eight years old, I would be the most grumpy child ever. I
hated the school in France and I would never enjoy it. My mom would make it up to me by going to
the same shop almost twice a week after school, and getting the same thing I loved so much. The
thing was a type of donut bread, sweet yet sort of salty at the same time. It had Nutella inside and
powdered sugar on top. I would always want more and more and more because it was so addictive
and so good.
It was a very small piece of bread, but it was so so so fluffy. My sister would also
always get it because she would get jealous if I was the only one who got it. I get so
many memories thinking about those days in France, and the shop, and the
amazing donut ball. I think the donut ball would just cheer me up every time,
because while I was in school I knew that my mom would probably bring me to that
shop and let me eat that heavenly sweet, so I waited and waited for school to
finish.
I remember specifically how much my mouth used to water just thinking about the
fluffiness, texture,
and the amazing taste. I didn’t only love the food though, I actually really loved that shop too, I found
it really cosy and small and it smelled amazing because of all the good things it had inside of it. I
think that the sweet also makes me remember more about France, and I find it really nice when
there is a small memory inside such a big one. Thank you, donut ball for existing.
-Luce
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You know, I used to like cooking. We'll, I never exactly LOVED it, but I'd do it if I had to. Now, I'm
forced to make my sister cook for me, even though she's bad. Allow me to tell you what actually
happened, traumatising me and my nonexistent bloodline for generations to come. So basically
what I was trying to do was melt wax. And look, wax might not be food, but the way I see it, you can
eat it if you try hard enough and that's good enough for me. My plan was to cook the wax, it
becomes candle juice, and then ta da~ I'd have a candle! You can probably already tell that didn't
work out great.
One important piece of information is that I was home alone, having been abandoned by my family
prior to this mishap. I had kind of just thought to put it in a saucepan because I was like “it can't be
that hard, right? I'm like, so good at everything that I do so I'll definitely manage this.”

So there I was, dumping wax into my mom's favourite saucepan. I put it on the stove and started
the fire. Then, inspiration struck. I decided I was supposed to stir it, because it's literally gonna
become soup, right? I turned to get a spoon. Chat, I'm literally a genius. I turned back around and
the saucepan was literally ON FIRE???

So I was freaking out, the saucepan was on fire, and I was home alone. I was like okay, water is the
opposite of fire. So I filled a cup of water and threw(?) it at the saucepan. The fire got way bigger,
and literally touched the ceiling??? I was like bro what. I literally had no other options, and at this
point I was thinking about what I should save and whether we had insurance or whatever. So I
poured(?) Another cup of water onto it, and it turned off. There was smoke everywhere, and a mark
where it touched the ceiling. The mark IS there, my family doesn't see it because they're BLIND. So
I started opening windows, and waving all the smoke out, when the front door opened, and my
mom walked in. I looked very unsuspicious, with all the windows open, water everywhere, and my
hands in the air, but somehow she knew that something was wrong. I wonder how? She was like
“What's that smell?” and I was like “Oh, I lit the kitchen on fire! Funny how that happens sometimes
right? Haha…”
My mom actually did seem to find it funny, until she realised
that I had used the only saucepan without a broken handle.
Then she made me clean for like an hour, but I guess I did
deserve it. The moral of this story is that when you light your
kitchen on fire, always throw two cups of water at the
saucepan instead of one. Truly valuable advice.
-Atisha
******
Food might just be my favourite thing in the world. I love food too muchin in fact I love food so
much I do not know what i remember. I remember at least more than 100+ types of food I love.
There are a few that will stay the closest to my heart, these foods which will stay with me for life
consists of these tastes: Sweet and salty and spicy. I really can not choose between these both for
my favourite, so I'll write about a food that consists of both these tastes. Into sweet my favourite
dish is a pancake I had in a restaurant called lavonne with Vihaan (another person in this class).

It consisted of two fat pancakes sandwiching chocolate syrup with

bananas, topped with ice cream, strawberries, marshmallows
And some powdered sugar. The good thing about it was how it looked
and the difference it has compared to normal pancakes we usually have.
When I had it for the first time after a while I was feeling full, but I just
couldn't waste it.
Moving on to my spicy and salty dish. Well these is just the main
two tastes isn't it, but I will go for this one time I had panipuri.
I don't know but for some reason this one time I had panipuri was
way different than the other times, I don't know how. But I can
say I definitely took more panipuri than I usually take.
This is my food memoir. Bye
-Abhi

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Whenever I think about food a distant memory always comes to mind. It was when I was living in
Mumbai. It's a very faint memory and I have tried my best to recollect it. I was 4 years old.

My parents took me to Sula Vineyard in Lonavala. They wanted to take a break from work and since
we lived 2hrs away it seemed like a brilliant idea. I can merely remember the lush green grape
orchids the vineyard was surrounded with.
The sunlight glimmered over the leaves and looked too good to be true. We were shown around the
orchids and then we were taken inside. We were immediately greeted with huge Steel canisters
almost 30 ft tall with wine inside. I remember how tiny I felt compared to that. After finishing the
tour of the whole vineyard we went to the restaurant. The restaurant was covered in white table
cloths and looked really fancy. They had an extensive menu to choose from.
I tried the prawn ravioli and I instantly loved it. It was creamy
and It tasted so good. It was sweet and a bit savoury and it was
just right. It was the only thing I ate. I didn't even try anything
else. Nowadays I'm just craving that same ravioli and I still can't
find it anywhere else. I wish I could go to the Sula Vineyard and
have some more.
-Aaryan

If I had to write about a particular food, I would write about the meal I have had the most ,which
would be varan bhat. Varan Bhat means dal and rice in Marathi but Dal has spices mixed with it.
Varan doesn't have any spices in it , it's just lentils and water with salt and turmeric. It tastes very
simple and plain but somehow it tastes really good and if you add ghee to it, it basically melts in
your mouth.
It's a soup like consistency with rice. It feels best to have it in winters since
it's hot and soupy .For me it reminds me of home. I have had it as a child over
and over again. Everytime I am sick, that's what I have, it's basically my
comfort food.Its the meal my mom makes when she doesn't feel like cooking
because it's extremely easy to make.
Now, I don't have it as often as I used to but we still have it once in a while
and NO it's at all my favourite food but I have had it the most so I guessed I
could describe it the best.
-Sara

Thair saadum has always been my comfort food. It sits well in my stomach and goes with everything.
Well, almost everything.
One time, we went to Chennai to meet up with some family. We were staying at a hotel. I was
complaining about car sickness since we had been driving for hours, so I ordered some curd rice and
sambar from the hotel restaurant. I was very excited, cold thair saadum with warm, salty sambar, it
sounded like heaven. That's when the doorbell rang.
I sat on the hotel desk and cleared the area to make space for my food.
After the food came, i looked at it in horror as I saw pomegranate on warm
curd rice. I was very sad, how could they put sweet fruit onto my thair
saadum? Even so, i persisted and took the pomegranate off. I then took a
scoop of thair saadum and put some sambar onto it. As I ate it, my face
quickly turned sad as I realised, the sambar was sweet. I was very sad, my
dreams of having cold curd rice and warm salty sambar were ruined.
I didn't eat dinner that night.
(This is a very dramatic retelling of a boring story, i don't have anything -Megha
against sweet sambar i promise)

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 When I was around four or five years old, I used to live right next to
the beach. My mom would take me there everyday in the evening
because it was only a five minute walk from where I lived and I
would play and sing in the water for a while. After that, I would play
in the sand for a while and when I'm done, I would always get me
something to eat. It would mostly be corn and I used to look
forward to it. I want to go to a similar beach one day and eat corn
again just to remind myself of the time when I went everyday. I
don't remember much from that time but if there was one thing I
remember well, it would be the evening trips to the beach and
eating corn -Isha

Fope’s Opinion
Whenever I think about of food. I think about this disaster that happened
recently. It was few weeks ago my mom told me to make some idly, and I messed
it up really bad. So it all started like this, it was a Friday morning my mom
explained me the process to it and I began preparing it. So first I got the batter
and poured it onto the tray, and waited for about 10 minutes. After a while I
checked on it and it's fully cooked, but again I waited for 5 more minutes, and
then suddenly!!! It started buring and then I saw smoke all over the place and i
quickly opened the lid, and saw the water was fully drained out, and I forgot to
add enough amount of water to it, and also forgot to apply oil on the tray, so that
the idly can come out smoothly.
My mom came home rushing and hungry, and also was really tired, so I had no choice to take the idly
out and let it cool down for a bit. After all of this, I started thinking how did I get distracted, then I
realized that I was too busy on my phone and didn't even pay attention on what was going on. So
two major lesson learnt don't do 2 things simultaneously, if you can manage it then yeah sure go
ahead and do it. And always double check things when you are not sure about it.
-Vihaan

The first thing that comes to me isn't a meal but it's pav bhaji, pav bhaji
is honestly just my favorite thing when it comes to food, I have other
favorites but pav bhaji is what first comes to mind, I've loved pav bhaji
for a very long time now and just the amazing taste really makes me
happy, and the soft buttery pav with the spicy tangy tasty bhaji with all
the onions, lemon etc can really melt my heart.

-Aarohi
The first thing that comes to my mind when i think about food
is cheese. It might be because I am French and France is known as the
country of cheese, (we invented more than 150 types of cheese) . I like many
different cheeses so I don't think I'll be able to say which one is my favorite
even though I have a little preference for goat cheese. I like goat cheese
because of its dry taste and its special smell.
i will stop talking about cheese now because if i tell you the smell and taste
of all my favorite cheeses it will cover all the magazine.

-Celestin
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 Korean Festival
Every year our korean community holds culture festival in
Auroville. This year we prepared korean foods, korean
calligraphy, hanbok trial and a hanbok fashion show!

I participated in the hanbok fashion show and also helped the

calligraphy team. I was quite surprised because there were a lot
of people and I was happy that our country was popular. I helped
the calligraphy team by translating from indian names into
korean and I really enjoyed doing that, I was talking to a lot of
people and they were enjoying taking pictures of me on their
phone. And I remember one person thanking me for making a
nice memory.
Around 4pm we started getting ready for the fashion show.
There were a lot of people participating and we had each team
for each theme, for example palace promenade, family outing,
wedding, summer night temptation and party time etc. I was
in the summer night temptation team. We already rehearsed
all our walking along with chosen music for us.

I was quite nervous before going on the stage but when I got
on the stage I was a bit shocked because there were more-Lea
people than before and the stage was filled and there were
even people standing because there were not enough sits. I
was a bit shy to walk infront of so many people but I had a lot
of fun. After the fashion show I was so dead, I was helping the
festival from 9am to 6pm. After having food we cleaned up and
went home!

I am already feeling excited about the next year korean culture festival!

-Lea
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 Craft Mela
The endangered craft mela is an event that happens every year in Auroville, where you can make
many different endangered crafts in a week. On the first day of the craft mela, we had to be there
at 9:30 sharp for the assembly. We discussed all the different types of crafts and where you could
find them. I started off with chair-making. Since chairmaking took really long to do, I had to find a
partner to make the chair with, so I chose to do it with Noah. We had to get four big wood planks
and cut them into tiny pieces, which took a few hours to do. Next, we had to sandpaper all the
pieces, and it was taking forever until a few of my friends came to help me.
In less than 2 hours, we managed to finish the sandpapering. And there was
only one last step left: putting all the pieces together. We thought it would
be the easiest step, but we turned out to be wrong. Putting the pieces
together was very hard because we had to screw all the planks together
while holding them so they didn’t fall apart. This was very challenging and
took the longest to make. We started at 9:45 and ended up finishing at 4:30,
which was an entire day of craft mela.
For the next 2 days, I made 2 types of glasses: wine and normal. I had to first choose a bottle, then
apply some coconut oil before lightly cutting the glass bottle. I then had to burn the area where
the cut was with a candle and dip it in the water while pouring water from the top, which made
the glass cut in half smoothly. The last step was sandpapering. There were four different
sandpapers. I had to sandpaper for an hour straight and then change to a smoother sandpaper
every 10 minutes or so. After that, I washed the glass, and it was done. For the last 2 days (if I'm
counting right), I did a shiva lingam in stone carving, a leather wallet (which took forever to stitch
because the leather was super thick), and a butter knife in the forges.
Those were all the things I did during the 5 days of craft mela. And the very last day of craft mela
was the fair, where you got to show the things made in all the craft mela days, and I kept our
things at our school table. (We had a table for each school.) We also got three food tokens each to
spend on any food we wanted to eat. There were also stalls with all the craftsmen who taught us
during the craft week, selling their own things. There was a silambam(Indian martial arts)
performance just before lunch and it was super awesome. Craft Mela overall was 10/10 for me.
-Meet

The endangered Craft Mela is an event in Auroville that happens every

year. The first day we went around the Mela and got a tour around the
different crafts that were happening there. We registered our names
and the next day we were back. The first craft I went to was soap
stone carving. I made a shiva lingam that took me 2 hours to make.
After having lunch I looked around for things I could make. I decided
to pick out a bottle to make a glass out of it. I learnt how to cut a glass
on a jig.
Then how to heat it up and then separate the glass in water. On the second day I was left with
mostly nothing to do. All of the stalls were mostly busy and didn't have any space to accommodate
more people. After waiting for a while I finally found a place with lost wax. It was a stall where we
learnt how to make spoons out of natural wax.. It was quite a tedious process and it required quite
a lot of strength to mould the wax into the desired shape. I even burnt my fingers twice trying to
mould the wax when it was hot. The third day I was interested in learning silambam. Silambam is a
martial art originated from tamil nadu. It involves fighting and self defence with sticks. I learnt
quite a lot of ways to rotate the stick and even dropped it on my foot which hurt. The first half of
the third day I made fishes out of palm leaves. It was really fun and not really a time consuming
craft. It was quite quick and it put my fingers through a test.

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The second half of the fourth and the whole of the fifth day mostly consisted of me finishing my
macrame. It was a lot of trial and error and it took way too long for my liking. But after almost 2
days I finally finished and I was quite satisfied with the product. Overall the craft mela was this
year could have been better. As i felt that there were a very limited number of stalls for the
amount of people that were there.
-Aaryan

The first day of craft mela was registration and a small introduction to various crafts. I knew
them all because last year I attended this and all craft were the same except few. I set few goals
for myself to do, like bamboo and carpentry but I couldn't manage to finish on time. The next
day was fun I started with soap stonbaskete craving. That took me about half a day, but I was
worth it. Few things about this unique stone Is that it's not found nearby its technically illegal
and there's no mining taking place now. Day 3 was boring because of my silly choice that I made,
the craft took 5 hours and I didn't have any outcome. But after lunch every craft was full and I
just sat down and did absolutely Notting. Day 4 I started macrame. I made 2 of them and that
took me about a day to make. After I finished it I started helping others to make it, and spent My
whole day there. Day 5 I made a glass cup out of a liquor bottle and it turned out really amazing
especially the design on the bottle. I made a lot of items and the experience was just amazing.
The last Day was fabulous performance with sticks on fire and it gave me Madagascar movie
vibs, these things are a once In a life time opportunities that u shouldn't miss out on.

-Vihaan

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 Marathon
All my life I thought that running was a very cool thing to
do. Like, telling your parents or your friend that “oh! I went
for a run”. Whenever someone told me something like that,
my impression of them would immediately change. It would
become something like this: this is a very sorted person and
they are for sure an athlete.
So yes!, if 4 months ago you told me that I would run a
marathon I would probably laugh because that's exactly
what I did when my father told me I should run the
marathon. After I realised that he was quite serious about it.
My first reaction in my brain was “not gonna happen, you're
setting yourself up for failure” but after thinking about it my
reaction became “it's the new year’s and you have nothing
planned, why don't we just try it”. So I said yes.

I knew that I would need a lot of practice so I started practising the very next day. My father
was basically my coach because a lot of his friends run so he had an idea of what I should do.
Not all days were the same. A few days I would manage. A few I wouldn't but as the days went
by I started loving the whole activity. It was the 45 mins in a day that I would be with myself
,outside and doing something I like. Everyday I had a goal and I had to achieve it, again some
days I would,some days wouldn't but the days that I did manage I would feel good because I
knew I was one step closer.

Fast forward to the marathon day, I woke up at 6am in the

morning full of energy. My goal was that I did 5km under 35 min
but somewhere in my head I knew that a known benchmark
was under 30 min. I wasn't sure I could ,but I really wanted to.
After we started running I put on music and the one thing I
kept telling myself was that this is like an everyday run. 500m
before the finishing line I checked my phone for the first time. I
was surprised , it was 28min. So now I was literally sprinting for
my life to make it in the next 2min. I was obviously tired by
running all the way till there but the thought of accomplishing
the milestones that I had never even actually dreamt of was way
more overpowering. I completed the marathon in 30.08min.
The first 2 mins after finishing the race were just catching my
breath and after doing that i realised that I DID IT!

As I sit here on my desk on this random Wednesday writing about this, I feel proud of myself
for showing up everyday and doing what it took.I now know that I can do better and no I
won't stop running after the marathon I still go “on a run once a week” (isn't it cool).
-Sara

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Poetry Collage

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