Started the day by following grandson’s, Ryan, cricket game on Auckland Cricket’s app. Playing for his college’s 1st XI the young man had bowling figures of 3.2-0-10-3 and also took a catch! Well done Ry.
Our own day was taken up with a cooking lesson with a local family headed by Shashi a woman who lost her husband (murdered by his close friend) when she was 32 & had two young sons to care for. She is from the Brahman caste and following the “rules” she was not allowed to remarry and had to find a way to support her young family as there was no wider family support available.
After doing menial work for 5 years she started this cooking class having been motivated by an Irish tourist who she had cooked a meal for and as they say the rest is history.
Her story in her own words can be found here https://shashicookingclassses.com/about.php
We were joined by a younger Israeli couple who are touring for a year and as recently as two months ago they were in NZ. He is an airforce pilot having done 10 years service and studying economics and she is studying to be a doctor having also completed her military service (3 years).
Shashi was assisted by one of her sons and together they were very good at imparting the information needed to cook good Indian food.
Between us we made masala chai, charparti, paratha plain savoury and desert, vegetable pakora, naan topped with yoghurt cheese & spicy tomato mix and folded over to become an Indian Calzone, mango chutney, coriander chutney, a dry Aubergine, cauliflower and potato curry and having made the “magic sauce” put together 2 dishes – aloo palak and paneer butter masala
Shashi
Her Son
Looking the part
A video of the group working is here
Having prepared the dishes the four “newly trained Indian chefs” then enjoyed the fruits of our efforts and if we say so ourselves whoever cooked them prepared the best Indian dishes any of us had tasted!
Sitting across the table from our new Israeli friends we shared our travel experiences but also had a relatively lengthy discussion over the conflict in their home country.
What came through was that while prior to October 7th they believed they could live in harmony with the Palestinians now they believe that there is so much hatred that all and every Palestinian would gladly kill them.
They can’t understand how the Israeli army were so unprepared for what occurred nor how they were let down by their intelligence agency who have such a good reputation. They have no time for Netanyahu who they say is trying to show strength to the country to retain his position as leader.
In their travels they often don’t mention they are Israelis because of the anti-Israel sentiment that prevails. They say the would feel safer in Tel Aviv than they do around the world.
Their view is that Israel has lost the information war which has allowed Hamas to control the narrative. They believe that the hostage exchange for convicted terrorists is misguided as those terrorists will ultimately come back to haunt them quoting a similar exchange where Israel released 100s of prisoners in exchange for one of their own and one of those 100s later led another terrorist raid against Israel.
They offered the view that if it was Hezbollah who had initiated October 7th then the Israeli casualties would have been 100 times worse so they approved of the action against them in Lebanon.
Sadly they can see no solution.
An interesting and informative discussion which gave us a better appreciation of the conflict from the Israeli point of view.
Then throughout the day we see and read the news of Trump’s train wreck of a meeting with Zelenskyy – God, be he a Christian one or one of the many Hindu ones, help the world survive the next 4 years while Trump and his equally dislikable VP try to flex their outsized egos.
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