Hello traveller,

Time for another tune, AND of course, I have another of Chandy's tasty recipes for you (below the song).

I really hope you enjoy,

Kat

TIME MACHINE

Come take your place
Alight inside
This oddity
Of my design

How quietly
We melt and flow
No earthly light
Is turning

Home enough for what I sound
All this time where have you been
Say the word and I have found
My time machine

My hour is come
Descending fast
Each moment gone
Could be my last

How quietly
We melt and flow
No earthly light
Is turning

Home enough for what I sound
All this time where have you been
Say the word and I have found
My time machine

Of human hearts and wild bird flight
Of haunting notes that fill the night
How I would like to touch the sky
Just one more time
Before I die

The way the instrumentation and melodies jump about on this track has always evoked travel and scene-shifting for me (Chandy). One day I found a set of HG Wells novels in a charity shop, picked up the Time Machine and realised that was what the song was meant to be about! The backstory for the single/album focuses on two South Indian housewives who run away and rob a bank, but it ends up going wrong. The Time Machine provides them with a quick getaway – they end up in North America during the gold rush and make a fortune. It’s a sort of Thelma and Louise, but with a secret stash of chilli powder to spice up things up along the way. Forget spaghetti westerns, this album is a new genre - ‘Spaghetti Eastern’ - and this song is the climax!

The song ends on a note of yearning for what is beautiful here on earth for someone who is faced with the prospect of leaving it ‘of human hearts, and wild bird flight ; of haunting notes that fill the night ; how I would like to touch the sky ; just one more time before I die’

Those last lines are my favourite ones of the whole album, I think that most of us yearned to feel truly alive again through the pandemic with all its restrictions. In my case, going through treatment for cancer, the lines have been particularly evocative.

And here's a bonus recipe for you:

Rice flour rotis

Rice rotis (biyyam roti in my mother tongue) are a great wheat-free alternative to chapatis. The mixture is very quick to make and lasts a day or two in the fridge. This is another recipe which is great for using up leftover vegetables, as they can just be mixed in with the rice flour. Cooking the rotis is the tricky bit and you may need a couple of attempts! It works best with a heavy bottom frying pan which gets nice and hot. The rotis are delicious on their own, but can also be eaten with pickle, yoghurt or curry (try them with the sambar recipe we gave earlier!)

Ingredients

2 cups rice flour

1 carrot, grated

1 courgette, grated

1 onion, finely chopped

½ tsp Cumin seeds

Chopped green chilli (optional)

Chopped coriander (optional)

Vegetable oil

Salt to taste

Method

Mix the grated carrot and courgette together and add a pinch of salt. Leave for 10 minutes and the salt will extract the water from the vegetables. Drain away the excess water and if possible squeeze the grated vegetables over the sink to get all the water out of them. Place in a mixing bowl, add the cumin seeds, chilli, coriander and salt. Add the rice flour slowly, stirring regularly. Add water as required, until the mixture has a sludgy consistency, a bit like cold porridge (it’ll be a lot more tasty than that though).

Grease a COLD frying pan with a generous quantity of oil (a couple of teaspoons at least). Drop a big dollop of the sludgy mixture into the middle of the pan and use your fingertips to pat it out over the surface of the pan. Dip your fingers in water to make the spreading process easier. Then turn on the pan to a a medium heat. When the oil starts sizzling around the edge of the roti, cover it for a few minutes. When you remove the lid, cook a little longer until the roti is browning around the edges and you can flip the whole thing over. Cook on the other side for 30 secs or so, and then it’s ready to eat!

Hope you enjoy,

Chandy