Nuclear explosions of the culinary kind

Some people cook awesome food. Not only lick your fingers, you can happily lick your plates too. It’s that tasty. My Ma also falls into that category (and I guess all moms do). Unfortunately I don’t. If given a chance I can easily burn water as well.

Looking back, my culinary timeline looks something like this:

11 years old – tried making puri, after watching Jhumka (who used to come in evenings to cook) the previous day. One advantage I always had was since both parents were working, I only had my paternal grandmother to keep an eye over me in the afternoons after school. And she preferred keeping her eyes closed in deep sleep between 2-4pm. Without digressing, the puris came out like rock plates, the oil and dough wasted, and I was left with a burned hand. I still remember my howling gathered everyone from the adjacent flat. I was forbidden to go anywhere near the gas burner without supervision. Sharma Aunty gossiped about it for a week.

13 years old - made Maggi for the first time. Everyone liked it (atleast they said they did). Got really enthusiastic and next time experimented with it adding egg, and vinegar. Even my dog refused to sniff. High hopes of eating it.  

Was too traumatized by rejection to try my hand in anything other than play video games for two years… also got addicted to watching afternoon cooking program on DD (we didn’t have Travel and Living in those days to teach us world cuisine and cable was new, too expensive and absolutely unaffordable). 

16 years old – after gaining enough theoretical knowledge, baked a cake. Started the recipe from scratch. Actually churned the butter out of the cream and made the batter (after all, that’s the sign of a real, gourmet cook). 15 minutes into the oven, the batter started making strange noises and to my horror the cake started rising. Now cakes are supposed to rise, even breads, buns and biscuits are supposed to do the same. But if my kitchen was a Roald Dahl book, my cake would have risen like that a mountain. Back to real world, it was scary cause 1. I was doing it after 3 years and desperately wanted to succeed 2. I had used up all my pocket money in buying the ingredients and if this didn’t go well, I was going to be broke 3. I was scared of Ma, it was suppose to be a pleasant surprise for her but the way it was going, it looked otherwise 4. It looked like the oven was also going to burst if the cake continued to have its way…

And then there was the nuclear explosion of the culinary kind. Thankfully the oven didn’t burst, but the cake did. It committed suicide by erupting like a volcano and oodles of vanilla scented liquid (which was later classified as ghee) started coming out. The dead cake deflated into a dense ball and with it, deflated my hopes of becoming a good cook. 

After much analysis by Ma and my pest younger sister over peals of laughter (much to my chagrin), it was inferred that I had not churned the cream well enough and put too much baking soda. The ghee was used to cook gajar halwa and my dad commented slowly over the dinner table that the halwa tasted like vanilla essence (I wanted to creep below the table and disappear)

21 years old – tea, omlette and Maggi were safe zones now. Time to move to higher pastures I decided. Baked chocolate éclairs for my first crush. The cream and icing came out fine, but the bread…err… no comments.

In last two years things have been on an uphill though. But if the record is anything to go buy, I am sure X may decide to kill me over eating home cooked food for straight three days. Incase you do X, you can have my world movies that you are searching the shops for… 

Sneak Peak

I lie down on the bed. I am exhausted. Emotionally. Mentally. I try to sleep. I check the watch. It’s nine thirty. Too early to sleep. Too late to stay awake. In the conveyor belt of my mind, I check each tag of the luggage it carries to check which ones mine…

Sleep.

Try to sleep.

Sleep

Sleep

X

Y

X

Y

X

X

Confused

Darkness

Love

Hate

Hate = love?

Close your eyes

Empty the mind

Sleep

Sleep

Fill the emptiness

Fill my darkness

Fill my heart

Close your eyes you fool

Close

Last kiss

Smile

My eyes close and I am still smiling…

Home Sweet Home

Yipppeeeeee!
Finally, going home after a year. Although parents are currently staying in another city 3 hours away, Bhopal will always be my home. Few things on the agenda:
1. Check if Aunty (they make one in a million like her- in extreme hurry!) still wears those hideous nightgowns all throughout the day and has the latest gossip on current love affairs to potato prices
2. If Panchmari is still as beautiful as it was when I went camping from school. Maybe, this time I can afford to stay at a nice hotel instead of that makeshift camp between mosquitoes, smell of faint cow dung and coconut oil smell lingering from the hair of my classmate sleeping a few inches away.
3. Does Pradeep uncle (I was always confused, whether pradeep was his name or his son’s name) still run the library at 10 no market? I used to borrow M&B novels on the sly when I was 15 as they were forbidden by Ma (how I wasted my pocket money giving rent on Nagraj/Dhurv/ Doga comics and later M&B).
4. Eat piping hot Jalebis from Chappan Bhog at 7 am in the morning with Poha. Only people living in MP can understand the sweet joys of eating hot Jalebis after every mouthful of Poha.
5. Do teenage school girls and boys still roam around the small lake near the hotel management institute in a strange form of immature mating dance? The nervous smiles, eye locks, swishing bikes and Kinetic Hondas, girls preening like peacocks in their best evening clothes and boys showing off with a dummy guitar on the back (come to think of it now, I doubt if that time Bhopal even had a decent guitar teaching institute).
6. If R eventually got married? Or rather where is he? He never kept in touch once I left for Mumbai, I took so many rides sitting behind, on his bike (left brakes deliberately put included).
7. If A has become a father? How strange life is… at one time I used to wait to just catch a glimpse of him and now, not even one string in my heart will flutter even if he vows to spend an eternity with me.
More than anything else, I can’t wait to see if home still feels like home…

Yours Honestly…

I was trying to talk to X. He was not in the mood, answering in monosyllables. I think he can express everything between ‘ah, hmmm, well and okay’. So simple and convenient. If it’s a trick question like “Do you think you will love me, when I am old and senile?” it can definitely be answered by a “Don’t know”. I also pondered should I even write this? (I know you are reading it X). Should I tell him it hurts to hear these words sometimes, after spending intimate moments, facing his typical indifference? It also leaves me confused. If it’s not there, then why does it feel like it? But then, just for today I have decided I will say, write and speak the truth and nothing but the truth, so help me god (if there is one out there…) cause if it comes like a scene out of ‘liar liar’ and I may not end up as lucky as Jim Carry does. It also answers my dilemma I guess, of debating whether to even write this when I know my thoughts are just a url away…

So here goes the confession of a lesser mortal-

I think marriages are outdated. Any relationship doesn’t guarantee commitment, even if you love someone, so why legalise it anyways? Alexander Woollcott may have been my long lost ancestor. His words “Everything I like is illegal, immoral or fattening” just reinforces my belief. I think I would have been happiest in my life living in sin. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want love. I firmly believe in love, but I think you don’t necessarily have to be binded by love. And yes Mr. Woollcott, I don’t think I am ever going to get slim and have a longer life by throwing away excess weight (even if I starve and kill myself to death anyways to be slimmer and live a little longer)

It breaks my heart to see even my own female relatives (forget about Indian women in general) don’t even have the wish to be liberated. They really love their unequal relationships. I will cook what my husband likes, not wear what my husband doesn’t like, will ask my father to get permission to go for a party. Too scared to break the mold? Or too happy actually to do anything about it? (Someone please tell me, because frankly, I don’t seem to be enjoying the role-play of Ms. Duty)

I like flirting; I think it’s a dying art. Most people automatically link it to sex, whereas it can definitely mean some interesting conversation.

I love it when X pampers me. It’s true. Maybe he is just doing it to get me in a good mood and get me ‘you know where’. But yes it makes me feel wanted, loved. I wish he could open his heart and feel this wondeful feeling of being loved again. And yes, I can’t take a shower without going beet red… you know what lies beneath that phrase X.

I feel sad for Y sometimes. He, being Y, can’t imagine the concept of emotions, people and life changing with time. For him, an emotion expressed at a moment is frozen in eternity. It’s like as you say in Hindi “patthar ki lakeer” (literal meaning- line of stone). How I wish he could see what it feels to be like to change your moods, wants and thoughts as you grow. But then I love indulging in wishful thinking.

I also envy Y. He, being Y, can easily take people for what they are. For him, there are no double meanings to life, what is said is there. The emotion expressed at a moment is frozen in eternity- he can relive it anytime he wants. Fall in love again anytime he wants. But then is it again a wishful thinking?

Sigh! Even honesty doesn’t clear the mind nowadays. Maybe what I really need is the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Any honest directions?