Yes, I love cooking!!!

Cooking is quite easy; the only difficult part is preparing oneself to cook. It is unwillingness to walk up to kitchen, wean away from whatever you are doing, (for me to wean away from computer) and get down to serious work of chopping and mixing and rest of the work is done by gas or oven, nothing tiring at all if it doesn’t indulge in back-breaking job of preparing unhealthy fried snacks to go with the meals.

Once the mind is set up, it’s really no big deal to cook. Like today, actually yesterday, I decided that I will have roast chicken for lunch. So, the first part of planning the menu is taken care of. Sometimes, making decision about what to cook is the most difficult part. During planning the menu, we go crazy, asking the family members what they would like to eat and they too are unsure themselves and will quiz us back asking us what we have decided, and it goes like – ‘you tell, no you tell, no you tell’ and when you tell, they might exclaim ‘oh no, not that again’. It is frustrating especially if every member has a different taste. One of my friend cooks different meals for every member of the family, everyday, I marvel at her energy. Just as well, she has a cook to help her with the cooking. But for common person like me, it is difficult just planning the menu. Many times I will walk up to kitchen, open fridge several times, open, close, open, close, hoping that by doing so, suddenly one cooked dish might come alive. But it never does. I know some families who have fixed menus during the week. Mondays-dhal, Tuesday- bhindi, Wednesday-gavar, Thursday- chana, and so on.. There is no gap for creativity, for thinking of something new to make during week-days, creativity is saved for weekends when mind is free to think.

Since I had thought last night that I would make roast chicken today, I had washed and marinated the chicken last night with crushed garlic, ginger, chilies and chicken cubes.

Today afternoon, just one hour before cooking, I went to the kitchen, cut vegetables like cauliflower, tomatoes, bean sprouts, carrots and boiled potatoes and added to the marinated chicken, then added some assorted sauces like black bean sauce, soya sauce, chili sauce and fish sauce. Mixed it added little oil and baked it for an hour. The dish was delicious and nutritious and not a big deal cooking it. Eh?

Cooking is easy, and therefore we see variety of dishes at the table. When the woman is in the kitchen she realizes how little time it really takes to cook and that is why she gets so creative. While she waits for milk to boil, she will be chopping veggies. While the veggies are cooking, she will make few snacks: bajiyas or samosas, or something spicy. And once she gets into the mood, she will make pickles, papads, sweets and other delicacies. And you would think she is tired, but a woman who is thinking of those smiles which she might receive at the end of her labor from her family, will even go to an extend of making deserts and ice creams.

No, women are not lazy at all. The ready-made stuff that is easily available in the market nowadays has made her lethargic, but yes, I love cooking!

Mother's Day

Everybody was screaming on all social networks the wishes, the quotes, some digging into thier archives to find wishes for this day, many of them sendng wishes on the net to their mom who is sitting in the next room. Virtually mothers enjoyed gifts, cakes and even virtual hugs. The flowers were sent, gift bought for mothers who were not net-savvy, who were then treated for a lunch and movie.

Umarried, I have never biologically mothered any child but, I have seen many children grow, who have played in my lap, I have mothered them all, my sisters' brothers' cousins' kids  my eyes still look for those babies who are not there....lost into the adulthood

And I was surprised when I too recieve wishes from some of them and it was a good feeling.

Many years ago, when Mom and I were staying with my brother's family, my brother's kids were very attached to me. On mothers' day they bought gifts for their mother and my brother and I bought gifts for my mother. Since I was mother to none, I didn't recieve any gifts. My four-year-old nephew, was very upset that his dadima  and his mom recieved gifts and his aunt didn't recieve any, so he comes up to me and asks me, "When is the aunts' day coming? I want to buy a gift for you too."

Well aunt's day is still not celebrated anywhere, though they will still remain all time favorites. I used to love all my aunts and I still miss them long after they are not here anymore.

Aunt's love is the extention of mother's love but it needs a special day too. haha!

Mexican Delight

Last night I went to this Mexican restaurant that is recently opened in Bandra, just few minutes away from my house. The décor was good with wooden tables and chairs that reminded me of the restaurants in Tenerife. On one of the walls there was a big wooden shelf with hundreds of sauce bottles, not sure whether they were new bottles or used ones, but it made an impressive collage.

Before our order, they served us a basket of tortillas with two sauces, a bland pink and chilly green. Since it was a new restaurant, the hostess would come to our table to check our satisfaction meter. “Is it good? Yeah?” Now even if it is not good, we would not be too rude to say so, our Indian culture does not allow us to speak the truth to the person who asks so sweetly expecting a compliment. Anyway, we order chicken wings and fajitas. I like it and enjoyed it too. But the friends with whom I went had continuous negative commentary to make.

Although a Saturday night, there were very few clients, which is quite abnormal in the suburbs where people are seen crowding outside the restaurants, waiting for their turns. They were quite disappointed that they didn’t have to wait for the table and got one immediately on entering. They compared this restaurant to the ‘Hard Rock’ which is also a well known Mexican restaurant that has everything comparatively better, the servings, the taste, and the ambiences. While they ate, they talked about things that were wrong with this restaurant and not up to its standards. They debated that the restaurant would do well if it served liquor. The soft drinks were not good and had sprite added to the juice. But still, whenever the hostess came around for a feedback, their comment was always ‘very nice’ with thumbs up.

Well, since I have ever been to ‘Hard Rock’ I was quite content with this one, nevertheless I gulped meekly when they told me that it was very improper and unethical to serve Mexican sauces in steel utensils.

“It kills the taste, you know?” they said

My building going for redevelopment

I have been waiting for this day since last five years. Waiting for the day when all the members in my building will agree to redevelopment and I will get a lift to go up my house. My building is more than fifty years old and it needs regular repairs to keep in shape, also it is quite dirty and I am embarrassed when I get visitors. Whenever I saw new building crop up, I would wish the same for my building. But we had some stubborn neighbours who did not agree to redevelopment, and were always airing negative views, could see only problems associated with it but never the rewards. For five years I have tried to put forth my point that we need to live in a good and clean society.

Finally the day has arrived. All the members have finally agreed to go for redevelopment, we went for democratic voting to maintian transparency and the builder is also chosen, the Satguru builder, whose building I checked out and they are quite good. This means that we will get a bigger house about 33% more space, corpus money and two years rent. It does not mean that I will get richer with extra cash on rent and corpus money that I will recieve. Nah! thats not the case. With newer building, we will have more maintainance tax which will cover the extra help of more watchmen, cleaners and other taxes. The corpus money, if invested wisely, will help me cover those extra costs. While presently, I am paying only Rs20,000 anually, with new construction, I will be paying five folds. The rent that I will recieve, I hope to save, because when I come back, I will need to use that money for interior decoration. So the only benefit I get is one extra room, two lifts and a brand new building with gym, garden and party room.
Now I am in turmoil. Lot of things need to be done before I move out to a temporary accommodation. Packing is the biggest headache. Then I would like to sell off the old furniture because moving to a new house would mean new furniture, what to sell and what to keep is my biggest worry and where to store??. There are too many things in the house: furniture, doors, windows, grills, clothes, dishes, show pieces, books. My routine is about to get disrupted. Should I rent a house or should I travel for two years? Lead a gipsy life?

Even after I am back to a new house, I will have to renovate it to my taste. I will only have modular kitchen and bathrooms in the new house. But will need to make new furniture, paint the house and organize everything all over.

I am confused.

Sorry for using a word .....

....that you don’t understand, but Lexulous does and so does the scrabble. Try it.

Scrabble and Lexulous are the games that are played online, mainly on Facebook. I play it regularly usually as a detour from my regular task of reading and blogging. With strangers I don’t enjoy the game but I like playing with friends, with whom I can chitchat and keep in touch. I have made many good friends on scrabble board and on Lexulous and have been regularly in touch with them. Actually, these games allow many weird words that we will never find in our text books, the trick is to place your letters, sometimes guessing a word, hoping that lexulous or scrabble will understand and voila, sometimes it does. But if it is at the expense of annoying my friends, then that gets me really stressed out because I really hate losing friends. I have very few friends and all very precious, wouldn’t like them to go off at a tangent over a game, which is just a game.

For me winning/losing is not the criteria, I just like to make the best word that I can. I have been playing this game for many years, precisely for more than twenty-five years. The first time I saw this game was during my trip abroad and I was fascinated by tiny wooden tiles. I played that game immediately and lost miserably but fell in love with it. I bought my first scrabble board, a tiny travel board with tiny tiles and holes on the board to fix the tiles ( this board and tiles, neatly saved and restored, are still lying at my home in Tenerife, Spain, hibernating and they come alive only when I visit my family)

During my college years, I taught this game to all my friends and we would play this game non-stop for days and sometimes all night. We allowed dictionary so that we could learn new words and we always played for fun; snacking and fooling in-between games. Over the years, I learnt some tricks on how to confuse the opponent and win the game. I taught those tricks to my friends too who would use it against me and make me lose. In Mumbai, I joined scrabble club, where we would play it regularly and even participated in many scrabble tournaments, much of which I lost. But I was never offended if I lost and always came out stronger each time.

Most of the time it is pure luck that we may get good combination to be able to make seven-letter word which gives an impressive score. It is not the deciding factor for showing off the intelligence or word power, nor are there any laurels to be won. The opponents who play with me regularly are equally good, and they do have impressive scores and rankings, so there is nothing to feel egoist about winning. But most of the time I am lucky. (maybe because I am unlucky in love. Huh?) I have some friends who continue to play with me and before one game ends they have already started a new one. They tell me that it is challenging playing with me and I get aggressive too.

But lately I have been offending my friends by winning. Now I can’t play badly and let my friends win, can I? That will not be fair. I don’t understand why they get so discouraged by my winnings? Why can’t they get aggressive and fight back? Why do they have give up on me? Must they always win and play with only those whom they can beat easily? Don’t they like challenges any more?

And why do I get stressed out if they give up on me? Now that is the question I need to introspect.