Close Encounters of the Culinary Kind

Aww man.....

It looked like it was gonna rain again. Just the perfect beginning to a day that could probably pose a serious challenge to the age-old wisdom "It could be worse"....

The bloke on the radio was jabbering on about how "Love keeps the mind young" or some crap like that. Ajay made a mental note to try his luck at hiring some local goons to bash up the cheery-voiced RJ. On second thoughts it might be simpler if he could just force feed him a spoonful of last night's dinner....

******************

Diya was riding the crest of one of her 'culinary experiment' waves....which meant that Ajay had to practice the art of pretending to love the food while all he could think of was how much the food reminded him of garden mulch.

Worst part was that Diya was on a diet which meant that she ate a vegetable salad while he was supposed to gulp down the serious contender to the title "Most Unedible Dish Ever Cooked".Well you'd think he could come clean and tell her how much he hated her cooking. But then he thought opening his mouth long enough to tell her that would bring a fresh wave of nausea.

And to think he had brought it all on himself!!

It seemed like just another ordinary sunshiny day. They were out dining at the brand new Italian bistro in the city. The food was delicious but the helpings were appallingly small. Both stomach and wallet felt empty on the walk back home. That was when Ajay was seized by the bright idea of asking her to make a fancy dinner the following weekend. Diya took up the project zealously. Her earlier culinary ventures had been restricted to toast, rotis and noodles. She was out shopping all Friday afternoon and came back late laden with so many parcels that he wondered that if she had plundered an entire shopping district.

"Hey I thought we are having dinner alone. Did you invite people over tomorrow?"

"Nope.Its just gonna be the two of us. Shyama is working this weekend and you know Rob's at his folks". (Shyama was a particularly irritating friend of Diya's, and Ravindran aka 'Rob' was Shyama's smart-aleck husband. They frequently hung out together, the four of them, boring the hell out of Ajay.)

"Then what's with all this food?"

"Well silly! Remember its gonna be a fancy dinner. I bought a new dinner set, some beautiful napkins and a really lovely centerpiece .....and ooooooooh you are gonna love the candles!"

"What was wrong with old china and what happened to all those lacy frilly things you put out every-time somebody uses the word 'fancy occasion'?"

"Well you never can have too much off these babies..." Diya said lovingly fingering the lace napkins and delicate bone china dinner plates.

Ajay knew better than to argue with his better half.

Just three months into their marriage and it was about time somebody lit the kitchen stove for something slightly more elaborate than morning tea. So he decided to let her get excited about making that 'fancy dinner' of hers.

Saturday afternoon was spent in a flurry of grinding, mincing, pounding and baking. He was banned from entering the kitchen until everything was set and perfect. He decided to dutifully play the role of loving husband and adroitly adhered to his wife's commands about the kitchen being strictly off-limits. He decided to spend the evening in delicious anticipation of the upcoming feast and watching cricket highlights on the sidelines. Nagging suspicions about Diya's culinary expertise were serenely subdued by a stealthy sip or two of his finest scotch.

The first faint tinkling of the alarm mechanism in his brains were set off when his nose caught something wafting out of the kitchen that suspiciously reminded him of old cabbages. Then he caught the drift of a telephonic conversation that metamorphosed the faint tinkling in his head to distinct jangles of the proverbial alarm bells....'well the aubergines and ash gourds have been stewed. Do I have to add asparagus and basil after sauteing the onions or before?' .....Ajay was seriously worried now. The choice of vegetables seemed ominous to say the least. He called out to Diya when she was off the call:
"What's with all those weird vegetables? Asparagus and basil? I thought we were supposed to be having a nice, delicious, romantic dinner."

"Well, of course silly....that's what's cooking. Plus, don't you know that asparagus and basil have aphrodisiac properties?" Diya added with that alluring smile of hers. Ajay felt immensely hopeful. Well maybe tonight might be about more than culinary delights. Old cabbage smell and weird sounding veggies notwithstanding.

9 o'clock. Dinner time. The scene had been set for the feast that was to go down in the marital history as a major milestone. The new table cloth, centerpiece and dinner set were all in place. The lady of the house looked tired but happy. Diya proudly rattled off the menu to a bewildered Ajay. 'There's a fabulous leek and cabbage soup and that's Veg-a-la-mode, there's bread stick and special blue cheese dipping sauce. There's fettuccini alfredo with chicken and broccoli. And here's a special dish of baked oysters."

And then transpired the most agonizing 40 minutes in Ajay's living memory. By comparison it made his last visit to the dentist seem like a trip to Disney Land. The culinary experiment had yielded fascinating products which were just pushing the limits of being categorized as toxic waste. Ajay developed a new found respect for lab rats. The last time he had been so profoundly nauseous was when he had met Diya's father, a retired brigadier of the Indian Army, for the first time. At that point in history he had believed that only third degree torture would be more disagreeable to a dude's constitution. Happier times.

Focus.
Just try to keep the food down.
Chew and swallow.
Do not try to taste.
He kept mentally repeating to himself. Diya happily munched on her surprisingly delicious looking salad and kept asking him if he liked the food. He managed a credible number of enthusiastic nods between painful swallows.

"And now for the best part....it's sour cream apple pie for dessert! You are so lucky that you are not on a diet!"

Ajay's face had turned a sickly shade of green and his forehead was liberally studded with beads of perspiration. He grimly thought of the day he had doled out pearls of wisdom to one of his friends who was facing a relationship crisis: "Sometimes a relationship is like a horrible joke your father-in-law just cracked. You just pretend to find it hilarious. You see, you have to constantly work towards making a commitment work. Relationships can be like bitter pills; sometimes you just gotta swallow them." Well,tonight, Ajay felt as if he were eating his own words.

Maybe you might be wondering why Ajay was just such a big wuss. He could have just told Diya that the food was terrible. But he realized that it would just break her heart. All the more so because she had put her heart and soul into the effort of cooking a 'special meal'. But most of all, he realized, guided by a certain wisdom much beyond his years that ticking his wife off would leave him with the very unattractive prospect of doing the dishes after a disastrous meal. Maybe he would subtly slip it in during their next truth or dare game. But definitely not tonight.

**********************
He was jolted from his thoughts by the ring of the telephone. Diya took the call and came back beaming. "It was Shyama. She had suggested the menu and the recipe for the dinner last night. She'd called to find out how it turned out."

"So what did you tell her?"

"I told her that it was a phenomenal success and that you'd liked it immensely!"

"Hmmm-mmm."

"She was so happy to hear that!"

"Hmmm-mmm"

"By the way, I have invited Shyama and Rob for dinner this weekend. I'm making a special dinner to celebrate the success of my first fancy dinner. Hope you are OK with that."

"You bet!" Ajay's heart suddenly soared.

He chuckled silently. The future held immense possibilities.

He looked out of the window and he could have sworn there was faint rainbow.

Funny Side Up!

Life has this infinite propensity to throw up situations where you have only two genuine options before you:

1) You throw up your hands in exasperation and start working up a fit of anger.

2) You throw in the towel (metaphorically) and start laughing at the silliness of it all.

Recently certain events transpired in my life where I was tempted to take up option 1 but fortunately better sense prevailed and I ended up subscribing to option 2.

I wish I could reveal the entire sequence of events but perhaps the world is too small and more importantly, the people associated with the events are even smaller! That being the case let me try to sift sense from all the nonsense that happened in the recent past.

My job gives me the rare chance to interact with a wide range of people....allegedly the country's best and brightest. I won't challenge that contention, but I have to state that the nation's latest brood of intellectual stalwarts have incredible potential for absolute nonsense.

It's disturbing to observe that intelligent , competent individuals who have obviously scored so high in examinations, score so low in life's finer details. Competition is good as long as you are a good sport. Talent is a great thing as long as you don't fancy yourself as talented. And confidence, alas, is a world apart from arrogance. When all these unfortunate attributes add up you have the perfect prescription for absurdity.

In today's age of social networking there is a very virulent visual display of absurdity all over the digital realm. Narcissism takes an evolutionary leap thanks to Facebook....you see it in the form of pictures, videos and updates of all kinds. Recently I was exposed a particularly strong dose of this digital display which made me digitally sigh a couple of times on FB in the form of status updates:

1. 'Subtlety is a sublime art that is either lost on most or wasted on the rest!'

2. 'Some people really fool themselves that they are in paradise, others are fools in paradise who neither realize that they are fools nor that they are in paradise!! Is it irony of some divine origin?'

Nobody is immune to this phenomenon. Most of us have succumbed to the obvious attraction of posting updates which show us in the most flattering light. It is pardonable, we are only human.

But the matter becomes serious when a person internalizes the notion of superiority. When 'holier-than-thou' comes as naturally to you as breathing or sleeping. Then knowingly or unknowingly you create fences round yourself and before you know it you are all alone in your fortress. You may have built the fence to keep out others. But the tragedy is that they may not have wanted to come in at all in the first place! In the process of choosing your friends you risk the chance of ending up with none at all. Read Oscar Wilde's short story 'The Selfish Giant'. It makes this point so beautifully.

Which brings me back to my original conjecture. When we are up against somebody who is so obviously convinced of his/her superiority there are only 2 real options. And if you are gifted with a sense of humor, try to laugh at the pointlessness of it all. Anger, hurt and resentment can at the best give you a nasty bout of indigestion. Whereas when you laugh out loud, you are not only denying the person the opportunity of hurting but also ridding yourself of all negativity.

So laugh guys, even if the joke's on you. Eat your eggs sunny side up and live your life funny side up!

Slices Of Life, Murphy's Law, Fate and Hope

I never had a slice of bread,

Particularly large and wide,

That did not fall upon the floor,

And always on the buttered side.

If Nature were intuitive it would be a gloomy overcast day. Ironically after pouring cats and dogs in close succession, today dawned bright, clear and sunny. The only gloomy thing in the radius of 5 kms is yours truly.Urgh! Even the weather is making a mockery of my misery....yet in Bollywood big-banner big-budget multi-starrers the weather always reflects the mood of the hero/heroine as the case maybe....which goes to show that real life is a world apart from the reel life. (So what else is new?!)

Was having a perfectly happy week.....in fact so happy a week that deep down I was afraid to say that alound in case i jinxed it. Well something did go wrong. Blew up in my face, blasting me to kingdom come. I'll spare you the nitty gritties....its boring anyway. The bottom line is Murphy's Law is terrifyingly accurate: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

Which made me brood on a whole range of experiences from chilhood to adulthood. And I've come up with my own version of a Law Of Life : "Slices of Life : The Tasty Bits are wafer thin...The Bitter Ones come as generous helpings".

Just when you begin to lower your defences and get lulled into a false sense of security..then BAM! you get hit on the head with a club (metaphorically speaking)

Just when you think you are finally making progress then BAM! you find that you've just made a head-on collision with a blank wall.

Just when you think you are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel then BAM! you realize that tunnel has given way to a bottom-less chasm.

So what's the way forward? Chronic Pessimism of the Murphy's Law kind? Do you kill the little optimistic fool within you called Hope who talks in a soprano voice and wears a frilly, gauzy pink dress? Hope can be pretty irritating especially when Fate her evil twin(who is stronger, fiestier and wears Army fatigues by the way) gets better of her all the time! Whenever Fate scores Hope comes up with cheery, sugary words....apparently to fortify us against the machinations of Fate, but annoying nevertheless.

Hope's annoying sure. But still I have a spot for the little old fool. So have you. So has the entire humanity. We all hope. It echoes strongly from the Obama slogan (Yes! We Can) to Aung San Suu Kyi's bid for democracy in Myanmar. That's perhaps why Fate despite being aggressive and combative has not been able to terminate Hope altogether. Not yet. Not ever. Hopefully.

Feeling better already. Hope just crooned a cheesy song about "how its gonna get better..." in my ears. I can't help but smile......:)

The Nonsense Factory

"The year 5050:

Apes have taken over the planet....and they are doing a better job of looking after the earth and their fellow-beings than man ever did.

Today there is a man in every ape household . Man has some good qualities, agreed all the wisest apes, although he talked too much. For one thing he too had opposable thumbs and for another he was better house-trained than the dog with the best pedigree; besides dog food was prohibitively expensive.

Man reminded the apes of the end of history , end of the age of the Homo Sapien. One man very diligently made a theory of evolution but forgot to take into account role of serendipity. In the evolutionary sprint Apes finally out-paced Man by the year 3090. "

"Urgh!That simply isn't nonsensical enough. The way we are going on about our daily job of trashing the earth it would be just a matter of years not centuries before apes or for that matter ants take over this planet. You really must turn in top-notch absurdity if you want to continue as our Nonsense correspondent", said the Editor, frowning slightly.

"I'm running out of ideas....you know it is a tough time of the year....what with the elections coming up and all. Our readers are weaned away by politicians who churn out nonsense round the clock. Even our most loyal readers have commented that our Netas are getting better at the Nonsensical game than us!," said the beleagured correspondent.

"Hmm...thats one grim situation" noted the editor.

" Maybe we should get the Election Commission to make speaking nonsense a violation of the Model code of conduct. It would never do if the netas themselves take the jobs away from the thousands who work for the Nonsense Factory." said the despondent correspondent.

" The EC would have a tough job sifting sense and nonsense. So that would definitely not be included in the Model Code of conduct." said the editor, stroking his beard thoughtfully.

"Well then we've run out of options. We have a tough enough job surviving competition from the other nonsense dailies masquerading as mainstream newspapers!"

The correspondent flipped through a prominent English daily which had its front page dedicated to a well-known catfight in B-town accompanied by exclusive photo scoops. The centre page was about India's most famous family fued (other than the Mahabharata). The sports page carried the interview of a world-class cricketer (prone to vitriolic temper tantrums) talking about his favourite colour, his new imported sports car, his girlfriend(s). And the back page featured a glossy ad of a Deemed University which appeared to be offering courses on every available subject on planet earth.

And that was not all. This overdose of nonsense was seizing all facets of mass media. Television channels, FM Radio, Internet, Movies.....the innocent bystander was constantly being bombarded with baloney from all possible sources.

It was obvious. The Nonsense Factory was in dire straits. Filing for bankruptcy seemed to be just a few editions away. Something needs to be done. Immediately.

******

Two weeks later:

At the board meeting of the directors and the senior staff of the Nonsense Factory the Editor finally aired the good news:

"Friends, I'm happy to inform you all that the Nonsense Factory has successfully tided over the financial crisis brought on by a drop in circulation. The government has granted unequivocal support to our request for a corporate bailout programme. As a gesture of our gratitude and goodwill we will be doing an exclusive coverage of the election campaign of our Neta's party. I also make use of this opportunity to welcome aboard our dear Neta who has graciously accepted our request to join the Nonsense Factory as Guest Columnist. Our share price listings have gone up by several points on the BSE when it was announced at the press meeting yesterday that our pages are going to be enriched by the witticisms and pearls of wisdom of our Neta. The future looks rosy my friends..."

A storm of applause.

Nonsense Reloaded

Every person needs a vent......a nonsense vent.....being sensible round the clock is something of an unsurmoutable task for ordinary mortals.....and i'm by far the most ordinary mortal ever ....always on the look out for the nonsense vent!
Everybody keep their nonsense radar handy...some are more attuned to their nonsensical selves than their real selves and i happen to belong to that elite group...hehee....
We do it in different ways...shutting out the world completely, not to ponder the mysteries in life but to keep in touch with our baser instincts....nothing transcendental about it....thats why despite all our professed contempt for slapstick humour we laugh alound at tawdry jokes on t.v when we know that no one's watching.....
To get away from the real world uglies we watch cartoons by the dozen...happy magical cartoon lands where everybody lives happily ever after....ah! pure undiluted bliss.

No Problem Dear!

The mobile rang once and fell silent.

Maybe she'd accidentally dialled again. Ajay looked at the time; it was already 11.50 p.m. He was about to switch off the beside lamp and turn on the AC when the mobile rang again. This time persistently.

"Hello Diya...What's up?"

"Dear have you got a moment? I felt like talking. If you don't mind, that is..."

" Of course not, silly....fire away" He pretended to be nonchalant although the alarm bells were jangling horribly in his mind.

"It's just that I've been feeling lonely and depressed of late" she said.

So what else is new? He wanted to ask. But out loud he said," What is it dear? What happened?"

He knew the answer already but braced himself for the tirade nevertheless.

The fact was Ajay loved his girlfriend, all her zillion annoying little traits notwithstanding. She was certainly not as bad as some of his friends' girlfriends. All things considered he was sure she was the one for him and all that.But....

But Ajay was equally convinced, by now, that he had to make peace with the fact that his girlfriend was a Class 1 'Whiner'. Sure enough she did not 'always' whine...but that was a mere technicality. Three days out of seven she would crib and complain for hours. She put him through endless such sessions. During the early days of their relationship he had been all ears, for ever the patient listener, while she emptied her endless list of grievances . But over the time he had become tired of her mood swings and depressions and 'phases'. He would have liked to tell her all this outright, but he didn't want to hurt her. For he was a rather soft-hearted person and did not really enjoy confrontational situations with members of the opposite sex. Particularly ones with a predisposition to whine.

It was not that he did not want to be supportive or helpful. It was just that he found her problems rather silly and trivial. And not at all warranting the amount of energy that she expended to sulk/grieve about, as the case may be. Take last week for example. She had called him on his mobile thrice during 20 minutes while he was at the cinema. He didn't attend the calls until after the movie was over and by that time she had graduated to phase 2 of her 'whining cycle'- being cold and distant to him. As much as he would have preferred not to know the reason for her latest grievance, he knew he had to ask her. What more, he had to coax it out of her, all the time being treated to an ear-load of 'how insensitive and uncaring he has been' and blah blah blah. Apparently his reason that taking a call in a movie theatre would invite angry shushes from all sides was simply a pathetic one. He finally admitted that he could have simply gone out and taken her call since it was clearly an emergency. So he apologised to her profusely. After his winsome apology she deigned to tell him what the emergency was.

"Doodles has caught diarrhoea, the poor mite."

(For those of you who don't know Doodles is her annoying little poodle.) Ajay nearly put his fist through the wall.....!

"Are you there? Did you not hear what I asked you?"

Ajay was brought back to the present by her voice at the other end of the line. The pitch was up a few notches....which invariably meant that she was getting angry, well that was phase 3. Alarm bells started going off in his head again. Maybe he had forgotten to grunt or produce some noise, to let her know that he was still listening, for more than 2 minutes.

" Of course dear....I'm listening....I was just thinking why such bad things always happen to good people." Phew! That line was a safe bet. He had perfected a whole series of exit lines to extricate himself from sticky situations like these. And they almost always worked.

"Well yeah, that true...I seem to have to the hardest luck ever......for example, just the other day...." She droned on for what seemed like eons.

"Do you think I could really make it this time?"

"Huh...What? Oh yeah ! Definitely!'"

"Do you really think I've got what it takes?"

"Of course yes, dear."

"So how's whole idea what do you feel, Ajay?"

I feel like hitting you over the head with my shoe and hang myself on my tie. Out loud he said" Of course...I think its a wonderful idea." He had no clue what she was talking about.

"I hope I have not bored you with my problems dear...Its just that this time I felt I could not keep everything bottled up,like I always do. Hope you understand."

"I sure do! I shall always be there to listen to you. Anytime you have a problem, feel free to call me."

So that will be like till the next phone call I guess, he thought grimly.

The time-piece showed 3.00 a.m. Awwww man!

Some Sense Mostly Nonsense

Hey there!!!

1. Have you ever wondered where you are going getting your head crammed with all useful(?) information?
2. Have you ever wondered why you are always on the brink of a momentous nervous breakdown brought about by the aforesaid information overload?
3. Have you wondered why you cant stop stuffing yourself with knowledge no matter how close to bursting-the-seams your head is?

If the answer to all the above three questions are yes then probably you too are a victim...like me... no matter how much it bothers us we feel undeniably inevitably tied down to the process of gathering facts. Although for very different reasons. Some of you may feel it's only your job and hence your duty, others like zillions of students the world over are helpless martyrs and a nutty few like me are foolish enough to go for the craziest of reasons: For Cracking THE EXAM!

Now for the benefit of those few who have already not guessed what i am talking about.....

In India there is only exam which is referred to as The Exam, yeah capital T capital E and it is The Civil Services Examination held by the UPSC every year. It is a unique struggle, not unlike grappling with the mythical Minotaur, which tests your endurance skills along with more mundane things like knowledge. It's a slow, long drawn out torturous process extending over 3 arduous phases across 12 long months of toil. Imagine a particularly painful tooth extraction and couple it with a slow motion sequence and bingo! you can have a vague idea about what I am talking about.

OK, OK all kidding aside, it is indeed a tough exam but definitely NOT uncrackable! I think the secret to clear the exam is to enjoy the process. Now how exactly are you supposed to enjoy a tooth extraction you might ask me. A very valid question. The answer is that the process of preparation grows on you....you have to acquire a taste for it. Like caviar. Like bitter gourd. You have to acquire a taste for it without becoming nauseous! You have to learn to enjoy the preparation....like learning to ride a bike, you tend to get the balance one day which makes all those grazed knees worth having. Simply put, a few months into the preparation if you अरे really passionate about making it to the most prestigious services in the country you tend to gradually enjoy the process of acquiring information. Believe me.

Not that you never feel like you have taken more than you have bargained for, not that sometimes you don't feel that you have bitten off more than you can chew, not that you sometimes you don't get this uncanny feeling that your friends secretly think that you are slowly becoming a certified geek. But these feelings are momentary, they pass. And all things said and done preparing for the civils in a committed and orderly manner makes you gain more than mere textbook knowledge. You gain perspective. You tend to observe things, events, people, places and endless other 'nothings' which you have either been too busy to take notice of or have been taking for granted all the time.

Take my case for example...I used to always have this impression that politics is dirty and economics boring. Wrong on both counts. It has been my overwhelming ignorance which had me make all those snooty remarks about these two interesting fields. What I didn't know about economics could actually have filled several volumes of any self-respecting encyclopedia. I don't say that I have become Adam Smith himself or that I could give Amartya Sen a run for his money but at least I don't say 'duh-uh' when someone mentions bulls and bears anymore. Nor do I have to keep myself from yawning every time somebody mention cost-push inflation.

I appeared for my first civils in May 2007. I was lucky enough to clear the prelims,mains and reach the interview on my first attempt itself. And I was stupid enough to not clear the final to make it to The List. That's right, capital T,capital L.

I may have lost the battle but not the War. So here I am, preparing for my next attempt.

All the above mentioned stuff may seem to be useless banter to most. But those who have been where i have been will understand, i hope. All that was a thinly veiled attempt at ventilating my grievance . On a more serious note i intend to make use of this blog to recapitulate what i've aasimilated for the day. So if you are in luck this maybe my ration of nonsense for a long time to come since my next few posts will deal exclusively with Fact File.

Cheers!!

And good luck to all those who are preparing for the civils this year.