Inflammatory Aspirations

It was an exceptional Sunday. The chill in the air was wrapped in gentle sunlight and there was only one colour when you looked up, Blue. It must have been around 7 AM and after a hot cuppa, I was wondering what to do. The morning was just so gorgeous that I could not help going out into the veranda to just soak it in. It was time to get vintage I thought. I tuned into the satellite radio. Searched until I found a station that was playing old jazz and reggae. No questions please! I just about know the spellings of these great art forms!! :-)

There are times when your spirits are lifted by something most ordinary. The music was nothing I could understand. But hey! that does not mean you cannot enjoy it. That is when i decided to do something I have mostly refrained from doing. It is a matter of safety and environmental hazards. It demanded dexterity of the fingers and the mind. It is like a potter at work. As he moulds the clay with finesse, you can almost see the shape getting life. It is like an artist with a brush in hand, as the white changes colors, you see the larger picture. An amalgamation of your creativity as you set out to create something that is entirely yours. The sequence and the consequence. This a ballet where you are the orchestra and the grand master. A wrong lyric could send out waves of disharmonious notes that can jar your ear. A melodious one can delight the heavens....

In case you have just yawned, I was thinking of cooking..

Hmm.. So where do we start, I wondered. The web yielded many recipes, but none that I could feel were simple enough.
"8 ounces cream cheese, 3/4 cup apricot preserves or strawberry jam, 1/4 cup finely ground pecans" - There are at least 7 words in the above line that I did not know the meaning of and even if I had the above ingredients at home, I would not know without them being marked so.

As you would have begun to realize, my culinary skills never developed like the 100 million other skills that also did not. As a human being, I think I have about 4 or 5 skills and most are developed well below average. The funny thing is that I cannot list beyond 2 or 3 of the 4 or 5 I have mentioned above :) So, life can be very hard for a person like me. But that Sunday deserved better and I set out to make Dosa's. You get these instant dosa mixes at the local groceries, I have friends who can vouch that there is always a stock of "Instant this", "Instant that" in my kitchen.

Armed with that paste, I added some more water and decided to go for creativity. Cut tomatoes and spread the paste on the pan.

Sunday means WWE time :) and it was King of the Ring! Undertaker v Triple H!!! Lord was it captivating! After sometime the smell from the kitchen was also captivating.

First dosa was harder than a diamond, so I named that fellow - Black Diamond and said - "Yeah , Yeah "- with a pathetic Afrikaans accent. The next time I was more careful, Thank god for commercials :) allows you to take your eyes of TV. The second one was spread well and I was standing right there to ensure that our Black Diamond did not have a twin. My ENIAC age memory meant that something was again forgotten and it meant that though this one was Black Diamond's German cousin, it still was stuck at many places and the over all figure could accurately describe the hole in the ozone layer. I named this fellow - "An Inconvenient Truth" - "How true," I sighed.

The next one was "Casino Royale" and then the last one was "The Departed". The music that Sunday morning was exceptional, the weather still glorious. The match on mute was rousing and I thought it was a perfect ending. My last attempt at adding some spices to the dosa mix resulted in a small fire on my frying pan. As it raged, I stood shocked. Like "Courage the cowardly Dog", I picked up the vessel and threw it in the sink and opened water..... Well... life is always about learning. I learnt that afternoon that "Burnol" helps, but slowly..

So my dear reader. It was a great Sunday. I quickly recovered from my inflammatory aspirations of cooking. My ambitions are more modest now and are restricted to coffee making and maggie. The rice is cooked too, but I stand at a safe distance until the "My- mother-mandated" four whistles of the cooker are not over. Then I run and switch off the gas and run away again. I ate my "Black Diamond, An Inconvenient Truth and The departed" with a lot of water. Most of the morsels were swallowed like tablets, but "Casino Royale" was eaten with a lot of satisfaction.

I do wish another Sunday like this came and I was able to cook up another breakfast like this. Only this time I will douse any inflammatory Aspirations that I may have before I literally "Burn my fingers" :))

Rural Verdict

I had a hard time explaining where I was working. The old man sat on an old chair in the porch and with a frown harder to remove than grease stains, the task was onerous to say the least. "GE, General Electric," I cried. "Chee Chee, your father educated you so much and with such expense for you to turn out to be a lowly electrician??? ", was the informed reply. Not that there is anything lowly about being an electrician, it is just that if you are educated in the cities, then the only job you should be having is a government job. I did not pass that judgement, our dear old chap did.

"No, No, I am not an electrician, I ...... well..... I fix computers, "I said. Well, I thought it was close enough to say that I was a help desk support technician. It did nothing to improve matters. He was convinced that I was bluffing. In my part of the town, the "electrician-next-door" often doubled up as a computer repair man. At the time of this incident, there were about 10 computers in my home town. So you should be beginning to see how difficult the task was getting. I then tried explaining the whole contact center thingy. He now howled that I was after all a phone operator. Gosh! this was demeaning! Though thoroughly frustrated, I vowed to have it explained what my job was.

Well, how do you even start telling a seventy year old man who has not seen much beyond a 50 KM radius of his hometown, what being technical support analyst was. I then resorted to talking about how big the city is and the different kind of jobs that are available for young people like me. He listened without the slightest trace of interest. I told him the diversified business interests of the company that I worked for. He blinked twice and spat out the remaining tobacco leaves. He nodded his head as if to say, "Go on, I am listening". I had to bring out a super weapon. I told him I had been to America to get trained on the job. He looked slightly interested. "Very cold there?", he asked. "Yes, we went in December", I explained. "Did you see Ice (snow fall for the uninitiated)?" "Yes"

I was beginning to hope that he would now start showing some interest in the job I was doing.

He yawned and asked me how much I was earning a month. I blushed a bit, but said it was nice and things were looking up. He then asked sternly what the number was. I don't know why I did it, but I told him. He looked up startled. I was grinning inside.

"Who the hell will give you a wife!!?", he suddenly announced.

"Madan earns three times, why? He is with the municipality! Narayanan's dad is going to retire from the postal department. Guess who gets his job?? Narayan ofcourse!"

A few other examples perplexed me. I suddenly felt myself in the middle of a court sentencing me to life time service of this old man. The only solace I thought would be the small number of years he had left. The death knell came soon afterwards. A small talk resulted in me saying that I work odd hours. Well, I think you know what happened afterwards.

I failed miserably to impress the old man. I was not there asking for his daughter. The one's he had were already expecting grand children. He died sometime later and when I was told about it, I remembered this conversation.

This rural verdict on urban efforts of a "modern" lifestyle.

I have long since moved on from that job. I must confess that I am slightly lucky. I do have a decent job, and the hours are not all together odd. There are varying degrees of learning to be had from this event.

The old man thought little beyond his convention and I thought little beyond my own. He was used to a languid stroll to a rundown building at 9.30 AM in the morning after a heavy breakfast. I was used to my cabbie wailing the horn for me at 9 in the night. He would come home to coffee in the evening and doordarshan's serials in the night. I would come home to coffee and breakfast in the morning and sleep till the evening. Contrasting, yet conventional for both parties.

The point is that it would have made little difference if I were the old man and he the young I. So much for different personalities :)

Purani Jeans aur Guitar!

have always believed that happy memories are perhaps the strongest reason why a human being wakes fit and fine everyday. If not for them, the mind has to be willed with infinite power to do the basic things in life. I have had the luck to associate myself with some very happy memories in my life.With rivalry at its peak and fire spewing out of adolescent eyes, cricket matches between boys are nothing short of war. We had two teams in the colony we resided in and ofcourse there was no love lost between us. We never spoke to each other and played in different areas of the playground. Funny thing was not many of us knew why the animosity :) But like in politics, knowledge is not always required, just a heightened sense of alignment to one group. Typically lasting between 4.30 PM to 7.00 PM in the evening. Post that it was a marriage of convenience to acedemics. Typically October and November of an acedemic year affored the maximum laxity from our parents to indulge in sports. Great advantage was taken out of this leniency.A cricket match on Saturday! I was owefully out of form and my captain decided to drown me further down the batting order. To most swashbuckling colleagues of mine, I was an eyesore with staunch defensive cricket. Add to that my form and I was hoping to be lucky enough to carry water to the middle. But since it was a bet of 220 rupees, we had to find every boy who could shell out 20 rupees. That is how I got into the playing eleven. Money does talk! :)We were asked to bat first and I dont remember anything of our batting or mine. I believe we made a modest total, half of which were made two batsmen and then a lot by extras and then some by what we call "Tondi" :) (let us just say unscrupulous means). By devious means we managed to make them bowl about 22 overs in a 20 over game. Duly there was a fight, duly things pacified. At the break between innings, my captain looked at me disdainfully and wondered aloud where to have me field. That was embarrasing enough, he then remarked that I also dont run well after the ball. So after many "brain storming" sessions, I was sent off to field at third man where they thought the ball would come the least. For the first few overs, life was a bliss. I stood there often collecting harmless balls and rolling them back to the keeper.Virgin islands dont remain undiscovered forever, they soon found out the Jonty Rhodes of the side. I suddenly found an increased frenzy of balls coming my way. Twice I hurt my elbow, courtesy my clumsy fielding. The captain grew desperate and in a strange move, put me in slips!What is the worst he can do? He must have thought, drop a catch? The surface was so slow that the only catch a slipper could take was one when the keeper threw him the ball. Well, guess what?A batter poked at a ball and it came my way, I went to my right before realising it was going to my left. Like a blite gazelle I turned and grasped the speeding ball which was travelling at close to 20 kms an hour and flicked it back towards the stumps. Ofcourse I was looking somewhere else when I threw it. A few moments later, my astounded team mates rushed to me to congratulate me for my exceptional effort. The bloke was run out and I also found that my antics had hastened the end of my worn out shirt near my armpits. Ofcourse I never gave a high five the entire match with my right hand :)Miracoulously, I also took another catch a little later. This time, I was determined to protect my ugly face and got hit on the shoulder in return and the balls dobbled into my hands. Nothing else came my way, except standing there and irritating the keeper. He soon grew tired of me and stopped talking to me. I havent met him after that, so in many ways, those were his last words....... to me :))The same devious means employed by our "friendly" opposition meant that we were bowling the 23rd over in a 20 over chase. It all boiled down to the last 2 balls and they needed 3 to win. The batter skied one and I gasped as I saw that it was falling around me. The keeper looked at me once and decided that there was too much investment at stake to risk a rookie with this catch. I still remember vividly that he pushed me off the ball's trajectory and completed the catch. He claimed his heroisim. I was just glad that I got my 20 rupees back. The extra earnings were ofcourse to be contributed to the "development" of the game at our club. Development included small eats and some cold drinks.I still do remember very vividly the glorious sense of joy that engulfed the entire team. The boys rushing from all parts of the ground. Hugging each other and shouting as loudly as their vocal chords would allow them to. The smile was hard to remove from our faces. More joy came when we saw our "arch" enemy vanquished. We did shake hands later but it was hardly meant :)This remains a beautiful memory till this day. I will write in more when the time comes.