bliss

Back after the long-long-long break!

Day 1: As is wont to happen, we started off the holidays with a fight! A bit of door- slamming, wet-eyes and the make-up session. Purrfect start, i say! Kind of like letting off the steam in preparation of the long week ahead.

After we got past the mandatory fight, we ended up having a really good time. Most of it was spend in bed – watching movies on the laptop, watching serials and movies on TV and other such exciting exercises!

We even went pandal-seeing – we were too lazy to get out of the car and join the crowd to have a darshan of the goddess and her children. We just drove past the pandals, craning our necks to see the idols, lighting and the never dwindling crowd dressed to glory. We drove past the same pandal thrice – i think he lost his way. On the third round, i could not resist myself and told him gleefully we were driving around in circles, that we have passed the same mishti shop thrice!

i insisted on going for a long drive – he indulged me. So we drove to the other end of the city – i have never been there and I wanted to see what it was like. i was expecting the place to be green and spacious. But the road was narrow and congested. After an hour, i got tired and asked him to turn back. En route i kept blah blahing about nothing in particular.

And then i insisted on a long-long-long drive. He indulged me. We drove to a sea beach about 4 hours from the city. The scenery was nice but the road – the state highway was horrible with open sores big enough to swallow the car! We drove on and on and on. The worse thing was that there is no signboard anywhere telling you where you are. So we had to keep asking for directions. After an exhausting drive, we reached the beach but not before driving through a stretch of road that had me hugging the side of the car! The beach was motor-able which meant we could drive straight up to the sea – ok, bad for the ecology. We spent some time on the beach and then went around looking for some place to fill our stomachs. This place is sort of new on the tourist map so it was clean and un-crowded which also meant fewer amenities. Since the “resorts” only had in-house restaurants we had to forego lunch. i insisted on driving on the beach and he indulged me, yet again. i tried to sneakily get the speed above 40, but he caught me at it and asked me to slow down. So mean of him, I swear. All i would have knocked down was just bored holiday-makers!

We then decided to drive back before it got dark and the roads swarming with people out hunting for pandals to feast their eyes on. And i learned a valuable lesson – never drive through these roads after dusk. No street lights. Potholes and wokholes. Add to it people who cross the road in the dark and cyclists riding in the middle of the road. i kept peering through the dark trying to spot people who seem to dart out of nowhere with a suicidal mind. Only when we approached the city was i able to sit back and relax. We decided to visit our fave Chinese restaurant only to find it jam packed. We settled on take-away.

It was bliss just to laze around, curled up beside each other. Cracking silly jokes, watching silly serials, reaching out now and then to cuddle. Bliss. Unadulterated bliss.

i am still alive....

It has been along week for me. Last Friday, he sent a SMS saying he was home. At 5 in the evening. That had me worried. i called up and he said he was not feeling well so he thought he would rest. i rushed home but not before going to the pharmacy. i bought so many medicine that the guy must have thought i had a dying family or something! Vicks, cough syrup, paracetamol tablets, throat soothing lozenges, decongestant nasal drops, vitamin c tablet, flu tablets…When i got home, i was distraught to find he had high temperature. i got down to playing nurse – sponging and massaging and the works.

Weekend: My guy down with fever and cold & cough. Spent pretty much the whole time trying to be a good nurse – patient with the patient, caring blah and more blah. The worse thing was the food – i am always at a complete loss when cooking simple food. i am more the spicy, oily type of chef!

He skipped office for two days and i decided to be an angel and stay back too and nurse him back to health! God, i nearly acquired a halo and wings!

This is the first time i have really seen him this sick. i have always been away –either onsite or elsewhere- when he got sick before. i guess it scared me to see this big guy slumped in bed.

Thank god that he is a bit better now though the cough persists.

And we were fourth in the Dumb Charades event – lost out by 5 points! But it was so fun. I am new to this game – at onsite it was everyone’s favorite game except mine; all dinner parties ended with a session of dumb charades. I love the guessing part though. I was depressed that we did not win a prize because I was counting on the prize money to buy a good glossy recipe book. Look at me - behaving as if I cannot afford it on my own! But it is much more fun buying it with those prize coupons!

And i got promoted – meaning, i am now officially responsible for everyone’s mistakes apart from my own! i don’t know how i would cope with office politics and whether i would be able to be ever politically correct in meetings. i need to sharpen my resource management skills and not fume and spew fire when irked.

The next week being Durga Puja, we have three days off! i am planning to take Monday off so I will have an really extended weekend! yahooooooo.....

dream on...

These past few days i have been trying to keep myself busy watching cooking videos on the net. i like cooking shows – Kylie Wong, Emeril – i used to like Sanjeev Kapoor too but, these days, somehow his shows bore me with all that oil/fat free stuffs.

i would love to build a website with all the recipes i love. Bengali, Manipuri, Thai, Chinese – i am getting excited thinking about it. But knowing me, i would not be able to sustain the enthu for long. But has that ever stopped me from dreaming? Nay!

i would love to start a small restaurant of my own – i have even decided a name for it but would not disclose it for fear that someone might steal that name (look at her, she is paranoid!! Who would even want to steal your idea?). i would paints flowers on the walls. Soft music in the background. Cozy seating arrangements. Hand painted candles.

Another few years of designing, coding, squashing bugs, nagging kids to death – and i want to break free. No more imparting trainings and trying to stuff knowledge into unreceptive minds!

Dreams. And more dreams. And some more dreams.

look ma, no fingers!

This issue has been a bone of contention between us for a long time. The subject is, of all things, iromba, or rather how i prepare it. Iromba, for the uninitiated, is one of the dishes close to a Manipuri heart. Prepared with ngari (fermented fish) and boiled veggies of your choice, it is healthy (no oil, baby!) and tasty (an acquired taste, in my case).

For reasons i don’t recall, i shunned this dish when i grew up. So i grew up as this strange being who refused to eat iromba. My family, used to my whims and fancies, let it go and did not try to convert me into an iromba-loving true blood Manipuri!

It was only after i left Imphal that i took to this dish. Though i still don’t count it as one of my favorites, i like this dish well enough to prepare it. This is where the story starts. Any Manipuri worth his ngari will tell you that iromba is a dish whose preparation requires the active participation of your fingers. But i beg to differ. Whenever i prepare iromba, i have steadfastly refused to use my fingers. i use a spoon, and sometimes a steel tumbler or pestle, to mash and mix the ingredients. He says it is not the right way to prepare it. His argument is that only by using my fingers i can really amalgamate all the ingredients and bring out the real taste. Eh? To me, it tastes just the same. Maybe better.

He is not the only one who considers this act of mine blasphemous. i have been told by almost everyone i know that this is not done. In keeping with my reputation as someone who would never toe the line, i persist in saving my fingers for better things. Like caressing!

love and shoes

Suddenly, love overtakes me. On a Monday morning, that too!

i suspect that i am the kind who finds perverse pleasure in seeking troubled waters. When calm weather prevails, i feel the need to stir the waters to whip up a storm. i have stopped trying to understand the warped way my mind works – some things need to remain shrouded in mystery. i think i go out of my way to court trouble, just so to test if i can survive another one of life’s jokes. Sometimes i get tired of myself – of this constant need to ruminate on the purpose of life, of trying to figure out the meaning of my existence blah blah and more blah blah. Sometimes i wish to be ordinary – ordinary in the sense that i would be contend with what i have and long for whatever it is that other people long for – gold, house, car blah blah . In a way, i am unattached to most things – sometimes even the books i seemingly cannot survive without. i feel like a freak at times.

Now, you ask, where does love comes into this? Sometimes, i feel like i want to flee from love – the many atrocities it inflicts on hearts fickle enough to succumb to its charm. Sometimes, i don’t want to be loved or love –i just want to stare at some spot on the ceiling and pretend i am thinking when all my mind does is tune out everything and dance to some tune of its own.

And sometimes, i am overwhelmed by love – to love and love till i am purged of this feeling. Do we have a finite amount of love assigned to us – one day, we would find we are out of love? Sometimes, as i read and he sleeps with his arm thrown around me; when he reaches out for me in his sleep, i feel the love ooze out like lava from a long suppressed vent (i know, my metaphors are as warped as i!).

One such day is today. i was so overwhelmed with love that i polished his shoes for him – i don’t know who was more surprised – me or him.