Hurrah for me!

I am a domestic diva. No, really I am I am!!!

I know that a couple of the girls are going to die laughing, especially SN, since I was famous for burning papad at her place at the tender training to-be-domestic-goddess age of 19. When they could roll out the perfect little rotis, I was relegated to sitting on the kitchen table and eating those little puris and zeera aalu.

But I did do my bestest this weekend. I think I am ready to be unveiled to the world!! Husband dearest’s praises does not really count because he was a dehati who had like never had any gourmet food beyond dal and chawal in his childhood and youth (he’s so lucky he has me, sigh!!!) and he looooves me (its amazing how much he does!), so even my burnt prawns are good for him.

Ever since we got back, colleagues, relatives, friends and friends of friends have been inviting us over for khana. It is payback time now! So, in the first round, RD, ND, G, NG, PG and baby H were invited for dinner on Friday night. I was all excited about making everything at home, since it was my opportunity to show off my domestic godessing skills.

This was my menu – adapted from Sanjeev Kapoors
* Spinach Nests (A yummy snacks, tastes like palak pakoras)

* Minestrone Soup

* Creole Spiced Corn

* Vegetables in red wine

* Pan-fried prawns with almonds

* Barbequed Chicken (This was done by the Hubby in the new Barbeque gifted by his team)

* Grilled peppers – since I didn’t have a grill, I just sort of let the peppers sauté in lotsa olive oil and thyme and a little balsamic. Served on garlic bread – this is something I learnt from Ma, and it worked pretty well.
* Warm potato and walnut salad with lemon parsley butter (oh god! this was the most easy-squeezy item and so good) Best part was ND doesn’t like walnuts, so there actually were leftovers for the chef :)
* Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and broccoli

I love sun-dried tomatoes, which is very weird considering that I’m not that fond of tomatoes unless they are disguised in the form of Maggi Hot & Sweet but well, there is no accounting for what the sun can do to you, if you just soak it up for like a couple of hours. Look at me, I’m also a much better person, after lying around in the Australian sun :) I’m a sun-driedish – eat me eat me! No, no don’t really – I’m a happily married woman (most of the time, said with straight face).
* Fresh fruit cake

And I’m so happy to say this dinner worked well, there were no leftovers - the sign of overeating by everyone and ergo a good meal. I’m ready to entertain more people but would prefer it if they too were easy to please and had like 5 glasses of chardonnay before hand so everything seems a lovely happy yellow haze :)

Was very knocked out the rest of the weekend, so just can manage a small plug for my darling friend, SK, who opened her very own art gallery. Congrats SK, I think this calls for Peking duck at Blue Ginger (I’m serious, was cheated last time)

PS: How could I have forgotten? Here's wishing the brave and gallant men in my life (namely, dad, AB, RS and VD) a very Happy NDA Day!!

A passing thought...

I wonder if Buzo likes her or he growls and scares the day lights out of her. I hope it's the latter! Yeah! I do have that bitchy streak in me!!


PS: Just got a mail from AB. "Buzo left for heaven on 01 Jan". Awwwww.. I never met B but I had tears in my eyes when I read the news. That darling dog lived a "pain"fully short life. He was AB's guardian angel. Hope AB's knee pain has not returned. Boozu sweetheart, here's praying that God stockpiled all your favorite food and a car just like dad's for you to scratch and go on long drives. Rest in Peace!!

New Beginnings?

*Cough splutter* I can't believe I'm actually using that corny title.. What the hell I simply couldn't resist. It certainly is a new beginning for me...

A week into 2006 and I feel like so much has already happened. A quick update on all that has transpired:

Am so proud of my little bro. He got a major major promotion and is now a BIIIG man in his company. The sad part is that he has to move base. He has decided on Pune. Another good news! Actually, I have tears in my eyes as I type this. Ma has agreed to his and N's wedding. WHOOOOPIE!! The w'day is April 15. What a start!! It must be bliss finally marrying someone who you have loved for 10 years

T has gone missing. I last met her in Ddun for the wedding. Subsequently, she went home and has disappeared now. Ro has also been making frantic calls to me. I did call her at her home in C'garh. Her dad told me (rather curtly) that she is not at home. Doll! hope all's well with you

AB is (hopefully) happily married. He must be. No emails / news from him.

SN is pregnant. This being her first baby, she doesn't exactly know what to expect when expecting. Anyhow, she was complaining to EP about how she had ten more weeks to go before the baby comes along. They were watching a documentary that talked about the gestational period of penguins. I think it is approximately 55 days. Her husband then told her that she should thank God she's not an elephant [~2 years].

RS has got his next posting orders. He has to report to Leh in the first week of February. All the best buddy! Its freezing out there! Take good care of yourself.

RM is back from his US deputation with 2 patents in his name. Wow types! I missed you pal!

KK, the fat and ugly gorilla and my constant companion for 9 years, was sent off to an Orphanage at S.O.S. Village along with a pitara of other things which BP refused to allow into the home. Took a last photo of KK before I bid him adieu. My! Doesn't he look handsome after the major bathing, cleaning and overhauling session I gave him!! I know KK must be making another kid smile but I miss him on many a nights :(

AC is dating the sexy guy from her church, who she had the hots for a long time. Grandpa's praying hard for this relationship to work out. Apparently, he likes LJ a lot and the fact that LJ's dad and he are good friends helps too!

A fortnight back I was at my miserable best - am I happy that's passed. My soul ain't healed completely, I aren't at peace with the world yet- but there's definitely a skip in my steps since the past two days. Oh yes, this year has taken off alright...and on that note:

Happy New Year! Bonne Année! Gutes Neues Jahr! Feliz Año Nuevo! Nuovo Anno Felice! Naye Saal Ki Shubhkaamnayein! :-)

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
the flying cloud, the frosty light;
the year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson

Jingle Bells

Well every year towards the second half of December, I start feeling good and bad. Good because Christmas and New Years comes knocking on our doors and sad because I am usually away from my family during the festive season.

Christmas brings back a lot of memories from the past. Have you read Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol? Do read it if you have not.

My Christmas memory takes me back to my childhood. Bought up in a fauji environment, we would always have a Christmas Party that would be organized by the unit. We would have magic shows, fancy dress competition, games and loads of yummy food. The best part was the Santa Claus and the gifts he would distribute. With age the gifts became interesting and precious.

Apart from the Children’s party, my parents would make it a point to keep something near our pillows so that we would wake up with gift the next day. It was an amazing feeling because my dad till the longest time wanted us to believe in Santa Claus. There were so many times I would tell him “come on…you kept it” and he would say a big NO. I actually loved the big NO. I do not know why he did it, but today I feel that he probably wanted us to believe in hope. He probably wanted us to keep the innocence alive till as long as we could. As we grew up, I and my bro got to know how Santa Claus never existed. But somewhere we just wanted to keep him alive. It was a strange thing in a way.

One of my fondest gifts was a grey polar bear (a stuffed toy) who still stays with me. He is called Pippins and he is my secret friend. It is precious because it was my first surprise ever. It was given by my father. He had been away on duty for a while and we were missing him. He just landed up on Christmas with a gift when all we wanted was him! The toy is in my mind part of my “First Surprise” ever.

Another gift was a story one of our teachers had narrated in class. It was about the “Little Match Girl” and how during Christmas, she was all alone, homeless and cold. She had no one but a match stick to keep her warm. The story had touched all of us so much that we had tears at the end of the story. All of us did something sweet for children who did not have anyone to celebrate Christmas with. Those were my first lessons to touch lives.

So, while you are shopping and enjoying yourselves partying, do take a while to think about the Christmas of the Past and smile at the times gone by. It’s an amazing feeling to visit the past…specially the ones that made the present so good!

Merry Christmas to all of you!!!

Meet the Fockers

So, I finally met the whole family i.e. hubs side. Actually this was my third meeting but the first time we met informally. Earlier occasions were ceremonious and I didn't get an opportunity to interact with them on a personal level.

We met up for lunch at hubs beautiful home in doon overlooking the Mussoorie hills. It was dad's 62nd birthday and the whole jing bang was invited. Overall, things went well.

Let me rephrase that, things went well until I got drunk and crashed into Mami's chair and landed on her lap. I wonder whose brilliant idea was it to serve GG 2 glasses of wine at 11:30 am? Yeah! I could have refused but then I didn’t want to sound too fussy in front of the in-laws. My tolerance for alcohol is as it is pretty low and is way lower in the mornings especially when I had to skip breakfast to make it on time to impress the family. F.I.L typical of RIMColeans is a stickler for time.

Everyone was in raptures and that gave BP the perfect opportunity to regale everyone with my past escapades. There was no stopping him as he narrated incident after incident about my misadventures. My kicking him from under the table had no affect on him. (Later I found out I had been kicking the cute devar) His mom must have felt some pity because she called me to the kitchen. I was too embarrassed by then and took that as a cue to escape. So that was the meet the family.

I titled this Meet the Fockers though because they were way more hippie than the original "Meet the Parents", way more fockeresque, but not as weird (if only all my strange movie dreams could come true!)

Saying goodbye to the past..

"In pain comes acceptance, in acceptance comes forgiveness, in forgiveness comes rebirth..."

I am now formally closing this chapter of my life.

Not all stories are happy endings, but all stories have moral lessons. The duality of life: light and dark, good and bad, pain and pleasure, all comes in a complicated package that we have to experience, for living would be worthless without it. I am now leaving this chapter with a fuller understanding of my purpose: life after death. Right now, I am in the midst of my grief, death still consumes my whole being. But I know in time, I will be okay. Then I will be free.

Until then..

Flashback

There are tons of songs I love. People make fun of how I have songs I love, songs I looove, and songs I luuuuuuuve. But amongst the many, there’s a smaller subset that truly touch my heart. Be it the lyrics, the singing, the music or some altogether indescribable element .. there are some songs that make me go weak in the knees and a li’l wet in the eyes.

I also have a song for everybody I know. Not the same song of course, but different songs for different people. It’s not a conscious allocation. I have not deliberately decided that a particular song goes with a certain person. Also, there’s no logic to the allocation. For instance, my song for my mother is not a lullaby that she sang to me often but ‘Killing me softly’. I think she sang it to my father once, but that stuck in my head, the hazy memory and the song.

Over the years, I have lost touch with some people. Days and months may pass by without me giving them a thought. But a few strains from a song (one of the songs allocated to them in my mind) and the memories come flashing back.

Radio City is running a series called ‘Musical-e-Azam’. It started last week, and in the 6 days till now, they have got 6 amazing singers to the studio – Asha Bhonsle, KK, Kunal Ganjawala, Sunidhi Chauhan, Udit Narayan! Today Shaan was on air. Shaan sang this oldie for his wife. Damn! It left me misty eyed.

Tumse milke aisa laga
Tumse milke armaan hue poore dil ke

Ae meri jaane wafa
Teri meri meri teri ek jaan hai
Saath tere rahenge sada, tumse na honge judaa

Tumse milke aisa laga
Tumse milke armaan hue poore dil ke

Mere sanam, teri kasam chhodenge ab na yeh haath

((Love, from a woman’s point of view. No red roses, no pink teddy bears, no chocolate-covered candy-hearts. Just a gentle assurance that I’ll always be there. ))

..................................................................

A passing thought: It is hardest to forgive people you have loved; it is also toughest to forget them.

Beautiful Ugly Duck

I’ve been sick the past few days. It’s been so bad that for a while I doubted if I would ever recover.
The last two days were the worst, especially with people visiting to check on my health and all I could get out of my throat was a *cough*. I’m feeling a lot better today, so hopefully my body has started responding to the antibiotics and is not wasting away (which is a little far-fetched) because judging by my girth, it’s likely that I’m doing just the opposite.

I don’t know what’s wrong with my body, but I never lose weight when I’m sick. Infact, I get so bloated when I’m sick that I suspect myself of somnambulist bingeing.

But, I digress. The point is this morning I woke up and felt better. The cough had lessened to a dry hack (so much more enjoyable than a wet one), the fever was nothing more than a raging headache and intermittent chills, the nausea only manifested itself when I thought about excessively disgusting activities like eating. My legs still felt like noodles though. I peeked at the mirror to get a closer look and a face with a disturbing resemblance to Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) stared back at me.

Feeling cheerful about my progress, I stumbled through the shower, made a few half-hearted passes with a comb at my mangled hair and brushed a couple of teeth. Although I have an excellent personality, in the real-world sense, I’m Cinderella before the fairy godmother, Elphaba before Glinda, the lovely Anne Hathaway before Disney. I am a woman awash with possibilities, simply waiting for the right person to come along, take over my wardrobe and grooming, and set me on the path toward elegance and beauty. Ma was that person!

We had a puja to perform at the temple today. Ma pulled out this beautiful baby blue sari with matching earrings and bangles for me to wear. After I was all dressed up, I went to show dad how I looked. The saree had transformed the Quasimdo into a swan. Yes, make-up and clothes can do wonders! I felt dad’s eyes moisten as he kissed me on the forehead and said, “our doll looks like a princess. We’ll miss you so much beta.” I will too miss them so so much.

I may look like the proverbial ugly duckling transformed into a beautiful swan but I am still a princess in my own l'le kingdom.

Insomnia and a head full of way too many things..

I canNOT sleep, my mind's too full of thoughts. That's what you get for not wearing yourself out all day so that you're dead tired by the end of it that all you want to do is go to sleep as soon as your head hits the pillow. Now is so not the time to start thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong, the possibilities for disaster are endless, and my imagination is tireless.

Today was a near perfect day. Its been raining like rain all week long and today was the first COMPLETELY CLEAR BLUE SKIES, A SMILING SUN AND WHITE CLOUDS day. Too bad that I had to spend it in bed. I am one sick moose! I have this yucky cold that has turned into a yuckier cough. OMG! I feel horrible! I have almost no voice at all. My throat hurts so bad it feels like someone jammed a couple of knives in there. It hurts to talk, breath, swallow, cough (which I do a lot these last couple of days). I have had this stupid thing for almost a week and seem to be getting worse instead of better. The past week I have been offwork.

I like to think that I am a fairly independent person. So it is hard for me to admit that I need people. But when I came down with the flu, I was feeling completely outta sorts (I was also in a mild depression because of the recent happenings in my life). I sobbed like a baby and told ma that I needed my mom and she should not to leave me even for a second. I am XXX years old... and I can do a lot of things for myself but sometimes I just need my mom. Ma's scrumptious tomato and basil soup and loving attention worked like magic.

God bless RM for lending me The Sisters Grimm: The fairytale detective to keep me company. Well, I know the book is meant for kids aged 9-12 but so what! I am still young at heart and totally love fairy tales. Sabrina and Daphne, who have been sent to live with their mysterious grandmother, Relda Grimm. From their first day in Ferryport Landing, the sisters begin to unravel a mystery that reveals a family secret. Snow White, the Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Wolf are all alive and now neighbors of Granny Relda in this community of Everafters. But life is not a fairy tale in Ferryport Landing. Someone has set a giant loose on the town, and it's up to the Sisters Grimm to stop the giant and find the Everafter behind its murderous rampage. Crazy adventures ensue when "grandmother is kidnapped by a giant, and some police officers turn out to be the Three Little Pigs." Great read!

I did sneak into work on Monday only to be sent home at the INSISTENCE of the pointy-haired boss and several of my coworkers. Seems my "husky" voice on the phone (and of course the sneezing) was a dead giveaway as to how sick I really am. I made it half a day on Tuesday and the entire day on Wednesday, had to work pretty hard at convincing the boss that I was ok to be there. Managed to dodge several co-workers who wanted to "feel my forehead" to see if I still had a fever. Well meaning people, gotta love em!

Another thing running through my mind is a friend of mine who is facing a pretty bad medical crisis.. I am worried about him and his wife. He is a very private kind of person but I can see the worry on his face. Really bothers me alot, really wish there was something I can do! Hopefully they both know I am there for them if they need anything!!

Another 2 hours before day break. Lemme try to get some sleep.

The new love in my life

Isn't he totally adorable? Look at those soulful eyes and cute face... Help! I am falling in love!!

The newest addition to our family. Custard! Sunshine! We are still in the process of christening (naming) him.