Uh oh!

I was very appalled with myself when I realised I had written about a lot of tosh but I had completely ignored the essential tosh -food!

If there ever existed an undergraduate course on food-cuisines, manner of approaching the cuisine, going through it and different styles of burping...Hell yeah! I would be the first person to graduate from the course. Most of the dreams I have got till date...except gruesome ones where crocs eat me up only to barf me out later (there you go, someone's eating), constitute of just food. 

Though a non-resident Bengali, I am still in touch in touch with my culture through my voracious appetite, although I try not to be partial by savoring the other cuisines as well. I certainly will not be surprised if I turn out to be a mutated dentrassi accidentally left on earth, the gourmand that I am.

Racism in me is exhibited only in cuisine terms. I accept or denounce a culture through the platter. As I work my way through the varied cuisines, the Chinese never fails to win my heart. Tea is the gateway to heaven while a cold coffee is bliss in the hot afternoons. A milkshake every now and then would just about be perfect. As Julie Andrews describes her favourite things, I slip away to the land of goodies popularised by Enid Blyton. Utopia in my eyes, I see myself running amok, dazed by the sights and smells, as free food blooms, ripens, appears, is passed over counters and is ingested. I am sure, had there been such a place, I would be elected mayor very soon. If not mayor, I would surely be awarded the ideal citizen or be approached to be the mascot for the town.

Though those were a few of my favourite things, Tamil and Gujarati cuisines break my heart and the North Indian fare keeps me looking for my weight machine every now and then. If I were given a chance to interview God, I would ask him these questions –

1. Why were the Tamilians programmed to render everything edible sour? Even the fish with its exquisite tang is not spared! How can one sour chicken?!?!?

2. Why are the Gujaratis so fervent about making everything sweet and dolloped with clarified butter!!! Luckily the papad was spared, or else the cuisine would be condemned in my suicide letter...

3. Is there any way to cook north Indian fare with oil a litre less?

4. Does the Andhra Pradesh cuisine favour food at all? Only Biryani isn’t filling, you know... a few more accompaniments would suffice, thank you!

5. Have you imposed fasts on Oriyas every other day of the week to prevent them from ingesting food? I thought the cyclones ravaged the coastal areas? I didn’t know it completely hampered food production in the state.

6. Why do the French like everything ‘rare’? Haven’t they evolved to the stage where man started using the fire to cook his food well?

And the list would go on. At the end of it all, God might condemn me to the Sahara where I will have to dance with the tribes to invoke the rain god for a few showers so that we can grow watermelons to quench thirst. Hunger...well let’s not talk about it. While the gujjus thrive in their sweetness and tamilians add more lemons...yes Father Almighty...thy will be done! Amen!

Cornflakes

the other day, i stopped at my aunt's place. as she shovelled cornflakes into her perpetually squawking son, she spoke at length about the everyday problems that an average housewife faces everyday. this certainly did boost my marriage paranoia which has been escalating ever since i entered adolescence. the girls who would put on pretty ribbons and frills to go out to play suddenly grow up to become aliens concerned with their settled life which was at that moment of life,of no concern to anyone else who should have been concerned about it. puberty can either do you wonders as boys suddenly awaken to the possibility of girls being, well, girls. or, it can hamper your progress as a normal sane individual as you take to the geeky path. at any rate it is very astounding how much information gets stored in the brain, irrespective of its value. boys have to remember their music, bikes, cars and good pickup lines. the girls have more work to do in absorbing gossip, processing it, sorting by date, person and issue and revealing their knowledge at the proper times. the tomboys have the most work to do in following the middle path that requires all the aforementioned skills.

at such times, they need some energy and memory retentive skill boosting material. what can be better than cornflakes, manna for the identity starved people! the wonders of the combination of flaky fermented orange chips with the pure whiteness of milk claims to act faster than any drug. with cornflakes by our side, no one can beat us at impressing the opposite gender. as i say this, let us, by the power of cornflakes, imagine the kellogs mascot do a jiggle for us... even before we see the orange hue of the sunrise, mother keeps a bowlful of similarly coloured cornflakes at the table. she hopes we shall excel at education by the grace of the soggy flakes sinking into the milk. naive souls! little do they know where our true aspirations lie. recharged, we start the day by flashing the devil's horn or going wheeee! and getting back to the inpression business. all hail cornflakes! mother of all aspirations....and no, i wasnt paid to advertise cornflakes..

The pros and cons of a dust bunny

it is not very pleasurable when one of them falls on your first morsel of the day. but nonetheless, if seen from a very unbiased perspective, dust bunnies can be the most endearing members of the house. the way they hang from the fans, going wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! when you turn the fan on, doing somersaults in the air before tenderly floating to the ground, resting at your feet, waiting for a word of appreciation. yes, they most selflessly work hard to adhere to your wishes and moods. even when subjected to the demeaning broom, they submissively get swept and wait outside the door, just hoping you shall turn around and sweep them back into the house where they took birth and hoped to multiply with your good grace.

the dust bunny, with its brood, be it any season of the year, any time of the day, patiently waits by the door. as soon the person enters, they lovingly circle his feet, welcoming him, when the rest of the family seems unaffected. yet, we, the insensitive souls that we are, continue to enter, crushing them mercilessly, leaving them to painfully reconstruct, accept their lot cheerfully and wait for the next entrant. how many times have we sought them out of love, without a cloth covering our face and a mop at arm's length.

when we yearn for pets, temporarily casting aside the additional responsibilities of pet care, we forget the lovable soft creatures of a verisimilitude kind, waiting in the dark, who have given up all food and water, all personal luxuries and ego hassles and ruthlessly dust them out, cursing under our breaths.

o! hear ye, ungrateful creatures!! respect the creature who works untiringly for thy satisfaction! spurn not, its colour and appearance, its birth or raiment! denounce not its handicap! for in the spongy hollow heart that it has, there is only one aim...thy happiness!!

you don't need time to get acquainted with them, endearing that they are. whenever you sit in a corner of a room, feeling unwanted and abandoned, you shall find yourself surrounded by them, all ears and caring gestures, just to make your spirits high. as your confidences take a plummet, they gradually rise in the air, making your spirits soar. they entertain you, making patterns in the space, delicate moves, floating down to rest at your feet. that is all they want. yet, what we do is view them with distaste and discard them at the earliest.

when shall our hearts mellow down to appreciate their existence and give them the rights they are entitled to? when shall we bend down, lift one up lovingly in the hand and leave it in space to be free and dance its way down? someday, we shall realize...