50 Shades of Crave.

The woes of being in your twenties - Only some can empathize.

 Sigh.  People ask themselves different questions: When will this end? How could they do this? How will I pull off this exam? Do my eyes look smaller today? Is he cuter than I am? Shouldn’t I have a job by now? Was I really thinner last year? Where did my favourite sweatshirt go? Is chilli sauce really better than normal low-grade tomato ketchup?

If you are a fresh, but-poor lazy architecture graduate, with a weakness for French fries and sauce, you find yourself asking all of them. It was time to get everything back, and get my life on track. Had my life unfolded as I had imagined it would? It sure wasn’t as easy as origami. 

How many of us wanted to leave our dead end lives to go live our dreams?

There was only one problem.

I didn’t know what they were. What I did know?

My cravings- Here they are, in no particular order, either in merit or in feasibility-

I crave to be read and written about, etched out on school benches and drawn on lavatory walls. 
I crave for a sack full of love notes, which bursts at its seams. 
 I crave for an existential crisis. 
I crave for silk satin sheets, and stiletto heels and secrets and shh’s. 
I crave for an endless supply of spontaneous rhyme, of undeniable with and irresistible charm. 
I crave for a pair of pet goldfish. 
I crave for the fetid fug of foams and fumes. 
I crave for a jar of Nutella, slathered on a slice of bread, and between crepes. 
I crave to be high up the social clique, with a gaggle of mean girl minions. 
I crave for a fit of uncontrollable giggles in a moment of despair, when times are dark and dreary. 
I crave for a rich juicy tenderloin burger, one that you want to make love to, with a side order of French fried and a milkshake. 
I crave to feel uncontrollable rage and unaccountable desire together. 
I crave to feel sporadic, yet unbridled excitement, in fleeting spurts, in large doses. 
I crave to feel the sand through my toes, and under my fingernails. 
I crave for a no-strings-attached one night stand, one without names, the duffel bag and the travelling toothbrush. 
I crave to have blood on my hands, and hands at my feet. 
I crave to be a synecdoche if not a transferred epithet. 
I crave for the tug of closure, sweeping over me like a cold wave. 
I crave to dream, unbound and unchained, living out a different life, in a different time. 
I crave for substance and stability, and the ensuing paradox. 
I crave for some remorseless sin, one without retribution and redemption. 
I crave to be out and about, but with a small trust fund to my name. 
I crave to listen to Adele on loop on a rainy day, when the clouds are full; not with rain, but with doubt. 
 I crave for an alter-ego, if not an everlasting best friend. 
I crave for people to listen to all what I have to say. 
I crave to take back all that I may have said. 
I crave for a dragon-less damsel-in-distress, without a tall tower and a curse to her name. 
I crave to be the filling, and not the buns, because I’d never be a complex carb. 
I crave to feel insecure, and cower with guilt and drown in self-doubt. 
I crave for happiness, one that can’t be contained in Styrofoam cups, brown paper bags or glass jars. 
 I crave to battle my feelings of cold feet, and cold shoulders. 
I crave to have fireworks on a rainy day. 
I crave for the stench of comfort, reeking of luxury , heavy with the stink of money. 
I crave to be supermodel thin with high cheekbones, and a small nose, but still be scientist smart. 
I crave to finish an unachievable bucket list, and still dream of immortality. 
I crave to have a sitcom life with an accompanying laugh track, and a corresponding love interest. 
I crave to inhale, exhale and repeat. 
I crave to be able to pronounce clingy and puddle. 
I crave for a big red barn, if wishes were horses. 
I crave to hit the snooze button and sleep for those five more minutes. 
I crave for acceptance, a sense of belonging, to become a part of a whole, or a whole of a part. 
I crave to be different, to stand out like a speck of yellow in a sea of black. 
I crave to be French, guzzle a bottle of red on a lazy Sunday afternoon and wear dapper suits. 
 I crave to be dapper, and quaint, and a hundred other colonial things. 
I crave for a pint of beer every day, sans the subsequent beer belly. 
I crave to be sorely missed, and longed for. 
I crave to learn Spanish; so that I can roll my R’s and drink sangria for breakfast. 
I crave for a job that does not make me look up at the clock every ten minutes, while I flit uncomfortably in my cubicle, counting down to the end of my work shift, and my life. 
I crave for the feeling of lingering hands, on and around me. 

But most of all, I crave to be with you.

83

There never really is a good time to write this. Most often, it strikes you like a tight resounding slap to the cheek, when something life-altering happens, either when you meet the love of your life, or lose one of them. < Something comes along, that changes everything.

 One minute you are heading in one direction, and the very next you spiral out down a helix, and are ricocheted elsewhere. Either for better or for worse, till death do us apart. Yes. Death. Funny how it seems so larger-than-life, so dark and dreary, but yet it comes along, and goes, in the blink of an eye, in a heartbeat, faster than light, and thought, like the blink-and-miss role of a junior artiste in a B grade pot boiler, like a flickering light bulb which fades back to black.

 My grandmother was an exceptional woman, and in so many ways I can say that she singlehandedly raised her four children. Simply because she knew that if she didn’t, my grandfather wouldn’t do half a decent job doing his share. But that’s probably the plight of women everywhere. Where they put themselves after everyone else, resolving themselves to a fate of a caretaker, and a giver of love, without any expectations of receiving it at the other end. She worked tirelessly around the clock, inside the home, the children were replaced by grandchildren, the number of rotis doled out was doubled, and the buckets of water filled increased exponentially. Time flied, and hair greyed, but the zest remained the same. A constant figure in everyone’s lives, it’s a wonder the impact she managed to make in a patriarchal society. She was spunky, she was spontaneous, toughed by years in the infamous family, strengthened by layers of memories, wizened by generations worth of experiences.

 It’s funny how people become just that -people, when they are alive. A part of the family, someone you have to respect, someone who is a casualty, someone in the background, someone who gives you money during Diwali, someone who made homemade chocolate for you when she came over home, someone who lashed out against dad for scolding you, someone who told you secretly that you were their favourite. Someone. Silly word. Most often, these ‘someones’ remain stagnant, while you go on with your own life; hazy figures in the background, wispy and smoke-like. But when they die, everything changes. One moment they are here, living it in the backdrop, the next moment, they are a flash and they are gone. They are remembered, they are mourned, they are thought of, and they are cried over- everything post-death.

But is it necessary to realise a person’s true worth only once they are gone? Why do we only end up lauding them posthumously? Does regret need to be such a life changing lesson? Pity you realise your wrongs, when nothing else is right. Can an epitaph or a eulogy ever undo all your words, can beautifully written verse deflect the worst? Can a Facebook note or a blog post ever define love, or the anguish of losing a loved one?
Probably not.
 But the most I can do is try.
 This one’s for the woman. She was everything. A mother. A wife. A grandmother. A sister. An aunt. A daughter.A survivor. A revolutionary. And like my mum says from time to time, she survived the Mahale family, with a long history of delinquents. That really counts for something. So many titles, one woman. She left our side two days ago, and nothing’s been the same ever since. All my problems seem insignificant now, choices to be made, jobs to be taken, a book to finish, and secrets to tell. And now my only regret is never telling her how much I loved her. Life’s like that.
 Amma, this one’s for you. Rest in peace, and watch over all of us. We all need us our guardian angel, especially right about now.

Food For Thought: Look Who's Toqueing.

She came for me from nowhere. One minute, I was whistling and whiling away time, minding my own business, and the other, I was running for my life, trembling heart in my hand. I could hear her behind me, she was gaining momentum, and in a few moments it would all be over. The prey had become the predator, and at a time like this, when everything was done for, I couldn’t help but curse Darwin for his evolutionary ideologies. I ran for my life, heaving out of breath and blue, thinking back on all those times that I had wished that I had exercised but hadn’t. My feet hurt, and my stomach churned, but yet I didn’t stop. I could hear her behind me, shrieking away, and all that did was egg me on to run even faster. I huffed and I puffed down the long dark corridor, quite unlike the big bad wolf, not enough to blow anybody’s house down, but sufficient enough to survive. She cornered me at last, and I squirmed like a wriggly worm, against the dead blank wall. I trembled and looked at her with fearful eyes, cold sweat running down my hot face. This game of Catch and Cook was a little too discomforting for my taste.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
We were like two age old lovers, only this wasn’t love, and I wasn’t age old.
 She squawked.
The plump white hen glared at me with her beady sesame-red eyes, and I shuddered. Rightly so, cause this was no ordinary chicken. It was gargantuan, of Roc-like scale and eyes that meant business. Not that I was the hen-pecked husband types, but when you were literally hen pecked, things were different, especially when you were on the giving end of a fast food happy meal. I shrieked for one last time, as the claws of death closed down on me, and my life flashed past my eyes, frame by frame, picture by picture, till there was instant darkness.
 And then, I woke up.

 You know you are going crazy when you have recurring nightmares of a plump giant chicken squawking away behind you while you squirm around like a worm, trying to hide from its scaly yellow claws. Fortunately for me, this early bird does not end up getting the worm. You can either get to the food, or let the food get to you. And usually, I would prefer the former. After all, doesn’t the belly rule the mind? Don’t get me wrong, I am not a glutton- I am an explorer of food. They say that the easiest way to a man’s heart (including mine) is through his stomach, and not through a serrated knife as per popular belief. If your heart is full, you don’t feel that hungry, either for food or for love. But, what do you do when nobody’s particularly interested in finding the way to your heart, you ask? Well, you do the second best thing. You cook. Take it from someone who spent a major part of the vacation desserting, while deserting a nonexistent social life. The joy of baking brownies is like no other; two portions of sinful gooey chocolate with heaps of decadent vanilla and a measure of caramel can fix anything but lack world peace (and weight gain probably). I have always loved my food, only because my food has always loved me back. Especially when the food is city bred, and close to comfort.

What the city loses out it traffic and filth and a hundred other key points that make any member of the Parliament cringe with embarrassment and turn a shade of beetroot red, it makes up in chugging out gastronomical delights. From a myriad of colours and flavors in a Gola cart reminiscent of a chemistry apparatus setup, to the sizzle of a pound of butter on a plate of Pav Bhaji. The spicy crunch of a plate of chaat layered with sweet and savory ingredients, to a piping hot batter fried vada stuffed between a freshly baked soft white paav. Each has its own story; each has its own time. Why this fascination towards food? Why this reverence towards the square meal, one that only makes me round?

I grew up on cartoons-on-cable, action figures that came in cardboard packaging; and hot rotis ladled with ghee, thanks to an omnipresent stay-at-home mother. I helped her over the kitchen on some spotless days, either when the cable was off or after my toys were packed away in the attic. She would hustle and bustle about the kitchen over a simmering pot of creamy gravy, overseeing the cooking of almost three different courses, all the time while I would tail her like a panic stricken squirrel gnawing away at the last nut, fetching her bits and pieces, odds and ends, feeling like a magician’s apprentice. So unsurprisingly and quite naturally, growing up (or as much growing up I could manage over the next decade) I dreamt of becoming a cook, or as my ten year old self didn’t know back then, a chef. It seemed different, and artsy, and exactly all the things that enamoured a pint sized pre-teen’s aspirations. If I could make instant noodles, and boil an egg, I could do everything. Or so I thought, I still don’t understand half the difference between a Brioche and a Baguette. What I do know? They are delicious, and they are French. (Note to the wary reader: I am still talking about the food)

Coming back to reality, in the post-Anthony Bourdain world where cooking is cool and every kitchen is confidential, being a chef is chic. There’s a constant flurry of food, and a frenzy of happy, yet hungry customers. If that doesn’t excite the mind, what does? A chef is not one who simply cooks, a chef is one who creates. In Bourdain’s words, the human body is not a temple but an amusement park, one to indulge than implore, to devise instead of despise, where the next slice of pizza becomes a necessity, or the last chicken dumpling is the key to survival, especially in a friend circle where food comes first, even before friends. It was magical, and seemed too good to be true. But life happened, and my dreams of becoming a culinary connoisseur died a half baked death, like badly made lasagna. I moved on to other things, and other aspirations, simply because I was but eighteen and unenlightened.
What didn’t die?
My love for these gastronomical delights, and my near reverence for their creators.

You might be eating pain au chocolat and crackers with goat cheese at an upscale New York café, or eating fish and chips in the back seat of a moving car somewhere in London, you might even be binging on a margherita pizza in Rome, or something exotic/adventurous from a suspicious wok in the by lanes of Beijing, but where is the faceless man behind all these flawless dishes? Haven’t we all watched a movie just for the bucket of buttered popcorn? Or watched late night reruns just to finish of the tub of double chocolate chip ice-cream? Who amongst us is not fond of fondue or plotted for a plate of pot rice? Or gorged on Gouda cheese and Foccacia bread, with a plate of pita and hummus? No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one French fry. There are some things in life you’ve got to bucket before you kick the bucket. Like a stone baked slice of calzone drizzled with virgin olive oil, or rich Belgian waffles with a side portion of nutella crème crepes with a dollop of fresh cream. A cut of pan seared pomfret with a sliver of herbs and garlic, to a square of exotic mocha crumble, with all its crunchy apple goodness, or a plate of mildly spiced chicken seekh kebabs, caked with a layer of a traditional kathi bread. Good food, unlike a good friend is not hard to come by. You just need to know the right place; and the right plate. In the end, to binge or to cringe, that is the question. You can never have too many of both now, can you? Hunger knows no language, only its feeder; whether it be hunger for food, or a primal hunger for power, for knowledge or sometimes, even for love.

 This is where I come in. I connect our stories, like a game of connect the dots; Chef to the common folk, maker to eater; Opening the whole world to yours, and you to the whole world. What is it that this is? This is Food for thought. But still, Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing. So I think to myself, what do I do the next time the hallucination hen comes up in my dream?

 I eat it. Probably with a chocolate milkshake, and a side order of fries.

The AOA/ Hogwarts Story.

The year was 2004, when social networking was unheard of, and email was in, and I was a little too old to be hopefully waiting outside my house, waiting for my Hogwarts acceptance letter. A good five years older; that too. in the middle of the night. Every day. like a recurring nightmare, or a beautiful dream. The letter never came, and only phone bills did. As I grew older, so did my obsession with all things Harry Potter. I saw less of this literal word, and more of the literary one. Probably why I came up with a list, of why AOA is exactly like Hogwarts, and still not the same.
1.Because AOA does actually have 7 floors, one corresponding to each floor at Hogwarts.

 2.Because even though we didn’t have an escaped murderer running about school in third year, our work was out to murder us, in our beds, and on our sheets. We don’t need no divination to see our Grims, yo. 

3.Because we can feel the dementors hovering about during third year, all of us.

 4.We don’t have just one Durmstrang, we have many. Full of knuckleheads and losers.

 5.Because they are unplottable, we are unreachable.

 6.We have a Yule Ball every year, it’s a different matter that it’s a tiny affair, and doesn’t involve ice sculptures, but still.

 7.Because both libraries have stern librarians.

 8.Because we have an out-of-bounds third floor corridor too. Not because of a three headed dog, but because of Virus.

 9.The food there is made underground, ours should be buried underground. :|

 10.Because six years in, I still don’t know all the secrets the college has to offer, with its secret passage way on the first floor, and the recently opened room right next to the lift.

 11.Maybe a set of brass scales are not the same as a set of triangular scales, but we get our own materials and equipment list in first year too!

 12.Our first years might not be sorted, but they are assorted. ;) Their Argus Filch is always in the background. Ours IS the background.

 13.Likewise, they can’t dissaparate outside of Hogwarts grounds. We don’t dare disperse.

 14.Be it History of Architecture, or History of Magic, The students just don’t listen.

 15.Because we all know a Cho Chang.

 16. Because we ALL had a Gilderoy Lockhart in second year. *wink wink*

 17.There’s no house Cup, there’s just a thousand tea cups.

 18. We didn’t have a Chamber of Secrets back in second year, we just drafted chamber pots, and urinals. 1
9. They might be protected by muggle-repelling charms, and complex defensive magic, we have the Siddhivinayak security.

 20.Because we all know a Hermione Granger, hysterical and hyperactive. Mine’s one of my best friends too.

 21. Because I had a minor fall out with my Ron Weasley in 4th year too. :O

 22. Because we never really had Dumbledore.

 23. Because most of us do take the train to station, and end up crossing the great lake, a.k.a Dadar Station during the rains!

 24. They fight Voldemort, we do NASA.

 25. They have a special Prefect’s bathroom; we have a special Staff bathroom, WITH a painting on the wall. :O

 26. Because I am sure somewhere, some LIK team actually has a detailed drafted map of the entire school with its many secrets, a la Marauder’s map.

 27. They have Owl post, we have AOAmail.

 28. The staffroom actually has a boggart in the cupboard.

 29. Because progress for the sake of progress, is an act of regress.

 30. They have Hogwarts: A history, we have our glossy green book. :P

 31. Because they have Transfiguration, we have TOS. Subjects dreaded by one, and many. Both subjects taught by women you don’t mess with, women who haven’t let their hair down. ;)

 32. Fourth year was the year we won our Triwizard Tournament, only here, there weren’t 3 participating schools, there were 80. And yeah, no one died while competing, at least not physically. ;)

 33. They have Hogsmeade, we have Home Deli, a tradition you enter after reaching the senior years.

 34. Whomping Willow. Banyan tree. Potato. Potaeto.

 35. Because, fifth year, we saw a different Dolores Umbridge, a diminutive woman, who would smile sweetly, as she plunged her sweet claws into our backs, riiight? Hem Hem.

 36. Because technically, The Slug Club started in my sixth year in school. * Winks at all the slug club members!*

 37. Because I just might not be present for my seventh year in too.

 I think that’s it. I’ve got potions to go brew, and spells to practice. Sigh; and a real world to get back to. P.S: For all you non Harry potter fans, all I can say is: Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus.

First Tango, Then Paris!

Paris. The city of dreams, and of love, and of dreaming of love. an agglomeration of artists, architecture and arrondissements. The French maybe out to get us, I believe, with their baguettes, bistros, boardwalks and bisous bisous. The well known Bordeaux brigade. where every road is a runway, and every glass is a Chardonnay. Who cares if they didn't invent the French Toast, or the French fry. because in the end, Slap me, I would rather be French. :O

lone lampost, in a lone city square.I wasn't alone though.

light, wall and sky.

In Paris, do what the Parisians do.

ah. macarons.

The Moulin Rouge, and the famous windmill.

everything looks better in Black and white; The Sacre Couer.

living the poster life.

I read signs. this tells me that you need to exercise to stay in a good shape till you are 30.

catacombs, call out to me. I hesitate, and walk in. they are a farce, and I am a fake.

The Louvre. it was crowded, but I tried and I tried till I got a picture without any people in it. twenty wasteful minutes, and an irate cousin later, this was it.

some people hang their clothes out to dry. and some people do this.

books, glorious books. In France, read like the French. but alas, In french.

Gargoyles everywhere, all dead, all stone.

serenity, at its fullest and best.

The Eiffel tower. Need I say anything more?

Breaks the conventional point of the stereotype, this one.

The Pompidou centre, the service side.

Shoe inside a cage. Probably one of Cinderella's evil stepmother's ideas. :O

A part of a flea market in the Bastille area.

some bread, and some is sometimes all what you need. and then some ice cream helps too. when things look good enough to eat, they usually are.

and then, the end of the glorious food, and a glorious trip. Porquoi? Precisely.

The Ones In The Closet.

A boxful of toys, a closet full of memories.

Santa's bag, my shoe box.

*Insert-Movie-title-with-reference-to-Rome-here*

When in Rome, do what the Romans do. Eat pizza, drink Peroni, binge on ice-cream and ogle lecherously at all the beautiful people.

either all the buildings really were yellow here, or I have jaundice.

pokerface, all masked up.

if you dont fall in love with the colours of these pictures, you are heartless. or colorblind. or both.

One of the many vestibules at St. Peter's Basilica.

Screw Fatty food ban. life is to binge.

man fondles horse, Eqqus style. bird looks away sheepishly.

Windows, seven.

black, and white, and smelly cat.

cycle. wall. photographic orgasm.

P-I-Z-Z-A!! goooo Pizzaaaaaa! * frantically throws fake pom poms away and rushes into the restaurant*

I would have gone inside to photocopy. but the only things i had on me were my Euros. and THAT would have been illegal.

Balcony favoritism. looks like all the other windows loved their kids less.

yellow yellow, on the wall, who has the colourful underwear that stands so tall? There, The roman empire ends.

Prague Diaries: road to revival.

Prague. a city- in-a- snow-globe by day. mythical and mystical. every reveller's dream come true by night. maniacal and magical. this one's for the Dark Knight City.

The blue fades into the back, behind the web of hips, dormers, and pitched roofs.

outside the Helveticka Metro Station, they turn a standalone wall into a piece of art.

they love their Rubik's cube, these people.

The astronomical clock at the town square. the Harry Potter fanatic in me nearly peed in his pants. though I didnt.

ah. toys. sometimes I am 2, sometimes I am 22.

If they had taught us something about elevational treatments, I wouldn't have used the standard stone facing that I always use.

The Jewish Quarter.( a.k.a The synagogue that was way too expensive to get into)

Black, White and a bundle of history.

it peeped at us from behind the curtain, and called out to us. It's no surprise that we spent most of the night at the Tavern below.

it peeped at us from behind the curtain, and called out to us. It's no surprise that we spent most of the night at the Tavern below.

The Hradsk castle, Hogwarts like.

the remnants of a lost weekend, and a terribly cool youth hostel. Sir Toby's,I salute thee and the hot receptionist. Sigh. I wish I could go travelling again.