Missing...

I am not a cooking person. For as long as I can remember, I have always avoided going into the kitchen. All I knew was to sit and wait at the dinner table when I was hungry while Maa would toil away at the kitchen. That too, there were times when I was a regular go-to-sleep-when-the- clock-strikes-9, and only a whole lot of scolding would ever get me out of bed after I had drifted off. So it is not surprising, I was not equipped to survive on my own in Hyderabad.
Vishnupriya turned out quite my opposite. She had helped her mother out a lot in the kitchen and knew the nuances of when the masala should be added, how much the ladies finger should be fried, what is the measure of rice is to water, how many whistles before the cooker should be switched off. Our Hyderabad lunch and dinners were small thoroughfares (I hope that is the correct word.) We would have steaming rice, a curry dish like sambaar or dhal and a vegetable side-dish which would inevitably be one of beans,ladies fingers, potato fries , paneer, egg scrambled, and curd to end it off. I would ofcourse always add sugar to my curd which gave Vishnu no end of amusement I guess. :)

So , its not that I ever have enjoyed cooking. But somehow it has always been the perfect thing for me to unwind always. And at the end, sitting down to steaming bowls of food in front of me, cooked by me ....seemed the perfect way to end the working day. Sitting down meant literally sitting down on a chatai on the floor as we did not have chairs or tables in our Hyderabad home. I think I have mentioned this before, but we had a long hall , at one end was an open verandah overlooking Hitech city and the sunset and on the other the entrance door overlooked the hills and Fine Arts Gallery and the sunrise. Once you kept both the verandah and the door open, you would imagine there was a mini-gale blowing through our house.

Well why the sudden reminiscing.....when I cook now (and I do not cook very often) and I am alone like on a sultry afternoon like today, I end up revisiting so many memories and experiences and reliving them. And it never ceases to make me wonder that cooking still gives me the sense of achievement it did back in Hyd. :) As if I have mastered something and that is irrespective of whether salt became more or the sabji was too watery or that I usually cook everything the same way.

I finished Memoirs of a Geisha today. I had made up my mind to do it. An interesting read but then again there were many things I did not agree with. For quite some time, (actually till I reached the end of the book), I was under the impression it was a true story and a book read, thinking the incidents have really happened is very different from a book read knowing its a story.
But all in all, I know that every book, (like every experience) leaves a part of it with you after you are done with it. It does not matter how small that part is. You have assimilated, imagined, experienced ...and have grown since you first picked up the book. (Very very philosophical!) Well my whole point is, for some moments after I have replaced the book and walked out of its life....... the effect still lingers for sometime and it feels like being in a trance. There are so many what ifs ....what if this had not happened or some other turn had been taken , how would it have been different. There have been not many books that have made me laugh out loud or cry out loud for that matter. Sarat Chandra's stories have always succesfully brought me to tears whether at the happy ending or the sad. I remember tears rolling down on to the pillow when I read Parineeta in bengali for the first time for the sheer innocence of the story. The other book which I remember kept me reeling for long after was Gone with the Wind. I have never felt totally changed and mature after reading a book as I did after reading this one. It seemed like being a totally different person.
Ofcourse books are not always about crying. P.G.Wodehouse brought me laughter through reading. Who would have thought a pig called Empress, Lord Emsworth and his castle called Blandings would be the source of so much entertainment. Equally entertaining, and I still smile when I think of the book.......was Three men in a boat. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. It had me in splits.

With books, and cooking...whats next!! :) Well for some days now, I have been wanting to go to a temple. And somehow, the Kali temple in Kolkata where I have had some of the most amazing coincidences if you will, the REC temple which gave company in all my solitude ............ somehow I have been missing it a lot , maybe I was just looking for somewhere to draw strength from or the reassurance that everything will be all right. (Like the fairytale endings of books.) The other thing I have been missing are my salwar suits. I have grown so bored of wearing jeans and tshirts all day , all week all month. I cannot remember ever saying I was bored of my salwar suits. The chiffon dupattas , and the colors and fabrics would be a sight for sore eyes if I could just get back to them once more. But for all that .................I guess a trip home is long pending and till then I just have to keep on missing these and much more.