Bachelor Cooking

When you're a young Indian male living alone like I do, what would you do for food? Well, let's rub out that "eating out" option because, err.. you live in the corner of Delhi (a place where you’d rather be born with wheels instead of legs) and don't have a motorbike.

Well? what WOULD you do for food?

Let's take a few considerations at first. We all come tired and exhausted from work, and cooking is the last thing we want to do. All we want is do something for our stomach before switching to horizontal mode.

Of course, maggie is the first option. I don't want to spend time on it, as there are many other blogs and websites dealing with the same topic. I of course have an approx of 25 maggie recipies that I would give only on request, some involving rare peppers from the mountains of Nagaland.

Maggie cannot be consumed everyday, simply because you'll start looking like a junkie sooner than later.

The food should be designed to be extremely easy to cook (cooking time less than 15min (30 min if you haven't cut an onion in your life before) least amount of dishes to wash, and is nutritious all the same. It won't taste horrible, as long as you put in enough salt in it, but you'd rather not compare it with your mom's beef biriyani.

The next post in this section would deal with effective veggie chopping styles and the basic things you'd need for this kind of cooking.

A comedy of errors Part 2 - A bar-room Brawl

Still breathless from the events that took place in the last four hours, I type here, one of the most extraordinary evenings I have ever had! Just yesterday, the SYD and ze german were commenting on the crazy, (sometimes spooky) experiences I’ve been through. The following event is so long that I’ve decided to put it in two consecutive posts. Don’t read this post before reading the previous post.

Even now, as I type, my hands tremble with excitement and my heart jumps at every new sound I hear. My senses are on full tilt, and my heart is thanking God for his mercies as I type.

The shop-owner called me half an hour later, telling me that the rickshaw guy had reached his place, and is going back to the village to find me. Half an hour later, the rickshaw guy calls me and after a few phone calls and some more running around, he’s at the gate of my house. He tells me it’s all my fault that we lost him. I don’t leave him alone. I fight with him and tell him that if he had only taken his cell-phone, all this would not have happened. We carry the bed through the stairs, and keep it in my house. I ask if he wants to eat, and he does. However, he pours himself a (rather large) peg and I decide to treat him to dinner. (The guy was literally sweating!)

We stop at our South Indian restaurant, where I decide to treat him to a Dosa. He has one plate dosa and one plate idli. He was getting a little tipsy (and I wondered how he could get so high so soon) I ask him, and he told me he knew I didn’t like him drinking, so he took two on the sly! (What did I get myself into here! I don’t want a typical wife-basher tonight!) So, I try and fill up his stomach with my dosa also and some more food. Suddenly, in the table behind us, there is this huge guy who’s evidently drunk and starts shouting at the waiter. I look back to see the tamasha. After sometime, things settle down and we settle to our food. My friend is busy eating, and I’m watching him eat. All of a sudden, there’s this huge slap on my back, almost making me choke my food. It is our famous drunk coming a calling. I give him the ‘what’s the matter?’ look. He asks me why I looked back. I muttered a sorry under my breath, glaring at my own half-drunk friend, willing him not to get up and start something. He glares back and forth, and is about to give my friend a slap in the face, when I put my hand up willing him to stop. Surprisingly, he doesn’t hit my friend and asks me to put my hand down. I give him the ‘I’ll-put-my-hand-down-if-you-promise-to-go-back-to-your-seat’ look for a two seconds, and I put my hand down. He goes back to his seat, and there’s no noise from him against the waiter or anybody in the room afterwards. (He of course didn’t stop swearing at people who didn’t pick up the phone when he called them! Later, he and his friend walk out of the hotel (paying the waiter, thankfully). He and his friend were carrying a party flag. That’s when I realized I could have gotten creamed before I reached home! Praise God!

My own drunk friend (after scolding the waiter for not doing anything) does get full finally and I pay Rs 60 for our meals. (Quite a bargain, actually) I pay him his due (Rs 250) while he tells me he wants 300! (Rs300! After all this?! What an ungrateful wretch!) But I go back to the ATM and give him his money with a smile. He then asks me if I felt bad if he asked for Rs 50 more. I smiled even more and told him I gave it willingly. (That was the most fake smile I’ve ever faked) but I told him I was very upset that he drank so much in my presence, and it would do him a lot of good if he stopped. He gave a half-drunk smile and told me he’d call. I said ok. (What am I getting myself into?!) and literally took to my heels and ran home as quickly as possible. I’ve never felt so much (I wouldn’t call it fear, but a heightening of all the senses, and your hair your neck stiffen.)

Now I’m here, having the greatest emotional workout of my life!

Though I know all my loved ones who read this will feel scared for me, but I want to tell you, don’t . If God wanted me to be beaten up, I would have been. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have let me buy that bed in the first place! For some strange reason, I feel that Rs2100 I spent the evening was put to good use. (Or may be it’s just denial???)

A comedy of errors Part 1 - Impulsiveness

I’ve never been so impulsive as I have been today. On my way home from work, I decide I need a clothes-stand to dry my clothes, as they refuse to dry inside the room. So I wash some of my clothes and hang them out to dry (inside the room) and move out around 6.30 (after putting my rice to boil) towards Sector 3, Dwarka to buy a clothesline for myself. I decided earlier that I wouldn’t spend more than Rs 500 for a clothes-stand. I go from shop to shop, deciding suddenly that I also needed a bed. Suddenly, I go into this ‘Second hand shop’, where I see beds. The shop-owner tells me that a certain diwan (which looks very nice, btw) costed Rs 3200. I was so blown away by the price that I told him that I just could not afford it. He asked me what my budget was. I told him from Rs 1000 to 1500. (As I had inquired in other shops, a brand new bed without the storage compartment underneath cost Rs 1200). He finally sold the second hand one for Rs 1750! I bought a bed for Rs 1750 without thinking or praying about it. (Of course, I had Rs 2000 still saved after my Winter shopping, and I decided to put those funds to good use!)

As I was reeling from the shock of buying the second most expensive item I have ever owned (next to my laptop) without thinking too much about it, I was bargaining with the cycle-rickshaw guy to take it to my place. We settled for Rs 250 (which was perfect, because it’s an exact Rs 2000)

I sat at the back of a bicycle, while a cycle-rickshaw guy pulled his rickshaw behind us. Before we knew it, we had lost the cycle-rickshaw, who had taken another route! Grr… We pedal back to the shop and ask the shop-keeper who tells us that they left, and scolds my friend (I later find out that his name is Ram* (*well it isn’t, name changed) ) and sends us back again. We go back and forth back and forth, left and right, until he gets tired pedaling. Then I start pedaling taking him doubles, and again looking for him back and forth, back and forth until we call up the shop, who says he hadn’t come back. We again do the above mentioned procedure before finally we call the office and asks for this rickshaw-walla’s number. The rickshaw walla doesn’t pick up his phone.

All this time, I’m wondering if this is a trick played by everybody on me. The shop-owner constantly telling me not to worry, the rickshaw-walla disappearing, while Ram constantly gets angry with the rickshaw-walla. He narrated some story about the rickshaw-walla getting some salary or something with a lot of tears in his eyes. If only I could understood what he said!

He had worked in Bombay, then came to Delhi in hope of a good job but couldn’t make it, and is now hopping from on job to the next. Finally, he gets frustrated, calls up the shop-keeper and goes back to him, leaving me alone with just a bill. I go back home, still wondering if I was being duped or not. I later feel that may be God wanted me to be a witness to this boy Ram, because I was extra-nice to him. Well, with these thoughts in my mind, I walk back to my room all tired and weary, ready for a simple meal and sleep. I come back and see my clothes hanging (still wet) and remember how I went out to by something I needed more than what I actually did! I try to take my mind off these disturbing thoughts with a movie. The movie is funny, and I am thoroughly entertained.

 

To be contd…

Advance Christmas fever

Standing in the background, watching all my friends at JNUCF work their lids off, grumble about all those who don't, and get back to work all over again, I get nostalgic. This time, last year, I was growing bald trying to pull out my hair juggling choir practice, term-papers, brochure writing and ‘silly-game invention’ at the same time. It is that time of the year we all wait for…

 

Advance Christmas! One of the biggest festivals JNUCF can organize, (given our limited time and our present organization skills). Working for this brings out the best and the worst in us, draining us completely by the time the show's over.

Murphy (the "the bread always falls the butter-side down" guy) said (at least I think he did) that passion over work will definitely lead to over-working, leading to physical and mental illness.

 

Thankfully, Murphy's laws don't work in JNUCF, the reason being, (of what I've noticed) everybody's readiness to laugh. The most stale jokes, the most juvenile pranks and the silliest sarcasm always gets a good guffaw. That's why when you stare up at the ceiling at night, (coughing away because you've been out in the cold too late) running through all the events of that tiresome day filled with running from one place to another, there's not a trace of bitterness felt.

 

Murphy's laws don't work because when you're lying down after all this with fever, you know that your friends are covering up for you (as much as they can), and the patchy presentation we put up in the end becomes so memorable only because of all the love that's been poured out.

 

Murphy's laws don't work because in the end, you're not working hard for yourself, but for somebody else. We definitely see symptoms bordering onto physical and (mostly) mental illness, but the reason is not because you’re hurting, but because you’re just tired after a long day of sometimes thankless work.  

 

This is a tribute to all my friends who must be chopping wood for the Christmas Informals night right now. As an ‘alumini’, listening to you guys cribbing about work, not quitting my job to take the fastest auto-rickshaw to campus and cut wood along with you requires great self-control. It’s not because my present job is more hectic than yours but because the best part of Advance Christmas is not the event in itself, but all that time preparing, setting up before, and the dismantling, the photo-sessions and the photo-shop experiments afterwards! God bless you all!!

Of manners...

While I was at college, and especially at university, manners were something everybody looked down upon. When a friend did you a really huge favor, thanking him only meant you’re not his friend yet. When in college, it is a friend’s bounden duty to do whatever you want him/her to do. (Of course, it works both ways, you also will have to go out of your way to help them) Thanking a friend, or making sure you split the bill when you have tea is an insult to friendship. And that’s only when we’re students.
But when you start working, you have to pay special attention to what you take and give. “It’s only natural” to make sure you pay-back in some way or the other the treat that particular friend took you out on. I hardly ever used to do that in university and now I begin to wonder how many people I have offended that way. I guess this ‘mannerlessness’ among friends is one of the things I like about the North Indians, who take favors done by friends for granted.

I find it distracting, but everybody else does it! Talk about a cultural shift! Well, this is what moving on means… You do not complain about how shallow friendships have become, but learn to accept the fact that no one trusts nobody else in this big bad world, and every small thing that involves money should be treated as business, no matter how they act about it.

This post, I feel is one of the most haphazard ones I have ever written, but this is just what my mind feels like at this moment of confusion.

I, Stammer

After an extremely long orientation period, I finally begin to work on my job, and it isn't as easy as I thought it was. There was a time I used to pride myself for the choice words and ingenious metaphors I used whenever I spoke.

Part of my job is to get contacts. Networking. This requires me to pick up the phone and call up influential people and tell them about myself and ask them if they are interested.

Today, I made my first call.

Watching Will Smith talking on the phone to various customers in "Pursuit of Happyness" makes tele-comm look easy. But today, after 15 minutes of preparation, All I was able to do was stammer and slip through a sorry explanation of Shalom and what I do.
Thankfully, the person on the other end was patient and listened (I felt an incredulous smile) and asked direct simple questions that would make me feel better.
After I finished with the call, my heart-rate at twice the speed, I thought to myself. I'd get better...

I'd better...

721

he mini-van I used to take to work burst a tire on the way, delaying me five minutes. The only option was to get into another bus, to make it at reasonable time. The only bus available was the 721. Reputed for the most irate conductors and the densest crowds.The bus was packed beyond compare. The Mumbai locals at rush hour are DEFINITELY more comfortable than the 721 (emphasizing my opinion in the previous post.) It was this young short, loud-mouthed bus-conductor who tried to push people into the smallest crevices that made all the difference. I guess the more people you can squeeze into the bus, the more you're are respected as a bus-conductor in these parts.I climbed in from the rear entrance amid the usual clamour. Once in, I decided to stay near the rear-door because my stop wasn't too far. The conductor issued the ticket. He was standing on his 'conductor seat'! (guess, he was a little short) and yelling at everybody to move into the already crowded bus. He began pushing and shouting at me in unrecognizable Hindi - I figured he was asking me to get into the mass of flesh in front. I just stood there, and quitely told him that I would be getting down at a few stops. He again said something in loud Hindi that I couldn't understand. He began pushing another person who refused to move. The conductor's unrecognizable hindi was buffetted with another tirade of unrecognizable Hindi - this time on the part of the indignant passenger. The passenger later berated the conductor about the pushing. The conductor quickly justified himself.
"I am the conductor. I have every right to push you. If I don't push you, who else in the bus will?"
I need to check the "right to push" part with the Judicial system. Anyone have the time to file an RTI to check if the conductor does have a right to push?
After that conversation, the conductor cooled down and began to collect tickets normally. Suddenly he looks at me and says.
"Remember, I won't let you get down this entrance. You'd better start making your way to the front, or you'll never get down at your stop"
(And I thought ragging got over after college!)
I tried politely making him understand. But he didn't seem to be in the mood for explanations. I'm not the sort that makes a lot of noise and puts up a fight, so, I put my tail between my legs began my journey to the front of the bus.
With a barrage of excuse-me's and sorry's I pushed, jerked and shoved past indignant old people, understanding and co-operative young men and disgusted young women. There is no place to put your feet down. Even the hand-rail is full of people's hands that it is a rare opportunity to actually touch that rail! I was so surprised I reached the front just in time for my stop. The conductor in front gave me a glare and asked said."What are you doing here?"
I really felt like giving him a good dose of my sarcasm, (the question was sooo tempting) but he had quite big arms, and I was already late for work. I smiled and told him that I was there so I could get down. Disarmed, he stepped aside and let me down. I breathed fresh air and instantly knew it would make a hell of a post!If I ever meet that conductor again, I would definitely want to thank him for letting me tour his bus for free even in the peak season!