Sacred Chicken

For a Maharashtrian Hindu Brahmin boy, paneer and chicken never really meant much until he left home for better/bigger things. But then the engg college hostel canteen happened and the search for paneer and chicken in the canteen food carried the same exhilaration as those famed gold diggers of the gold rush days. Over the years paneer could not hold its charm but the chicken was right up there all alone at the pinnacle of the food pantheon.

Chicken delicacies were almost sacred because they were dished out by experts; be it the chefs at Blue Nile, Tirangaa or even the Konkani restaurant in Nashik. It was almost like a ritual performed by priests of the highest order. I could almost never imagine that such chicken delicacies can ever be conjured up inside the four walls of a domestic kitchen.

All this now has changed. It is almost like a barrier come down. It is as if the doors of the temples have been flung open to the untouchables. Where ever I see who ever I ask is busy cooking chicken. No not ordering chicken from a non veg restaurant but cooking it all by themselves!! It is not that I am against the entrepreneurial zeal of these folks who think that they can achieve divinity, but flirting with divinity every other weekend is outright blasphemous.

I have made up my mind that I will pay for your culinary 'foolishness'. No I am not saying I will taste each of your chicken experiments as now I am even fed up with doing that. Your culinary sins will be washed off by the sacrifice which now I have decided to make. I will be pretty much off chicken and for that matter any non veg for the next month. I guess in that time you will all have the good sense not to toy with the chicken but to leave it to the experts alone.

"Forgive them oh Chicken for they no not how to cook"!!!Kukdukoooooo

P.S: Over the years I have had the honour of bumping into common people and not chefs who dish out wonderful chicken dishes. I have nothing but respect for these wizards!! Its the wannabes I despise!!!

2K11...2K12

So its the end of another year and the beginning of another year. The FB Wall is inundated with new year wishes and so is the Twitter timeline. The best and the worst list of the year gone by have been published and re-published. The thinkers of our times have put their heads together and given us a lot of food for thought about the year that was and the year that should be or will be. The sum total of this introductory paragraph of my blog is that even I will not be left behind...even I got a couple of cents to spare.

2K11 for me as far as India goes was the year of the 'World Cup victory', 'Anna', 'Rising fuel prices', 'Silent Manmohan', 'Pawar Slap', 'Anna', 'Silent Manmohan', 'weakening rupee' or if you would appreciate my position 'strengthening dollar' and finally the mockery of democracy at the very pantheon of Indian democracy.

At the personal level, 2K11 was marked with intellectual bankruptcy on Blogger. I could manage only a couple of posts all year. I did really make up for it by vociferously micro-blogging on Twitter but then 140 characters is really child's play, so I won't go much into it anyways!!!

2K11 got me geographically relocated and addicted to Wi-Fi ,3G and 4G and the numerous vices which come with it. The Amazon Kindle proved to the best buy of the year for me with my Motorola Atrix 4G coming a close second. The dump of free Kindle ebooks (989 in number) which I got from my colleague should be termed as the best surprise of 2K11. With so many books at my disposal I am sure I have finally got a lifetime of something with me. The Foundation series remains the best 7'o-logy of the year!!!

I was introduced to the Art of Cooking if not Living and in the last 6 months I have pretty much mastered the art of Baigan Bharta and a few Aalo delicacies. Poha and bread upma are like a walk in the park!!!

Over the course of this year I gained a couple of inches around my waistline not to mention the few extra pounds which I recently added. But then I have got a New Year resolution to take care especially of that :P

After India's World Cup win the only thing which I am waiting to see/follow is Sachin's 100th 100 after that I don't think cricket will remain the same for me. Anyways in Yankee land I have pretty much started following American Football with New England Patriots as my favorite team. Baseball still bores me and NBA has to many games to keep track off (even after the lock down :( ). Arsenal still continues to get my respect and love and the way we ended the year on 4th has only instilled more confidence in me about the current team and not to mention the ever present Professor.

That was 2K11. 2K12 holds a lot of promises (as most of them already said in their FB statuses and tweets). Let me not enumerate them for then they might just lose their charm.

For now all I can say is that I will be blogging regularly in 2K12 and yes HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!. But I am sure that you have heard the latter quite a lot until now :)

P.S : Under the one book per week plan, I am still at Hunger Games - I

When a pessimistically optimist (self-proclaimed) patriot writes…

Dear Anna,

The very fact that everybody in the country is talking about you, made me shun my Saturday morning lethargy and make this endeavor of talking to you. I had dialed that support number from my mobile (the one which we were told to give a missed call on to show solidarity with you, but the network congestion prevented me. Hence this letter)

No, we have not met before and I am sure we never will. Yet the stir which you have created in the capital and the congestion the tweets bearing your reference have caused on Twitter have not passed my notice.

I know most about you and the cause which you are fighting for thanks to the many e-mail forwards I received from my co-workers. I also googled up Ralegan Siddhi and least to say I am impressed by the phenomenon you have made out of it. Such is the impact Ralegan Siddhi has had on me that I have already planned my trip there for the month of May. Getting the leaves approved by my manager is a mere formality which remains now.

Sir, I call myself a patriot. I don’t really get a chance to salute the tricolor on Independence Day or even Republic Day, but I did celebrate India’s World Cup victory in an inebriated state at my city square, honking my car horns in unison with many other like minded souls and demanding that now was the time that Sachin Tendulkar be conferred the Bharat Ratna. The next day when I narrated this at my office, the “ooohhh’s and the aaahhh’s” I got was proof enough to brand me a patriot. Well there was this one instance when I was a bit lazy in getting up for the National Anthem (but I did get up in the end) at my city multiplex, but I think we can discount that. I am a patriot, ai’t I?

Till last week I was thinking of joining up an NGO on a part time basis, to bring about everything from “social upliftment” to “education to all”, but the project deadline at work really made me forget the last date to apply. Now I will have to wait for six months until the applications are out again. Don’t you think that working with an NGO for a year will give my resume that push which I need to get into a reputed international MBA program? Most of my friends have already done it and now are more than well off.

Now that I have shared so much about myself with you, let me also tell you that sometimes when I am high on my rum and alone I sometimes ruminate if I have become a pessimist. You think Anna, that I am a pessimist?

I aspire to go the United States of America soon. Of course the dollars hold there own charm for me, but I have promised my parents that I will be back in 2 years and that I will be marrying an Indian girl of their choice. With so much to look forward too, I feel that I am an optimist. I still got that another drink inside me. Am I right Anna?

Do I detect a scorn on your face after reading that paragraph? Well let me add that in the USA I will be actively participating in all Indian Cultural activities. I will share those pics too with all my friends on FB as a proof of my international social consciousness.

It’s almost 10:30AM now. I have to watch the news channel which is going to be the first to telecast “HAPPY ANNA TO BREAK FAST”. Alongside me is the laptop where I have already typed out my tweet. The moment you break the fast I will be submitting it. I have very deftly copied the same for my FB wall as well. You think that I will be the first to tweet, “I was the first to see him break his fast”.

Wish you success in (y)our campaign against corruption.

By the way there was this one instance not long ago when I got off from breaking the read light for as low as Rs50, but guess that narration will have to wait.

We need crusaders like you Anna.

Thanks

A pessimistically optimist (self-proclaimed) patriot

P.S: I forgot to assure you that my support is definitely with you if you stand to contest the elections. Choose my constituency, we need a true leader. I noticed a certain Mr Kalmadi too at your rally. He seems to have finally had a change of heart. Good for the nation I think.

Postmanly...

Ashutosh Rana filled our hearts with the fear of the postman. But much before this fear was ingrained in our psyche that fellow wearing a khaki uniform pedaling his way through the numerous alleyways of our town had very unexpectedly been the carrier of one incident which I so wanted to hide from my dad. Such was the magnitude of his back-stabbing that from that day onwards I was forced to denounce this act in a single word which was to be an adjective. That adjective was "postmanly (adj) : of devious intent".

I have never been of the athletic bent. If the proverb says "think twice before you leap", I would rather prefer to think thrice and not leap at all. Having said that it would not be much difficult for people to conjure up a image of me all of 10 years old, pedaling my Hero Ranger up an incline and really baffled as to why there should be an incline on the road when the earth was round. I consoled myself by saying that maybe there would be an equal decline at the diametrically opposite end of this due to which the earth could still retain its roundness against such odds.

While I was battling with my wits to keep the earth round, there from the corner of my eye I caught a blur of something coming my way. I was late to react which by now I was used to and the next thing I knew was that the earth was no longer round, infact it seemed to have a shapelessness which later I would equate to an amoeba in class 9. Distant voices came to me and as the oriented myself to the din, I realized that the blur which I had seen only a second ago was an old Atlas Goldline Super which now had mangled in with my Hero Ranger. I was on the ground, my white uniform a mess. I looked around for the rider of the Atlas Goldline Super, but he was nowhere to be seen. I craned my neck upwards and there he was standing with an evil smile on his face, his uniform not a bit crumpled for I guessed he had shown the right amount of agility at the right time to land on his feet away from the collision which was very much unlike me. A crowd was beginning to form around the scene as I got up and in the most innocent way conveyed my utmost apologies to the postman who was having a devious laugh on his face.

He did not have much time to waste and he departed soon after firing me with some of his choicest abuse which at that age I was not in a position to comprehend. Any further damage was nullified as the collision had caused a traffic snarl and the people behind were anxious to go off than to indulge in a 10 yr old mix up!!! As I continued my homeward journey, the soreness of the entire incident started to grow on me. There were a few bruises here and there and a dirty uniform to foot.

The remainder of the journey home was slow. I no longer bothered about the cursed roundness of the earth, infact I quickly built a narrative which would explain the day's event without giving anything away. Having played and replayed the narrative in my mind a hundred times, tying up loose ends, I still felt there was one thing which I had not really factored and that thing opened the door which I rang the doorbell. That thing was my sister.

I have always found a close relation between the word 'sister' and 'sinister' and my experience had made me realize that the elder they are the more sinister they become. True to her inquistive nature the next 10 mins where the most demanding where my story was questioned, re-questioned, re-re-questioned and finally the matter was put to rest when Mom announced that this will be discussed at the dinner table.

At the dinner table, sister's interference was overruled and my story stood the test of parental scrutiny!!!! The story I cooked up was so overwhelmingly perplexing that I am sure that both my Mom and Dad let go of it by the time we were through with our first chapatis!!!! So I thought that it was the end of it. The collision was to remain a mystery to my sister all her life and I would grow old with the contentment that it was only me (apart for the postman and a few passer-bys) who would know what really transpired that afternoon.

Each passing day the spot which witnessed the collision grew in iconic status in my mind until I decided that one day I will come back here and build a little something which will commemorate the day I had won at the dinner table!!!! But it was not to be...

On the 8th day after the memorable victory at the dinner table, I was pillion on our scooter carrying a few groceries with Dad waiting to cross the road and there out of nowhere he appeared. I did not recognize him at first, but he sure did and shot me a wide grin. I froze. He negotiated his Atlas Goldline Super through the motley of vehicles and aligned himself parallel to our scooter. His gaze was still on me. He turned towards my dad, ignoring my pleading eyes and said, "काय Sir , कशे आहात? " (Hello Sir, How are you doing?). Without waiting for my Dad to reply he fired his salvo, "पोरगा पडला होता तुमचा त्यादिवशी सायकल वरून, ८ दिवस झाले आता!!!",(your son fell off his bicycle that day. Been 8 days now) and he guffawed like I have never heard anybody guffaw before. Almost on cue to that guffaw the traffic made way and we crossed the road. Dad did not have time to reply to him, but then what would he have said. The postman never really wanted a reply. His only intention was to convey and have the last guffaw!!!!! He had succeeded!!!!

I had lost my appetite for dinner. Dad had narrated the scene back home and my 'sinister'..oops sister had a look of triumph in her eyes!!!!

I don't remember what everybody talked about at the dinner table but I do remember that I cursed the 'postmanly' attitude of that postman!!!!



(P.S: this is the 100th post on my blog!!! I have taken time to get that 100th post but you really can't force it out of it each time can you?? :)