Restless Thoughts

Gehra Taalluk…

Filed under: Behind the screen..., craps ..., uuphh yeh life!!! — chapters @ 8:53 AM

Have you ever been to Kolkata, if yes, then have you ever ridden one of the rickshaws??? No, I am not asking about the hand pulled ones… but the normal ones where there is a pair of pedals attached to it… If yes, then have you ever felt the huge panic in your little tummy (you can interchange the adjectives before ‘panic’ and ‘tummy’ as per your choice ), when the rickshaw wala tries to overtake everything that is on the road right that moment… say another rickshaw, auto rickshaw, bus, truck etc etc??? Isn’t it the “Chal Dhanno aaj teri Basanti ki ijjat ki sawaal hai” kind of situation?

As I sat there, holding on to my dear life, my hand bag, my tiffin-and-umbrella bag and my new shorts and T-shirt packet, the rickshaw puller tried to immitate the Main-Hun-Na stunt and I was thinking… “Abey piche to dekh… rickshaw khali thode na hai? Mein bhi to hun na!!!“. I exactly breathe thrice during the whole journey of 7 minutes and 28 seconds… nahi sachhi… jhut nahi bol rahi hun… First when I got on the rickshaw, second when I was tired of popping out my eyes in horror and the third time when I got down form it.

And I thanked my guiding angels when I was assured that I was still very much in the living world.

Living world se yaad aayaa… I am not going to cook today. (living world se khane pine ka bahat hi gehra taallukk hai). Yes I made a rule for myself that I won’t cook on fridays. Now everyody working in the IT industry knows what a Friday means to us… Since last 1 and 1/2 months, by 6.30 AM I am in the kitchen preparing my breakfast, lunch and dinner. For breakfast I prepare roti and sabzi, for lunch ka dibba, I prepare roti and sabzi and for dinner I prepare roti and sabzi. Yes, I eat the same roti and sabzi thrice a day… now don’t ask… HOW &WHY… But aaj subhe, when my papa called up to check on what I was doing at exactly 6.34 AM, I was still in bed, in all my new white T-shirt and shorts, giving an advertisement for “safedi ki chamak”. Lately I have been fascinated about the color white. I dont know why I~) thinks that I look bad in white dresses… I just looked at the mirror… but I dont think white does not go on me; afterall black n white is a good combination, isn’t it??? But then who cares!!! Coming back to the discussion at hand, I declared to papa over the phone about my personal rule. So today is party time .

Party time se yaad aayaa, its already 8.42 AM and my kaam waali has still not arrived. (you see… party TIME and the 8.42 I mentioned… dono hi time hai… so un dono ka bhi gehra taalluk hai na…). Oh Lord!! What I am gonna do??? And guess what, today is transport strike in Kolkata. Won’t be getting any bus or auto rickshaw today… Will have to look for some green auto today… Yes, it was mentioned in our office mail that the green autos will be still running. But I doubt  if I will find any one not filled up. Oh God, that means I am going to loose my precious breathes again, on a rickshaw .

Ab Rikshaw se yaad aaya, I completed 3 glorious years (glorious to bas to aise hi bol rahi hun… andhera hi andhera hai saamne… reccession time  chal raha hai… uuiii maa…) in the company today. (Now what can be a gehra taalluk between rikshaw and my so called glorious 3 years in the company? Ummmm… I don’t know re… Aise hi batana tha, so I thought to continue being in the mood of the current post

Bas Yun Hi Kuch Likh Di hun…

Filed under: Behind the screen..., Stories..., craps ..., uuphh yeh life!!! — chapters @ 6:20 PM

She was happy, holding his hand and walking in that evening, on that road rarely taken by anyone. 

It was not easy for her to take the decision… the decision to come out the cocoon of her fear (which she misunderstood as her strength) and say yes to him. But once she came out of it, there was just miles and miles of love stretched in front of her.

A relationship, as she used to think, was as complicated as the electronics circuits in an Advanced Electronics Circuits book of her 7th semester, engineering course, with some extra capacitors and resistors casually connected here and there to confuse the student even more. Little did she know that, in a relationship, the love output is trillion times the input irrespective of all the resistors present in the circuit.

She smiled coyly; looked at him, who was walking beside her. He lighted his cigarette and sucked in a mouthful of smoke, played with it in his chest for about half a minute before letting it out. She watched as white smoke came out of his mouth, some out of his nostrils. She did not like the smell. It made her feel so weak in the stomach.

“Aur ek baar ‘I love you’ bolo na” [Please say 'I love you' once again], she told him casually, expecting a smile following a small “I love you” phrase.

But the next instant, he stopped walking, turned around and faced her, threw away his just lighted and so-many-puff-still-there cigarette, cupped her face with his tobacco smelling hands, looked deeply into her big shocked eyes, planted a tender kiss on her forehead and then said the 3 magical words, with the utmost feelings she ever saw in the eyes of any romantic hero of any romantic movie.

Her heart missed a beat… but she was happy about the missed beat.

The Red Rose…

Filed under: Stories..., craps ... — chapters @ 6:23 PM

She has to clean the study room today. She does not know how else she is going to pass her time all alone as her husband had left for a official trip to Delhi since last 3 days. Today, in the evening he will be coming back. These 3 days, she did all the grocery shopping for the month, cleaned the garden, trimmed the plants, cleaned and rearranged the kitchen utensils, and many such works.  She has got more than half of today and nothing else to do.

So, after she had her breakfast, she went to the study room and started unloading the books from the shelves. Once done, she started cleaning the shelves with a piece of cloth. Then she came to the pile of books. First she has to sort the books according to their categories, then wipe the dust off them  one by one and then put them on the shelves again.

She sat down among the books and collected all the business magzines first and made a stack. Then she made a different stack of all the novels. Now she was deciding whether she should make 2 different stacks for fictions and non-fictions for the novels collection when her eyes caught a glimpse of a old book under others. She pulled it out.

Love Story By Erich Segal, She read the cover page… opened the first page. There it was, written in bold letters, her name and a date which was 7 years earlier. Her book… her first roamntic novel; and the last. She remebered the day she read it and how she cried.

It indeed had a sad ending but what a marvellous story…

She sighed while turning over the pages slowly and occasionally reading phrases from here and there. Suddenly something dropped form the book. She looked down. It was a dried and flattened rose, almost black, but must would have been a beautiful and big red flower sometime.

She hold it… smelt it… Smells like paper… She looked back at the pages, inbetween which it was kept. There are faint black marks describing the existence of the flower for all these years. She tried to rub the stain away with her finger. It did not go away… dead and dry fungi… 

She looked at the rose again, remembered the fresh fragnance it had when he had given it to her… how red it was… how smooth its petals were and how happy she was. It was the first time that somebody had given her a flower. She wanted to steal the very moment of her life and seal it in her fist forever. Life was beautiful back then. The days that followed brought more and more flowers from him. She had almost cried with happiness the day he brought another of bunch the red roses, kneeled down in front her and asked if she would marry him.  Her friends were so jealous of her for having such a dreamy proposal.

She was on cloud nine. She accepted his flowers and his love. They were considered as the best couple in the college campus. She being a sweet, sensitive and beautiful girl and he, being the sporty, dashing handsome guy… they were perfect with and for each other.

A lump formed in her throat when she thought of the day he went away to United States to persue his Masters. How she cried and how he promised that he would come back soon and they would be together again… how he planted a kiss on her soft lips before leaving in the airport and how he almost ran back to her to give her a red rose… Little did she know that, that was the last one.

Her eyes eluded her… she touched her eyes… they were full of tear… she was sad.

Why? Because he never came back again?? Or because he found somebody else and settled there and did not think its necessary to let her know the reason for abandoning her?

Whatever the reason was, but she was heartbroken. And she never let her family know her depression. Whenever there was anybody with her, she held back her tears, put on her brave face and smiled. She even smiled the day she heard about her wedding being fixed with Abhishek.

After all these years, the depression, the tears, the anguish everthing came back. The bitterness was all around her. It is not that she did not love Abhishek… she loved him, but it was always his memory which haunted her heart and she could never be the same passionate, romantic dreamy-eyed girl again.

She stood up and went to the balcony. A fresh gust of air brought the faint but sweet smell of the roses from her garden. She looked at the rose bushes. Like her, her husband Abhishek also loved gardening. He is a simple person. He loved his job and dedicatedly loved her. On their first anniversary there was no red rose, but a bunch of rose branches and they planted them together. Those bunches are bushes now and full of flowers… spreading thier fragnance every now and then.

She stood there teary eyed for another couple of minutes before she started smiling… She wiped her tears, rushed back to the study, brought out the dry rose and had a last look at it before throwing it away.

He  came and brought a relationship that got dried up, lost all its colors, lost all its smell. Still she kept it with her all these years. It just blackened with each passing moment and stained her life, her present, and was about to stain her future. 

Abhishek came and along with him brought a relationship which he himself nurtured, made its roots strong, shielded it from the bad weather and today it is blooming… just like the red roses…it has luxuriously colored her life with love, filled it with the sweet feeling of being needed and being cared.

Later in the evening, Abhishek returned from his trip. As soon as he opened the gate which led the way to their front garden before moving into the house, she almost ran to him and hugged him.

She told him how she missed him. And for the first time after their marriage, Abhishek found her smiling so heartily. He held her tightly in his arms and smiled.

Is she smelling like a rose today???

When you don’t have anything to do…

Filed under: Behind the screen..., Funny!!!, craps ..., uuphh yeh life!!! — chapters @ 12:40 AM

So last Saturday, I had nothing to do apart from waiting for I~) to be online. But as he did not, I was left with no other valuable plans. So I thought of writing a post in my blog. Then I thought of many topics which I could have written about. But the most appealing (read “time consuming” ) topic was a food blog kinda post , where some really great and cool cooks post their fabulous recipes. So I planned to try my hands at those blog posts.

I also tried to give some special effects to the post by adding some photos. I did not have any idea of what I was going to cook. So first I took everything on a plate and then clicked a pic with my mobile. And then the photo session + cooking started which lasted for almost 2 and 1/2 hours.

 So with these vegetables… I planned 2 items at first… little did I know that I would end up with 4 items

What I planned…

1. Palak  (Spinach)+ other vegetables mixed sabzi
2. Pumpkin Flower bhaji with potato, onion and Pumpkin

What I did not plan…

1. Masoor dal with Ginger (I wanted to have dal so badly )
2. Brinjal bhaji (As the brinjals were too big and only half of one was enough for the Palak sabzi and the rest half, if I didn’t use then, it would be have been wasted)

So let us start from the Mixed Veg and Palak Sabzi

Ingredients :

• Palak –> 250 grms (washed, drained, and cut into small pieces.)
• Brinjal –> 1/2 of a big one… or else just one if it is of medium size (washed and cut into small 1 inch pieces)
• Potato –> 2 small ones (washed, peeled and cut into small 1 inch pieces)
• Pumpkin –> 150 grms (washed, peeled and cut into small 1 inch pieces)
• Onion –>1 small one (Cut into small pieces)
• Ginger –> 1/2 an inch long (either grated or cut into really small pieces… you can make a paste but I could not due to absence of a mixie )
• Garlic –> 5/6 cloves (same as Ginger)
• Tomato –> 1 medium one (Cut into small pieces)
• Green chilly –> 1/2 depending upon your taste (cut into small pieces)
• Pancha Phutana (5 spices added together… Saunf, Nigella, Fenugreek seeds and I don’t remember the other 2) –> 1/2 tea spoon
• Oil (refined oil for preparing the masala) –>  1 table spoon
• Turmeric powder –> 2 or 3 pinches
• Hing –> a pinch
• Everest Kitchen King Masala –> 1 tea spoon
• Salt –> as per taste

Method :

  

 

 

 

 ~ Heat the oil in a Kadai (ask your indian friend about this … asif anyone reading this blog… that too anybody from some other country … this is called the height of optimism )

~ Add hing, pancha phuatan… then add the green chillies, onions and cook it till the onions are little transparent.

~ Add the ginger and garlic , when these are cooked a little bit then add the tomatoes and keep stirring with a laddle.

~ Add a pinch of salt, and turmeric powder. Cook till the raw tomato smell is gone. Then add the Kitchen King masala and cook till the masala is done comeplely. You can know that when the oil starts to get separated from the masala and the raw smell is gone completely.

~ Once the masala is done, add the vegetables now, except the Palak. And mix them well with the masala. Add salt as per taste. And cover it… put the flame in sim.

~ Once the vegetables are half cooked, add the palak and mix it well.

~ Then put the lead cover and let it be cooked on low flames. Cook it till alll the vegetables and the palak are cooked enough. You don’t need to add any extra water as the vegetables themselves give out some water. Just stir it in between couple of minute so that it is not over done or burnt.

 

So guys, enough for today… The other recipes will come in the subsequent posts…

 

PS  –> I found out that I am not good at writing serial blog posts. Well thats the difference between me and EKKta KKapoor you know. So I will just stop the post here, but before that I am going to add the final picture of my lunch that day.

Pujo Aasche…

Filed under: Behind the screen..., Down the memory lane..., Family..., Friends... — chapters @ 12:36 PM

I booked my tickets for Durga Puja in last week of June. Yes… there are still couple of months before it actually arrives. But tickets won’t be available for that long. 90 days before 24th September, the booking started and the very same day, at about 10 AM, when I checked for the availability it was showing WL 218… Luckily I got the tickets in Ladies quota. Phew…

Here in West Bengal, Durga Puja is the biggest festival for Benaglis. They enjoy those 5/6 days immensely. They cook and eat delicious food, they dance, they sing, they wear new dresses, they worship, they pray, they meet relatives and friends, they roam around their city/village to see the various idols of  Devi Durga and the Pendals.

Everybody seems so happy during the Puja time. I have been staying here in Kolkata from last 3 years and this year it would be my 4th Durga Puja in Kolkata. Last year, I went out with I~) and his group of friends on Sashthi to see the idols and the pendals. We roamed around Kolkata and saw different varieties of pendals. We were 11 people… T and his gf N, D and his gf M, Ang with his gf P, J, Bachha (I don’t want to make that short… ), Arin, I~) & me. We hired a tata sumo and from 9 AM to 9 pm we were on the roads…

This year I dont think it will be possible for I~) to make it to Kolkata during Puja. P is in UK and it is not sure whether he will coming or not. Though Arin is in Hyderabad and N is in Mumbai but they will be coming. I will be boarding the train to Bhubaneswar in Sasthi night. And I am not sure whether this time we will be successful in making a trip around Kolkata as last time!!!

Back at Bhubaneswar also we celebrate Durga Puja. Though it is not The biggest festival… but it is one of the big festivals we Oriyas celebrate. We also have beautifully decorated Idols and Pendals.  Back in school/college days it was a long vacation of 7 to 10 days. I long for such a long holiday when I see school kids. I wish I could go back to those days again… Those carefree days.

Bengalis always say that the “Pujo Aasche…” (Festive days are coming…)feeling is better than the actual Puja. As during Puja, time flies fast. But the “Wait” and the “Hope” before Puja drives us through the mundane and dragging days. The special feelings have already made me to know their presence the day I booked my tickets. I hope it will be a gala time for everybody out there.

So folks… get ready… “Pujo Aasche…”