Food as only Mummy could cook it – 30th July 2010

As she poured the chocolate cake mix into the round non stick dish, we watched in amazement. In less than an hour, you could smell the rich chocolate saturating the air so that you breathed delicious hot cake. The oven would open, the cake would come out, a little puffed up but perfect nonetheless. And we stared unblinking as she stuck a fork in it to make sure that it was cooked well. And Aley would run, pick up the phone and call her friends to inform them about the latest developments in the event of the day. This would be followed by the quick arrival of a bunch of 9th grade boys, shy at first, with alarmingly widening eyes as they gazed upon the treasure with watering mouths. She must’ve done this a hundred times in the course of our lives so far.
The baked Italian chicken filled with fresh spinach mixed with a number of cheeses came out of the oven. The cheese shamelessly overflowed from the sides of the oblong chicken pieces .The best part was when you poured the faint orange sauce over the pieces of chicken. She would watch as we sliced our forks through the chicken and placed the piece dipped in sauce in our mouths and an expression of nirvana crossed our faces. Except papa who was impossible to read only if only about his wife’s food. But you could tell from the speed with which he ate and his sniffing nose that he enjoyed it greatly.
And the Biriyani.....I think maybe I should stop. Strange as it seems, I feel my laptop growing jealous of its natural inanimateness and therefore inability to eat.

Some things and some people are too personal to write about. Words seem rather inefficient. They really fall short. So I wrote about food instead and I really do love food.

Vengeance - 25th June 2010

The act filled her with a deep sense of both satisfaction and cold justice. She felt particularly proud of herself seeing how she was the one to serve this justice. The blood on her arm only amused her slightly. It reminded her of her achievement. The quick, skilled move of a practiced killer. He had got her the last time but defeat at the hands of an enemy only drove her to revenge. And boy was it sweet.
She was watching him for some time now, observing how his movements displayed to the untrained eye, a complete lack of interest in her. But having been struck before, she knew he had an unquenched thirst for her blood. Having tasted it once, he longed for it even more. He ran circles around her, whispering things meant to confuse her. But this time she was ready. She had learnt her lesson the hard way. She knew that all it took was a single moment of distraction, a single mistake and he would win again. So she waited patiently as he moved closer, his whisper louder, perfectly in tune to the sound of her growing heartbeat. He touched her skin, went for her blood and she killed the mosquito.

Kerala and the Rain - 19th June 2010

I woke up today to the strong smell of rain outside and for a second I thought I was home, where I come from that is. I don’t have particularly fond memories of Kerala, at least not of the people there. My good memories of ‘Gods own land’ consists of exactly that, the land. Staring out of the window as we traveled back and forth from our house in Pala, it often occurred to me that the place that I so detested, the place where I spent two and a half months of my summer vacations every year simply because I was forced to by my parents and not by choice, it often occurred to me that the place was actually beautiful.
And then I felt at home. I felt strangely honoured to come from a place that was as green and as peaceful, if you were in the right place in Kerala that is. I mean, take a ride through Kottayam town and you could smell the combination of vehicle and industrial pollution in the air. A smell so strong, you risked choking to death or at least you are haunted for a second by that ridiculous fear that sometime in the future you would be told in a doctor’s office that you shockingly have lung cancer and two months left to live and at that moment sitting there, you think that you will think back to the day you rode through Kottayam town in an ambassador car, eating up the pollution in its fullest. But this thought is quickly brushed from your mind. Point being, you find yourself in the right place in Kerala and thoughts of tiny paradise fill you up like coconut water and you start thinking romantic thoughts about a nadan chekan that does not exist… or maybe he does, but then that’s another story.
The rain, nothing soaked through me as much as the rain in Kerala. The smell of wet grass and mud, the sound of the thunder, the cool nights, waking up after an endless night of rain to a faint morning that refused to let the sun shine. The rain in Kuwait where I spent the rest of the year, in our 3 room apartment was just not the same. It felt more like a shower switched on. But this rain felt almost mystical. Every time it rained in Kerala, it was as if it was a message from someone else, a sign of good hope. Maybe it was just a little way of feeling special, but I felt connected to another soul who stared out of his or her window at that exact moment, thinking exactly the same thoughts.
The rain in Kerala had the most hypnotizing effect on me and my sisters. I could stare for ages at it pouring outside our window. Just after completing another session of complaining to our mother of how much we hated it here, it would rain, and then we would be quite…