Taste of an Art

As a child, during the summer holidays, I have learnt quite some things like embroidery, batic, clay modelling, doll making and different types of painting. Remember the organisation called Bal Bhavan in Cubbon Park, Bangalore which used to offer various such courses at very nominal prices!! I wonder if these courses are still continuing. As an adoloscent, I have always had interest for such things and continued to learn. I learnt Ikebana and mural painting. I know till know this post seems like beating my own drums :D Now comes the real deal. They say cooking is an art. I never bothered to get a 'taste' of this art till I got married, that is till I was 27 years old. There are many reasons (read excuses) for this. Primary ones being:

• My mom is an early bird. She gets up at around 4:30am or 5am to start the daily household chores. Not that, I used to get up late. During school and college days, I used to wake up at 4am but the early hours of the day were used for 'studying'. I had to leave home early as I had travel to the other end of the city.
  

• I thought helping my mother with grocery shopping, vegetable cutting and some odd tasks was great proportion of real cooking. How wrong I was!!

Even after I got married, as long as I stayed in India, I just helped my MIL with cooking but never did the real cooking as I was really pressed for time. But then, few months later I landed in France to run a family on my own. The first month was just out of a horror movie. Once in every two times, I got it wrong!! After 3 months of cooking, I can confidently say I have improved leaps N bounds. I know there is a long way to go but still!! This is not just my story. Many of my friends were like this. Never learnt cooking and after few months they are quite good!! So unmarried girls reading this, a tip for you, dont worry about cooking, its our second nature!!

Anyhow, there are some primary requirements for cooking. My two cents on it:

• Time: In the initial days, it takes a lot of time. It used to take atleast two hours for me to prepare 'Sambar'. If the salt was correct, it used to be very spicy. If the spice was correct, it used to be too sour. When all these turned out to be correct, it was too watery. So I had to cook Dal yet again, and add it to the Sambar and start again to adjust the salt and spice :( It takes some patience in the beginning to get the combination right!! After some time it is 'bhaaye haath ka khel' :D

• Good Recipes: Nothing matches mommies recipes!! Of course :D But with technology, we get a lot of good recipes from various cuisines on the internet. In the initial days, when my mom used to say, use 3 or 4 chillies. I used to ask, is it 3 or is it 4 and what size each :D
  

• Creativity and Innovation: Improvising a classical recipe. Thats gives a lot of satisfaction. Trying out new recipes is quiet interesting. But then, you need a lot of time for the same
  

• Last but not the least, you need a really Good Guinea Pig. Husbands are the most easily available and vulnerable category :D Shan has been really patient and very helpful. He is quite a good cook himself and thinks cooking is a very good relaxation!! Uff, I have not reached that stage yet!! He always volunteers with new recipes, to cook as well as to get experimented with :D

After few months of cooking experimentation, I have the following achievements, if I may call so :D

• I have hosted many parties for my husbands friends and colleagues. I have prepared an entire repas - full meal with an entry, main course and dessert, that too tailored to French tastebuds :D
  

• We celebrated our first anniversary with a barbeque picnic party on a hilltop after 1.5 hours of cycling :D
  

• I prepared continental dishes like the French tarts and the Italian pizza. Prepare, does not mean get the base etc from the supermarket. I prepared it from scratch!! Yippee!! Man! Actually, traditional continental dishes are quite complicated!!
  

• I have celebrated all the festivals till date. The latest one with a 13 item menu :D

Most newly married women, may have similar stories. I just shared it :D I have done nothing great!! Till now the story seems good. But all stories, seem to have some bad part embedded. My mother got recently operated after being diagnosed for a gynaecological problem. After her operation, she obviously is suggested bed rest. My father is not a great cook but helped my mom quite a lot. So, he is currently struggling with my mom totally out of kitchen. I am so many miles away from them and cannot help my mom now, when she needs me most. That too when my culinary skills have improved!! What an irony of life!!

Signing off!!

Contrast of the Moment:

In France, people cook for 20 minutes and eat for 2 hours. We cook for 2 hours and eat in 20 mins :D

Next to Come: By your side!!

People People Everywhere...

I come from a country which has the infamous reputation of being the second most populated country in the world even though it is only the seventh biggest country of the world :( The cities are just too flooding. Most of us might have seen the road crossing scenes in Mumbai or the traffic jams in Kolkata over the television. Uff!! One of the cities which has recently exploded(yeah!! exploded not expanded) in population is Bangalore. Till 2001, I was able to travel around 22kms in less than 40 mins with my puny two wheeler. Last 5 to 6 years, two wheelers are considered non existent. I have taken around 2 hours to travel 12kms from office to home. Pchh!! Why am I ranting yet again?

With so many malls, multiplexes and other hyped-up places mushrooming all over Bangalore, I end up dashing into some not expected people in 'candid' situations. Its worth to mention a few:

Incident 1

In my neighbourhood, lived my brethren, the IT professionals as it was the nearest decent residential layout(those days) to the IT park. There is real bad taste joke about my neighbourhood - "When you throw a stone, it either hits a dog or an IT professional" :-/ Chuck that.

I am not a fashion freak. However, I do visit the neighbourhood beauty parlour at regular intervals to get my hair trimmed to avoid the constant cribbing from mom about split hairs!! One Saturday, I pushed myself to the ever-crowded beauty parlour. Voila!! There I see all those known faces seen almost daily at my office campus. Placed myself next to more known lady and started chatting with her as we were waiting for the girls at the parlour to be liberated from two fatty aunties covered with some white and pink cream all over their body. (Wo)Man!! These women spend so much money on their bodies. One lady paid around Rs3000, right in front of me!! God knows what she did!! She didnt look anywhere close to Aish!!

The girl next to me chatted continuously inducing instant headache! She was from another part of the country and complained continuously about Bangalore-its traffic, the people, the pollution. She behaved as if it was not in India!! Irritation level was increasing. Thanks to the girl at the beauty parlour who understood my agony!!

I know this parlour girl 'Ammu' for a long time. She was giving me suggestions about increasing my hair volume and the best hair cut for me though she knows that I always end up getting the conventional step cut for myself. As she was describing a hair cut, one of the fatty ladies had washed herself and ended up wrapped in a towel right behind me. I could see her in the mirror. Man! It took some time for me to recognise her sans cream. She was my instructor during my training days!!

I dislike it when someone forces syntax of a programming language and ask us to mug it up!! She exactly did that!! So had run into rough weather with her and she had 'tried' to embarrass me many times!! But in this situation, she was really caught in a very embarrassing situation!! Standing in front of around ten ladies just in a towel and lot of mass around her waist!! I controlled the bubbles of laughter evaporating from my stomach and wished her with a timid 'Hi'. "How come here?" was the incontrollable question to follow as she was not from our area. She said she came to her sister's house (the other fat lady) for the weekend. Man!! What an unfortunate weekend is what she would have been thinking after that!!

Incident 2

There are lot of malls in Bangalore. I really warn claustrophobic and sociophobic people, to avoid such places!! I had been to the PVR multiplex in the Forum Mall. This is quite close to my home in Bangalore, just about 2 kms. I was not married then (olddd story). I met a friend of mine and her would-be hubby, another good friend of mine. We planned to watch a much hyped movie. This friend of mine is quite crazy about how she looks even in a dim lit theatre. She made yet another visit to the rest room to make up the make-up! Meanwhile, her to-be hubby and I were joking about her real girly trends. He commented that she would take half an hour to shop even a plain white handkerchief :D

As this loud laughing and bitching behind the back was going on, one of my neighbourhood aunties dashed into us. Timing, I must say!! It was sight to watch!! She scanned from head to toe the to-be hubby. Hope I could tell her that he is the to-be hubby of my friend and not mine!! By then, my friend had decided to be kind on us and came to the dramatic scene. I was quick enough to introduce my friends to this dear aunty. What a relief! Not for me but for that aunty :D

Incident 3

Chat(eatable ones :D) centres are not a rarity in Bangalore. They are spread all over. There is one good chat centre called Anand Bhavan in Koramangala. I was introduced to this chat centre by a good friend. After that I frequented this place with various groups. Once I had been there with friend and ordered for my favourite Katori Chat! These chat centres are really crowded and you need to have a hawk's eye to catch a good table for your group. I was successful in getting a suitable table for us.

The sumptuous looking Katori chat arrived and salivary glands became immediately active (To tell the truth, mine are never inactive :D). As I was about take a big bite of the Katori Chat with my wide opened mouth, I caught the eyes of my ex-manager, right across the table. Suddenly, an "Eve's apple" seemed to grow!! Quite a scene!! Laughed my heart out that day, remembering that scene every 15 minutes :D

Incident 4
This was my second meeting with my not-yet-decided-to-be-hubby. I should have turned nuts to give him a rendez-vous in Bangalore Centrale. Man!! It was people people and more people. Being short, I could just see feet of people and at his height, he said he could just see heads!! We took some time to find each other! We were trying to call each other standing at different doors of the same store!! Meanwhile, as usual, met a couple of colleagues there!! I was hardly interested to talk to them and one must obviously know why!!

I had seen such situations in movies. It is way different to experience this and behave human! Some of these situations are embarassing, some cute, some unfortunate and others irritating. But then, these are the ones which spice up life. A bit of gyan there :D

Signing off!!

Contrast of the Moment:

The office campus, I worked in Bangalore supported around 25,000 people. The city, I currently live in France has a total population of around 17,000!!!

Next to Come: Taste of an Art