The Cho Cha !!!

For all those people who either actually know me, or have actually read my blog in the past (Hugs!!!), there is one thing that might, just might, be a teensy weensy bit apparent by now.

I’m interested in food. Like… it does hold a bit of importance in my life. Like…my life might just revolve around it, you know…just a teensy weensy lil bit.

So the food I have does tend to alter and determine my moods, my actions, and sometimes life altering decisions. 

 

So there happen to be a few rules, a few theories revolving around different food items in my life. The Chop suey Theory is one very important one among them. Now I can’t go into details about it…its really top secret, and I am still waiting for the patent to come in…but it has held true these past twenty one years,( soon to be) and deserves due respect. And recently, to pay my respects, I have embarked upon a Chop suey Challenge.

The challenge is simple.

Singapore.

Random tiny Chinese restaurants.

One American Chopsuey.

And so it began.

Location: Authentic Chinese Restaurant

Order: Pepper Chicken, American Chopsuey, Pepsi

Time Taken: Torturous

 

And I kid you not. I thought my watch had stopped. All time and matter stood still, not even a slight ruffle in the chicken’s feathers as it faced its last few moments in a kitchen somewhere. That’s how long it took. But there was a very valid explanation for it, as I will soon let you know.

 

The place was nice, the way a Chinese restaurant should be. Because in my experience, the best Chinese is not the Bercos, Golden Dragons and Five Spices of the world…even though I love all those as well. There’s something about sitting in a small, brightly lit chinki* family run restaurant, with one Chinese fan adorned on the wall to make it look more authentic and a little stained menu with at least two price revisions scratched out with a pen…it just makes the experience…well…an experience. And the food’s usually good.

 

So I placed my order, and waited with bated breath.  And waited. And waited some more. Just when all the oxygen of my before mentioned bated breath had run out and stars were popping before my eyes, I spotted the reason for the delay. Some ten packets of home delivery.

Hmph.

Oh well, the food came.

 

I tasted the chop suey. The crunchy sweet orangy chop suey. I opened my mouth to comment on the taste, but the conversation on the next table proved to be rather distracting.

Two women with extremely painted and botoxed faces (I swear they couldn’t smile even if they wanted to) walked in and were greeted rather warmly by the waiter.

“Ok, show us the photos.”

 

The waiter eagerly bowed, ran in and came back with his fancy phone. He then showed them some photos in a rather conspiratory manner. They nodded at each other and smiled (or at least I think that’s what the frozen face muscles were trying to do).

“Oh, they’re cute!”

More nods.

“They have been with me since they were babies. I have taken really good care of them.”

Awww…his little adopted chinki kids.

“They’ll adjust to our home well.”

Huh? Suddenly my full attention was with them. Lil cute chinki slave traders.

“So once we take them, do we need to give them cooked food? Or just raw food would do?”

Huh??

“No no…don’t bother cooking. Just make sure you give them enough water throughout the day. That’s enough for them.”

Wtf…inhuman ^%&$*!!

“So your final price is 8000? Nothing less?”

Nods. Looks exchanged. Handshake.

The price of a lil cute chinki kid = Rs. 8000 wonly. ( are they going to make them massage their frozen muscles ??!!! )

“Don’t worry…they’re very well trained. They won’t take flight.”

Hmph.

“Yes…I really love pets…and I think birds are perfect.”

Ok…so you knew what that conversation was about right from the beginning. But believe you me, when you’re sitting in that tiny restaurant, starved by the wait, hogging away on crunchy chopsuey, your mind does take you in weird random directions.

Oh…the chop suey!!

It was…perfect.

Well, it did come late. And for some weird reason there was no egg on it. But it was perfect.

It was just the right amount of crispy.

It was just the right amount of sweetness.

It adhered to the right gravy to noodles ratio.

And the noodles were broken just the right size.

It was really worth the wait.

21 years. ( well ... soon to be .. )

P.S. It might be important to mention here that the birdie negotiations were being handled by the waiter…erm…the sole waiter. So for half an hour, all orders, all payments and all requests of each and every person in that restaurant came to a standstill.

P.P.S. 8000 bucks for birds? Really??? You know the amount I can shop in that much?!?

*I hate the word ‘chinki’.  I know its racist. But I’m hoping I’ll be excused here on the pretext of creative liberties.

The midnight mission

After twisting and turning in bed for what it seemed like ages last night, I got up and decided to clean my wallet ! (I'll get to the significance of my wallet in a minute).Of course there were other better ways of wasting time in the middle of the night, but I decided to do something I had not done in maybe a year. So there I was, wide awake, at 3'o clock in the morning with the sole intention of giving my wallet a decent look. The task was simple: to pick out everything one by one, decide which ones deserve a place in my wallet and throw away the rest. However, it turned out to be not as simple a task as I had thought it would be.

Okay, so what's so special about my wallet ? Absolutely nothing, except from the fact that it's huge. It's really huge. Friends, who have seen it, always ask me "what do you have in there?" I always tell them that women like big wallets so that they can carry their worlds in them. But that is just a lame explanation, because all my other female friends here have small and thin wallets. Ofcourse they have big hand bags and/or side bags where they carry their worlds in, but that's not the point here. So honestly, I don't even know why I need to carry such a huge wallet, because I hardly have cash in there.

Apart from that, it's all apparently useless stuff: some old and torn movie tickets , some Café Coffee Day napkins, a few Indian coins, quite many old receipts of restaurants and coffee shops, a few bus tickets and a small piece of paper which has a list of things I need to buy for the ongoing week (and this one gets replaced every week or so). I really wonder how these 'few' things make my wallet look so big and heavy!

 So last night, I started off by taking everything out of the wallet and putting only the selected ones back in. I put the cards, some cash and the to-buy list first back into the wallet. Now, about the rest. Most of the tickets and receipts were damaged and hazy. I couldn't even read the small letters, so there was no way of knowing what we had ordered at the restaurants or which movie we had gone to see. I could just make out the names of the shops or the theaters.I smiled to myself and put them back in. Memories.

 I hardly remembered where I was going and why I had kept them for so long. I could just remember those indefinite hours spent in the buses, reading books; the verbal fights between the bus conductors and some fellow passengers and those regular arguments over the ‘Ladies’ seats. I put them back in too. . Then those few Indian coins which I had purposefully retained before coming here. They’ll stay, I said to myself and put them back again.

  Now the job was almost done, except for the few napkins and small coins. A friend of mine and I had this habit of writing things down on the napkin whenever we were at the Café Coffee Day. We wrote mostly about each other, what we like and dislike about each other and stuff. Sometimes when we were bored, we just made smileys or funny faces on the tissue papers and then I used to take them with me as memoirs. Going through these napkins took most of my time last night. Ofcourse I couldn’t remember which Café we had gone to. The only things I remembered were the time I spent with the few people I now consider family, the things we did and discussed, FOOD and so much more. I smiled to myself because I knew what I was going to do with those napkins - put them back in !

 Bottom-line: I spent a couple of hours dissecting my wallet, and now my wallet looks and weighs exactly the same (both from inside and outside) as it did before I went on this mission. Agreed, I could have thrown out some of the coins.Maybe I'll throw them away the next time I try cleaning my wallet. And I don’t remember when I went to bed finally last night :) 

She strode along the pavement, not stopping, not looking back, not knowing where she was going. Her heart was thumping hard, and her jaw was set and tense. The snow had turned to slush, a cold drizzle was coating her hair and dripping down her neck. But with every step she felt a little better. With every step she was further into anonymity, away from the shocked faces of her family.

Her whole body pricked with anger .She’d never witnessed such an ugly family scene.She closed her eyes she felt raw and vulnerable , not ready for this. People would surely expect her to answer question, to reassure them and help them digest this piece of startling information .But she had barely digested it herself .

Her condition was a nebulous fact floating around her mind, unwanted and uninformed, as yet presentable to the outside world. She couldn’t articulate what she thought about it, could no longer distinguish between emotional and physical sensation. She was still confused .She still wasn’t sure what it felt like? To have a child inside you? But she didn’t want to answer that question. She didn’t want to think of herself as carrying a child.

She stopped in a corner and cautiously laid her hand over her stomach. When she imagined whatever was inside her, it was small; it was like a small shellfish, or a snail.  Something coiled up and hardly human something indeterminate. It was another day older. Another day more developed. Perhaps it had features by now. Perhaps it had little hands, little toes. It was a boy or a girl. A little person, growing inside her. Whose life had not yet begun. Whose life might, if she chose, progress no further.  A wave of strong feeling, half grief, half sickness, swept over her, and she began to tremble. She had to decide whether another human’s life should go ahead or not.

The thought transfixed her. She felt almost overcome by her burden, overwhelmed by the decision she was going to have to make, for a moment she thought she might collapse, sobbing, on the hard pavement. But instead, with a slight impatient shake of the head, she thrust her hands deeper into her pockets and, teeth gritted, began to walk once again.

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You are everything !!!

As a kid, I was dreamed about falling in love with a prince, who would come in a silver shining armour, and gallop away with him on his horse into a hazy, peach orange sunset. I waited for so long for that dream to come true and in the end it did . And that moment felt like a fairytale !!

It felt like a million angels had decided that I was good this year and deserved someone amazing - YOU !! You make me feel like the happiest girl alive every second of every day.You make me feel like there is no other, like you are the only one I will ever love. And I know deep down in my heart: you are the only one I will love. And the only one I ever plan on Loving.

I can have a really bad day one day, and you can just text me and I forget what I did that day and I will be so happy, you make my day a hundred times better and no matter what you say it just makes me feel so good about myself. And every time we talk it feels like my stomach is doing non stop back flips and my heart beats like crazy just by hearing your amazing voice ....  

You always compliment me in every way possible, and I write them down and read them and smile and think ' what good have I ever done in my life to deserve someone like you .. someone who is so amazing !!! ' . Before I go to sleep you always say "Goodnight, Sweet dreams , sleep tight " It makes me feel so good... you make me have premature ventricular contractions !!! you make me skip a heart beat ...

Love had become just another word for me until you gave it a definition, and you have...you are my love till the end... nothing makes me feel different unless it's more love, and that is every day and every hour and every second... you are my love , my only love... for today , tomorrow and forever ..

You are the only one I can talk non-stop to .. I can talk my heart and then still manage to talk something more to you.. you know me inside out .. even better than i know myself .. you know when i am angry .... you know when i am sad .. and you try so much to make me feel happy again .. !!!! And you also tolerate all my tantrums !! :P and wait for me ... long endless waits ... I really don't know how you do it ... With us it is  fantastic,passionate,scary as hell, scary because i feel so many emotions at one time !!! Literally, one extreme to another...  and also because it was something that I never felt in my life before ...  something so extreme !!!!

But I am happy that I had those feelings, I feel light on my feet, my head in the clouds, I only think of you. Your face, your laugh, ,your soft words, your kisses....I knew I was in love. 

 I love you like stop motion; deliberately and in small increments. Every little bit of you I allow myself comes with a price. I’ve learned I must pace myself with you. I’m easily addicted and you are a poison. Murder has never been this delicious…or voluntary.

 you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me. I am perfectly content to be with you for the rest of my life. I am perfectly content to give you all of me. I love you so much. I need you so much. You are everything to me.

I spend everyday counting the days until we meet... talking to you always brings a huge smile on my face .. without you i am incomplete ... i wish i was there wth you .. but even though your so far away you feel so close to my heart .. i always look at the sky and smile cause i know the sky is something that we both share .. i wish you were near .. bt dont worry .. we'll get through this .. I dream about you .. about us everyday and every night  .. and i'll always be here counting the days until we meet each other ... <3 A lifetime of you is not enough, but it is more than I deserve ! Forever is a long time but I wouldn’t mind spending it by your side. Tell me that everyday I get to wake up to that smile. I wouldn’t mind it at all.  You will always be my love , my shona , my babu , my shonu , my kiddie , my gubbara .. My everything ..

Babu, this is all for you. There are thousands and thousands of words in this post . and every single one of them belongs to you. I thought that if I could form the perfect post, the perfect paragraph or sentence I would be able to convey to you just how much I love you ! But in the hundreds of thousands of words I still haven’t done that. I still don’t know how to craft the perfect sentence structure and choose the perfect diction and word order to adequately express how much you mean to me, how much I need you, how much I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe I’ve been over-thinking it. Maybe the perfect sentence has already been formed

It’s been getting harder and harder for me to write here. That’s because what we share together is too precious and perfect for me to capture accurately. My feelings are so hard to put into words. Even now, I’m racking my brain, trying to come up with a strong enough diction to paint a picture of what I feel for you. But I’ll try anyway…
I’m lying here on my bed and my brain is doing that thing again - that thing where it takes a memory of you and amplifies, magnifies, copies, and basically overloads my mind with nothing but you. Now my chest hurts and I have this overwhelming urge to cry because it’s times like these when I want you next to me so badly it physically hurts. I literally ache for you. And I wonder if you ever feel this way too. I wonder if you hurt like I do… I wonder if without me you feel like you can’t breathe. I wonder if without me you can’t sleep. I wonder if you have to fight to get me off your mind. Because I do.
Maybe the only way to sum it all up is in three words; eight letters. 
I love you.

                                                                                                Yours forever,
                                                                                                 Me.

This is my India !!

Good news. I’ve found the answer to life. Bad news! It’s death. A scientific study of 7 billion people of different genders, races and “Which Shah Rukh Khan Movie Are You?” answers showed that there are only two things that we all have in common. We are all “Tere Naam” and we all die. In India, we die more than most, and we do it in style.

There are 1.2 billion of us, most of whom live in deplorable conditions. People die uncared for on the streets. Others look at them and thank the stars that they have a roof over their heads, even though they had to pay six men from the BMC (and the baba who chanted at a coconut and set it on fire for luck) for the illegal house. Which then collapses and kills them instantly. Others join politics to fight the corruption that causes such senseless death, and they do a great job of it, until the day they meet with an unfortunate accident that kills them. But we continue to believe in this totes (short for “my education was a waste”) amazing ideal of India, and we put men at our borders to preserve it, and then one day, five of them die. And then a voice from the other side says “Sorry uncle galti se shot maara” and we tell the kids they can’t play cricket for a few years, and the prince and Cinderella live happily ever after.

We die with such consistent ease in this country that the only way we can deal with it is to turn it into entertainment. A 14-year-old girl dies and a nation hangs on forensic details. A troubled lady hangs herself, and the public glare is so intense that it magically makes Aditya Pancholi relevant again. And natural disasters? Those things are a godsend. The waters in Uttarakhand filled up half the valley and more importantly, every single news programming hole in a one month radius. Finally a wholesome tragedy the entire family could enjoy. Illegal construction along riverbanks! Biblical rainfall! The irony of the faithful paying pilgrimage to the lord!

Armed-force awesomeness! It gave us so much to bullshit about at dinner parties that we’re still serving leftovers two months later. Narendra Modi rescued 15,000 people. Rahul Gandhi rescued 5 million. And then they both hugged at Baba Siddique’s iftar party.

 Pop quiz :  how many jawans died in Chattisgarh in June? You can’t remember because it was too many statistics ago ! We’re desensitised to death and for once, it’s not pop-culture’s fault, because nobody dies on our TV shows. They just go away and come back as Ronit Roy. It’s not even the news-channels’ fault. They only turn it into entertainment because we’re already desensitised to it and they know we won’t mind. We’re desensitised to it because life in this country kills you. When life is cheap, death does not matter !!

Why not do a reality show? We’ll call it Shradhanjali Idol’s Got Talent Ka Muqabla, and every week, people with hopes and aspirations can be on TV and explain what senseless tragedy they want to die in, and we all get to vote on who has the best, most inspiring tragedy waiting to happen. At the end of the season, we kill a winner and award his family prize compensation money, and our collective guilt is assuaged until next season. I think ratings would be great, finding contestants will be easy