Bon Appétit!!

Cooking is an art. I am not an artist.

Now most people would've left it at that an got on with their lives. But, as the legend goes, Kenny never gives up without a fight, specially when his food is at stake...because he has a lot of free time. In my honest opinion cooking as an art form has a lot of advantages over its contemporaries. You don't need to be naturally talented for it, if you have enough flair and enough practice, you can be just as good. You don't need an audience to appreciate or judge your work, as long as your taste-buds are in perfect condition. You don't have to be totally original, and your masterpieces have a great repeat value....who would mind having a sumptuous meal week after week? And, like with all art forms, I've found over time that cooking can be an excellent conversation starter with the ladies. ( Ok kiddos!! Take notes...firstly the women are intrigued by men who have dared venture into what's mostly termed as their domain - namely "the kitchen". Two, brush up on the basic cooking jargon but don't try to pass yourself off as an expert...because if you're not you WILL be found out. Three, try talking about this dish you've been trying but hasn't worked out for some reason...read up about the dish from a cookbook before you do that...and the women, nice people that they are, always like to help out. And they also like the fact that you're willing to admit that you're doing something wrong...one thing they think most men lack. So you score extra brownie points for that!!)

Anyways, the topic's art of cooking and not flirting so without further distractions. Cooking has always appealed to the curious side of me, whether it was helping out my mum in the kitchen as a 7 year old and wondering in awe as the seemingly normal ingredients came together to form all those dishes. Or as a teenager when the kitchen was my favorite experimental lab during summer holidays. But then moving out of house, in the last six years I never really got around to get myself to cook again. That is until a normal Saturday, which would've gone with the usual routine of takeaway food and eating joints. But fate had other plans...as rummaging through my closet I came face to face with the only cookery book I've ever bought ( I was feeling kinda bad for the salesman at this bookstore where I'd spent a good two hours going through the comic books...so I'd picked up a book on 'Italian Cooking' on my way out. ) As I sat there flipping through the pages I came across this illustration...and I knew that was what I HAD to have for lunch. There was this feeling i can't really explain. Ok, for the guys I can try to term an analogy...remember when as hormone ravaged teenagers we used to flip to the centerfold of our "dirty" mags and look at the model and wonder, dumb-struck in our awe, what those boobs would feel like?? We couldn't put it in words because none of us really knew...but we knew it had to be awesome!! That's the feeling I'm talking about. And girls...after that example I'm sure you must be thanking your stars that I'm not gonna try and think one out for you too.

So there I was, seduced by " Pasta Amatriciana". So after a short trip to the mart I was ready to begin. I had the ingredients, I had my recipe, I had my beer to accompany the meal...what could possibly go wrong?? And exactly an hour and a half later I learn the following things :
- The extra seasoning of a dash of human blood you involuntarily add to the list of ingredients while chopping onions doesn't really help the flavor. It doesn't do your finger any good either...
- The kitchen is a mystical place in another dimension where all logics of time and measurement cease to exist. The chef's 15 minutes seemed much shorter than my 15 minutes. The chef's recipe's for serving four, I figure I'll make enough for two and halve the ingredients...doesn't add up!!
- When you come across some fancy sounding term that you don't understand, don't go "Ooohhh!! Big Italian chef with all his bloody fancy lingo!!" Big mistake. Go through the glossary at the end or look them up on the net. It's better than eating something raw or over cooked or just plain miserable.
- Stick to the rules. If it's your first time cooking, this is not the place you want to let the rebel in you out. Since your entire digestive system is at stake, you'll see the sense in that. You can leave the experimentation for later.
- If in the end it doesn't turn out well, blame the Mr. Big-shot Italian cook in his big fancy Italian kitchen, drinking Italian wine with his hot Italian wife. Probably drives a Ferrari too. Grrrr.....I so hate that guy!!

At the end of it, I was staring at a plate of what looked to me like the "evil twin" of the dish I'd ran into earlier in the picture. Maybe it lacks the looks, maybe it has a beautiful inner soul...the spiritualist in me says. Wrong again.

Cooking is an art. I am not a cook.....yet. As the legend continues, Kenny gets knocked out...he gets up again.
But at that moment I was just another guy with two cans of beer. My masterpiece is yet to come.

P.S.: This happens to be my 50th post at this place. 50 special moments spent in Blogsville, good, bad, weird, got all kinds....and thanks to all the wonderful people who've dropped by, pretended that they've read all through the post and left a nice comment at the end...ok, just kidding!! So today I raise a toast, to the place where I came to lose my mind....and found out I wasn't the only one. Cheers!!
P.P.S. : I've started replying to the comments you guys leave on my posts taking a cue from the other bloggers (don't wanna end up being labeled snobbish!!). So if you're the kind of person who's into that stuff, just though I'd let you guys know...starting with my previous post. And Life's good......

I'm Just A Guy...

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed below are my personal thoughts and do not necessarily apply to a group as a whole...that is unless they want to. And guys, if you don't agree with whatever I'm going to say, please don't beat me up. And if you do agree with me...still, please don't beat me up!!

In retrospect, I guess I just have myself to blame for bringing this upon myself. With a blogroll in which seven out of ten bloggers are female, plus that I'm more inclined to read blogs put up by girls (not really my fault...the female mind always did intrigue me more!!) it was inevitable. And I thought, well, considering I have an opinion on everything...why don't express it this time as well. It all started with the posts. Posts where the subject of guys would crop up.....we were the bad guys, the people with no emotions, some even said we had no hearts, that we didn't belong in a civilized world, we couldn't give or command respect, we lived under illusions that we were "knights" and so on. Firstly, let me tell you this...girls, you are right. I know I could get butchered by the guys for this but it's true. Of the ten things that you think are wrong with us, all of us have at least eight of them genetically engraved onto our DNA. So why does it bother me, if I'm already submitting to the fact that it is true? Simple, because I'm a guy, I'm one of them, and then I'm really not....actually lots of us are not, but we live double lives divided between the "cliche' guy" definition and who we really are...just because of the reasoning that you belong with the majority unless you can prove otherwise.

So who are we? We are the guys who woke up one day and thought that maybe there was something wrong with us, something on which all of your accusations could be based upon...and we ventured out to find what that was and to change it. We were going against every natural instinct of ours, we were going against "the tribe"...but we were just getting bloody tired of being ridiculed all along. So we tried. We were just as curious as the others about you when we first saw you, but we recognized the fact that ogling at your cleavage was not the way to express that. We did have sex on our minds, but then we also knew that it was not necessary to express that every time you're around. We were brought up in a world that said to us "real men don't have emotions"....but we didn't accept that and poked around inside, and we discovered that we have them just as much, if not more, than you do. We had enough reasoning to establish that remarking about how great your ass looks is not a great way to start a conversation. The thought of being in your bad books is really discomforting for us, so we think and we think and we think again in every single thing involving you so that no bad vibes are there. We respect your intelligence as much as we admire your physical attributes (and we know enough not to be vocal about it!!). We, like any other guy, could get possessive about our women, but we wouldn't ever let it show in front of you...maybe we'd punch holes in the bedroom wall when you'd go out for drinks with that handsome guy from work, but we wouldn't let you know how possessive we are. We knew that Knights are of no use when there are no damsels to be rescued. That's us. Us?? Am I one of these guys? I know it was pretty easy for me to acknowledge that this is my space and take some liberties....so I won't judge that, the "we" is just representative of those who belong. All I'll say is that there are guys like that, who want to change the way the equation of the sexes stands...and you know that just as well as we do. And I don't know what exactly I'm hoping to achieve by writing all of this, but I do feel the need to let the "voices in my head" out once in a while...so I'm just doing that. The main idea here is just that...there's good with the bad...so just don't give up on us yet. We're trying to change. Honest...not a cliche' guy "honest", "honest" the way you want it to mean. ;)

The Aftermath...& A Few Lil' Secrets.

It's been a whole month now, and I've been holding up much better than I'd thought I'd be able to manage. Single, sane and still surviving. And it seems to be getting better with time.I read this in a book once that time is the best narcotic for pain. Either the pain disappears when it runs its course or a person learns to live with it. At this moment in time something of both is applicable. The pain has not disappeared but there is less of it.The easy going slow pace on the work front is one thing I'm not really appreciating though, cause this is the one time that I could use some of the usual frantic pace involved to keep me occupied. Up until now I haven't told anybody personally about the events that transpired, and the two guys that somehow did manage to run across the blog (which goes to say a lot about how popular the blog is..) to find out have nothing more to offer than buying me a round of drinks so I can "let it out", as they put it. Which roughly means that I should get drunk and then bitch and whine about how things got screwed up. And that's why I haven't played along and don't plan on doing so, I've got nothing to bitch or whine about, I know where and how things got screwed up and I'm not pissed off at anybody. And one of the main reasons is I don't wanna be drunk when I'm sad. I've seen how pathetic I can get when I do that. Total nightmare...you don't wanna know.

Life has changed quite a lot too ever since the thing happened. There are obviously ways in which you expect things to change. Like dealing with all the emotional stuff you have to go through, analyzing what went wrong where and what the future holds. Then there are the slightly uncomfortable social situations where everybody starts wondering why you wanna hang out with them all the time all of a sudden, or how much you've started calling up your friends lately. Communications are affected. I haven't been online to talk to anybody for the whole month now. The Vodafone people must be wondering in awe if this month's phone bill was really mine, the guy who'd managed to sky-rocket his credit limit from a measly 3000 to a whopper of 10,000 bucks. Sleeping patterns are affected. The insomnia still prevails but for totally different reasons. It goes along the pattern of a Sine curve. At the beginning, fresh into love, you're getting no sleep, it's all just so exhilarating. Then as things start to settle down a bit, the amount of sleep you can manage increases...and then with the break-up it's back to zero. Entertainment is affected. Here it's mostly about what could trigger off the depression. Like I've been skipping almost three-fourths of the songs on my play list ( and now I've also got to learn why couples have "our song" and not "our freakin' whole god-damn play list"...once you've split you don't lose out on listening to all your fav songs)...cause they can be potential triggers. Ditto for movies, tv-shows or places you like to hang out at. And these "triggers" can also help in evaluating how much better you're getting....like the day I can sit and listen to "Almost Here" without feeling a thing I'll know I'm good.

And as always, I've tried to analyze what I did learn at the end of it all. And that would be that I've this tendency to get too complacent once I think that things are going along smoothly. And I haven't got what it takes to carry forward a long-distance relationship. That's just not my thing..... ok, I guess that about enough for now, about the whole thing, maybe I should move on to something else. Some of the guys on the blogroll have been seeming kinda down lately ( that's for Adi, Shyma and J with his visa problems) ....hope things are getting better now. Hmmm....next time I think I should try writing about something more interesting... like why i love to hate celeb couples, or why i think blogging is one step away from being termed sadistic, or why i really feel that I have super-powers, it's just that the accident where they are revealed to me hasn't occurred yet. If you believe me in the last one, you'll probably me my arch nemesis. If you don't you'll probably wind up as my side-kick.

I saw this tag on Sam's blog and thought of trying it out. It's supposed to be about revealing ten secrets, but the way it's going I think it could be better described as "10 facts about me that I can think of now" or something like that..cause I didn't see anybody reveal any secrets, and some secrets can get ugly....and I only want you to see my favorite side of me and not my ugly side ( I know I shouldn't stoop as low as quoting songs word to word...but it just fits, doesn't it??), so I'll play it safe. Anyways here goes nothing...

1. At age 14 my parents wanted me to go see a shrink. And they still do.
2. When I'm around girls and I speak in Hindi, for some weird reason it comes out with this accent that I didn't know existed until it happened the first time....and I've no idea why it happens. Honest.
3. In my 6 years in Delhi, I haven't made any friends. Made contacts, made acquaintances... no friends.
4. I will never share my food with a person if he/she had the option of having the same thing I'm having.
5. I can get really uncomfortable talking to people on the phone.
6. I like going to sleep with stuffed toys next to me. Kinda feels good...
7. I'd never tell a girl that I love her just to get her in bed. However I think one night stands are okay, as long as there's no cheating involved.
8. I have really terrible luck. It's no secret, but it's getting tough to come up with ten of these things.
9. A woman's feet can be a major turn-on or turn-off for me. Call it a kink or foot fetish or whatever, but I check out the feet.
10. I think I've got a good sense of humor...but with a terrible sense of timing, so it doesn't help me in any way.

Ok, so that's ten for me. If anybody wants to do it, let me know once you're done. And I'll head out of here for now. Got loads of "Single in the City" articles to catch up on.... ;)

The Trouble With Love Is...

After a relatively mind-numbing month spent contemplating whether I should resume the blog or let the "farewell" post stay up as I intended it to, events of the last week have given me some kinda reason to come back around. Rather ironically, if I may add.

So, I could quote a hundred songs about it or a million words....but at the end of it all nothing else but two words are enough to bring me to reality of it all. Su's gone. Forever. Period. No re-conciliations this time around, no second chances to make amends. Just like that, one day I wake up and it all vanishes. Not the love, just the chance to make it last. And in a way, Life, at least for the blog, has come a full circle. It all started with a heartache, then somehow out of nowhere came "the love", and now it's time for he heartache again, and it keeps getting worse each time. One place where practice doesn't really make perfect. And it's ironical, at least I feel it's ironical, maybe that's the wrong word to use in the context, because she'd said that she would stop talking to me if I didn't get working and put something up on the blog real soon.

Ok, I'll be honest. We both knew it'd come to this one of these days. But, and I'm gonna quote Su' herself over here...."In the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairytale." And along with that a hope, that somehow everything will go right. That somehow, some way, you can make anything possible. And that's exactly where I, or rather we, forgot the ground rules of how the real world functions. We don't always get things the way we want. And as the curtains fall down on another chapter of my life, I muse on what hurts the most. Deleting all the signs that a person you love more than anything else ever existed, or having to forget a whole year of your life just because every little memory reminds you of that person, or the feeling that a couple of years down the line, the other person may not even recall who you are, or at least pretend to do so.

Anyways, I know the best thing to do now is to move on. Just wish it was as simple as the "Fast-Track" advertisements. And as always, I did learn something, came out a little bit wiser. And at the risk of sounding totally goofy, I'd really like to thank Su' for one thing. For taking the scepticism out of me. For showing me that love is not over rated. That what I did believe to be "real life love" was actually feasible. That all the things people say about loving somebody more than one's own self, all that is possible, and not just in greeting cards. And for never complaining when she didn't get all that in return. I'll miss you, Red. And I have a feeling that some part of me will aways love you.

P.S.: If you're reading this, life without you really sucks....but then, you already know that.

23.

22/03/1985.

22/03/2008.

23 years. 23 years since my arrival into this crazy world, since this wild ride called "Life" started...for me of course, life was here much before that. That's the only relatively significant happening I can boast of since I last came out here to write. And a couple of weeks ( that's also exactly how late this post is ) down the line even that seems insignificant....just a change in the digits and a realisation that time is passing me by, that's all I'm left with after the D-day has passed and celebrations attached have died down...that and a few greeting cards and a mother of all hangovers. And it sucks having a festival and birthday coincide....got 34 Holi greetings, 4 calls for the birthday wishes, so much for Mr. Popularity. Not to forget that it's also a "Dry Day"...but trust me to take care of that. The birthday evening just drilled in the fact that my social life shot itself in the head, which in turn points towards why there's nothing" happening" to report. So that explains the header for the post, lame as it is...but then, it goes well with rest of ad libbing I'm doing here under the pretence of writing. But then, small good things have been happening that help me along...help me retain enough enthusiasm to say "Life looks good." That's another thing that my head starts screaming the choicest of explicit adjectives when people ask me how my life's going. That should explain the weird look on my face every time I answer that question. And I know I'm straying off the topic and rambling on again...but I never did claim to have any talent for this, did I?

Honestly, I really want to crib and complain and bitch about life ( though I think I did succeed in that a lil' bit, my apologies ) and certain people in it right now, a LOT, in fact I had the whole thing worked out in my head, how I would go through pouring out my woes one by one to unsuspecting strangers...but I won't ( you can take a sigh of relief now ). Two reasons. You don't care and I don't want to because I know you don't want me to. Nice and simple.

I hope to be back soon...hopefully with something good this time, show streaks of some talent, give the people something they'll like eh? And finally, there are these lyrics that I feel come pretty close to describing my state of mind right now. So I'll leave you with them. Today, I feel unwell.

"All day, staring at the ceiling
Making friends with shadows on my wall.
All night, hearing voices telling me
That I should get some sleep
Because tomorrow might be good for something.
Hold on
I'm feeling like I'm headed for a, breakdown.
I don't know why.
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell...."