Le Chef.

The Writer (W) in conversation with The Basboobah (B) on her highly combustible weekend. (Because she cooked on Gas.)

W: So, Restricted Entry heard about your cooking frenzy this weekend B.
B: Yes, well. Sometimes the domesticated me rears her head and wants to do extremely domestic things. Since cooking is the least effortless of the lot - when compared to folding the hordes of clothes tucked into every orifice of the house i live in, or dusting everything - this seems easy peasy. Besides, i was cooking at a friend's place, which meant that i wouldn't have to clean up after my cooking. (Snickers.)

W: What did you cook, and how long did it take you?
B: (Thinking) Let's see now... i made Dal, Ghee Rice and Stuffed Capsicum on Friday night, my trademark Maggi on Saturday morning, and Chicken Curry on Sunday afternoon. Yes, that's about it.

W: Trademark Maggi! That's interesting. Any chances you'll be seen on the Maggi pack soon?
B: (Tinkling laughter): Oh no no no. I'm above all that. Although i might strike a deal with them and get a trademark masala made... perhaps earn some royalty and stuff you know...

W: Why, you don't plan to get married? You deprive a very lucky man of a lot of happiness if you don't.
B: (Laughing out loud) Trust me, i'm giving some man a lot of happiness if i don't get married to him. Although my friend's husband, when he tasted the food i had made on Friday night, immediately began to think of all the eligible men he knew that he could set me up with. His logic was slightly similar to yours: why deprive a man of good food? (Laughing loudly) Men, i tell you. Such chauvinists.

W: So you're pretty good at cooking, huh?
B: Well, i'll pass. I guess i could safely say that there are some things that i'm pretty good at, and some that i'm a novice of sorts at.

W: So what are you good at?
B: The basics - eggs, rice, daal, vegetables, curries. I'm still coming to terms with Biryanis and Pastas.

W: That pretty much covers everything, doesn't it?
B: Not unless you're talking about my clothes! (Laughs out boisterously.)

W: Err, umm, he he. Well, it was a pleasure chatting with you B.
B: The pleasure's all mine, hon. (Winking.)

You know what's funny, F?

That you called me a close friend, and then vanished when you knew about the crush. It was a crush for heaven's sake, not love! And i haven't even been crushy about you for a bloody long time now. Dayem, mister, you got some serious misconceptions nursing themselves in your head! Oh, and if you're still holding the grudge of me calling you a cradle snatcher, then it was meant to be as serious as you calling me a Paedophile a long time back. So that sort of makes us even now.

But that's not the point. The point is, you vanished. And that makes me feel like shit, you know. Like i was never really as close a friend as you made me out to be and all that. Ignore. That's what you've done.

And i'm cool with that - it was a choice you made, not me. Makes me respect you a little less, but what the hell. It's not like it makes any difference to my life or yours.

Bad Directions Day.

Yesterday was terrible. I screwed up miserably on directions not once, but thrice in less than five hours. For the first time ever.

It began with my going to K's place for the evening (after sleeping the whole day because i worked like a dog over the weekend till 11 on Monday morning), and got the autowallah to turn at the wrong left. Where i was really close to her place, the wrong turn took me really far away from it.

Much later when it was time to head home, we called for a cab. (By the way, what is it with all these guys? They're fine the first couple of years and then just deteriorate.) So call comes from Cab No. 1, asking for directions. Half an hour. That's how long we kept directing him to the place. He got thoroughly lost on his own, then got to a place and asked us to walk it there. K lost it then. She yelled and yelled at the guy, and we cancelled the cab. B called another cab, and that one too, we kept giving directions to for at least 20 minutes. He managed to make it to K's home, though.

I think i must have been affected by lack of sleep for the directions to have been so bad. And it must've been a serious lack of it, because it's never happened before. Ever.

By the way, have i confessed how much i like Jezebel by Sade?

That's not quite what i meant.

Last Friday night.

G: So, what's happening on the love front?
Me (getting into the mood with a dialogue i was long waiting to try on her): See, it's like this. I'm like this fertile field and...
G (before i could finish): ...and nobody's sowing? (And there follow raucous laughter.)
Me (disgusted): Eeeyuuuuuu. That wasn't what i was going to say at all.

The damage was done, though. I have removed the dialogue from my Encyclopaedia of Witty One Liners altogther.

A movie marathon weekend.

It started late Friday night with The Reader and went right on through Sunday. Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes were followed by Remy Girard and his troupe of mistresses n' friends in Les Invasions Barbares (Invasion of the Barbarians). Sleep knocked at the doorstep of our eyes only at 6 in the morning. Day dawned at 12 in the afternoon, and was soon washed down with finger-licking Ajwain parathas and Egg curry. A crazy game of table hand ball came after, and then i went over to grandma's. Watched Things We Lost In The Fire on Star Movies that night, followed by another movie, the name of which i don't recall.

Kept Dad company on Sunday as he watched Namastey London. And then channel surfed into Nigella Lawson's kitchen, Samantha Brown's hotel rooms as she took a trip across London, peeped in on Benicio Del Toro to see what he was up to. Started reading Love In The Times Of Cholera, not sure if i can keep up reading prose like this any more. Seems like my days of Classics are drawing to an end. Worked a little, slept a little. Put my culinary skills to use by churning out colourful pasta and some cheesy, herby white sauce. Picked up clothes from Peter England for an uncle, paid my credit card bills, made a couple of long-pending phone calls... and felt good about myself.

Gosh, i love being domestic.

Alright then.

Dear God,

So, you've had your joke. Now can i please have my old self back?

Yours sincerely,
Me.

On what i could safely call a relaxed weekend.

After having worked all these years, i figure that Saturday and Sunday have been redefined for me - any weekend that does not involve work is a relaxed weekend. Even if it means that i end up doing long-pending personal chores. Which i didn't this weekend; rather, i ended up doing some good reading and movie-watching.

Let's call the book reading a Neil Gaiman Dash. Late Friday night, i finished American Gods and then got on to Anansi Boys. Somewhere in the middle of the latter, i figured that i knew who Anansi was because i had a storybook on the spider in my childhood days. Surprising for one so petrified of the Arachnids, but there you go. And i also distinctly remember being besotted with reading the story again and again. So that memory somehow brought the book closer to me. Good reads, both. Anansi Boys more so, because it does have its dose of humour and (Forgive me Mister Gaiman) chick-flickness. The problem though, is that if you've just finished reading a book of his like American Gods, it gets a little hard to shift gear (see, i'm finally driving) and see him in the sort of light that Anansi Boys is cast in. (In short, it's a little difficult to not take Anansi Boys as another piece of sci-fi mind boggler, even if it is more to do with mythology and stuff.)

Then, when i was done with the two, i flipped over to something flippant like a floosy Mills & Boons about a filthy rich female forlorn in a ferocious forest full of furry grizzlies, and how she finds someone frikking hottie in the middle of nowhere to take her under his roof. That done, i got bored and switched over to television.

I managed to catch the last bits of Sweet Home Alabama and caught sight of the extremely good-looking Josh Lucas. Ooooh, he's hot. Then i watched Juno. Nice movie, although i don't see why everybody was raving about it so much. I mean, yeah, it would have been melodramatic if they had shown Juno's parents hitting her and cursing her and asking God to take her away - or her walking in the rain and trying to kill herself and all that - typical Bollywood style, but then underplaying all of that so much just killed the reality of it for me.

Oh, and then on Saturday night N and I braved the mall crowds to go watch a movie in a theatre (because i haven't been to one in the longest time), only to find that we had:
a) Missed a show by half an hour
b) No movie screening for the next one and a half hours or
c) No movie screening for the next one and a half hours that we wanted to watch.
So quietly, we went to Allianz and had some terrible Ginger Tea, saw a very average Photography Exhibition and then headed home to pick up DVDs so we could watch anything we wanted.

We watched Choke. And we almost choked ourselves to death. I also sort of arrived at certain conclusions about Chuck Palahniuk and his writing: he's like Whiskey - you need to develop a taste for it before you can enjoy it, and i certainly haven't reached the enjoyment stage with either. As for his writing, well, i found it easier to watch the book-turned-movie first and then read his movie-turned-book. It increases comprehension levels about what he's saying, greatly. (Or maybe i'm the only loser that thinks this way.) Which doesn't go to say that i read Choke - no Siree, i didn't. Like reading an M&B, i let my eyes rove over the juicy parts and skim through the rest. And what i roved over, i didn't like. So obviously i missed the whole story (unlike an M&B).

So yeah, this weekend like i said was pretty chilled out. No stress. No commotion. A little heartburn, but that i can live with. Four more days of this sort of chilledness and i would have started-finished Shantaram. A book that i have been preciously saving up for the last two years so it can be perfect beachbum fodder when i take that extended vacation to an under-populated beach with gently swaying palm trees and clear blue waters that are not too deep.

Ah... i can taste the sea on my tongue already.

Now who might this good-looking woman be?

And at the insistence of dear F, who is THIS not-so-bad-looking babe?

(P.S: I put up the first picture cause that is what i was wearing to office today - cool-looking Genie pants and a short Black kurti. Paired up with chunky midnight blue earrings that are hardly visible, like my face.)