Hope For The Best Curry

Servants have always been a problem in my home. For some reason, we don't seem to get a permanent household staff EVER! If they are honest, they don't work, if they work, they thieve, if they thieve, they break down one fine day, confess and leave! Thus, our kitchen sees a variety of cooks, but more often than not, amongst the four of us, it sees Mum the most.

This lady ABHORS going into the kitchen. Heat-sensitive that she is, she ends up letting off a lot of steam (apparently passed on by the pressure cooker)on us, and we end up looking like a lot of steamed lobsters- slightly overdone!

However, since generally my mother happens to be one of those extremely easy-going, happy-go-lucky people, she ends up in the kitchen, cooking for her (relatively) ungrateful family- ungrateful because, more often than not, I eat out, my father doesn't eat, and my sister is not even here!

These days, she has lost patience with proportions. What she does is throw together a few things, and pray to Lokenath Baba to make it come out just right- it might seem hard to understand, but every time she has done this, the dish has been delectable! This is what she calls her Hope-for-the-best Curry. Throw everything together and just hope for the best.

Her recipe goes something like this:

Fish/Chicken/Mutton/Egg/Veggies (SOMETHING!!)
Salt/Sugar/Soya Sauce (Yes, she is a lady who believes in the power of Soya)
Oil/Oil
Onion/Garlic/Ginger or Onion AND Garlic AND Ginger
Water (lots of it)
7up Lemon/Limca (for her to sip on while she happily martyrs herself for her family)
Turmeric, Cumin, Coriander, Chilli powders (preferably combinations-if you are feeling out of sorts go green and if you are feeling naughty, go red)
Hope (oodles of it)
Anything else that comes at hand

Fry what needs to be fried, and add the rest of the things with the water. Bring to a boil and let it simmer after that for 15 minutes. For chicken or mutton, its best to use the pressure cooker (this I mean). After that leave everything in the hands of God, and serve with lots of love.

Trust me- it cannot go wrong. At least, in this lady's case, she stands to be THE case in point, and her hope has never let her down- or us.

Love her for that!

When I held you in my arms

This is dedicated to all the friends who have come into my life, and for all the people to whom I had or have been friends.... its what I felt for them, and perhaps, what they felt for me, when we parted ways... don't judge it by its literary value, but by its emotion...

I held you tight when you cried,
Your sobbing head on my chest.
I stayed awake watching you sleep
just so I could be sure you rest.
I held your hand when you decided
against your best judgment.
I saw you piecing together fragments
of your life just for the semblance of sanity.
Yet when it came to the point of holding on
the part when two voices become one,
there was none- a silence devastating
hollowing, a phantasma from the past.
No present, no future.
Did we come together for a reason?
Did we love because we wanted to?
Did we deserve what we got in the end?
For the end justifies the journey, they say.
Does it hold true for us?
If so, why does it hurt?
Why does the scar burn, like an open wound?
Why does it feel like it was yesterday
that we parted ways?
Is it so that you can come back and soothe?
No longer shall I brood,
for it is a new 'we' now.
You came, and we became.
But its the past, and I need to let go now,
for the past 'we' is no longer there
and the present 'we' needs space to grow...