Cooking lessons for first time cookers

If you live in India, give up on your cooking ambitions and head to the nearest restaurant. The meal there is going to be quicker, cheaper and tastier than the mouth watering concoction you think you will be able to cook.

If you lived elsewhere, you couldn't have gone anywhere better to learn about cooking. Believe me. When cricket is a religion, Sachin is God. Just so, when cooking is a religion... you know the rest, don't you?

Ok, let us cut down on some egotism and concentrate on the cutting and chopping. Peak performances can be achieved only when there is a pressure to perform. So if you are going to cook for yourself, there is not going to be any pressure. Therefore invite your boss and his boss for dinner and tell them to skip lunch that day. But never tell them what you intend to cook. What you intend to cook is not always what ends up on the table and it is not on your hands.

The first and foremost lesson for any kind of cooking is to have a Plan B: Always have a plan B. Buy a maggi before you set foot into the kitchen. Following that, unplug the smoke alarm. Smoke alarms are useless devices that go off even when you light a match a mile from them. When you cook there is bound to be some smoke. Don't be bothered about it until the flame under the frying pan leaps onto the top and torches the roof of your kitchen black. When that happens, you should call a fire brigade. So keep your phone ready with the fire brigade number keyed in. The corner stone of any cuisine is onions and tomatoes. Normally, cook books will instruct you to chop them. There is a big possibility that you will chop one of your fingers. Now that is not bad. But not everyone is non-vegetarian. So keeping the herbivore species in mind, use a mixie and crush them all. This is all vegetarian and it saves some time. Since this will be your first time cooking, your imagination would have run wild and you would have bought every conceivable ingredient from the shop. But what you would not have done is cut open the packs before you started the process. But never mind; try and tear open the sachets while the cauldron of broth is spewing smoke and reducing visibility. You are bound to spill half the contents when the sachet splits into two. But never mind that too; because in exactly 3 seconds, the flames from the bottom of the pan is going to move to the top. So your next action to stop the flames will be to pour some liquid onto the pan. Avoid pouring oil unless you wish to understand what the expression 'adding fuel to fire' really meant. Next is the salt lesson. Do not forget to add salt. Just after you have added salt, you will always feel that you should add one more spoonful and after much deliberation you eventually will. But the last spoonful of salt will turn your meal salty and there is no way of getting over the last spoon temptation. When you have arrived at this stage, your meal is ready.

After-note: Never boil ladies-fingers unless you are making a jelly for dessert

Airport at MG Road

That I have spent a fortune to arrive in time for Arun's wedding, and that I have a history of missed buses and trains (I was not the one to blame for any of them), I decided to check on the flight dates and timings. I got the date correct but the timing wasn't so right. The stupid daylight savings had confused the airlines. Or atleast, I would like to blame it on the stupid daylight savings.

Next, I had to figure out my inflight and transit entertainment. But I am not going to worry too much about the inflight entertainment. The kingfisher girls sure know I am flying this Saturday night. But the problem is when I arrive at Bangalore the next morning and when I have to wait 7 hours for my connecting flight to Madurai. Sure, I can use that time to finish a few levels of NFS or The Satanic Verses, but my bum is not very happy to sit on steel chairs for the full 7 hours. So I arranged for Sridhar to pick me up.

I know Sridhar through Arun. For years Arun and D used him as the sidekick who is ready to accompany them on dayouts, dinners and movies. While he was genuinely overwhelmed at their including him in all their activities, he never suspected their evil plans. Otherwise why would Arun's bike have only two seats that will fit only Arun and D while Sridhar rode the bus? Or why would he be part of D's birthday party when there was no party on his birthday? But the unsuspecting Sridhar will know nothing of it. And again, this weekend, they have guiled him into coming to Madurai. So he will not be available to pick me up.

My next option was Collins. But I can not expect Collins to come to the Airport after his hangover from the previous night. So I rang him up to find my way to his house. But there was bad news. The Bangalore airport is an hour and half away from anything that is Bangalore and Collins' house was a 2 hour journey from the airport. Discounting all the travel, check-in and check-out there is probably going to be just an hour for me to spend at his house. Cushioned chairs at the cost of Rs 150 each way and one free beer (that I assume Collins will pay for) are no way better than the free steel chairs. 'Could you send a couple of your girlfriends to the airport.' He almost hung up the phone. People are becoming too selfish to share.

I then trashed out a million exciting ideas for another million unexciting reasons. I finally decided to settle in at the airport. So I looked into the airport website to check out the facilities offered by the airport. To my ill luck their restaurants, food & beverage section was blank. I suppose they did not have anything to offer there.

As the mind wandered around in search of new ideas to keep itself busy, two thoughts struck me. 1. Why are there not people thronging to pick me up? Don't they know that all people flying from overseas bring with them cheap liquor which they generously distribute? 2. Why is the Bangalore airport so far off from the city? Why can't it be shifted to the centre of the city? For sure, space is a constraint and planes need long runways to land and take off. But why can't we move to VTOL aircraft? Now there is an idea. And that is an interesting way to kill my time. So I will build a case to show the government why we should and how we could move the airport to MG Road. And in that 7 hours, I probably will also convince the airport authorities with my idea so that the next time I fly in, I don't have to travel 2 hours for a pint of free beer.

Sunburns & Sticky Armpits

Living close to the equator has its own advantages. Yes, we don't experience spring, or winter; or autumn; but who likes change. The body gets used to the eternal third degree sunburns and sticky armpits. So when I was flown into the middle of semi-arctic winter from the one-weather land, it was only a teeth clattering experience.

In the first few months, the sun never turned up for work. When I woke up, it was dark. When I put on layers and layers of wool and just let my face uncovered for the security guard at the office to identify me to let me through, there was no sun. When I was tired of my (n)ever exciting work and left office, there was no sun either. I was not the only one to complain. One senior manager from a not so sunny land as ours confessed that she used sunbeds regularly to keep herself ticking. But why did she tell me that? Anyway...The sun never turned up and my melanin content dropped by the day at an alarming rate. I was afraid the pretty girls were never going to recognise me when I go back.

But just when I was turning into an Albino, it is summer again; which meant the sun was back from its holiday. But here again, there was a problem. It knocked me out of bed even before the hen was out of its bed. That was not it. I always thought that we ate supper after sunset because we did not want to share it with the sun. When I tried to do that here, I was hungry and sleepy for the first few days unsuccessfully waiting for the sun to go. That is because the sun would not switch off before 10 pm. Overtime for the lost time in winter I suppose. Joseph's family will be the only family that will find it alright with the sun setting at 10, for they probably are the only ones who eat their dinner after 11. It is time to push him to make use of his unused HSMP.

The Quick Curry Maker

Cooking is not what you really want to do when you are back from office after a tiring day. Especially when you sat at your desk all day resisting muscle movements and wondering why the office did not care to plant a water pipe right next your mouth or provide you with a pee pipe fitted chair. The inactiveness is infectious and transcends into your home. And unlike Chennai, eating out everyday is not an option here. The office pays me only just enough to buy groceries, frozen pizzas, booze, video games and a return flight ticket to one European country. So I have the option to either cook or heat a frozen pizza. While settling for the latter is the easier convenient option, it comes with a prize. I am forced to upgrade my wardrobe every fortnight or shift to elastic pants, which both cost me. So I have to use all my IQ to figure out new innovative cooking methods and dishes that will not take me more than fifteen minutes to cook. While new innovations kept popping by the minute, the mother of them all is my patent pending curry maker. For centuries my foremothers (my forefathers only knew to eat) spent half their lifetimes chopping onions and tomatoes. While I applaud them for their contributions to the current state of affairs at my parents' dining room, I can not say the same thing about the last two television infected generations. The melodrama from the mega-serials is augmented by the teary eyed cousins, aunts and grannys chopping onions. And onions and tomatoes are the primary ingredients of anything that I cook. So to help both parties, I present my invention. Or atleast part of it. (I know you will steal my idea if I told you everything) The mixer. Don't chop the onions or tomatoes. Just use your age old mixers and crush them all. The entire cook time takes less than half an hour. And best of all, it works!

That I have stumbled across the greatest invention after the wheel, I must quickly patent it so I can sell its rights. That will bring me extra money which I can then use to eat out everyday.

The leap of 26

Turning 26 is scarier than I had anticipated. A lot of my friends marked their 25th birthdays as new chapters of their lives. It did not seem so to me. Nothing changed at 25. But now, at the brink of 26, everything suddenly seems to be transforming into new and unimagined things. Cricketers are now younger than I am. Friends who played tennis ball football in sweltering heat and fought over a piece of candy bar are sending wedding invitations. The quiet and loud little girls I have known are infesting social websites with pictures of their little ones. The ambitious ones who were once worker-bees now have new-bees working for them. The perennial pencil borrowers have become owners of new homes. Atul has finished his PhD. And I will no longer be eligible for young person discounts on train journeys as I turn 26.

The world around me is changing and I have to borrow a mirror to find out if I am changing with it.