Biryani Dreams

It was my last day at work before the summer holidays. I had the same buzz that I have always had as a kid sitting in an examination hall, dreaming of the juicy mangoes I was going to steal that summer, impatiently waiting for the bell to ring, so I could hand in my paper and run home.

I no longer had exams to pass. But I had exams of another kind – those gruelling, brain draining meetings that I had to get past before I could go home. I was dreaming too, but a dream of another kind – hot, stingingly spicy, mouth-watering biryani.

That Steve Jobs’ speech that every man and his dog would have seen – something about how you connect the dots when you look back and seemingly unrelated events lead you to where you are – I am just telling you right away that this post is all about that.

So. (I have just hit an epiphany that I no longer have to write grammatically correct English as mandated by the GMAT and conversational English is so much easier on the lips and fingers) Google might possibly know all that I have been thinking for the last several years and might even predict what I would think in the future as I have got into this habit of googling anything and everything I think about. (Okay, now, I know where this is all leading to. My wife is going to check how many times I have googled her name since morning and the truth is going to be out today) So, I googled biryani. I googled the origins of biryani, the types of biryani and even memorised the making of a version of biryani. The meeting ticked away slowly. And painfully. I shook my left leg rigourously, waiting for them to say their good byes, before I could pack my bags and head home. I was all set to go home and make the best biryani in town.

Back at home, the wife who had decided to clean the kitchen nonchalantly stated, ‘you know the bag of rice that your mom gave us to make biryani? There were insects in them. So I had to throw the bag out.’

The stolen mangoes were always as juicy as the ones from the exam hall dreams.