Colours of Thoughts

Over the past year cooking has turned out to be one great stress buster, not that I am or was in a ‘lot’ of stress. It’s just that it is so much fun when you concoct something and it magically turns edible. Looking up recipes and deciding the most suitable among the zillions available across youtube, blogs and websites has become easier. The simple thumb rule is look at the ingredients, you have all of them go ahead and read the recipe, you don’t, next please. A few frustrated unfruitful search has often lead to experimentation which have sometimes turned out well. The chicken kabab was one such case. With no clear recipe in hand, I went by intuition and it did not give up on me.

Looking back, living a definitive formative phase of my life in a college hostel in a campus that was 3 kilometers away from the nearest civilization and a mess that sometimes had grasshoppers in food did have its impact on me. Being brought up as the only child pampered with all sorts of delicacies churned out by the world’s greatest cook have almost enslaved my taste buds. However, those 4 years did bring a change, a change in expectations, a change in wants and a change in threshold altogether. So all I look for now is edibility in food. Eating out in Indian restaurants is more a decision out of time crunch or need for change rather than attraction to the quality of food itself.

Being a Hyderabadi, cravings for Nanking, Biryani and Mirchi Bhajji are at an all time high alongside the craving for a leaf meals at Saravana Bhavan in Chennai. I haven’t had better biryani or better avial elsewhere. My attempts at biryani remained attempts and never really turned out great. And I did not dare try avial.

“I’m not going.” The tone in which she said that reflected how serious the decision was. “It’s important and you know it.” I said.

I was standing by her side, happy, nervous, conscious with people all around me, all at the same time. Confused I looked at her only to see my reflection in her eyes. Emotions dancing over our heads just as she did on the stage when I first saw her. A trance. Amidst a sudden muted commotion, I heard, ”… I declare you man and wife.”

Ten years had passed since that precious moment. Me, the sole survivor. Aradhana, the testimony.

A dark morning. The sun was being overpowered by the clouds. Calm and gloomy, a perfect setting which went unnoticed. ”Are you ready?” I asked, “It’s time we started”.

“I’m not going”.The tone in which she said that reflected how serious the decision was. “It’s important and you know it.” I said.

“But we can’t leave Aradhana alone with her fever,” she protested.

“It’s difficult for me too, but he’s serious. You know that the hospital’s not far and it shouldn’t take more than an hour, we’ll try and be here soon, moreover mom’s coming here to take care of her.” I said.

An eerie silence followed.

“Please”, I thought.

“No”, she thought.

“This is the last time we are leaving her alone” she said all of a sudden.

“I promise” I pledged.

Tears blurring our vision, we started. Me at the wheel, she by my side. With thoughts ruling our minds we drove along.

Air hitting hard on our tear stained faces, a sudden blindness followed and a few seconds passed. I opened my eyes only to see her blood stained face. Shocked! Helpless I try getting closer to her. “Aradhana….”, her voice died.

It’s been two years since.

“Aradhana”, I called, “Are you ready? It’s time for your dance class.”

“I’m not going….”

————————————————————————————————————-

I wrote this story a long while back for a short story contest. Found it in my almost orphaned Google Notebook and cleaned it up and put it up here.

So, how is it pronounced? All along I used to pronounce my name as Jo-el, Jo as in Jo and el as in el in ‘elegant’. Now this was all the Joel I knew. Last year at around this time I stepped into Chicago and during the first day in office as I was being introduced, almost everyone pronounced my name as Joe-l. Now that was new to me. How am I to know that Joe-l is the American way to pronouncing my name? So then there were corrections and clarifications where people asked me how I pronounced my name and finally most people who know me now pronounce my name as Jo-el and not their natural Joe-l. At times I get confused too. And all along I thought mine was the simplest and most easy to pronounce name. Wrong again.

All of a sudden I have been engulfed in this feeling that I have done nothing interesting all through the four years here at Cognizant. Looking back to see if there was at least one proud piece of work or at least one proud moment, there is absolutely nothing that can or will ever evoke a ‘wow’ and this concerns me deeply.