Anwesha's law of food making and its subsequent consumption states that the time taken to consume a meal is inversely proportional to the time taken to prepare it and quality of the meal itself, if the quantity of food remains constant.

For instance, I could spend 3 minutes to fry an egg and find it consumed in another 5 minutes, while it would take me 2 hours to make 'mishti-doi' and have it disappear in less than a minute.

So, assuming you want your meal to last as long as possible, cook it badly, put all sorts of unwanted ingredients like 'potol', green beans and cook it really fast. However, note that since quality is an extremely sensitive factor in this equation, do not extend its range so much that your meal finds no takers.

For instance, first time when I cooked one packet Maggi in one litre of water, it took a little more than 3 minutes but nobody wanted to eat it. When I cooked 5 packets of Maggi with the same amount of water, it took almost the same amount of time but was better received.

Lastly, never cook in large quantities. You might find that after a point, people get bored of eating the same meal day-after-day even though it might be well cooked. Results may be obtained by experimenting with a one kilo packet of puffed rice to make bhel-puri on the same evening and expecting your parents to consume all of it.

Cold Play

I have a bad cold and it has set me thinking.

Catching a cold is like catching a butterfly. If you catch it, you've got it imprisoned and its yours for the time until it dies. However, to know whether it's really yours, you should learn to let it go (with the help of Coldarin). If it comes back to you (as soon as you think that you've had enough of those tablets) it's yours. But if it does not come back, you were only dreaming about it on a light-headed midsummer night.

Black is back

Welcome to the new look blog courtesy J seen here hiding behind the transparent coffee cups. It is in testimony to his coffee drinking capabilities that I dedicate this blog to him. While I could not finish the iced coffee adulterated with God-alone-knows-what, J was not to be put down. The picture is a result of our efforts after almost 30 minutes. Its not difficult to guess who crossed the finishing line.



They say if we finish 6 of these, we'll get a free one. That's what makes this exercise so challenging!

Back to the blog, this reminds me of my teen aged days when my wardrobe had four black tops, a few black skirts ( I wasn't into jeans yet) and all my shoes were black. Whether it was a futile attempt to create an optical illusion about looking slim or simply a fad of the age, I'll never find out. Suffice to say, I remember embroidering pink flowers on a black colour rubia handkerchief for SUPW (ofcourse! Some Useful Periods Wasted) and I cried when we had to dye our black cloth in other colours to create the bandhni (tie and dye) patterns. My mother refused to buy me any black coloured woolen garments because she felt that winter was about bright colours and I protested against this curtailing of my freedom of expression. My first pair of sneakers were black and I wanted a cool black school bag that year even though school regulations were blue. In short, I was in love with color black. Like its true physical nature, it represented an amalgamation of all the mysteries of growing up, the invisible thoughts that played in my mind in those formative years, to absorb everything and give away nothing. As this blog takes a dark turn, who knows what secrets will be unravelled. Perhaps, a riddle to be solved or an enigma waiting to be discovered. Keep your fingers crossed and keep guessing...........

Mumbai, Thou art fled to brutish beasts

In the face of what’s happened to my country a week ago, I still feel shocked and helpless.

I know that no place on Earth is safe.
I have learnt that being a law abiding citizen means nothing.
I have seen that there is no such place as a ‘secure locality’.

Is the future generation of my country going to grow up in the fear that they can never take living for granted?

I thank God every night for keeping me away from death for yet another day. And maybe, this is how I am going to live for as long as they will let me.