My Mango Cheesecake

Exactly 10 years ago on this very day, that is, 8 June 2003 something wonderful happened. Something wonderful that changed my life forever.

It was a Sunday, and I along with my parents took an hour plus long afternoon journey from Nerul in Navi Mumbai to the Domestic Terminal of Mumbai’s passenger Airport at Santacruz. There, very near to the Airport, at the Orchid Ecotel Hotel in a nice cozy hotel room we met Mr. John Paul Moolayil, who was there along with his beautiful wife Mrs. Valsa John Paul and their only daughter who was still pursuing her final year in Architecture from Satyabhama University in Chennai.

After a brief introduction, the seniors reminisced their good old forgotten days, most of which they vaguely remembered and talked about some common family friends from their past life in Baroda which, was followed by a string of modest unidirectional bragging by my dad, which instantly elevated me to superhero status. Notwithstanding my embarrassment at imagining myself flying with my undies over my trousers, which almost ended up with me burying my head into my shoe soles, the chubby, bearded and cheerful Mr. John Paul who was dressed in a silk white Kurta and Kerala Mundu allowed me to take his daughter down to the lobby for a ‘private’ chat.

Down at the lobby, we stopped by the Cake Shop and picked up a Mango Cheese Cake and two spoons. We found a table in the corner and posited ourselves there. On that table, I found out that she had three names, Elizabeth, Thara and Unni and she found out the Sweety was not just a pet name! There, we also talked about our college life, our friends, our religion, our aspirations and the movies that we loved.

As we talked, and she narrated on how her parents conned her into making this visit to Mumbai, I got lost in those eyes, taking advantage of which, she proceeded with raiding the Mango Cheesecake using both the spoons.

That day, I don’t know if it was her used spoon or the Chef’s handiwork, the Cheesecake tasted awesome. That day I fell in love with Mango Cheesecake. Somewhere in the days that followed, I fell in love with that girl.

Kevin’s School Bus.

After a few unattended calls to the School Bus driver, Kevin’s mother assumed that possibly, the bus met with an accident or had breakdown and so decided to drive him to his school.

She drops him at the gate, and before leaving finds out why the bus did not come today.

As she leaves the Admin Office, a visibly shocked Kevin runs out of his class crying and frantically running to the building exit. His mother intercepts him at the lobby and this is what he had to say "Amma, I forgot to tell you. I don't have school today"

A little bit of insanity

A little bit of insanity is good

If it gives me wings to fly

 If it takes me far and high

If it gives the world a better I

A little bit of insanity is good

If it brings in happiness and joy

If it posits a smile

And parks a tinkle in the eye

A little bit of insanity is good

If it binds my home

If it makes us one

And from us, it takes away the ‘I’

A little bit of insanity is good

If it makes me courageous

If it makes me carefree

And takes away my fear to vie

A little bit of insanity is good

If it pushes me to strive

To kill my fears high and dry

And put me on the podium high

A little bit of insanity is good

If it brings in more sunshine

If it keeps the wind blowing fine

And  kindles my stars to shine

A little bit of insanity is good

If it makes your tresses glow

If it causes my words to flow

And a poem for the world to know

A little bit of insanity is good

Yes, for me and for you

And for the rest of the world too

A little bit of insanity is good

A little bit of insanity is good

My poem for feeling alive.

Treat life as a precious gift.

Live each day as if it was your last.

Reinvent a new you.

Give it all, go that extra mile.

Respect the people around you.

Become what your kids want you to be.

Rise in Love, do not trip and fall.

Thank God.

That is all.

All these Facebook peoples, I say.

FB is a great place to stay in touch with your friends and relatives.

In fact, FB has become an integral part of my life, especially since I found most of my ‘BFFs’ from my school and college days and started socializing with them. In the last 1500 odd days since I moved on to FB from Orkut, I have made many friends, some of whom are related to me, and some others who are linked to my past life in some or the other way. 

This is my analysis of the 10 types of people they have ultimately become:

1.      The Dead People:

They seem to be dormant, but are actually active, very active. They do not interact openly, they do not post anything about themselves nor do they like or comment on your posts, but they are reading everything. They are around; they are watching your every move.  The worst is when you meet them in person; they come up with “I see you all the time on facebook. Very active ahh?”

2.      God’s Agents:

They share religious pictures with the instructions “Like under 10 seconds and get blessed” or “share and experience his holiness”. Most sensible people on FB do not approve of these, but some girls do like and share them anyway, out of fear that their Aunt who has posted this may think that her niece is an atheist and may not help her in finding her NRI groom.

3.      Quote Aunts

They spend their whole day searching for quotes. Every day they share at a minimum ten quotes, most of which are not applicable on them while dealing with their husbands, also, they do not remember sharing these after two days, and so it repeats.

4.      The Day Spoilers

They post all the unwanted stuff and the best you can do to yourself is ‘hide’ their posts. Some of these people post pictures of unwell kids and ask you to like them, some post pictures of gory accidents and missile attacks. Some others try to force their political views up your ass.

5.      Game Worms:

Not satisfied with playing games on their androids and ipads these guys log into FB to play games. What is worse is that they repeatedly keep sending you invitations for games like Farmville, Criminal Case, Train station… blah blah blah.

6.      The News Agents:

They share all sorts of weird and sometimes obvious (like cricket scores and election results) news from here and there and everywhere as soon as it is published on one of the news websites. Some of the news they share is also fake.

Then they have their expert panelist friends, who go to youtube and wiki, do their research and come up with a comment like “Do you remember that match in 1985, at Lords. This knock reminds me of that.”

7.      Religious Advertisers:

They are always on a mission of promoting to the FB junta that their religion is the best, that their scriptures have all the solutions to your problems and that their deities are the most pious of all. Invariably all their post will share a picture about their religion. Apart from posting these pictures, they are also most active on their specific religious FB page.

8.      The Next Gen:

They are the ones who have more than thousand friends on FB. They painstakingly tag each pic of theirs with as many friends as they can. Although I would call them the next generation of FBers, they are pretty old generation in terms of technology awareness. I say so because their comments and posts are full of compressed words. For example, who writes ‘avn woful tym a ma frns BP’ instead of ‘having a wonderful time at my friend’s Birthday Party’. The only reason why they write so is because either they are using their parent’s discarded basic mobile phone or they do not know how to switch on the spell check feature on their system.

9.      The Hot Pie:

Anyone who has secret admirers falls into this category. Age, race, sex do not matter. This could be a young person who posts stylish drool worthy pictures, or could also be that boyfriend/girlfriend you couldn’t have while you were in college. Any damn thing that this person does is almost always liked or commented upon by you.

10.  Useless Buggers:

They are always on FB. They give an impression that they do not have any other work in their workplace. They are all the time chatting with someone or are busy posting waste comments on their friend’s wall, which continues through the day, and even while at home sometimes until very late in the night. 

Some of these people even write blogs on unimportant topics and share it on FB. And then, there are some other Useless Buggers who spend time reading it.

Chicken rolled in Lettuce

After many days, I am back with a food blog. Which means that I was back in the kitchen; nevertheless, it is not yet time for the bachelors party. Yes, my wife has not gone to India. My family won’t be leaving for India till end of June this year, which means that I am still captive, which is good, because it also means that I am still being taken care of well.

So how did I end up in the kitchen? Blame it on my big mouth …. errr …. blame it on my fast fingers! We were on one of our usual familial chat sessions on whatsapp and I happened to poke fun at her. It was a routine humble poke by a husband, not offensive at all, but her fast fingers promptly typed “No dinner for you tonight”. In addition, since her relatives got involved, it became a prestige issue and she found it hard to back out. That was it! Anyways, she was kind enough. She did take out a frozen chicken breast and leave it in the sink for thawing and left upstairs after promptly reminding me of my diet for the day, which was limited to fresh vegetables.

Now this is how this dish was born, out of a piece of chicken thawing in the sink, my dietician’s instructions, a peg of Jack Daniels, some salt, a generous load of pepper, a few pinches of spice from the jars lying on the kitchen counter (names of which I don’t remember) and my laziness to chop a few vegetables.

Actually, the cooking and arranging time for this dish is only around 5-7 minutes, which means it is easy to cook. Most of the time consumed is for thawing (around 90 odd minutes) and marinating (around 30 odd minutes).

Cooking this dish is as simple as Agent Oso’s project and requires just three special steps:

1.    Cut the chicken breast into small pieces and marinate it in a base made up of a peg of Jack Daniels, plenty of pepper, some salt and some mixed Indian spices. Then, leave it in the fridge to marinate for around 30 minutes.

  

2.    Pan fry the chicken, which hardly takes 2-3 minutes.

3.    Roll the fried chicken in strips of Lettuce and secured each one with a toothpick.

That’s all.

Top Five advantages of empowering your wife with a credit card and a car:

5.       She will drive the kids to their extracurricular classes, take them to the doctor/dentist as required and will even drive down to their school and pay their fees without any delay or fine.

4.       She will do all the grocery shopping and ensure that your stocks of drink accompaniments are up to date at all times.

3.       Every other day you return from work, you will find her eyebrows neatly trimmed, face fresh just like it was out of a face pack, hands manicured, feet pedicured and yourself floored, stunned, stumped and what not!

2.       You will be able to drink as much as you want in that late night party, because you can now rely on her for that safe drive back home.

1.      She will deliver you your dabba of fresh hot and tasty food right on your office desk just before lunchtime.