Word Attack!!

Going to Vellore tomorrow

Hi guys….we’re headed out to Vellore tomorrow for a day. Will be back tomorrow evening, inshallah. Going there because my uncle has his housewarming ceremony tomorrow. Its a time for new beginnings for most Pisceans I think! I’m flush with new beginnings myself…new house, new job…and here, Shakeel mam too has something new to be happy about! A brand new house in Sathuvachari(Suburban area in Vellore).

Over and done with!!

The daawat is over and done with! Last night, everyone came to our home, for the fatiha and dinner. We’d ordered biryani and my mom had made kutt! I don’t know how many people actually know what kutt is, but its this absolutely divine curry that is made from boiling horse gram in water and reducing the broth over low heat(its a process that can take days also!)…yes…then this broth is then given this tingling tadka, and then we add brinjals(never my favorite) and boiled eggs and kofta to it(yum!) In the end, its this dark, deep brown curry that has to be tasted to understand the flavor of life! Now that I have gone on and on about kutt, let me say that it takes a lot of patience to make it as it isn’t something that you decide to make in the morning, and you have it ready in half an hour or even by lunch time. So, its a rare treat and every one loves a dash of kutt.

So, as I was saying, Ammi had made kutt and along with the biryani, everyone loved it. My only disappointment was that since we had decided to have dinner upstairs, all the women were sent off straight up, and the men were sitting below. Hardly any of the women came to my house as we were all upstairs. I mean…why did I take so much trouble in cleaning and dusting if no women were going to come and see it? Only the ladies would actually notice the lovely sheets I had put on the beds and they would see how neatly the kitchen was arranged. I am not a tidy person but when I do take the effort and it goes unappreciated, its a waste!

Nevertheless, some women did come downstairs and they did inspect the kitchen and other rooms…so it wasn’t a complete waste after all. Whew! Now that this is behind me, I think I can breathe in relief and carry on!

A little pissed

I’m a little pissed. Actually a lot. I have realized that there are more than a couple of people in my relatives who feel that I need to be put in my place and are constantly doing it, by saying something rude to me. Its happened twice in the space of three days. I don’t know what I will do if someone does it again. Ignoring them is the best option I feel. I dont want to get into any sort of ugly confrontation and then the repercussions of that are aplenty. So am I just going to stand there and let them say what they want?

I realised that in a way it almost works. Both times, I fell silent and the opposite party didnt know what to do. I think if you let them go on, others in the vicinity will surely see that you are being victimised and their sympathy will be towards you. But what help is that? God save me from such relatives! I wish I too had a caustic tongue that could say a lot of spiteful stuff and hurt the person who hurt me. But I don’t. I just have a bad temper and when that explodes I only feel foolish afterwards. So i prefer to rein in my temper and shut up. Such people are not worth my time.

Anti-climax - No Daawat

Hi guys…I was going to post an entry yday about how the daawat got canceled but I was just too caught up with work and by night I didnt even have the energy to power on the laptop so I left it for today. An uncle in Vellore passed away late Saturday night and my mother in law canceled the daawat at the last moment because everyone would be heading to Vellore for the funeral.

So we ended up eating dal(which I made) and some chicken( which MIL had made and kept upstairs). Our daawat got postponed to Friday evening. I guess that gives me a few more days to finally gear up! Thanks for all the support you guys!! Love y’all!

Not geared for tomorrow

Tomorrow is the big day when my house will be thrown open to all the relatives who will descend at the same time. I haven’t even started cleaning the house yet….gosh…where first it was my tension about cleaning the room, now the entire onus of the house’s respectability depends on me!!! Wish me luck!!

Rat Escapades Part 2

Having not seen the rat for another two days, I thought that this time its gone away for sure. But this time it decided to make its appearance in the morning when Mansoor was around.

This morning, it jumped from behind the TV and scampered behind the fridge in front of our astonished eyes. Mansoor swung into action. He grabbed a broom and tried to push the rat out and finally it ran out, reached the hall, clambered over the sofa, clung to the curtains, and hid on the window. When Mansoor poked the broom there the rat then jumped back right at us, and scampered behind the cupboard(from where he had hidden in my earlier post).

Mansoor was in full josh now. He poked and prodded behind the cupboard, it ran behind the fridge again, and then from there it did the SAME sequence of events I described just a while back. There it was in the window. Mansoor tried to move it from there, and then when we pushed the curtains aside, we saw it wasn’t there!

I thought I saw the cushion on the single sofa moving. I told this to Mansoor and he dragged the sofa outside the house and tipped it. Voila! It fell out, scrambled up and ran away somewhere else. We finally pushed it out of the house. Success!!

Biriyani overload

It starts from tonight. We’ve been invited to my chachi’s house for dinner. The ENTIRE extended family. Shazu and her hubby are on their way to Bangalore from Vellore where they’ve been for the past few days. So, in their honor, there’s a dinner invitation where everybody will be coming. Great!

Tomorrow Bade Baba has invited everyone for lunch. The day after(i’m dreading that one) is when we have invited the whole extended family for lunch and a fatiha to celebrate moving into our house. And you know….in our families the only thing you can expect at a daawat is biriyani. Lots of it!!!

Hits and Misses…

No hits so far..

Only misses.

Yesterday there was too little salt in the curry and roti. Mansoor complained that they make him uneasy and he feels like throwing up. I felt like throwing something AT him.

Today there was too much salt in the curry and the rice. Mansoor complained that I should have made some chicken fry and everything else would have been forgiven. I felt like throwing HIM out of the house.

Time seems to run away like its grown a million legs while I try to finish making breakfast and lunch together so I can put Az to sleep and work peacefully. Before I know it, its 11 am! I really need to grow more organized. Thank god its the weekend tomorrow!

Feedback!!

When I got this month’s Good Housekeepin magazine, I eagerly looked in the Letters to the Editor section to see if anyone, anywhere had mentioned my story in last time’s issue, I found there was nothing at all. Then I spotted a small sidebar where someone from Delhi had written in to say that their photo feature was fantastic. Then, here’s what follows…”This issue was really good…from the touching short story ‘Was it Love’ to the recipes….” etc and etc…:)

My! I thought I’ll take a picture of that page, zoom the section where my story is mentioned and then paste the link here, but unfortunately, the sidebar is in yellow with white text. So, naturally, you can’t see anything.

Feedback feels great!!

Rat Escapades Part 1

Ok. So here’s the update on the rat. It escaped from the confines of the room by getting inside one of the woofer speakers and sitting there very quietly and happily. So far, it had tossed the bread I had kept aside for it(generously topped with rat poison of course) very contemptuously. The bread was in one corner and the rat poison was strewn around everywhere. No sign of any dead rat. Because of course it was sitting inside the speaker.

When the speaker came outside into the hall, it had escaped into the hall without our notice. We thought that it had either died or ran outside the house when the doors had been open. A couple of nights ago, Tuesday night to be precise…I was alone in the house. Sab had gone with ammi and Mansoor had gone to the restaurant.(He runs a small fast food restaurant in BTM Layout, our erstwhile neighbourhood).

At eight pm, the house was quiet and I stepped out of my room bored. There was no TV yet. Bang opposite my room is a small wash basin and I heard some rustling sounds coming from there. I shut my bedroom door and then quickly took a stick and pushed it behind the wash basin. Nothing happened. I peered around but theres not much space to peer as there’s a wall next to the wash basin. I saw a black tail hanging out from behind the wash basin. Horrified I poked the stick at the tail and the rat ran outside and scrambled madly before hiding behind a cupboard that we have kept in the hall.

My heart was racing as I dumped Az on the sofa and came to see behind the cupboard. There was a small gap between the cupboard and the wall. You know, when you’re looking for a rat, you do tend to look down right? That’s what I did. No rat there. The, purely by chance I lifted my eyes. What do you think I saw there?

Yes…a little like in this picture, the rat was actually spreadeagled between the wall and the cupboard while he looked straight ahead, hoping I would not spot him. What a moment that was!!!! I still feel prickly when I think of that!!! I didn’t know whether to stand there amazed, or to chase it again or to take a picture. I regret not taking a picture! I shooed it with the stick and it slithered and ran all the way down and disappeared.

We had no idea where it had disappeared after that. I was hoping it would have run off outside the house. Read the next post and you will know that I was wrong!!!:D