My Broken Marriage

It was a very cool day and we were seated in a corner of a famous restaurant in Chennai. It is the first time I’m meeting her and her family. First time in my life , I’m part of a bride seeing ceremony , the very process I had considered irrelevant to the current world and later on had to convince myself that this is the way of life , hanging on to optimism all this way. I was dressed in my usual unconventional way , not giving any consideration to the attire aspect at all. She was dressed in a bright short kurta and a jeans , without any makeup or special care , as this was my clear instruction. I had made up my mind to speak all about me , anything and everything and let her decide whether she can accept me , whether she can spend the rest of the life with me. After a few minutes of being put up in an rather embarrassing position , with the rest of the family members seated around and watching us with teasing eyes and giggling amongst them , I started the whole thing by offering her an ice-cream. We moved away from the crowd , a few meters separating us. We started from the usual talk about families and after a few minutes into this chat , I let her know that I cannot talk to her freely and frankly(dhil kolke) , with the whole crowd following us literally. I was looking for some private moments with her where i can talk about everything and anything about me.We went towards my car and we left for the cool & relaxing ECR and after a few minutes of tense driving by me , reached the Muttukad boating site at around 11 AM.

We spent close to 4 hours there , most of the time talking about our individual lifes , till this point. I talked about everything , my childhood craze towards dance , my capabilities at grasping new things when I was a kid , my love towards tamil and how it transcended to me writing poems on a daily basis and where I stand on that skill today. We spoke about our individual views on issues ranging from the problems faced by the Indian society , movies , personal likes , sex , glamour in cinema , aids, the confused Indian teens , personal likes & small things like eating panipuris on a road-side shop & what not. At the end of the talk ,above everything else I felt that she fitted well into one of the key qualities which I was looking for in my life partner. The maturity , attitude towards life and the openness to talk & communicate about issues which people generally prefer not to discuss even as couples and listening to the partner when he/she was trying to tell something. We again spoke over the phone the same night and finally came to the conclusion that we will make a good couple if not a great couple.
I wanted the marriage to happen atleast after a gap of 4-6 months so that we try to understand each other to the extent possible during that time. Understanding human nature , being the toughest thing in anybody’s life , if can’t be done within 6 months , can well be attempted at. Our marriage was fixed to be after after 6 months. This was one hell of a time , knowing that the void feeling that was creeping into me day after day for the past few years , was finally going to go and the sheer feeling of having a woman in my life had put my life on top gear. Day after day , our talk kept on breaking boundaries after boundaries , throwing open our minds to various new things into our lifes and simply the feeling of the areas which we might explore as a couple after our marriage kept me flying day after day. This started showing on my behavioral aspects too. I , who was perceived as a serious faced chap till the time somebody really started moving with me and got to know me , was undergoing an total makeover on my outlook , helping me to pose a happy face all time around.

But on the day of marriage , just before a couple of minutes before the time when i was about to leave my bachelorhood behind me , i came to know that she was not intrested in the marriage at all and she was totally forced into this. I did a fast run through of the events starting from the day i met her till this time. Everything seemed to just evoporate in front of my eyes. I got into the room where she & her family were put up and had an interaction with her (CA in business terms). Finally it was my simple appearance and my bespectacled face which failed to impress her. Being a guy who does not really give importance to external aspects of a person , this was a huge shock for me. I could not really comprehend the situation for a couple of minutes and cursed my inability as a person , for being unable to see this thing coming and kept wondering as to how she was being able to show an totally different face to me inspite of all these things happening inside her , starting from the time when we had met & talked for the first time till this moment. Having this inside her mind for so many months and still she was talking to me as if nothing unusal was happening. Total deceivement , one can say , but to me it was a total loss of trust on a system which never succeeded in convincing me , till the time i started to feel that it was not possible for me to lead my life single anymore and having seen the method seeming to work fine in a few of my friend's cases. Everything seemed to come crashing on me and the void feeling inside me started to grow bigger. How can a person who has been all alone for 27 years in his life , without the least presence of a woman in his life , can be expected to accomodate a new woman into his life all of a sudden. An thought provoking question in fact , one still unanswered by me.

"Abhe yaar!. Ut na yaar . Time Saade aat baje bhaj gayi bhe. Office ke liye Nikalna hain", It was one of my roomies waking me up early in the morning. Ohh!! Everything was a damn dream , rather an nightmare!. Hope i never come across something like this in my life.

The way I do it

Having become a seasoned sambar maker , thought of sharing my sambar making experiences with you guys. All my room partners are Marathi Manoos and the first day when I offered them to make sambar for dinner , they were really happy as we were having plain dal/Rice for the last couple of days. Finally i started with the process of making sambar . First the sambar dal was cooked for around 45 mins , as we did not have a cooker. Once that was done , i started with sambar and in the process of making it , after a few minutes , first i felt it would really be thick , so added some water & after 5 mins changed my decision and added some more sambar powder. After a few iterations it really looked like the valva of a volcano from the top , with the various layers hidden inside. Finally it was more of watered down version of sambar powder on dal & eventually my RPs liked the taste of it (what else can they do , it was around half past ten @ night). Thank GOd , it did not have any master-effects on my stomach & the day passed off.

Next time i assured myself that this time it is going to be great and after a bit of analysis , came to the conclusion about what i really missed in my last attempt . It was the missing vegetable which i concluded , for the lack of taste. I went ahead with 200 GMS of Ladies Finger and to improve the mix , i boilded it with the dal. This resulted in some sort of viscous mix , which after the next few steps , resulted in a more unrealistic version of sambar. No need to mention , this was again accepted by my RPs.

Stung badly by my inner voice , i decided to act in a more prepared manner. I went to one of my friend , recorded the recipe in my mind & saw him making sambar from the scratch. It was the judgement day and here is how i went ahead with the recipe. The recipe is for you here

Take three handfuls of dal , clean it by rinsing thrice or more. Put atleast twice the amount of water for the dal to boil. Put this in a cooker & let it go on till you hear a minimum of 4 whistles. Keep it aside and take a clean vanali , without any traces of water on it. Pour some oil , let it for few more minutes till it starts boiling. Add some seeragam , rai , vendayam, chopped onions & green chillies and keep stirring till the onions start turning a bit brown. Add some ginger paste , imli water , two heaped spoonfuls of Sambar powder , salt & chilli powder to taste. After a few minutes add the boild dal & the vegetables. Keep it on flames , till the mixture starts to boil and the moment the raw smell of the mixture is taken over by the sweet aroma of Sambhar , turn of the burner. Add some chopped coriander leaves for seasoning and your easy make sambhar is ready. Mind you , after this occasion , i started making real good sambar and have received rave reviews from my RPs.

P:S : Following this amateur recipe might lead to various unpredictable effects on your stomach and the author or his recipe cannot be held in any way for those incidents.

Rakhi Sawant : Good Fodder For The Media

In the last couple of days , i have been seeing various newspapers and their electronic versions , oozing with pictures of Mika kissing Rakhi or otherwise and the surrorunding controversy. What actually has it yielded , more controversy & the associated publicity for Rakhi , who was already getting embroiled for performing sleazy steps at a function in Maharashtra and a lot of people ( including me) came to know that Daler Mehandi has a younger brother by the name Mika. Whether these girls are really under-paid not to afford clothes that really give you a feel of wearing something or is this how fashion sounds these days , frankly i don't know & these people seem to have taken openness by it's literal meaning. But one thing is sure as hell , Indian media's reach among the teens & pre-teens via the paper mode is so prevalent that whatever would have been read by you/me could have been very well read by an fourteen year old. If you people remember , sometime back there was a proposal from the I&B minstry about bringing in a scheme , wherein papers would be given some sort of certificates like the one which is already in place for movies. An A with a circle around it for 18+ olds , U for everyone etc. Under the current context , i see that proposal as something close to being logical but can only ridicule that for being not practicable. For the kind of dependency politics has on media , the government stands to lose more than to gain by this step.

What we can do about this , we can ask these people to be more sensible , as their behavior as such has an impact on the society. In this case we might get ourselves labeled as someone from the neolithic age , whereas we are not & seeing from a logical sense , are more responsible and matured than them. So the first option more or less seems to be ruled out. The second one is to ask the media to be more responsible and insensitive to such stunts , which i personally believe can afford. Might be who knows , Rakhi might have Called Mika the very next day and they might be laughing on the phone about the whole episode!. God only knows the pattern of their operations and let us better keep all our senses insensitive to these things.