The mysterious tryst with vanity

Sunday was the day when I officially lost interest in shopping. Seriously.. Enough with vanity! For the past 3 months or so, I’ve been spending all my weekends with my Mom in some or the other corner of Delhi, looking for some or the other random item. I so miss my lazy weekends when all I used to do was watch back to back repeats of all my favourite shows. Now I have no clue whatever is happening to them without my viewership. And the worst part even though I’m done with shopping, it isn’t done with me! Yet!

Yesterday was the day when I told my mom I didn’t want any more jewellery, can you believe that? Me? Who starts behaving like Gollum every time I even so see a picture of the shiny metal (My precious.. My precious.. He’s cute in parts J like the 10-15 minutes of the movie that I’ve watched)

Something has gone wrong with me. Suddenly I’m not interested in anything cosmetic or aesthetic. I couldn’t care less if my shoes match my dress or my dress matches my jewellery or my jewellery matches the décor (Ok that one is a little farfetched never cared about the last one.. the others I did care at one point of time J ) The fact being that the wedding dress in itself is big enough to be a tent big enough to fit a party of at least three, I don’t think my little shoes have even the slightest chance of shining through! And where does that bring us to the status of the anklet and the toe ring I spent one full day looking for? Well.. let’s just say that there moment in the sun sure isn’t my wedding day. And still there was time I paid attention to all that detail.

And you know what is worse? I can’t even wear or use the stuff I’ve bought or another month! I can’t even wear the stuff I’ve bought after three months of painstaking labour! I’m not a hoarder, I am the kinds who has to wear her new clothes the very next day if not the same moment before leaving the store (this is to cover for the fat chance I’d want to exchange J And that happens a lot if I’ve bought something without my mother’s consent, somehow she never approves of my choice. Well that’s for clothes and other trivial things, for life changing events like who I marry she’s surprisingly confident about it .. this is I think material for a different post and a different time, lets’ not lose focus right now shall we J). It’s so frustrating looking at all these clothes scattered all over my room (Yes, my room is the official storehouse for all wedding shopping, even the bed spread L )

Oh wait a minute… it’s starting to clear out now.. brainwave!! I think that’s it! It’s not that I’ve grown tired of shopping all of a sudden, it is the inability to wear my new clothes that’s been driving me crazy all this while.. Thank god for this realization! I had begun to think my long standing affair with shopping had ended, that would have catastrophic! Now that I know it’s just a timing issue I’m glad. Minor road bumps J Just a little less than a month and I’ll regain the will to shop again and so will I have the freedom to not wait before a wear!

And I'll be back to my usual state of mind as regards to shopping, very correctly articulated below:

Freak moment… less than a month to go.. what is wrong with the clock.. does is it really need to run this fast?? Or it’s just messing with me!

The way to a Man's heart!

This post has been shamelessly picked from the other blog that I write, no valid explanation. There may be this if anyone buys it: No body knows about the other blog :D. But this one felt like it belonged in this one.. so here I am, recycling my own material, give it a glance will you please :)

There's a saying which I've heard way too often.. "The way to a man's heart, is through his stomach". Although I'll think the way is a little down south than the stomach :P .. But I wont disregard this old adage, I mean this might or might not be true, but I don't want to risk it!!

So what does that mean? Well that simply means, I've started taking cooking seriously, not that I can't cook if my life depended on it, I CAN! But that's not the way you win a man's heart, even if its someone with as low as a benchmark as my man does (I mean come on he's a bachelor who eats office cafeteria food.. even if I feed him uncooked vegetables I'll beat that mark :) !!) It's enough to stay afloat.. Yes.. but to win his heart.. Umm.. No.

And the more I get to cooking, the more I'm getting addicted to the praises and empty trays :) .. I've always been very fond of baked goods. It always surprises me how magic happens in the oven. But I wont say I'm a born cook. I had in the past tried my hand baking, but I was so bad that even the dogs decided to let it pass. Seriously NO KIDDING! The dog actually did sniff the cake and walk away. And with that historic day in my vivid memory, and to my misfortune my Mum's memory any experimentation I did now was bound to scrutiny. Anyway, I decided I'll take baby steps, first step making my own breakfast :) .. Well there's no science to a bowl of cornflakes you'll say and I agree completely. But once bitten twice shy. I needed to gain confidence. Mixing milk and flakes right, ok i can do proportions now. Then graduating to making my own eggs, now I can cook on flame and not burn myself, great going. Milkshakes, I can operate the blender yay! and such small victories, made me a happy trooper!

There was a time when my mom was away for a week where I had to feed my dad and myself. It's then when I realised, I didn't lack the skill, I only lacked the patience :D .. my poor dad had to eat the same daal for the whole week :P But he's a sweetheart he doesn't complain ( I mean he did .. but while eating so I didn't take him seriously :P )  But Mom came back and I had no intentions of honing my skills further until "The Man" expressed his age old desire of having the wife cook delicacies for him, and how he'd never have that fulfilled as he chose me (angry face!).. That was a moment when the HWIMYM Barney style "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!" buzz came to my mind. Whatever happened to that show man! I was such a huge fan.. now I'm not even sure if it's still on air!

First step was obvious.. his favourite breakfast recipe, Pancakes!! How difficult is that, just flour eggs and milk, and you're done :) .. I thought the effort was worth appreciation, he on the other hand thought the pancakes needed a little more cooking.. *heartbreak*. In my opinion they were fabulous and edible. I even improvised and added orange and apple flavor to it! But what would a office cafeteria food eater know about culinary skills

Alright, we wont back down due to disapproval, only grow stronger and move on. Next up, appetizers, this time i decided Indian is safer, you see if you have the ingredients right, there's nothing much to it. So I thought Dahi ke kebab, and to my rescue came Tarala Dalal (who sadly passed away late last year, may that amazing woman's soul rest in peace, for she helped a million Indian brides, find their way to their men's hearts!!) and did they work up a charm! It got even my dad stand up and take notice.. which is for me the best compliment ever. And because the kebabs were so good, he accepted defeat happily gulping down those melt in the mouth awesome things :D

Now emboldened by my new found success I decided to pick up the one task I most dreaded and haunted by.. Baking. I decided to bake brownies, and thus began the hunt for the perfect brownie recipe, after hours of internet surfing came across one which seemed achievable, got the ingredients, the humble food processor every lazy cook's dream tool came to help, took the abandoned oven and viola! slightly burnt but perfectly edible brownies!!! And once you get over the burnt crust they tasted almost bakery purchased! And yes he agreed to that I can cook and that he only mocked me so he could get to eat the marvelous treats :D

And do I believe him? Of course not! He had to eat his words because the one considered out of the race has won it! :)

And there's nothing which tastes better than the taste of victory!!!

Happy Holi you all!!

Of Mamma's boys' and Daddy's girls'

This realization took me some time, but it is slowly and steadily dawning upon me that I've chosen an almost carbon copy of my dad. It's uncanny how two people from very different cultures and upbringing be so damn similar! And how did I manage to find him of all the people I've met in my life!

Now in what sense are they similar one may ask, let's make a list shall we? (I have this thing for lists J )

1.     They've got similar food habits, none of them consider a meal to be worth it unless at least one bird has been killed and served on the table

2.     It’s easy to keep them happy, good food (satisfying the above condition) to eat and they’ll give you no reason to complain

3.     They both do not care much for clothes and/or colour coordination

4.     Both won’t know subtle hints until one writes on sheet of paper, wraps it on a rock and hits them with it

5.     They find it difficult to be around people, in their different ways but they’re both pretty anti-social

6.     I’m the centre of their world (OK maybe the last one isn’t all true.. but it’s true in parts J )  

And this doesn't end here, he also states that I'm so like his Mom (I could add a list here too, but I wont  J ) and that his mom has scolded him for the most part of his life and the remainder I shall take over. 

He often wonders why all the women in his life (Whom he claims to love more than anything the world.. sometimes I believe him sometimes I don't :P) are so mean to him.. I said maybe it's because he just can't function without being told what not to do, but that's only to humour him, I have a feeling the problem is much deeper than that. I do see a very strong pattern here, and I've sworn to resolve it!

There do exist scientific terms for this: Oedipus Complex (for the Freud fans) and Electra Complex (For the other school of thought) but I’ve always thought Freud to be a crazy man and he took things to a completely different level. My thoughts revolve more around looking for traits one is comfortable with.

I would place my bets on the subconscious feeling of being protected when around someone like your Dad/Mom. If there is one person who could get me out of any soup, it is without doubt my father! Probably when I find the other qualities in this man, I de facto assume ( to be read as most optimistically hope!!) that he would also possess this quality as well. 

This logic sounds simple and understandable enough.. doesn't it? As this is the best that I could come up with. And lets face it I'm no psychologist so my opinion is only personal, so don't go quoting me any where. I don't have any lawyer friends who would bail me out in case this lands me into trouble. (In case their are friends who are lawyers I'm not aware of, could you please raise your hands.. I really need advise on how to get a court marriage done these days, his folks are really worried about it and mine have got no clue! Any chance it could be done online? That would be really convenient J )

And I’m not the only one who seems to think so, anyone I’ve mentioned this to, has at least once, if not for long but a second pondered over this observation of mine:

Women end up marrying their Dads and men invariably end up falling for their Moms! 

So much for running away from your parents in your teens and in-betweens J

Like all other emotions, my understanding of this emotion also comes from animation. What better example of father-daughter love than Ariel and her Awesome Dad King Triton J