Cooking

Alert Reader Rahul Singh commented:

I dont know anything about kids but i can imagine that your pista and kishmish are real angels, although you may contradict some times when they r in a mood of crying, otherwise you have to agrree with me. anyways i like to read about them and i am reading abt them from quite some time. just a question why r u keep bloging the "how to be a cook" kind of blogs in between your regular blogs.

Thanks for the comment, Rahul Singh, and may I say: How the hell did you find my blog?? Seriously, I'm shocked. I thought it was my two friends reading this thing, and that's it.

About the cooking, I should clarify.

My original issue was that I wanted to deal with the problems and complications and confusions and learnings that arose when I turned into a housewife and then into a stay-at-home mom. This being an Indian household, many of those problems and learnings and so on have revolved at some point around food and cooking. First it was my learning how to cook stuff my husband and I would both like. (Well, first it was figuring out that I was going to be doing all the cooking except for fried peanuts, which my husband can cook.) And then it was learning how to cook all our food without spending the whole day in the kitchen. (And at one point, it was about learning how not to allow the kitchen door to swing closed behind me, so that I'm locked for hours in the kitchen while A. sleeps the entire afternoon away in the bedroom, oblivious to my cries for help.) Lately, it's been my learning how to deal with servants--having two servants, telling them how to cook stuff, coaxing them into not using all the oil in the house to make a single subji, and getting over my fear that they are going to poison me and steal my children/laptop. (That last fear deserves its own post. Maybe later.)

So I imagined Desperate Chickoo as a place where I'd tell great stories about my life as an Indian housewife, all drived by a recipe that brings the whole thing together. But you know what? It's too hard, so I gave up immediately. And now I'm just adding random recipes that connect tangentially or not at all to the rest of the blog.

For example. . .

A.'s Fried Peanuts
Take some raw peanuts in their skin.
Throw them into a kadhai/wok that has hot oil in it.
Stir the peanuts around in the oil until they are brown and done.
Take the peanuts out of the oil, add salt, and eat.

Star-struck

When we arrived in Mumbai in May 2004, I saw Shah Rukh Khan at the airport baggage claim. He had beautiful blond highlights in his hair, and later A. was convinced to style his hair the same way.

I saw Salman Khan's brother, such a forgettable and unpleasant looking actor that I have forgotten his name, on the lift at Lilavati Hospital, as I was coming from an appointment with my doctor. I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out where I knew that weird-looking guy from, then another 10 minutes looking for a PCO, so I could call A. and tell him about having spent 2 minutes on the lift with this guy.

I saw Govinda in the cafeteria at Lilavati Hospital; he looked sad and burdened, probably because his wife and child were in the ICU there. I felt sad for him as fans still approached him for autographs. Later I told my mother-in-law about the sighting. "Was he looking fat?" was her question.

I saw Abhishek Bachhan (along with a machine-gun-toting bodyguard) near the room where I got my last ultrasound, on the eve of Pista-Kishmish's delivery. (Apparently Amitabh himself was inside the x-ray room.)


That same day, I saw Anupam Kher as he walked through the ultrasound waiting area. We also saw many more stars at Lilavati that day, but many of them only A. recognized.

I saw Suniel Shetty at. . . um, at Lilavati Hospital. It was nearly midnight, and I had finally come to terms with the fact that the babies really did need to be delivered. My semi-urgent operation was first thing in the morning, and we had delayed and delayed our trip to the hospital. By the time we got there, the grand sliding doors by the fountain were closed, and we had to walk all the way around the hospital and enter through Casualty. We then had to walk through the inside of the hospital, back to the sliding doors, just inside which the admissions desk was located. As we finally made it there, with our bags and our parcels, not to mention my big pregnant self, the doors slid wide open and in walked Suniel Shetty. I was livid. In my truly embarrassing Hindi I demanded loudly of the security guard, "A 9-months-pregnant girl has to walk so far and can't come in through these doors and has to walk all the way to casualty, and this Suniel Shetty can walk right in the front doors just like that?" The security guard just looked back at me with a blank, helpless look, because of course the answer to that question is, "Yes."

So with all these sightings, why was I so happy to see this guy at a Pizza Hut in Powai?

Even I don't know. But, readers, if you can identify this star (and I use that term very loosely, in the case of this individual) you win Desperate Chickoo's very first contest!

Good luck!

Letter

Please take a look at this letter to the editor in the current issue of Outlook magazine. It's under the headline "Oh Lord, Save Us from the Lard."

Some time I'll get my thoughts and emotions organized enough to write about breastfeeding on this blog. Until that time, this letter will do.

Naps 2

Right now it's early afternoon, and both Pista and Kishmish are napping. They have been napping for nearly 2 hours, a disconcertingly long time for a shared nap.

This happens, rarely, when A. is home, and somewhere around the two-hour mark he'll get worried:

A.: Have they really been sleeping for two hours?
Me: [mean stare]
A.: OK, I know, if they don't sleep then I ask what's wrong with them, and if they do sleep then I ask what's wrong with them.
Me: Uh, yeah. It's taken weeks of no-cry-sleep-solutioning this family to get to this point. Please.
A.: OK.
pause.
A: But still, is this normal?

I shouldn't blame my husband. I've gone into the room where Kishmish is sleeping several times in the past few hours. I've been known to hold a hand over a baby's chest to make sure it's rising and falling; I've felt the deep, deep regret of waking a sleeping baby, as I checked for signs of life.

I just want to add: Kishmish screamed as I was writing this post. By the time I made it to her room (no great accomplishment, as this whole place is about 900 square feet), she was asleep again. Pista's sleeping next to my desk, and she's been whinnying and neighing in her weird sleep.

I'm sorry, but is this normal??