My culinary crimes!

I am a well read lady. Or so thinks my mother! My parents hardly inducted us into kitchen skills earlier in our life. My mother especially believed that we needed no culinary coaching (as we were supposed to be busy studying!). “Jokhon dorkaar hobey, nijei sheekhe jaabe”. She meant that we will learn when the time (and need) would arrive!

And I did learn. The hard way!

During my hostel days I had discovered the royal Indian recipe of preparing the Horlicks. And my experiment begun and ended with that! And not that I did extremely well in studies! I was ultimately ‘na ghar kaa, na ghaat ka!’

Of the various skilled culinary culminations (read crime!) I can recall, the first one was during my first posting at Hazaribagh. The time (and need) had arrived, finally!

My brother had arrived on the occasion of Rakhi. We were five colleagues staying together, maintaining a common ‘mess’. And what a mess that was! Four of my colleagues were great cooks, we also had a very skilled hired cook and that left me alone; being the only one who had very little clue about the cooking secrets!

With the arrival of my brother, the affectionate sister within me woke up in a pursuit of dishing up something special for my ‘Bhaiya mere bhaiya’. Till then, my skill had reached to ‘anda curry’. So, I ordered “Takhliya...” or “You leave” and out went our cook. My colleagues were in for a surprise that day!

So the onion, garlic, garam masaala, tomato, ginger, chilli, and whatever, were perfectly done on the pan and the already fried eggs and boiled and peeled potatoes were waiting for their fortune to be dipped into the gravy. I already could smell the food and boy! Did it smell good! So the andas and aloos were in the gravy at last. I wandered if the gravy would be enough to feed seven hungry mouths. So I added some water and then little more and then more. My cook was by then vehemently pleading, “Bass Didi Bass” but I knew the appetite of my giants! So more water and more went into the curry.

The onions were now floating and the curry had lost its aroma. But there were so many famished skeletons I had to supply food to!

So dinner was announced and I requested them to bear with the anda “jhol” (soupy liquid curry). And then this proud me had all the famished skeletons pouring out their heart in disgust at the very sight of the curry. One of them, the lesser famished one played with the soup by dipping a ladle into it and pouring it into the same pan, over and over again and laughing her heart out! I was not the one to be hurt so easily! I said well, we could have the eggs and ignore the rest. In a moment the army of the great cooks were inside the kitchen, trying to prepare some edible stuff for my Bhaiya.

Our cook at Hazaribagh made the best Parathas in the world. One day all the other colleagues (the accomplished cooks) were out on tour and our cook had to be at the head office for the entire day. My colleague’s sister and I decided to prepare some parathas. We fought with the wheat, oil, girdle and all the other paraphernalia until we could finish making those edible maps made of wheat! Even at the end we were not sure whether the oil should be put at the centre of the paratha or from the edge. “End taq pata nahin chala!”

After the cooking was done, we sorted out the best of the (okay, comparatively better) parathas and separately stored them for our cook, to spare ourselves from his stark remarks. The two of us satiated ourselves with the rest of the black elastic carbon parathas!

Well, I have come a long way from that point in life! My mother was correct, everyone has to learn, some learn fast and some has a pace of one’s own but the roads are not always easy..

Iss Mod se jaate hain
Kuch sust kadam rastein
Kuch tez kadam raahein...

So we all cross this lane, some are slow and some are quick. Gulzaar saab, maaf karnaa mujhe!


Photograph source: Web

My Minz Chaachaa

He was a little more than 5 feet 3 inches or so, dark, with radiant oily complexion, hair generously oiled too. In the scorching heat, in withering cold and during the torrential rain, Minz Chaachaa, in his Khakhi uniform, would un-failingly arrive, walk few stairs up and few stairs down and on his big black Hercules, move from lane to lane, street to street......

Minz Chaachaa. That’s how we children knew him. He was our postman.

As very young children, we watched him delivering yellow postcards from beneath our closed apartment door. At times we would duck at this side of the closed door, watching the letters being slowly pushed in by Minz Chaachaa. At times we would politely pick up the letters and at other times, we would pull a letter so as to let him know of our presence. Minz Chaachaa, in turn, would playfully pull back the letter and this fun would continue for a few moments.

At times, when he had something important to deliver, like a registered post or parcel, he would bang the door loudly. Worthwhile to mention here is that though we had a door-bell, Minz Chaachaa never could use it since at that part of India where my father was posted, there was no electricity for a brief duration during the day, say, for about 20 hours!

The other neighbours called him with a ‘generic’ name, ‘Aye..postman..!” That’s how Minz Chaachaa was addressed most of the time. My mother said that no one addresses my father as ‘Aye....Supervisor’ or for that instance my mother did not have to hear ‘Aye..housewife!’...so why call anyone by his/ her occupation! And that’s how we knew him as Minz Chaachaa; Albert Minz, being his name.


We saw him delivering the acknowledgement of the money-orders, which our father would regularly send to our grandparents and at times, during the Christmas season, he would bring a lot of Christmas joy and money orders from our uncles. He would meticulously count the notes and ask my mother to repeat it before accepting her signature. My mother would always shy away from checking the notes and the amount in his presence. She said that would mean she did not trust him!

I would often wander how on earth Minz Chaachaa could travel to all the faraway places where our grandparents and uncles lived to bring us those letters and money orders!

During those days, most of the letters arriving were in yellow postcards. Mother and father would go through them, turn by turn and the important ones would find a place on the wall, get pinned to a hook, along with other paper bills, grocery bills, wedding invitations, etc. etc.

Sometimes we would receive inland letters. The more sophisticated relatives would always send inland letters, my mother explained. It was Minz Chaachaa from whom we learnt the art of folding an inland letter.

During the school days, we received our annual report cards via post. And thus, once a year, for ten long years, I would have to bear the tearing anxiety when from my balcony, I could see Minz Chaachaa, carrying along with other letters, my yellow report card! He sure did not have a clue as to how my heart beat increased at that sight! He would wait till the result was opened and each time my father wished to gift him some money on the occasion, Minz Chaachaa denied, saying , “Uss paise se baby ke liye kitaab khariid leejiye, dada!”

He accepted gift only on one occasion, Christmas! Each year, the gift he would receive from the neighbourhood would go to the orphanage.

Times changed, days gave way to months and months to years...but I saw the same Minz Chaachaa, walking up and down the apartments, across the lanes and streets, tirelessly and never missing a smile.


By the time I was 20, the postcards and inland letters had given way to more numbers of yellow envelops with stamps on them. Those were from Nike.

I was studying in the neighbouring city during those years and as my holidays would begin, a permanent seat by the window of our apartment would be booked for me for the lazy afternoons. With voluminous books on my lap, I would have my eyes across the window, waiting for Minz Chaachaa.

His arrival would mean a gush of expectation for Nike’s letters. Never in my life was the ring of the bi-cycle bell so melodious and never before in life the loud thump on the door during the sleepy afternoons, was so very welcome. Days would pass like this, waiting for Nike’s letters; some days would bring in disappointment while there were days when my heart fell out to Nike’s letter, lying beneath the door where Minz Chaachaa would have pushed it through.


Years of courtship passed with Minz Chaachaa playing the messenger for our love, fights, tears, complains and forgiveness’s... only that Minz Chaachaa had no idea of what he had been delivering....!

Even after Nike left for his further studies and I returned to my home town for my career pursuit, Minz Chaachaa continued to be the harbinger of my blooms and glooms...

Suddenly Nike’s letters stopped arriving! Day after day Minz Chaachaa arrived and returned without slipping in from beneath my door, any letter from my Nike. With his arrival, my expectation would soar high and with his return, would start another day of wait, hoping that next day, Nike’s letter would arrive! And months passed by...


And one day, finally, Minz Chaachaa, as usual, pushed in a pink envelop, this time an Archie’s Greeting Card. This one was from Nike! Months of anguish broke into a dam of tears as I picked up the card.

Nike had proposed. And not only was that, inside that cover, there a letter from Nike’s father, proposing a visit to our town soon, for engagement. He did not want to wait, he said.

I wanted to run across the lanes, fly across to Minz Chaachaa and tell him that for me, he was the messenger from Paradise!

While I walked down the aisle on my special day, I looked at Minz Chaachaa sitting among the guests. He raised his hands in blessing.

Today, when I am at the other corner of the world, I have no clue of my Minz Chaachaa. I wander how he must have been during the past few years, I wander about his health and I often picture a frail Minz Chaachaa, hoping his sons are taking good care of him.

My messenger from Paradise, the harbinger of my happiness; May God bless Minz Chaachaa with great health and abundant happiness!

The Valediction

That was the last time I saw you. Standing at the balcony of your apartment, you waved your hands in adieu while I walked away, via the small red gravelled path, out of your campus. And your life.

That was the day when the harsh reality was finally condensed in your dew laden words. You told me that no tree ever could hold back a wandering bird. The sky was home to your wings, you had said and you were on your way to fly across lanes, meadows, shores and oceans, but all alone.

With the utterance of your decisive words, I heard a glass castle break. The castle had belonged to me. I had joined pieces of pristine glass, one by one and had held out towards you to put your piece, in the same castle, for the two of us..

But the castle was broken and with it ended my trance. It had given way to a conscious pledge which you did not have to reciprocate. I did not need that. I was too proud to need but anything from you.

Decades have passed and today as I prepare for my eternal journey beyond the confines of my breadth, I have nothing to demand from you, I have nothing to offer you.



If my silence reaches to you across the horizons, tell me, could I once see you? Could I once behold those eyes and the smile and could those hands liberate me by waving an adieu, once? This time, for the last time, for the last time, ever?