The question mark?

Hazelnut coffee or Regular coffee? Tall or Grande or Large ? No cheese, Extra cheese or Regular cheese?

We often come across a myriad of choices in our lives, some as simple as selecting between mutton and shrimp biryani other’s bordering and threatening our very existence on this planet! Exaggerating a bit, but what if you simply do not have a choice, what if all the cards belong to someone else and all you can do is play along, hope you somehow come out a survivor?

Can the cards be grabbed, can they be shuffled? Do you want to do it, are you willing to go the extra mile, make the connecting flights? You like words like wallow? While all you want to do is swim and furiously across shores. Can you unwrite all the words that were written? Can you unbreak all that was shattered? Can you make sure the spider does not start spinning his current *more deadly* web and this just after you’ve cleaned the old one?

Can you not do any of this? Can you simply continue living one day at a time?

And then I wonder ‘Why I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.’?

12:57

The cooking range clock and the microwave clock were blinking 12:57, it couldn't have been AM since I could see the sun streaming in through the window shades and on my groggy eyes. My first thought was that I had somehow turned off the main switches for both the microwave and the range.

I turn off the mains for the heater as sometimes it gets uncontrollably hot and the heater knob seems to be mal-functioning, I hear ya ... I need to put in a maintenance request for that like I've been meaning to for the past two weeks, one of these days for sure!

Anyway, so I go check the mains and despite my still slightly dazed state of mind, I can see that all the switches are in the 'ON' position like the way they are supposed to be. I then fiddle with microwave and can see that it works fine and the range too. Finally it strikes me! I check the time on that little travel clock and its blinking 12:58 in not so much glory and likewise on the range and microwave too!

For the life of me, I honestly believed it to be closer to 3 PM or so! maybe it had to do with my successful attempts at making panpole (finally) and consuming them non-stop with that tomato chutney and copious amounts of chai or it had something to do with that mid-noon dream, I remember nothing of! In any case, 12:57 it was!

Give me my bone

So there's this bone I am particularly fond of, I can suck on it until there's no semblance of juice left in it. Ever since I can remember the kitchen used to be our battleground and this piece of heavenly anatomy the prize for the victor, put on your best armor and pounce on it. Praise the heavens if there were a satisfactory number of pieces of the prize, if not, alas, be the envy of piercing eyes and salivating mouths!

If anything can turn me into a cannibal, then this is it! The bone marrow in that oh so delicious mutton curry. Growing up, mutton curry was always reserved for special occasions, unlike your usual chicken or beef or dukra maas. That piece of bone marrow would make even the laziest of girls to pick up the plate and hurry to the kitchen so that they'd be the first in line for the best of those bones.

It has been a long time since I have indulged and salivated on one of these bones. Unlike the mutton that's sold in Mangalore, we buy Lamb meat here, but that piece of bone is as succulent as ever and I always pick the packs which look like they have a few more bones! The ritual of eating is almost the same although not as tough here. The bone marrow flows much more smoothly over the tongue and is quite easy to suck on.

Back home, the ritual involved forks, the end of a spoon, toothpicks and pure pleasure. I spend a minimum of five minutes on each of these delicious things, making sure it is as dry as a bone when I'm done with it, soaking it back in the gravy and sucking the life out of that poor bone.

No wonder its called God's butter, to many more such bones in our lives!

quidnunc

Who are all these people who say they are totally content in their lives? Tell me, I want to meet you, I want to know what makes you happy and content? How did you get there? Don't you ever suffer from the 'grass is greener' syndrome?

Most people I know are at various phases of contentment or so to say. If having a daughter seems like the 'it' for someone, just being married or having a companion may be the only point of satisfaction for someone else. Then there's some who don't want all that, they say they are happy the way they are, but then comes the huge 'BUT' they want to be *more* rich, want to own a yacht or have their 15 minutes of fame/maybe more or there are some who just want to be left alone, who don't want to be micro-managed, who want to be their own boss, who just wanted it to stop being so cold and snowy and chilly!

Again it is a question of 'what' after all this? Are your wants satisfied or do they keep blossoming? I want a little of the grass is paler and grass is greener syndrome in my life. I want to be grounded, settle for something while continue my quest for everything else. Where do I draw the line, what are these lines made of?

There are days when I live in a black-box and sometimes I live in a blue-box. Give me a little bit of sunshine or let me enjoy my cup of coffee in peace or just lick that frosting off the cupcake one day and on some others a trip to the moon would not suffice! I draw lines in my mind for all those boundaries and sometimes when they was wash out, I re-draw the lines that were originally drawn in chalk, now in felt-tip pen. They might fade too, but that's okay, I'll be happy then or I'll draw those lines with something way cooler! Maybe I'll narrow it down, maybe I'll widen it just a little bit, maybe I'll pick precisely something that is all wrong for me, but then who knows until it has been tried, has been tasted, maybe that's the way we're wired.

And a simple want after a long mentally exhausting day at work! maybe just enough?
'All I want to do is go home and kick off these incredibly painful shoes, eat pizza and watch some really bad TV where people’s lives are more screwed up than mine.'
- Addison Montgomery

Quid-nunc is from the words 'what' and 'now' describing a person who does not cease to ask 'What now'! Isn't that what life's quest is all about?

Okay, done with my rant. Don't even get me started on the lines that separate the wants from the needs!

The joy of owning a dog

vs the trouble? My neighbor next door owns a poodle, he's an adorable little thing. In case you're wondering he looks something like this dog

I do favor dogs over cats, in fact my paranoia flares up when I am in close vicinity of the feline variety. In any case I know it is too much trouble to own a dog here although I'd be more favorable to the German Shepherd or Alsatian or the Golden Retriever type of breeds. Coming to why not, as long as we live in our apartments, with a rather stringent pet policy and spend a significant amount of time outside with no one at home, caring for a dog is just not possible and really we can't have the dog fend for himself now, can we?

Maybe owning a dog comes with the white picket fence and the kids and the suburban living or NOT!

For now I make do with Caramel (in pic!), and then there's Pluto the little doggy and Dunno, the panda and oh, how can I forget the real dog from back home!