Side effects of watching too much "Master Chef"*

* Master Chef is a U.S. competitive cooking reality show, open to amateur and home chefs. Click here for more details

What those blue eyes told !

Some one said long ago, that life is more like a long long night ride.  There are times when you drive smoothly along the familiar highways in a comfortable speed avoiding all those unknown roads. But once in a while life throws you a surprise lightning whose white shining light opens your eyes to those alternate unknown roads, making you rethink about the direction and pace of your road trip. Here is a short first hand experience of how such a lightning struck me couple of days back

There is a famous quote from the Turkish author Adnan Oktar a.k.a Harun Yahya which goes like "I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question."
Katty (not exactly her real name) is some one who seems to have asked this question to herself long back during one of those chilly winter mornings in Switzerland and then decided to pack her bag and fly out of her nest looking for more warmer lands. I met her in a bus during one of those journeys where the cramped over-head luggage rack was not accepting her heavy back pack. I helped her out with my expert knowledge about the presence of a trunk at the side of bus where she can keep her bag and this allowed me to have a short chat with her, who was much thankful for making her seating more comfortable. 

Katty is more like one of those migratory birds where the seasonal movement is triggered by the chilling winter back home. She travels all alone with her back pack, her 'punk'ish nose rings and her special 'Bob Marley'ish hairstyle. Its her second visit to 'Gods own Country', previous one was 5 years back. She already traveled along length and breath of India from Rajasthan deserts to inner villages of Bihar to beaches in the west coast and her favorite Fort Kochi where she was heading this time once again. Sometimes you wonder what makes her do all this lonely seasonal migration, is it just about seeing places, or escaping winter or is it some thing more. To take her own words "What I liked about Kerala, apart from the climate is the pleasant welcoming smile I get here every time". There is a shine in her blue eyes which seems to reflect all those smiles she collected around the world 

That day I saw in the lightning, a Swiss bird who flew away from her nest and her familiar tree, to the unknown sky only to collect smiles around the world. Then I stretched and looked at my reflection in the rear view mirror all I saw was a bird still flying around the comfort shadow of his tree. But now when I look up I could see the wide blue sky with a pleasant smile, welcoming me to take that unknown path .. 

Memoirs of a 'Shoppingophobiac'

I’ve been to a lot of super markets and malls around the ‘globe’ and no matter where it is, every time I enter one of those dress shops my eyes eagerly starts searching for something and the search more often ends in disappointment .. no it’s not the rest room, you can find that much easily. What I am looking for is rather a resting place, a sofa or a chair or anything on which I can rest my butt with some dignity

It might sound silly to some of you out there, but for the people like me suffering from (or may be gifted with) a condition called ‘Shoppingophobia’ every step taken in the shop floor is nothing short of torture. But who cares about ‘us’,  in this bourgeois capitalistic system customer is the king and they will be given a polished floor and pleasant lighting so that they can walk, stare and finally end up ‘consuming’.. and ‘we’ … we will be sidelined as a some lost souls forced to keep standing and walking like one of those zombies you see in Hollywood movies, trying to find the meaning of our existence in between the jungle of garments

But alas, finally my prayers (?) are heard.. today as I walked in to Lulu at my hometown in my typical melancholy mood resembling one of those poor helpless goats led by the butcher to the cutting stool, I almost left out a yell of joy. There it is….. my key to freedom from the long hours of pain I was getting prepared to. Dressed in Blue, three of them greeted me with a welcome smile. With relief I slowly alighted to the middle one of those chilling steel couches and slowly started to scribble my ecstasy so that at least some of my ailing brothers know it..

Yes, it’s true comrades ... there is still some hope left in this world for us and today when I looked in to the tunnel there was surely a light … a blue, cold light !