While he cooks..

As i write this my husband of 4 months is chopping coriander in the kitchen. We had gone together for our evening exercise an hour back. As i cycled he ran alongside yelling behind me to take the "right" turns. He complained as we got in that we barely exercised and if we did, it was for measly 30 minutes.

He quenched his thirst with the juice of the most nutritious berry(apparently) found on earth (acai) minutes back. Sitting on the laptop, the thought of eating "hara bhara kababs" started growing on him. To my amazement, he found the recipe and as i write he is involved in blanching(-the meaning of which he did not know 5mins ago) spinach.

Tarla Dalal, Sanjeev Kapoor and the others have done brilliantly by publishing their recipes online and making it available to novices, amateurs, those who want to try something "interesting", those that want try something new or those like my husband who ride on their fancies. Methinks though, that by serving the last of those categories they did no justice to me and wives elsewhere who will have leftovers in their fridge cos the husband wants Biryani and we had made cous cous ;)

Not that handsome guy

A couple of years back or so it seems i went to a party..one thrown for the most inane reasons- 2 of my friends had hooked up. Anyway so long as you get to dress up and a free bite. We were in college then, we went to Nirulas, ordered some good ole thin capsicum-onion pizza and a smoothie. There were 10 of us and then there was this average, reticent type guy sitting across from me.

We must have said only a couple of word to each other, or may be nodded, a few furtive glances, but then thats all. Serendipity is what brought us together. A couple of text messages misdirected and we got talking actually texting, but thats only semantically different. From "best of luck" for exams to "i have been thinking of you" took an eon; but we became friends. We had our rendezvous but things were limited to the cell. It' like in those old hindi movies where the man and his beloved meet each other in parks and terraces and sing "achha to hum chalte hain, fir kab miloge, jab tum kahoge, aadhi raat ko hmmm mm and so on...". This is pretty old fashioned, comparing this is contemporaneous to the widespread use of cell phones. But then i am an old fashioned gal.

Anyway so we went out the first time, he was in an olive green t-shirt and i was in a red faux leather jacket. Again we went to Nirulas. The gist is that we went out, didn't kiss, talked about some boring stuff and got back to the hostel. We are three friends, then in different colleges(now in different continents). At about the same time in our lives some men had entered. We were doing this whole description thing for each other of the respective men. I remember, distinctly, that i narrated how he looked and concluding with the following words:

He is not really that good looking, like those handsome types

Little did i know that i would be writing this 8 years hence, that "not that handsome guy" would be the guy i married.

Phase I over

I arrived in US in December of 2009. I got married in Dec of 2009. In a period of 28 days my life transformed. It was like entering a very long tunnel and exiting the other side with a feeling that the world has changed in the span of those few minutes you were in. I was in a state of flux just days before and precisely 15 days after. In between changing outfits for the numerous dos, sessions at the parlor, lunches & dinners at my husbands family i think i lost touch with whats reality.

And reality my friends is that 15 days later there's not even a chance of invitation to a dinner. I gotta cook myself-yep, and not just dinner pretty much all meals and snacks if me or my hubby are hungry or we're entertaining. So, after arriving here i am to see the United States of America. What's there to see:-long & wide roads, small mountains, walmart, ikea & the likes. Nature is almost befitting the landscape, it seems manicured as if it went to a nail spa which are many in this country.

Yeah, so with wide eyes i am seeing, then they take to me a lake-this is a place which people visit often if they are in the bay area(this is the place i live now). Bay area has many cities, surprisingly they are not part of a city like in India, where we'd call them areas perhaps. And yeah market is called down town. Taps open in the other direction, same for locks and traffic is bizarre- the platform 9 & 3 qtrs doesn't seem so weird to me.

He( my husband) suggested i start driving, which will help me survive,which in fact is true. In India if you want to survive you'd prefer to stay off the road(extreme situation). But unlike India(well not politically) i had to a write a test, after reading a 100 page book n all. After flunking the test once i got the 'instruction permit'. After which i did not go behind the wheel until a month later, just yesterday!

It was my childhood dream to visit Disneyland, that's what America meant to me. Thus he said let's. Believe it or not that's what they call it too-"the land where dreams come true", synonymous to US. By this time people i meet ask me polite questions about how i pass time and in consolatory tone let me know "that's ok" and "that much time you take to adjust", stuff i already know and i guess they know i don't wanna hear.

A couple of weeks later, by now it's valentine's day and 6 weeks after my arrival in this country. I decide to gift him something-with experienced cooking skills n familiarity with American stores i think a cake is opportune. Little did i know that cake mixes are sold by the dozen and after making one i can tell you they are phenomenal (tried Duncan Hines-Devil's food cake). We also decide to go to Vegas, by the by; around this time people have already started exasperatedly asking me the same question "how do you pass time". I think i should come up with a wittier reply, like may be i have started smoking, or i can now count up to a million stars on a clear night. At least it will get the conversation going somewhere interesting. My answers remains the same and so do their quintessential responses. Anyway, so Vegas is a place which breeds debauchery and they tell me it spoils. But i am ready to be spoilt and get outta my house at any given chance, which happens to be weekends only in the company of my beloved.

So Vegas is a 3 night and 4 day road trip for me and him. This was his 4th trip, and he kept tutoring me on where everything is as if bay area isn't enough for that. But then that' what attentive husbands are for, i suppose. We gambled and clubbed in Vegas, i gaped at the grand canyon and tirelessly walked across death valley. After 4 days there i have come back to where i was, have seen more of this country and have some more topics to talk about.

Until now, he and i used to fight rarely, now we fight more often-i want to blame it on vegas but truthfully vegas has only humbled me (shown me how much more money is needed, before i can hit those tables again). I can talk to some people who've been around, about some common grounds we have toured. Despite this feat in a strange country with new people, i still can't chat with my mother in law.It's hard to broach a subject and am constantly answering or asking about the weather. Thanks so much for that!