The BAKE(ry)

Growing up i used to look forward to the months of July and August as these would bring a lot of birthdays and that would mean loads of black forest cake - my family's all time-favorite at that point in time. I used to love black forest cake till one fine year we decided to move on to other kinds of cakes which came along with ever mushrooming, swankier pastry shops. But, there are a few things i am quite particular about when it comes to pastry shops. There's a quaint little pastry shop that used to exist and every stick jaw in the world is compared with that yardstick. Another bakery that has grown with the times still has the best frikkin chocolate éclairs you can get!

I would love venturing into my neighborhood pastry shop to pig out on their hot-dogs (that had a mutton seekh kebab instead of a sausage!), their lovely mini-pizzas and their chocolate truffle which the lady would microwave just a little so it would be like a chocolate volcano going off in your mouth. Also it was pure bliss watching the pretty lady pipe her cakes while i gorged on her lovely lemon tarts. I was in pastry heaven and i had the fat to prove it!

Zoom through to a few years later. One particular Saturday probably in March of 2000, we were yet again in the bakery at college but this time it was our final exam in bakery. We had to make breakfast rolls (the figure of eight - which incidentally is the only thing i ever learnt in bakery), muffins (with a little help from my friends) and a mousse or something like that. Now this last preparation needed something that is known as a sabayon. This sabayon thing is a mixture of egg yolks that are cooked slowly on fire (but not warmer than body temperature!!)so as to not get it grainy (Source: Google zindabad!). Insanity!

Anyway while everybody was leaving i was trying to make my sabayon for the 5th or 6th time. In the end my bakery chef just gave up. She not only made the sabayon she also helped me finish the mousse. She then gave me a passing grade folded her hands and said thank you for never coming back now!

Cut back a few months when i had just joined the insti. On the first or second day i was crossing the bakery, which by the way happens to be the first classroom as you enter the building, and 'cause it was empty i opened the door to step in. I was nauseated! I had never smelt something that awful. A few weeks and a couple of bakery classes later i figured out what that odor was. Lingering, stale fumes of yeast, odors of raw eggs, the smell from the ovens, awful remains of vanilla essence and the ever present sugar made for the most awful air that stuck to your chef coat for days. I could handle the curries and cream but this was a whole new planet. And the way i see it now, we as a group (batch a and b) were paying for some past sins. 'Cause not only was the bakery nauseating and hot, we were scheduled for bakery classes on Saturday afternoons while the rest of college was out having a good time and you could see all of this while you were in there suffering and literally sweating your blood out in the heat. My dislike for something or someone has never even come close to the pure hatred i had for bakery!

For a couple of years after college it was still quite difficult for me to enter a pastry shop 'cause i would fear that those awful odors would come back to haunt me. I still don't particularly like going to pastry shops, but it has become better. I will always love the wonderful treats a bakery can produce and if wasn't for the single thought that how can something that tastes like magic in your mouth smell so bad while in production, i wont really consciously walk into a bakery!

Work, Pain & Pleasure (Haiku)

Morning rises
Fresh and old
Dying to live
...


Pains forgotten
memory remains
Longing forever
colors for a palette
wiped with a dirty cloth
...


One drop
magnificently small
pearl in an ocean

Refreshing mint
Unbroken light passes
a new dream takes over
simplicity of the awe
complex in patterns

Breaking waves
within the self
reaching higher ground

Fairies descend
demons rise
souls collide
vibrations
...

25th August 2009 (Haiku)

Place.

Arambol
earth and sky
One

Party.

Mind traveling
rainbow of people
wandering at 162 bpm
...

Rubber souls
jagged rocks
heart skips a beat

Enfield.

Screaming winds
still of the night moon
fireflies whiz by

Life.

Time and self
footprints felt
being daft
...

Blank pages
door left open
traces of gold

...

Time Check

I have often pondered on certain relationships and there peculiar occurrence. They can't really be classified under a regular name like let's say a friendship or something to that affect.The person just happens to be around and you are associated only due to the proximity you share. Beyond that there is really nothing concrete to write home about, either about the person or the relationship. The best part is that the person keeps popping in and out of your life and now with the communication age he's just a facebook message away.

All through kindergarten up to the fifth grade i used the, matador, school van to commute. This meant that all of us boys and girls, us and the girls from cjm, were in a cocooned and isolated circle away from the seniors. During this time a chap whose name I'll reserve for obvious reasons would travel with me to and from school everyday up to the second grade. We were in the same batch albeit in different classes. Our real interaction happened only in that matador. The memory i have from this pop-in number one is that i invariably would get into a fight with this chap and would beat the shit out of him in the morning. During the half hour recess at school he would gather a couple of his classmates who would find me and beat the shit out of me. Guess what i was doing when we were going back home?

Anyhow, time went by. I moved into the school bus and by the time i was in the sixth grade i had completely forgotten about this chap's existence. Growing up is always eventful and i had a fucking ball! In the ninth grade a 'moment of clarity' occurred. You see we had to choose between two vocational courses. One was the choice between Hindi and Sanskrit. Two was the choice between computer science and craft. Obviously computers but because of my Sanskrit teacher coaxing me into it, i made a stupid choice in Sanskrit. In hindsight it was one of the best things that happened to me. Two days into the new term and i was like fuck this shit man i need Hindi. I was given Hindi after a little running around but my class section had to be changed 'cause the current section, that i had grown up with, was now a Sanskrit only batch.

After six years i was sitting in exactly the same section as the chap! Pop-in number two. We hit it off like two long lost girlfriends - r u freaking kidding me?! Anyway the year was spent making new friends and breaking into the friendships that had existed from kindergarten. By the time the year was ending i was very confident that these boys should have happened to me a long time ago! The chap, no doubt, was lurking in the shadows all along.

A couple of weeks before our final exams were about to start, somehow, the chap decides that he is close enough to me for him to be able to invite me over to his house and spend the Saturday with him. I accepted with an ulterior motive - another classmate lived in the vicinity and i had to work towards making him my tennis partner and i knew we were gonna go and pay him a visit. Not a bad day overall and the only other person in the chap's house was his 80 year old grandma.

By the end of the end we were chilling on the computer - in what he had clearly told me was his room - playing games and the like. Here the chap acts real cool and brings out this 'office file' to show me. He had gone through the pains of cutting each page very carefully and then place them inside the plastic jackets of the file. Thus transforming the really dirty, and i mean really hardcore porn dirty, magazine into an innocuous looking file that he may be using for his schoolwork. Good job i say!

But you see me being me, i couldn't help controlling myself. At a very opportune moment the chap's grandma calls him away for some chore and he leaves telling me to bolt the door just in case. Excellent! I quickly pulled out a few very hardcore centerspreads and placed them along the length of the bed under the bed cover. A little while later i left and pretty much forgot about the whole thing.

One afternoon, a few days later, i get a call from a person who said i am the chap's grandma speaking, you know the one you met the other day and all that. The chap did such a sad job of imitating his grandma that even my dog could have told the difference through the phone. Anyway, this grandma goes on to tell about what a terrible thing i have done. I had no idea what she was talking about and she never once mentioned exactly what she was referring to. The next day was our final English paper. I met the chap outside the classroom just before the paper was to start in the morning. He looked like he needed to catch up on a weeks sleep! I was like what's wrong mate? He explained to me how the house was being painted, how the painters had shown his mother what was underneath the bed cover, how she had freaked out, how his dad had beaten him with his shoe, how his grandma nearly had a heart attack 'cause of the way he was beaten, how he hadn't been able to sleep for 5 nights and how he had not studied for today's paper.

I was like dude hang on, you had told me very clearly that the room was yours so very obviously the bed was yours in which you would go to sleep at night! It was also very cheap for you to have called me trying to imitate you grandma and giving me all that spiel! Finally i said to him chill out man - it's only an English exam!

Can you say 'lingerie'?

It's like i always say - the lot of us were put together at the same time and each had his/her own particular spot to fill, a role to play and for a reason.

A particular, or peculiar i should say, character was amongst us. Tall, 6'1", hefty (read plump), not really bad to look at with his short curly hair and affable little smile. All of us have forever wondered how he ever made it in the first place? He couldn't really converse in proper English - he would always trail off into Hindi. His written English was even worse. A disaster in the kitchen and a complete buffoon when it came to service. Not too bright either one would say but 'cause he was really a nice guy at heart, this alone made up for most his shortcomings. Also one he's your friend you can pretty much count on him for anything. Not too much of a drinker or a smoker when he first came in, things changed rapidly i would say.

I don't really have too many memories of him from back in 1st year except the fact that he pretty much taught me how to ride a bike, a borrowed one at that and whose handle i managed to break. Also he let me borrow his sandals for my vacation in Goa. My real deal didn't start with till like the end of 2nd year during our front office ojt for which we were deputed together. By this time our man was a full power pill popping, ganja smoking alcoholic. The local chemist round the corner had learnt the magic of pharma through him! He was thick with the one of the biggest ganja dealers in town and he had tabs running at at least 2 of neighborhood bars. The man was a walking intoxicant ready to give you the same experience.

One particular day our shifts collide and we were working together from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The man decides that today is as good a day as any to get trashed at work. With low occupancy and no check-ins the day was perfect and a fresh delivery of beers had just been made! At 11 the man takes one of the travel desk cars down to the chemist shop and returns with an assortment of pharmaceuticals. I in the meantime have rolled a couple and a fellow trashee has the beers organized. The three of us go to the roof of the hotel and by 12.30 are way into wonderland. It's time to go back to work and i decide to take it easy and head to the business centre to chill. About ten minutes later the man joins me to chill as well. Right behind him walks in the general manager who looks directly into the man's eyes. Brilliant timing and the first question the gm asks, "why are your eyes red?". No answer. "Are you on drugs?". No answer. "Can you please follow me to my office right away?!". I believe he was suspended for a week. Not too much sweat for someone who had his first letter of suspension framed and put on his wall in his room in the hostel!

By the time 3rd year happened, the man, who was still in the same room in the hostel next to the bathroom, was a pukka pothead. I remember those days very clearly. At 8.45 i would barely be ready to go to college and our man in the meantime was all dressed and ready to light up his morning glory. I have bumped into him (read pulled into his room) one too many times with the request, "Jalanaa!".

The Smurf

It's easy to forgive they say. It ain't easy to forget. To the extent that you will never let t go. Sometimes the most liked of friends become the most dis-liked literally overnight. The strangest part is when they tell you that all they were trying to do was to be 'you'! It's a very crazy situation to be in.

This drama unfolds over several months covering the whole of first year and quarter of the second year at college. Like always no names but i believe out here it'll be pretty obvious who and what we are referring to. He was my roommate and he was the 'smurf'. Tall, lanky fellow who belonged to a part of Delhi i had and didn't want any association with. Somehow i seemed to take a liking towards him. To the extent that he went ahead and fashioned his nickname after mine, and i seemed to have no problem with that! Overtime and owing to the fact that we were roommates (him being one who had no issues with me and pals partying it up way into the wee hours on a school night), we became good friends and did manage to have quite a blast while it lasted. People all around me told me i was being a fool and that he was just trying to be a cheap imitation but, i really didn't care 'cause i liked him.

The shit pretty much hit the fan around the time we were chucked out of the hostel. Another story for another time dedicated to another shitty little fucker we had amongst us but, that's for another day.

Smurf, 2 others and myself decided that we are gonna shack up together and so moved into these new digs. On the day of moving my father accompanied by smurfs' father came to town - obviously owing to the shit that went down. My father had me know that while traveling, on the same train, Sr. smurf decided he wants to get drunk and doesn't even have his own booze. Now my dad ain't a bad guy so he let him have his whisky. Far from being appreciative Sr. smurf goes ahead and has the audacity to tell my father that because he blames me for smurf and the shit he is gonna slap me when he sees me. Sr. you are damn lucky you were in the state you were in 'cause otherwise you would've been a dead man. I was pretty pissed off after listening to this and that got me further pissed off at smurf 'cause apparently he had ratted us out in front of the princi.

The first night at the new digs we had ourselves a party. Quite a few of the boys were around. After consuming quite a bit of alcohol smurf and i got into an argument. The last thing i remember is when smurf threw a bottle at me which missed me by a whisker. The next thing i know is that i am being held by a couple of guys and smurf is lying on the ground half-dead.

A few days later all the shit in college died down like it always does, i moved into a new place with the other 2, Sr. smurf apparently told the princi that smurf would be killed outside so he should be allowed back into the hostel, and life pretty much carried on after that. First year ended a couple of months later, one roommate plugged the year and moved on, the other was a senior who went back home. I moved back into the hostel, another story :), became good friends with the boy who we had beaten during the whole shit and never even so much as acknowledged the fact that smurf existed.

Just when you thought everything was swell, smurf had to go and royally fuck around. A few days before our first on-the-job started smurf got into some serious shit. A bunch of us were called upon to go to Pune for a 4 day outdoor catering that was taking place. Smurf was also one of the few. Anyway, after 4 days of hardcore work we decided to party it up. A few of us went to a colleagues place and the others made their own plans. I was pretty much partying till morning and after that caught my bus back to college the next day not knowing what had gone down back at the hotel where we had been given rooms to stay. Apparently smurf had tried to get fresh with some girl from college and that too in her bedroom which she had been nice enough to offer so smurf could sleep. The nerve!!

I found out about this about a week later when i saw smurf outside the princi's office. Immediately after this we were on our first on-the-job at the Residency next to college. As luck would have it smurf was there too. During the first couple of weeks or so we had a Foster's event at the hotel 'cause of which nobody really kept track of beer consumption. A friend and myself managed to take out quite a few bottle with us outside of the hotel and into the hostel for a party. Next morning i see smurf outside the princi's office yet again. This time around he had tried whacking the beers as well and had gotten caught by the guard. The fool had Sr. smurf on his way back again, twice in the same year! During all of this tamasha i also learnt that smurf was going around telling people shit like 'if you can like Garry why can't you like me?'. I couldn't believe this!!

One evening just when i was getting ready for dinner there was some hullabaloo around smurfy's room. He prolly was getting a beating by the boys 'cause of what he had done in Pune. At that moment something prompted me to go to his room, not to beat him further but to just talk to him. I remember locking the door when i entered his room while he sat on the bed. I believe i spoke to him very calmly and rationally for about a half-hour. Recollecting all of what i said is hard but, in the end i walked out with a bunch of guys standing outside trying to listen and smurfy still sitting in his room sobbing like the little girl that he was. A lot of people think i beat him up that day but, that wasn't how it went down. My goal was to break him, mentally, and that's exactly what i did.

A few days later smurf left college for good. I remember thinking back then, he couldn't have handled the 3 years anyway. Was it so hard just being yourself is what i ask?

The Sleeper

I could not contain myself any longer. Just the thought that it was going to be my first time in Goa, that too for new year's, was enough for me to tell my father that he needs to fax the college authorities and ask them to excuse me for the new year outdoor catering as we had a family vacation planned that had been paid for months in advance and could not be cancelled. A complete lie, considering I was going to Goa with another friend.

December 26th, 1999, 6.30 a.m. - Mapusa, Goa. I had arrived and was brimming with excitement from head to toe. This is not a memoir of the trip as such but a recollection of a real comedic situation that left one of the most laughable memory for me in Goa. I had joined a friend, who had already set up the accommodation and transport for us before I got in. Two more were joining us on the morning of the 31st. One of them was called Sutta Singh and this is about Sutta, a rave and a chai waali.

The turn of the century and Goa was spilling over with hippies and other such. The energy of the place was enough to keep you awake all night and give you a high without any psychedelics.

We had to literally park our bikes like a mile away from bamboo forest on 31st night as there was a multi-lane traffic jam on the road leading to its entrance. If you have been to Goa, you know the size of the roads! The four of us managed to get to the forest and found ourselves a nice spot next to one of the chai waali's who had set up shop under the huge bamboo tree. We decided that this is gonna be the homing spot whenever we needed to re-convene.

The escapades began. Sutta and I were together as the other two went off to look for their own adventure. We had all chipped in for the psychedelics and I decided on a dolphin and a hoffman to kickstart the night. Sutta decided he is going to pop his share after a while.

While the other two went off, I decided to roll one for Sutta and myself. By the time i was finished, Sutta had pretty much passed out! Anyway, I had a pretty white girl sitting next to me who was more than happy to share the smoke. As the night progressed, my highs began to work their magic.

Sometime during the night I had succumbed to the psychedelic and so decided to head to the dance floor to meet other magicians and create an alchemy of good vibes. Sutta, of course, was left sleeping next to the chai waali.

Now, because, I had been sitting there and was chatting with the white girl and buying stuff off the chai waali she didnt mind that Sutta was lying there sleeping his ass off. Once i left, having pretty much forgotten about Sutta, I have no idea what happened next.

Around 5.30 a.m. I bumped into the other two who asked me about Sutta. I said he must be still there because he was deep in slumber and snoring away to glory when I left. We made our way back to the chai waali.

This is when all three of us almost died laughing. Now, i wish i could sketch the scene out for you so I'll do my best to put it down into words and try to create a visual for you.

Sutta was completely stretched out (like you would on your own bed), his feet were pointing in opposite directions, his arms were in a V-shape with his hands bunched up to the sides of his chest (you know like chicken wings) and his mouth was wide open. Coupled with that the chai waali was hitting him with her steel 'chimta' (tongs), trying to wake him up while shouting "this is not a bed you harami! Either get up and get lost or start buying something in compensation for the last five hours you have been passed out because of which i have lost business you bastard!".

Like I said i wish i could draw this whole scene out for you, because not only the three of us but everybody sitting around was looking at what was happening and was laughing their freaking balls off!

The three of us calmed the chai waali down, so she would stop hitting and cursing him, by buying some tea and there was Sutta still lying in the same position throughout this whole comedy. He did wake up eventually only to find that his share of psychedelics had also been used up by us. I mean c'mon you think we would wait around till 6 in the morning for his royal ass to wake up while we held on to the goodies?!

I don't think anyone in the world has ever slept so peacefully at a rave like Sutta did that night. How? You gotta ask him yourself 'cause we were too busy laughing ourselves to death!