Saturday glee.

There was a chocolate cage on a plate today. We broke it down, with affection and a wee bit of a destructive feeling. There was ice-cream in an edible tray that tasted of honey and cinnamon. We ate our way through it to reach the end, with a little too much determination for a dessert.

We giggled a little, and held out our chocolate smeared hands. The girl, with arms deliciously tanned from her recent adventures, told me stories that made me laugh and feel a happy warmth on the inside. Stories of camels and sprightly scarves that shone in the sun and forts that were so majestic that no photograph, however well shot, would do their grandeur justice.

The weather was very genial when we walked out; the wind turning our hair into a playful mess. We took a whirlwind cab ride and laughed and chattered about inane but deeply interesting things.

The afternoon stopped by, to look at our child-like excitement amidst the  traffic.

Wrapped in a white polythene bag at the back of a cupboard, I found small rectangular notepads with crumbling yellow paper. They were filled with things my grandfather wrote when he was my age. His handwriting scrawled across the page, the loopy y and the hesitant punctuation. He had written things that he must have read somewhere and liked enough to document; things that he wanted to tell someone but had no one who’d understand. The writing was progressive and the thoughts travelled way ahead of his time.

There are some things that I immediately and unknowingly associate with him. Brown sweater vests, ochre coloured walking sticks that make a clacking sound, coconut ice-cream in a small glass bowl.
My grandfather told us, on more than one occasion, that long fingers indicated an artistic bent of mind. I couldn’t even colour inside the lines in school and I decided at age 8 that my long fingers weren’t taking me anywhere. He then told me, in a rather cryptic fashion, that being an artist doesn’t restrict itself to painting. I didn’t really understand it.

I started noticing people’s hands to check for fingers. Without realizing it, I started remembering people by their hands. I remember telling him this and he laughed a clear laugh that I still hear sometimes at night. Those are the nights I read his powerful thoughts with vehemence.

He wanted us to become doctors. My sister did become one. I notice hands and write a little bit. He’d have been proud.

It’s been exactly 12 years since he passed away. If he had been alive, he’d have been 100 this year.
He’s still around, though, in our writing and our interest in poetry. Every time, we read a good book and discuss it, I imagine him sitting on his bed, a copy of A Tale of Two cities covered in newspaper resting on his lap.

Fine dining.

There are long weeks that feel like many days just blurring into one endless time span. My week has been like that. We’re here again on a working Saturday – words that strike fear in many otherwise relaxed minds.

If I had to chalk out an ideal Saturday night plan for tonight it would include dinner and consumption of interesting liquids but without pushing the mind off the edge.

When I imagine interesting plans, in my head I see the same people, sitting around a teak wood table, laughing and telling anecdotes. I always imagine red wine, though we hardly ever drink it, and I always imagine leaving the place bubbling with emotions of the positive variety. In my head, at the end of the day, I am dozing off in the cab or the train, weaving in and out of sleep.

Things don’t pan out exactly like that. Sometimes, people are quiet. They don’t have anything to say. Sometimes, they’d rather be elsewhere or doing something else. Sometimes, people snap and say something snide without reason and then everything just gets uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Regret is our special for tonight, you can have it with a side serving of garlic bread.

We’d probably be happier off if we could all be happy by ourselves, and if our happiness didn’t have anything to do with other people. I am definitely not like that as of this moment, and to be honest I don’t see myself being absolutely at peace just being by myself.

My mental picture of dinner plans, where the yellow lighting makes everyone glow and the wine makes people friendlier, if you take away my people from the table, the evening automatically becomes redundant. Then the lights just hurt your eyes and the wine is an unnecessary expense.

A long time ago when college festivals were a deal big enough to be bothered with, the Martyr Momos were born on a July evening. We needed a name for the blog event and we decided that it had to have something to do with food. I don't know about the Martyr part. We picked that out on a whim.

The Momos have been around for longer than the blog they made. I met Krati Tandon on a very rainy day in 2008. Don't tell me it's a cliche, It really was raining. You can ask her. We became friends almost instantly. If I hadn't met her, I am pretty sure I would a different person. I wouldn't write as much, I wouldn't have as many bangles and there would be long blank spaces in my day; spaces which now are devoted to talking to her on the phone about the many inane things that plague my life.

Then we did the blog event and had such a good time, that the blog name became a part of us.

 Krati Tandon is a super momo - with her tech advice and her whizzing around with her camera, her enthusiasm and her jewelery. She does sharp market research by day and writes hauntingly beautiful poetry by night. Her evenings are taken up by Momo meetings, buying wooden bookcases that are full of character, bike trips with her face wrapped up in scarves and educating the ill informed about best technology available in smart phones.

She is very 'sunshine on a Christmas morning interspersed with wise words and funny stories'. The best kind of festive sunshine, don't you think?