dreams ajar

Sunday nights, as a rule, have been mostly spent lying awake, waiting for sleep to commence my descent into a delicious abyss that forever awaits for its unpunctual nightly guest that's me and so there are dreams, thrown up from the void to assure me that I'm fast asleep.

One such from last night or was it this morning had me visit someone from a very long time whose name I can't even seem to recall and there was a house in which she lived along with others whom memory evades and they had a bathroom which had a bucket blue in colour full of water and sewing needles.

'But there are needles as the bottom of this water.' I'd exclaimed and they'd made an unsurprised face that relayed so what?

'oh we know' they'd said ' but can't be bothered to get them out' and so I scooped one by one, all of them and counted them to be hundred, telling them it's not a feat but a matter of moments to keep yourselves from getting hurt, 'look here they are, keep them someplace you'll remember' I'd said and so they flung it back into the bucket, who cares they'd said and because I did, I exited that house not before exclaiming it was a pathetic little hellhole, wearily unkempt and disgustingly unsanitary to which they seemed surprised and banned me from their surroundings.

And so I woke up, wondering at what I'd seen. Why would anyone live with a bucket of water with sewing needles thrown in?

night time stink eye

So I stumble back into my casa sometime shortly before midnight and realize with all the hate of the gods that I'm hungry.

This happened last night and somehow I'm still angered about it.

yes there was a huge party and yes I had fun and no I didn't much drink and the only saving grace  was the fact that my makeup hadn't budged a bit, so much so that when I stood in the washroom ready to take the war paint off I realized that my face looked pretty much the same as when I'd left over seven hours ago and in fact I toyed with the idea of ringing a friend and hitting a club, but better sense prevailed and I found myself getting annoyed again at the thought of having been to such a niche event with an after party with a VIP pass for an entire week and finding no food.

there were drinks, yes and that was nice but there was nothing to eat if you discount the miniscule cubes of artisan cheese, chips and olives. Come on!!
Who serves that at an event at dinner time after unabashedly printing hors-d'oeuvre on the invite?

Sure I could behave like some of the guests who piled these foods on their plates and made a meal out of it but I don't do desperate.

Goddamit!

I was so upset what with so many things mounting up to form a mega heap of a god awful day that I did nothing save drink a large glass of water and sleep, followed by a lengthy workout and never ending shower.

Yes, I"m better now but I'm still upset and what of it?

eats and bits

As a great believer in food tourism, I like to deviate from the usual fare of usual dinners on Thursday's and culinarily transcend into other realms.
The safest ones, of course, being Italian and Thai and the braver ones being Korean and or Japanese, not that any is absolutely authentic but it needn't be so in food.
And so today I've been asked to drop a pin over the safe word that is Italy and make risotto, something I absolutely love to eat, no matter the challenges surrounding a vegetarian version of it and so I shall go about it, though now is hardly the time to make or even talk about it because it's best cooked just before dinner, because the longer it stands the gloopier it becomes, owing to the starch in those rice and the only reason I talk of food right now is because I feel hungry.
It's the 4pm slump and soon, anytime now I shall be heading out, a leash in hand, doing a bit of baking myself under the hot sun.
To say that I've burnt to a charred crisp would be a bit of an overstatement but not entirely incorrect because I have now begun peeling.
Right then. Away we go!

in another life

In Goa with my colleagues

In China with puppy fat

Meanwhile

A long walk and a diaphoretic shower later the body signals commands wherein I have to follow the orders to drench my throat in iced water or I die. Of course, I immediately comply, what with the lightning speed of shutting all windows and blasting the air conditioning only to shuffle in for a quick shower so I can absorb the welcome frigidity on cleansed skin. 
Now is the time my inner automaton says to slave over the hot stove, except it's Wednesday and something about Wednesday makes me feel like it's Friday and so instead of an elaborate meal of the usual I decide on simple things. chholay+rice+lassi+salad (because you need to graze on something of a different texture) and that would be it.

Green fairy

The caffeine purge ends tomorrow and I like how this Verdana font makes words look larger on a normal scale as opposed to times which sometimes needs a magnifying glass, but let me not wander from the topic that is my caffeine purge week ends tomorrow and I'm especially glad because this month as bland as it was, painful too (busted my quad) brought forth a new pash and you know my mania for new things and sudden, certain vagaries that crop up from nowhere..right, so talking of my new pash that is matcha.
yes, yes it's green tea, but a certain kind of green tea with excessive amounts of chlorophyll and powdery personality that seems to sing to my soul.
I've had this green elixir on and off but lately, I ventured into the manic territory and bought excessive amounts of it and added to my smoothies, turning them into liquified Hulk, so green did they become, to overnight oats and to steamed soy milk as regular matcha latte and let me tell you, that stuff is fantastic. 
I don't know what it is but the flavour, the scent and the green tint it offers, calls to me like a white light to lost souls. I can get a bit spiritual about things, especially foodstuffs and Matcha maketh my heart flutter.

I shall update more on it soon.. with pictures too. 

updates and all

Well, whaddya know!
I'm back, I'm tired and I'm hungry, even though I had lunch which I felt was not enough even though it was.
Fun wouldn't be the exact word to explain it but it wasn't boring and it was, well, decently engrossing, though I'd say that it was the mothers of the kids who were more interested in learning what I had to teach and don't get me started on the exclamations emitted in gasps of wonderment when I dotted a page with different colors to show how wet on wet works. It's not like I was conjuring fireworks, except it was something so new to everyone that almost the entire time everyone only experimented with that one technique.
I guess watercolours do that to you.
Though my biggest gripe was that very few people brought proper watercolour paper. Almost everyone had regular sketching sheets and No, it's not going to do the trick but I found a way around that and once I gave them drawn out stencils of watermelons and bananas on proper watercolour paper they realized what they should've brought instead and even made notes.
Almost every parent was convinced that their child would be the next Dali and I didn't want to rain on their parade.

But seriously kids have the attention span of a dead mosquito and most of them decided to write their names on sheets and experiment with mixing colours in a way that it felt like there was mud splashing over their pages.
Anyhoo, done and dusted and now I crave caffeine, but settling for a rooibos tea instead cuz purge week.

Tell more, lots of things. I miss..

coffeetea

Why do I immediately feel like drinking another cup of coffee after one cup of coffee? In my defence, the coffee I made today in a Moka pot was pretty darn good.
I like my coffee just a little bit tangy, dark roasted, medium strong and slightly sweetened with a dollop of milk (almond) or creamer.
I have on earlier occasions spoken about how coffee that is too strong and darker than deepest nights refuses to go down my gullet.
 I am after all essentially a tea drinker with a fondness for coffee that is well made and just once a day, having said that I drink tea once a day too and apart from the regular gingery masala tea in the morning the only tea that passes my lips is oolong or some flower tea, but then when I'm at my parents I could end up drinking up to three small cups of tea because what is tea if not a staple in all our households but by the heavens hold the milk or I shan't drink. 

read on baby

Tis the season for aircon's and I have broken the seasonal maidenhood of my air conditioners by finally switching one on today.
The verisimilitude of today's incalescence hit me like a wet towel that's been doused in superheated steam before I even stepped out this afternoon.
Bathed in sweat right out of the shower with wet hair clinging to every part of the body and refusing to dry because of humidity and staying wet because of sweat so piteously triggered me that I wanted to cry.
My entire face feels like it'll begin to melt and that I'd end up finding my features in my shoes because everything about me feels liquefied and it doesn't help that this house that is super airy and tremendously ventilated now lets in the kind of heat that I could near poach in what with its extremely soggy characteristic that I feel I shall keep ranting about this entire season.
The problem with fans here and it's not as such an issue with fans as it is with the way they are is that there is no concept of ceiling fans which have the ability to disperse air throughout the entirety of the rooms, instead, there are only table or pedestal fans that project air in a single direction only and the moment you're out of their influence chances are you're suffocating; not to say that fans are any helpful but at least some respite can be had, having said that I do know of people and families who only turn on their air conditioners on the rarest of occasions and even then they don't.

I'd once gone to a house in the previous town I lived in regarding some work and the heat was stifling and imagine my disbelief when on reaching that house I saw the entire family seated on small stool's around a low table with just a couple table fans for company eating watermelon.
Every member was profusely sweating, there was a tower ac in the corner that stayed quietly ignored and it was in that mucky weather of their house that I conducted my business and hated every second of it because I was evidently uncomfortable, saturating my small hand towel with perspiration and not a single person seemed moved by that image. It felt and looked like a penance.

On another occasion, a friend of mine was aghast that the first thing I did on reaching home (again this was in my previous town) was turn on the ac during winter months on the warm setting because the house was well below freezing point and she inquired as to why did I do that? Odd question that but I told her it was cold and she said yes, but it's better to sit with a duvet rolled about your person than turn on the ac, at least that's what most people did (in that town apparently) and then it was my turn to be aghast.
Rest assured my duvet never left the bedroom and doesn't to this day, but yes these are incidents that have happened and they're funny to recall.

And now, as I near finish this post, my room, cool and comfortable in that non-icy pleasant way rather makes me feel like I'm in one of those sanitized laboratories. All experiments are a go go

π

Fervently ignoring
but getting loved instead
palpable guilt (as if)

la-la weather and mood

I just, I can't even..blue skies, chirping birds, sunshine and beauteousness all round. It's overwhelming, I'm in tears and I just sat in the balcony, soaking some Vit D, having my lunch reclining on the chair, feet atop a footstool, cat on my lap and the world was indeed happy, that is until someone rang the bell and I had to break the calm of my harmonious worldly oneness to shake the cat off the lap, get up from the almost sleepy position and trudge towards the door to find a stranger who looked more surpised than me because he'd gotten into the wrong building and broken my reverie. 
I spent some more time fitting back into my previous position like a Tetris block but this wouldn't last I knew. Things had to be done, there was work afoot, and I couldn't just lounge about, now could I? I mean I could but perhaps on a weekend when there's no rush; seeing how it is Tuesday the faith stays in short supply.
But this mellow warmth tinged with slight coolness during the afternoon which rapidly depletes as the sun goes down is much welcome and is here to stay for a few days until the weather gets cold again, but it's pretty much pleasantly cold in varying degrees after that. It's not yet denim jacket pleasant, but definitely not the thermal wear season anymore either.

This morning began with frightful chirps of birds that seemed all too glad to have found sun after almost months of intermittent gloom and it wasn't with a heavy heart that I found myself waking up, but with a light footstep and though my morning mood is mostly murderous it was almost congenial in that scary schizophrenic way and as fearful as I am of stepping out of the house too early to buy vegetables I found my heart volunteering for the deed and thusly I spent a good half hour sitting on a park bench near the river and came back laden with fruits and veg and even some tentacled dead bodies that I intend to cook up tomorrow.

I might even be tempted to sunbathe if the weather continues to stay so deliciously comforting and in fact, I'm resolved to clean up my balcony and get rid of all the lazy pile-ups of forgotten pots and soil by planting seeds and other such gardening endeavours.

I'm going to begin spring cleaning very soon. 

!

I really want to watch Tomb Raider for no other reason except Alicia Vikander 

back and forth

Today went by in Kimchi fumes and I haven't as much as touched my drawing but what can you do? I know tomorrow is going to be much the same because I'll be out during the afternoon because my friend and I are going on a little adventure to a spice market which is unbelievably huge. It is basically a wholesale market for foods which supply to taobao and I'm already excited about all the treasures I know for a fact I will unearth there.

Now what? It's that time which is too late to do something constructive and too early to cook dinner, my favourite time during the entire day when I let myself do whatever I please for an hour, from reading to mindlessly surfing and catching up on youtube or playing Jenga with kids.

The weather is a rainy 9ºC and not exactly fun but I'm happy to report that spring will finally spring(?) the way it should spring by next week. It will get warmer in that pleasantly cool way which doesn't make your feet freeze when you don't want to add a layer of a jacket over your sweater. I'm waiting for that time when the breeze feels enjoyable and you want to open your windows to let it caress your cheeks with a soft crisp.

from grey to off white

I mean I can't..
the fifty shades of grey ad is so cringe. I have to look the other side whenever it's on youtube.
Ugh, it's I mean what is it even?
Apparently what I gather from the ad is that they're now married and they're still on with their kinky games and I absolutely refuse to believe married people so sexually into each other. It's a bloody lie. 

last month

It's always at this time of the year that I stock up on my kitchen essentials and supplies, not least because it's cold and going out to buy small portions of basic necessities at regular intervals is a thought most unwelcoming, but also because 'tis that time of year when indulgences significantly increase and there's a colourful aura of fun festivities, or perhaps this could just be in my head, or a wintery syndrome.

I find myself cooking more, gifting more (foods that I've cooked that is) and eating more.
I've half a mind to bake some delicious, multigrain bread today, anything that speaks sustenance in carb tongue.

Tea tops

Apart from days that I go on a voluntary caffeine purge, I need some tea in my system each morning after a small meal which I had to forego today, seeing how I had to leave early and whatnot.. but five hours later when I came back home, tea was the first thing I concocted for myself, and feeling it drain down my gullet was something akin to vampires feeding on blood. I think I understand their need now.
I almost surprised myself on realizing how deeply I felt one with that brewed manna.
Ah, maybe I should indulge a little more and make another cup. It's Friday after all. 

made up memoirs

Here's a funny thing about memories- they randomly pop out of the weirdest places of the oddest things, and you're left reminiscing about them in a light you probably might not have at that moment of the incident. 

Case in point my visit to Sephora in Delhi.

Not a spectacular place, but okay lot's of makeup in one place and what not..great! Here's the odd part. 

The salesmen of shop attendants or whatever is it that one calls them were all men.

I don't know why but I felt rather uncomfortable talking to men about makeup and listening to them suggest colours and tones for my skin.

Not that it's a problem, anyone can buy or sell makeup, but I didn't feel relaxed while browsing for goods or swatching colour because a man would pop up out of nowhere and start asking me what I was looking for, brand, skin type etc, and really I wanted, needed a woman to come over and talk to me about these things, and all the female sales representatives (I think that's the correct terminology these days) stood in a crowd and chatted on, while men, who I didn't think would understand makeup the way women do, crowded over me, applying creams on my hands, shoving concealers on my face, dangling primers on my head, and though they were just doing their job I just felt mighty uncomfortable.

I wanted to hear a woman's voice talk to me about foundations and night masks and lip glosses, and mattes, not men. Ugh. 

I'm not being a sexist in any way..you see, I'd be okay if some man who wore makeup showed me these things, but then none of these men were the kinds who wore or even went close to makeup and knew the nitty-gritty of how makeup applies or the problems women face with certain areas on their face, things that only women or men who wore makeup would know.

It's something similar to buying lingerie or discussing it with a male rep. Yes, they can sell lingerie but they don't know the specifics of that particular garment the same way a woman or a man who wore lingerie would know and understand. 

Yeah, so memories and odd thoughts. strange. 

lip me up stick me down

Help me, dear gods. I am a lipstick hoarder.

All it took was a message from Sephora to inform me of new launches in their stores and there I was looking at the nudes and metallics and stains and balms. 

I swear it was no more than a few minutes but it's been over half an hour and I've somehow reached the Victoria Beckham Estee Lauder collection staring at golden eyeshadows.

That's when the enchantment suddenly broke and brought me to the real world with a thud and here I am, wondering why I'm not doing what I should be doing right now.

I mean lipsticks. Come on. How many could one possibly have?

I know I can't finish all my liptsicks in this lifetime and yet each time I'm near makeup I end up buying lip colours. Such is the enchantment of makeup. 

Maybe it's something to do with the fact that I can't seem to hold myself back when it comes to colours. 

Right, back to real world as it is. perhaps some hot chocolate. or maybe even some coffee, or just warm water? I's idiotically confused. 

obliterating thoughts

This weather has hot chocolate written all over its frosted mien. The need to sip on a steaming mug of cocoa enriched with some vanilla, honey and a splash (just a splash) of foaming hot milk is strong today.

I have given up on pre-mixed hot chocolate packages, preferring to make my own mix to be jeujed up as I please.

Sometimes a sprinkle of cinnamon, sometimes a drop of orange flower extract..as befits my mood, as befits my will.

It was with the single-minded pursuit of dunking my body in a molten concoction of richness that I set about towards the kitchen only to be distracted by a lone plate languishing about in the sink. 

A sink that isn't empty and dry is enough to send me twitching into epileptic convulsions and within moments I had the situation under control, except I forgot the reason I'd actually gone to the kitchen.

hmph, I brewed me some hot coffee and it was while foaming a splash of milk that I realized I was supposed to be making hot chocolate.

gah!

And so I sit and sip and sulk.

˚˚

And so I sit typing away only to have a barrage of phone calls disturbing my flow and lo, I've no idea what I was up to.
Muttering unintelligible curses, flinging wrists in the air, poking holes at the sky I get back to doing what I thought I was supposed to, but now I'm distracted and hopelessly annoyed.
An anxious pang of reverberation in my head for reasons I can only wonder why.