Monday, February 23, 2009

Coffee @ 1024

It is kind of strange that the food and scent always pulls in old memories. All of my lower primary school days where linked with a touch of Cuticura powder scent as my mom used to put a lot of talcum powder on me, it is the same thing with my vacations, The Chandrika soap always gave me thoughts about long forgotten wonderful baths at ‘Panavalli, Cherthala’ on open ponds where the soil is white in color… The latest thoughts where more related to food rather than soaps and talcum powder.

It was just another interesting weekend where I found various levels of thought process after watching the movie ‘Nan kadavul’, which roughly translates to ‘I am God’ where the hero kills the heroine at the last scene with a verse,

Death is a gift to some one who cannot sustain their life and a curse to a bad soul”.

The second score was Delhi – 6 which turned out to be great entertainer for me. From the crowd of six guys, only two liked this movie and others where all sleeping by the time movie ended, if otherwise, Sonam kapoor was the only reason which kept them awake. Every one was leaving the cinema hall saying ‘No story line, what a waste of time’. But me and my friend were grinning ear to ear thinking about how good the movie was!
For Delhi 6, the movie trip itself was interesting. The pretty girl in the cinema hall two rows down the line sitting next to (probably) her sister and her sister’s husband was a serious distraction to the movie until the movie really synced in. But as the movie set in with the streets of Delhi blossoming, the fair lady was long forgotten and the music just flourished.

OK now back to the weekend. After a movie each on Friday and Saturday, it was time for a feast on Sunday. So Mr ‘A’ ( the one who liked the movie) decided to make his special ‘Beef’ curry at his home. The beef curry and a side line of entertainment (it was in A’s place) where all the other four guys including me where running different kind of queries into Kerala matrimony website to get series of search results. Yes, this is one of the favorite time pass for many these days. To look for a bride, where we get to see the best pictures and unless and until we commit the mistake of contacting some one, it is good to know what people are looking for. We were little scared to see so many profiles’ of girl’s which said ‘ Software professionals please excuse’, that much for the recession !

Yes, I had started with food and memories and ended up on recession, lost in the trail again! So the beef curry was too good, hats off to MR A for the awesome beef curry despite being from a Variyar family (A caste by which he is supposed to be a temple guy ‘Ambalavaasi’, who is forbidden from eating eggs, chicken on any meat for matter of fact) The rest of the evening was on Oscar and another Tamil movie ‘Arinthum ariyamalum’ The food and memory part kicked in just there. As the Oscar fever was spreading its fumes with A R Rahman and Pookutti on centre stage, Mr B was busy making chappathy and I was busy switching my eyes from Oscar and the movie on laptop.

There, the thought of beef roast + chappathy came into my mind and pulled in some old memories. At my house, chappathy for supper was always accompanied with light black coffee. It was so nice of MR A to offer me coffee. A piece of chappathy with curry followed by a small gulp of coffee ..aaahhh, I closed my eyes. I could feel myself sitting over the gas cylinder (My usual place at my mom’s kitchen is over the spare gas cylinder for eating the hot chappathy straight from hot plates) Thanks a ton to Mr A and B. The fun part was ‘making of black coffee’. As A offered me coffee, he did a small calculation and put only one cup of water for coffee and started searching for coffee powder.
He found 6 empty jars of coffee bottles, but he could hardly find enough coffee powder from all of the six jars to make my coffee. Then A started asking rhetoric questions in kitchen like
‘Who drinks so much coffee here?
Why are these empty bottles still here?
Who is collecting all these empty bottles?
Are you folks planning to start a road side shop ? ( Murukan kada – where you could find lot of candies in bottles in the front row)
It was fun watching him pulling his hair out on the empty Jars of coffee bottles. To add fuel to the fire, I took this snap and said I will be blogging this tommorow….




But the food really pulled in some memories …the scent and flavor always push us back to some old memories attached with it. It is strange how we remember things which are getting faded in our mind just comes back fresh and crisp with sensations like taste and smell.