Let's cook some history!

Mrs. Suveni Balan

From history lessons based on drawings to discussing the Mumbai traffic, an evening with my former history teacher brought back so much as well as some new insights about the city. I learnt about schools that had their roots in Germany. The ones that did not restrict their students to code but instead the morals. Sitting down on the floor, sharing and washing your own dishes is more important than the length of your hair. A neat look does, make one look presentable. Certainly not what I am in the above picture. The first thing I did next morning was to shave my uneven beard. You can't even call that a beard. I have bushes on my face.

She treated me with dishes from Kerala. Some sweet thing rolled in Maida (Edit: The sweet dish is actually called ada. It is made of rice atta rolled in banana leaves (I (Suveni Ma'am) removed the banana leaves before giving it to you) with Jaggery, dry fruits,and coconut*), shaped like a triangle. Then there was Tofu along with some Malabar Paratha. Her husband is also such a sweet guy. We talked some more over food. How did I even get here in the first place?

Going back..

I got free from work, and called her up. She was most probably busy with something and I straight up broke the flow due to which she had trouble recalling my name but once she did, a cheerful voice immediately greeted me. It took me a while to get my stuff in place. I left my laptop at Cinema (I call my office 'cinema', get used to it). I sometimes do that when I don't have some work to attend to next day in the morning. "Quite normal, why are you boring us with the details?"

Next, the bus boarding procedure. A numb nut would not look at the traffic and timing. I am a numb nut. I did not look at the traffic and timing. That bushy beard in the photo grew on the bus ride. THAT IS HOW LONG IT TOOK! Music gave me company. Plus I shared my location with Ma'am so she called and gave this sense of much needed reassurance.

Her door was open when I arrived. The sweet couple was waiting for me. Everything after that, is now registered like a pleasant echo in time. A lot of intellectual conversations started to muster up when the three of us sat on the dinner table. Sir was busy solving the puzzle section of the newspaper. Ma'am and I went down some old happy roads. That nostalgia trip which is necessary once in a while. Sort of refreshes you to the core.

What did we talk about?

Hehe, not telling you that. Bye! A reunion might happen.

* text taken directly from a chat on Facebook