2018 - The Year that Was

Each time we enter into a new calendar year, we tend to reflect upon the one that just went by. Or at least I do. And my verdict for 2018 is that personally, it was a pretty good year for me. I ended the past year with my friends in Kolkata, with laughter, food and travel and began this year with a minor surgery, left over from the accident I had a couple of years ago and something I had been putting off for a while. 

Bringing in the new year with friends

This information was shared with you, not to get sympathy or attention (honestly!) but to talk a little about how working on my mind the past 2 years has helped me to treat the entire hospital episode as just another day (or two) in my life. Of course, the fact that it was a minor surgical procedure helped but it’s never fun to be in an institution where everyone is broken or ill. Or being under the knife. Thankfully I stayed calm through the two days earlier this week, slept like a baby (without aid) and enjoyed the surprisingly good hospital food!

Now going back to last year - it really was a landmark year of sorts for me as I officially got into the ‘feeding’ industry. When I met Ranjeet almost exactly a year ago at the Kolkata airport, I honestly did not think that I would be running a brand new cafe, with so much of ‘me’ in it. While I’ve always enjoyed cooking, feeding and taking culinary lessons, it was always treated as a hobby. In 2018 it became more than that.

Close to my heart - Terra Bites

Cooking for family and friends, and cooking for strangers who are paying for their meals, is like night and day. The former will always appreciate whatever you lay out in front of them, many people from the latter group will try and find fault with everything. Believe me when I tell you that it’s really hard to be judged constantly. 

Thankfully and knock on wood, the response by and large has been fantastic. There will always be some I won’t please, regardless of what I do but as long as I’m seeing happy faces leave the cafe, many of who are returning often, I am nothing short of thrilled. That’s all I’m going to say about it right now because although I’m working on eliminating fear from my mind, I am still afraid to jinx it!! 

Besides the cafe, the year also had me being involved in a story I had written that a friend of mine, Aditya, wanted to turn into a short film. Writing the screenplay together and then being a part of the shoot was an experience that has made me understand films from a completely different perspective. Hopefully the movie will be released for all of you to watch sometime in the early part of this year. 

Coming soon - Fingers crossed!

Although I travelled a fair amount, it took a little bit of a backseat due to these other activities. After three years I went back to my favourite place, Ladakh, and got close to the mountains that I so dearly love. A trip to Varkala during the devastating floods in Kerala, made me realise once again how vulnerable we are to losing our lives. 

Ah Ladakh! How I had missed you

And I have to thank this vulnerability, that I experienced all through 2016, for helping me turn my life around. To do the things I kept putting off, where I can proudly say that I’ve mostly overcome this disease called procrastination. Where into my middle ages I feel like I’m starting life once again, being thankful for every opportunity to learn, grow and enjoy from what life throws my way. My goal for this year is to forget the meaning of fear. 

Once upon a time, when I was a young boy, my dad had my palm read by an ‘expert’. While I have no recollection of what he predicted from those lines, the one thing that (strangely) stayed with me was that I would become famous in the food industry. I’ve always wondered why this piece of information made such an impact, even at that age, that I never forgot about it. And although I have no interest in fame, I think I would like to feed more people and have them appreciate and enjoy what comes out of a kitchen that I may run. 

None of us know what’s in store for us this year, this month, tomorrow or even the next moment. I’ve given up making plans for the future and have never believed in having a bucket list. The future is now and the bucket is going to get kicked in any case. Make the most of the present and have a rocking 2019!

The Big Snore

Let me start off by saying that I have slept with more people than most people I know. Before you begin to raise your eyebrows and go ‘hmmm’, the keyword here is ‘slept’ and for the purposes of this post, no more than that. Which makes me wonder when it was that ‘sleeping’ with someone began to mean ‘having sex’. But that’s a topic for another day.  

Recently I travelled to Ladakh with a friend whose name begins with the letter ’N’. Our first night was spent at the Ibis Airport Hotel in New Delhi since we had a ridiculously early morning flight to catch. A few minutes after we went to bed, our room began to shake with N’s snoring. For those of you that haven’t stayed at an Ibis, they have small, efficient, capsule like rooms which allow snoring sounds to bounce off of every close wall. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep for a moment the entire night and just to get back at N, I woke up at 2:30 am, turned on the lights, banged on doors and took a shower. Yeah dude, I’m going to punish you by being clean early in the morning.  

The next night wasn’t much better, after which I decided that if I didn’t get my own room and a proper night’s sleep, N would probably not make it out of Ladakh alive.

Save your sympathies for now because I’ve been on the other side, driving my sleeping partner crazy. Eight of us had once gone to Dehradun, where we were staying in a fabulously charming bungalow with enormous bedrooms, 4 poster beds, sunken baths, definitely one of the warmest and most tastefully done up places I have ever stayed at. There were 4 bedrooms with 2 of us sharing each one. The first night apparently went off okay because my roomie didn’t complain. The next two nights however, my snoring was so loud that he had to sleep on a daybed in one of the other bedrooms. Which actually worked out pretty nicely for me as I could spread myself across that king size piece of antique. 

The funniest snoring story though brings me to when I was living in Chicago and was driving to the Smokey Mountains with my friends Mike and Elsa. We began our journey at around 8 pm with the idea that we would drive for a few hours, spend the night at a hotel and continue on in the morning. Except that when we were ready to call it a night, there were no rooms available at any of the hotels we were stopping at. We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, there weren’t a lot of hotels to choose from in the first place and apparently a movie was being shot so for miles and miles everything was booked.

Finally at about 4 am we got to a Howard Johnson and the three of us, tired but still nutty and goofy, got off our car in our sunglasses (don’t ask) and walked over to the reception desk. Elsa was in the middle with her arms around Mike and I. She looked at the lady at the front desk and asked in her most serious tone, “honey, do you have a room we could use for a couple of hours?”

Of course the 3 of us burst out laughing and at that unearthly hour, our laughter sounded really, really loud. Anyway, a few minutes later we got ourselves a room, Mike had brought a sleeping bag and Elsa and I got the bed. I don’t remember how long we had slept but all of a sudden every light in the room had been turned on and Mike was standing at the foot of our bed going, “would you guys just knock it off with your snoring?”

How exactly does one do that since a sleeping person has no idea that he/she is creating havoc? 

The good news is that the last few people I have slept with during my travels have not complained about my snoring keeping them up. It’s probably because I now have a relaxed life and get (more than) adequate sleep. So if at some point you’re thinking of sleeping with me, it’s pretty likely that you won’t be disturbed. 

Oh and by the way, how many people have you slept with?

Almost Disconnected

A little story from my recent trip to Ladakh ...

Our driver, Tashi, who we thought should be a model instead

We said our temporary goodbye’s to Tashi, our 27 year old, lean and tall driver, who dropped us off at the home-stay in Likhir and drove away. The plan was that he would pick us up from the same village in 2 days, after we were done with our trek and take us back to Leh, where we would spend the night and head out to Nubra Valley the next morning. 

Except that the original plan of us trekking to Yangthang, spending the night at a home-stay and then doing the same route back the day after, didn’t make sense any longer. Our guide, Norbu rightly suggested that instead we should trek to Hemis on the second day, a different trail which will make the walk more interesting, and get picked up from there. 

The challenge at this point was to inform Tashi of our change in plans. With no connectivity in Likhir our only hope was that Yangthang would be more cellular friendly. 

Our super warm hosts in Likhir

After a breakfast of Khambir, which is a Ladakhi bread, freshly made by our host, spread generously with butter and jam, we were all set for our 5 hour mountain trek. Tashi teased us about it being a ‘baby trek’ and watching Norbu, it felt like he was taking a stroll in the park. On the other hand Naresh, my friend, and I were huffing and puffing within no time, the thin mountain air at about 11,000 feet not helping and the climbs starting to feel like we were reaching for Mount Everest. 

Took only a couple of pictures during the trek
when we were in flat lands

“I have to go back and get fitter,” was a thought I had many, many times. After a particularly long ascend of about 40 minutes, with a couple of stops on the way, we reached a point where we simply had to take a longer break. The place was scenic, just like most places in Ladakh are, and as I sat myself down on a large rock, unstrapped my water bottle and reached out to get a packet of biscuits, I heard a series of familiar tones. At that exact spot, in the middle of nowhere, not a soul or a home in sight, our phones had found a way to connect us to the world! 

As I took the phone out of my pocket, there were Sms notifications, Whatsapp messages, Facebook comment notifications and a couple of missed calls. 

“Let’s call Tashi!” I said excitedly. 

A couple of minutes later we had informed him about our change in plans and life was good once again. Temporarily, as a few minutes later we were back to our disconnected status. Except that it didn’t matter any longer. Who needs a phone when you have the mountains for company?

The joy of connectivity when you really need it

Yangthang, a very pretty village, with a stream running across it, sparsely populated and greener than anyplace we had been to so far, was exactly what we needed. Our rooms, situated on the rooftop, had large windows and comfortable beds. At one corner of the roof was a mobile phone hanging from a bamboo pole. We found out later that it was the only spot where they were sometimes able to get a phone signal! ‘Rarely’ is probably a more appropriate word than ‘sometimes’ because the entire time that we were in the village, there were no bars on that phone and Norbu found out later that, just like Likhir, there was no way to call from Yangthang either.

Fields of green and yellow at Yangthang

So in a nutshell, if we hadn’t stopped at that exact spot to catch our breath, there would have been no way to inform Tashi of our change in plans. In which case, we would have had to trek back to Likhir instead of Hemis. In which case I would have no story to write about. In which case you and I wouldn’t be connected at this very moment.