My echo, My shadow and Me...

For most of the people from the part of the country I come from, Diwali is just an occasion to burst crackers. It was not much different for me too. The very thought of Diwali was scary (!) for me. My poor lungs were too weak to bear the amount of pollution in the air, thanks to the tons of crackers burnt. As the days closed in to Diwali and people around start count down, I would be crippled by the images of me, sitting in a corner of my bed, struggling for breath. I have had sufficient reasons to hate the festival. Even then there were certain things I liked about the festival. I was scared of it but waited for it...waited eagerly to watch the lines of diays that maa (mamma) would put around the house, making it look like a heavenly abode...I longed for the day when there will be silence all around; I would sit on a chair and watch the flames dancing with air waves. Sight of diyas struggling to keep themselves alive when air movements became too ruthless evoked countless thoughts i

How tough can making chapatti be? If you are a natural cook, you will frown,"Making chapatti tough?" Ask me, I have been trying to learn that for the past four years.Just to add to the variety of food a bachelor can have at his own auspices. Even then I am miles away from proficiency. Demonstration of my imperfection starts right from the stage of preparing the atta dough. Either it will be too hard or too soft , as if to create problems at the time of rolling the dough into a disc. There will be no dearth of reason for the discs to be uneven, at times taking the shape of the map of India.As I was never good at drawing, a map of India used to take "more or less" the shape of a disc. Now, the chapatti discs I roll take more or less the shape of a map. The major disaster happens at the last and final stage, browning the discs. My teachers say chapatti can never be called well-prepared until and unless it puffs while browning. I have never seen that happe