Twenty- five Seven

Fly lice and noodles

September 14, 2012

Last night we went to China Garden after a long, long time. And finally after a long, long time I had a great dinner.

Our guest that evening was a fine young lady who was spending a few hours with us before leaving for the airport. Luckily our regular waiter wasn’t around so we had the opportunity to try something without his recommendations well meaning though they may be.

I always wonder why I ask the waiter what is the best on the menu – obviously he doesn’t really know my likes or dislikes. I also now understand why my husband always asks for the same dish time after time. He knows what he wants and doesn’t want to deviate from the tried and tested. So in every Chinese restaurant that we visit any where in the world, he asks for Haka noodles and stir fried vegetables including restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai!

The restaurant was fairly empty when we arrived at 7.45 but filled up quite soon, a testament to its ever green appeal. My Lung Fung soup was served at just the right temperature and the bits of shitake mushrooms blended well with the chopped tofu, carrots and beans, a nutritous mix which prevented this soup from deteriorating into a mass of congealing corn flour.

Our guest ordered a stir fry of chicken and veg while we had the mock meat and haka noodles. Mock meat is found only at China Garden and is nearly always perfect to satisfy those cravings for real meat; stir fried with soya and green chili, it complemented my vegetarian FLY LICE.

We wound up with a slightly disappointing dessert of tinned lychees that were rubbery but all in all I was pleased. Finally a meal where China Garden lived up to its reputation – a place to go for the best Chinese meal in Mumbai.
Watch out for the expiry date

September 11, 2012

While shopping for groceries, medicines, cosmetics or any other consumable item, we always look out for the expiry date. Sometimes it is written in large bold letter while more often than not it is written in small, unidentifiable print. You have to turn the can around, squint a bit, hold it against the light and there you will find it written as unobtrusively as possible to avoid disfiguring the attractive packaging. So attracted are we by the outer packaging that we often forget to look for the expiry date and when the fruit begins to smell putrid or the medication is ineffective we wonder what went wrong. We just plain forgot to look for the expiry date.Everything comes with a shelf life – whether it is a man made product or a natural occurrence like sunshine or darkness at night. When the sun rises in the morning you know it will end just as you know that nightfall is limited till the next day break. We are not surprised when day follows night so why should we be surprised when things come to an end?

Unfortunately we imagine that things will last forever – especially those things that are nurtured by us. Our frail human egos have us mistakenly believe that what we have created is a masterpiece that will survive the ravages of time. So when they vanish either voluntarily or accidentally, it comes as a shock to us. But time, the proverbial healer makes us understand that what has changed has changed irrevocably and one should be gracious enough to accept change. After all everything comes with an expiry date : if we didn’t look carefully for the expiry date, it doesn’t mean that it won’t expire.

So even if you didn’t see it coming,
even if the end was truly shocking,
accidental or inadvertent,
nothing in this life is eternal
least of all a
relationship.

For relationships are
fleeting
transactional
and transient
with an expiry date
we fail to see.

That alone will explain one of life’s eternal questions – Why did this happen to me?
Waiting for Claire

September 9, 2012

Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport seems to be a strange place to spend a Sunday morning especially at 8 in the morning, but since I hadn’t gone to the airport since December I thought I’d go along to see how much progress the new airport had made.I must say, it still looked one higgeldy piggeldy mess with mounds of mud covered with weeds, bits of flyover connecting to nothing and a huge umbrella of steel. But the part that was functioning was quite different in the morning.

The airport was still waking up and being cleaned. Trolleys were being moved and the food stalls were still getting ready to open.

The palm trees outside the airport looked green and lush and for a minute could have you wondering if you were in the right place.

The morning calm was quite different from the frenetic midnight madness that I was used to seeing while picking up passengers.

Seeing eye to eye

Taxis waiting

But what I didn’t reckon with was the fumes of alcohol that came from the breath of meeters and greeters. Holding placards announcing names of the passengers they had come to receive, the drivers were all singularly bored. Most of them were lounging around, staring vacantly and perking up only when a passenger showed up. Then there was a frantic activity as they all came forward waving their placards. I overheard one chap looking bewilderingly at his placard and ask another “Yeh aadmi hai ya aurat?” ( is this a man or a woman?), either unable to read the name and definitely unable to recognise Claire as a female name.

When I told him that Claire was a woman, he went up hesitantly to a blonde lady who was looking out for him.

I realised then that it mattered little whether Claire was a man or a woman or whether the meeter & greeter could recognise her: Claire could read her name and would have definitely found him!

Welcome to Bombay!