The Food Review

Being a celebrity, the lady in white is regularly invited on TV shows, book launches, openings of supermarkets, and other such grand events around town.

On one such occasion, she was invited to a popular TV show to review the creative culinary art of a famous international chef.

She arrived in her elegant white linen trousers teamed with a lacy shirt. The click of her stilettoes announced her entrance in the kitchen studio.

As he shook hands with her, the chef noticed her expensive white clothes and made a mental note to offer her an apron when she watched him cook.
"Today I am going to make a special dish for you" he said to the lady in white as he smiled at the camera.
"Oooo...I am so flattered" cooed the lady.
He offered her the red apron while saying to the camera that he did not want to ruin her wonderful whites. The lady found the red apron disgusting as it smelled of garlic and onions and vinegar, etc. She made a face (off camera) but said nothing.
"I call this dish 'White Delight' as it is inspired by you" said the chef as he looked at her adoringly.
He then assembled a dish made up of dried ginger, baked beetroots, raw cabbage and topped it with fried vanilla ice-cream.
He delicately arranged this creative masterpiece on a heart-shaped white dish with a dash of honey on the side and a generous sprinkle of sun-dried tomato sauce.
Then he proudly presented it to the lady in white.
She sniffed it reluctantly and said, "It smells as wonderful as it looks."
He urged her to taste it and handed her a spoon.
She hesitated at first and then picked up a squidgy-bit in the spoon and put it in her mouth.
Immediately, she made a face like a baby does when she tastes an orange for the first time.
Luckily for her, the camera was focussed on the chef who was explaining how this recipe was influenced by a variety of culinary traditions around the world.
"And, my dear," he said turning to her, "how do you like it?"
In the meanwhile, noticing that nobody was looking at her, the lady had surreptitiously chucked her mouthful of whatever-it-was into the bin strategically placed under the table.
Noticing the camera focussed on her, she clapped her hands and said,
"I have never tasted anything quite like this before. The subtle influence of the different flavours put together created a spectacular effect. You are a true genius!"

(Picture courtesy: Google images)

(The Lady in White is Anna's creation. If you are in the mood for humour, do look up the label on top for more such stories.)

An 'Indian' Indian

Suzie is stunningly beautiful.
With luscious black locks which fall down to her waist in waves, a golden face with sharp features, a brilliant smile and a gait that gives away her wealthy upbringing, she is a head-turner among all my friends here in Muscat.
When I met her for the first time, I asked her, "So which part of India are you from?"
"I don't know" she said impishly and waited for me to say something.
I, in turn,  waited for her to provide an explanation.
From her appearance, I had taken it for granted that she was from India. Anybody would.
Then she laughed and said, "Well, to be honest, I was not born in India. I am from South Africa. My ancestors from India had settled in South Africa years ago. So long ago that I do not know where they were from. In my bones I feel more South African than Indian."
"Have you ever been to India?"
"No, but I plan to do so soon. I just might bump into a rich great grand-uncle who has hidden away all his gold under a temple" she winked.
We were soon joined by Suzie's friends. It was her birthday.
After the customary hugs and kisses, she introduced me to them.
"Hi, meet my new friend - she is an Indian Indian."
...
Since that episode,  I have met many Malaysian Indians, Australian Indians, and even Indians from Trinidad and Tobago.
When they ask me where I am from, I join my hands in the 'Namaste' gesture and say,
"I am an Indian Indian".

(Picture courtesy: Google images featuring the Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai)

 

Remembering Radja

Our expat life is such that introductions and farewells happen regularly.

We celebrate these occasions with coffee mornings and promises to meet again. At school, the leaving children are given t-shirts on which their classmates have sketched hearts and written forget-me-not messages.

Many farewells happen during end of the school year. This year, too, the leaving children wore their t-shirts at the school assembly and we bid them goodbye as they went to other countries to begin their new adventures.

Radja, however, left us without saying a proper goodbye.

...

We first saw Radja when he was at pre-nursery with our daughter. His chubby round moon-like face and almond eyes were unlike any other.

“Hey, you are named after a King” we told him.

He rewarded us with a grin which showed his bunny teeth.

As the years passed, we saw him grow into a tall, handsome boy with a toothy smile. He was so much a part of our daughter’s childhood that he was like one of our own children. His coy mother always brought traditional Indonesian pandan cakes at our class coffee mornings and was an active volunteer at any activity at school. She had three sons at the school and she cared for them with selfless love that only a mother can give.

...

In the last week of July, Radja came to the class end-of-the-term beach class party with his mother. He had fun with the other children, and as the darkness gathered in the sky, we wished each other happy and safe holidays.

In his Indonesian hometown, Radja was admitted to the hospital for a serious illness. Although he had two surgeries, the doctors could not save him. He passed away in mid-September.

The sad news was broken to his classmates by the head teacher as gently as possible but their little hearts sagged with grief. For parents, it was even more difficult. We could not fathom the depth of the feelings of Radja’s parents and brothers. We consoled each other and wept in each other’s arms.

We hugged our own children tightly and chose to believe that Radja had gone to a beautiful place from where he did not want to return because it was paradise.

...

I met Radja’s mother the day after she arrived from Indonesia.

I realised how thin she had become as we embraced each other.

“His voice” she sobbed “is still in the house”. He used to pop into the kitchen and declare “Mummy, I love you!”

She remembers everything. She is surrounded by friends who constantly console her.

She manages to send me a smiley whenever I text her.

She is a brave girl.

May God give their family the strength to bear this loss.  Amen.

(In this casual class picture provided by the school last year, Radja is the boy in the blue t-shirt giving a confident pose for the camera. Front row, third from right.)

Express Shopping

The rhythmic click of her stilettos made people look up as the lady in white entered the supermarket.
Weekends are not good times for shopping in the fruits and vegetable section. There were harried housewives with babies, matronly mothers of large families, single men and women, all choosing the choicest and the freshest produce.
Abandoned trolleys laden with groceries lay here and there while their owners rushed around to gather more goodies.
There was a long queue at the weighing counter.
The lady in white had only five items on her beautifully hand-written  alphabetical list - bananas, beans, cucumbers, oranges, and watermelon.
She quickly looked around and spotted these items in the abandoned trolleys near her. Picking up the things that she wanted from these trolleys, she checked them for weight and price stickers, and with a click of her stilettos, marched up to the billing counter near the exit.

(This is another one of Anna's comical stories. This lady in white is also featured in  http://freshmintandlemon.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-piece-of-cake.html )

An Old Dream

Whew!
Now that we look back, it seems like a well-crafted script.

It begins more than a decade ago and goes like this -
Enter: Two protagonists - My husband and I.
We have a dream that we dreamt together - to buy some land for farming in Vasai.
It is a pleasant dream and gives us a creative way of fantasizing about our future.
There is a certain complication: We don't have the money.
So we wait till we have some money.

Six years later...
Enter: Mr D, a young, budding developer. He leads us to a nice plot in a neat bungalow scheme that he was planning. We love it but there was a complication - we didn't have the kind of money he was asking. Yet.
We would have to take a heavy loan if we wanted to buy it at that time. It was against our principles to live beyond our means. Our parents had brought us up that way.
So we just keep on dreaming.

Five years later...
Enter: Mr C, a middle-aged developer. He presented before us the proposal of a little farm that was a part of a large rice field near the famous Vasai fort.
This time round, we had the money. We promptly gave him the token amount that he asked for. No papers were signed.
A year later we found out from other sources that this piece of land was already sold to someone else. Fortunately, we got our money back.
We continued to dream.

Three years later...
Enter: Mr F, a well-known developer, who arrived in Muscat and smartly presented us with a property proposal directly in our living room.
This was it! - we thought.
We gasped at the prospect of owning such a beautiful green farm as we viewed it with the help of Google Earth.
We immediately wrote off a chunk of our savings on the cheques that we handed over to him.
"Give me six months," he said as he rolled up his papers and left.

A year passed.
On our visit home, we soaked coconuts in water so that we could plant them when our farm was ready.
We went to meet Mr F in his fancy air-conditioned office.
"These things are not so easy. Give me some more time. There are several families who own this land and I have to get signatures of all of the members, you see. Don't worry, it will be soon" he smiles. He looks down at our little daughter and asks her if she likes Vasai. She, too, has dreams of a flower garden in the farm that we plan to buy and has already made a list of flowers.

Another year passed.
The coconut saplings are now ready to be planted.
No updates from Mr F.
Our dream begins to wilt.

Yet one more year passed.
So, last month, we went to see Mr F in his office again. Our daughter did not come with us.
He spread out a chart in front of us. It had a big family tree with several branches. We did not recognise any names.
Mr F circled each name as he explained to us who has signed and who has not and for what reason. He talked for an hour. We simply nodded.
Using a red marker, Mr F circled two names.
"Now these two here" he said pointing to the names, " absolutely refuse to sell."
"What are their demands?" asked my husband.
"They have not made any demands" Mr F replied, hopelessly.
We felt hopeless, check-mated, stale-mated, dead-ended, ...or whatever else you would call people in such a situation.
"Can we have our money back, please?" we told Mr F.
"Please don't lose hope. I am building a state-of- the- art building in the heart of the town. Are you interested in buying an apartment instead of land?" he said excitedly.  
"Our dream, if you remember, was to buy a farm" we remind him.
He simply smiled.
We have given him a December deadline to return our hard-earned money. We have no choice but to sit back with fingers crossed.


Enter: Mr G, a landowner who wanted to sell his farm so that he could buy another plot near his house.
He called us in response to a notice that my husband had put on OLX.com a couple of months ago, which said "Looking for an agricultural plot in Vasai from landowners only. Brokers, agents, developers: please excuse."
There was an enthusiastic response from brokers, agents and developers which we ignored.
It rained heavily this monsoon. The rain drummed on our rooftop and we barely heard the phone ring when Mr G called.
The next day we went to see him and his farm. He turned out to be the brother of my classmate. Their family lived simply and had high moral values. It was a privilege to be associated with this humble family. Within a months time, most formalities were completed.

Enter: Our dream. Its an old one now, with burnt fingers and lots of patience.
It finally opened its eyes last month to see a lovely piece of farmland.
Thank god!

 

 

(This is a true story. Names have been disguised to protect identity. Any resemblance to persons with similar initials is purely coincidental. )

 

Hot New Accessories

Featured above are my latest hot new accessories - reading glasses.
I got two pairs because I didn't want to be stuck if I lost one.
It was time to get them when I confidently stamped a library book upside down and didn't realise it!(I publicly apologise to any of my friends from the library who are reading this.)
Well, the reactions from most of my friends and family were positive.
My fiercest critics, my daughter and husband, however, said that the brown one makes me look like a premature grandmother whereas the white one bestows on me the scholarliness of a computer geek.
So you see, I get to choose my look every day.

A Piece of Cake

There is a special birthday in the family today. We spent last evening baking cakes. Here is a cake story for you... and a little piece of cake too!


A lady came to tea. She was the guest of honour.
Dressed elegantly in an immaculately white satin blouse and skirt that fitted her svelte figure perfectly, she sat gently on the couch with one leg nicely crossed over the other. Her tan leather peep-toe shoes were the trendiest thing in the room.
With pursed lips which were painted a rosy pink, she made pleasant comments in the conversation.
The hostess brought out her new bone-china tea set with the pattern of delicate flowers and poured hot tea in the teapot. The living room filled with a toasty warmth.
The lady in white watched in appreciation as the hostess balanced the big cake on a filigreed silver tray. Being the guest of honour, the hostess urged the lady in white to help herself to the cake.
The lady took the knife, cut out a neat little triangular piece of the cake and set it on a plate. Then, thoughtfully, she placed a fork next to it.
After that she picked up the rest of the cake from the silver tray with both hands like a squirrel and ate it.


(This is one of Anna's comical stories. Recently she has been coming up with a lot of similar ideas. If you like this whimsical lady, let me inform you that she is also featured in other posts under the label 'The Lady in White'.)