Driving Home - Part 2

Even a Humvee driven by a murderous maniac would have trouble getting through the mess of a traffic on Mehrauli Gurgaon Road. The traffic has increased to the point that at normal hours (i.e. not between midnight and 2 in the morning), the cars just crystallize into position and are unable to move. Crystallography talks of degrees of freedom, and Professor G Sundar tried to teach us how to calculate it. On MG Road, the value is easy to work out - Zero. You cannot move. If you move your elbow, you will poke it into the eye of a fellow motorist, who will turn around and fire a bullet through the head.

Creatures like me harbour the deep rooted desire to return home and go to sleep, so MG road is an absolute no-no. Even the T-72 tank that I had planned to obtain would find it difficult to pass through the crystal maze, so alternate methods of locomotion is a must.

So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the god-foresaken road past Mandi-gaon. It's a narrow road, currently used by a few Qualis drivers and chauffeurs of the rich and famous (who own the farmhouses along that road). The road connects Andheria More on one side to the Gurgaon-Faridabad highway. If you take a turn on the way, you could pass the Chattarpur village and reach Anuvrat Marg, a kilometer from the Qutub Minar.

At a time when it takes two hours on the MG road route, the alternate route, 10 Km longer, takes an hour.

And, an hour's extra sleep is welcome any day!

An Idea for Icecream

Lately, sheer laziness and a good cook has conspired to make my attempts at culinary innovations a fairly rare occasion. It's unusual at this time of the year - usually the brightly coloured vegetable barrows in winter are a sheer temptation to try my hand at something new.

Several friends, at the receiving end of new experiments, often ask me, where do you get ideas for all this? They usually have a look of martyred resignation, steeling themselves for bouts of nausea, food poisoning, diarrhoea or worse. Only when they find themselves to have miraculously survived another sunrise do they trickle back to ask for the recipe.

At such occasions i am strictly truthful, even to the point of admitting a modification to a published recipe. Over the years I have admitted:
(1) Recipes that have come in dreams (Honestly!!!),
(2) Reverse engineering from food at restaurants,
(3) Sneak peek at someones kitchen,
(4) Sheer random exuberance

But this time I have taken professional help. During a development of a fairly bitter concoction I briefed all the well known flavour houses - IFF, Firmenich, Givaurdan Roure and Symrise. And they have come out with brilliant combinations that will persuade the sweet little kiddies not to spit out what mamma spoons into their mouth.

One of the flavours that failed has, however held me spellbound. Forget Lily the Pink's Medicinal Compound. This flavour - a combination of alfonso mango, peach and vanilla is a shoo-in for the next icecream to be made during the week end.

The flavour house, which I shall not name, has thoughtfully provided the individual flavours - none of them are as good as the three of them put together. Even a small deviation in the percentage of the flavours takes away the entire charm.

So what is the combination? Sorry, that's the secret that stays in-house. After all, I did take the trouble to brief the flavour house. To the victor goes the spoils, doesn't it?

Never mind! Friends are always welcome to visit during the week-end! Advance warning (in the form of a telephone call) is a must...

Packing

I shall be travelling again at the end of the week. Its a thing I usually look at with dread. Travelling means packing.

I am bad at packing. Every time I travel, I end up postponing the packing part of the journey till the very last minute - and then hastily dumping the things I need to take into a suitcase. I end up leaving quite a few things I needed to pack, toothbrush, shaving tackle, socks, slippers...

I've never left my ticket behind. I check a million times before I reach the station or airport.

My wife loves packing. Not only for herself, but for me. She takes time and effort to select what she is going to take, intuitively works out the most optimum way of filling the suitcase, with due care to ensure that everything comes out more-or-less intact. The suitcase is carefully shut (without a pair of socks sticking out from the side), locked and carefully arranged near the front door in anticipation of our departure.

Naturally I have passed on the responsibility of packing to her capable hands. Once, in a burst of guilt, I did try to pack my bag myself, but the resultant chaos, lost temper and delayed journey swiftly convinced me to leave something to the experts.

There's something about packing that creates a mental block. Theoretically, I should be pretty good at it. I managed an A-grade in Optimisation in college, breezing through the section on Cargo Loading Problem. Even practically, my wife defers to my expertise in stuffing the last bowl of left-over into a fridge bursting to the seams.

But when it comes to packing I have waved the white flag long ago. I have done many hectic first-flight-in, last-flight-out type tours so that I didn't have to pack. I've sent colleagues out on tours instead of going myself for the same reason.

Unfortunately in the end you end up with tickets in your hand and an empty bag on the floor and a cupboard from which you've got to select which combinations of shirts, trousers, undergarments, nightwear and accessories need and should be coaxed into the suitcase.

"It's easy," says Nilanjana, "all you have to do is to first put the trousers in this way..." I don't listen any more. My wife's home, and the packing is finally in safe hands.