In America

Prawns were paying for their sins. They were being burned on the stove and had chilly powder rubbed into their eyes. It was drizzling as I brought in the prawns biriyani to Gafoor's house for the Eid potluck. Familiar looking items had already taken their spots at the buffet table in the garage. Costco chairs and tables were set - complete with stylish blue table cloth skirting from Alvin.  It was after 2 PM when we reached a second time, this time with family.  I went staight into the buffet line and started serving my plate. Jacob was there next to me.  I looked for a familiar face and sat diagonally opposite Alvin who was engaged with deep technical discussions with Basil. Gafoor came and sat opposite me, and it felt like it has been a long while since we had just talked one on one. Bobby and Adarsh joined the table and the discussions steered into the movie world.  Adarsh made me kneel down and write "Aadujeevitham is not worth a ten on ten". He was very clear an...

 White spots on the dining table. Light through the patterned black doors of the oven. Timer sound. Three plates on the table.  "Kids .. time for dinner.". I call out.  Niya walks up with a beaming smile to the table in her navy blue long sleeves and jeans.  "Where is Kittu?" I ask her.  "I don't know. I thought he was downstairs" "Must be sleeping.. " I said to myself, crossed the wooden flooring on to the white carpeted steps calling .. "Kittoo.. ".  Varied inundations. Multiple calls. From the staircase landing to Niya's room. Look around the room. Back through the landing section.  Then I walk through the master bedroom .. "Kittoo.. ", then to the office room. Monitors, office chair, speakers. Then to Divya's office room.. white table, chair, periodic table, globe.  Hurried steps downstairs. Carpeted landing to wooden flooring to carpeted guest room.  Cozy looking grey sheets. Walk back to kitchen. "Niya, ...

  Gafoor had come over sunday night and assembled this basket ball hoop. The black base is filled with sand that was in the brown paper bags.  The instruction asked to fill the sand by holding the base vertical which meant one of us would have to hold the base, and the other guy would have to carry and control the sixty pounds sand bag. Instead of that we decided to keep the base on the ground, empty the sand bag, and tilt the base back to push the sand down. This made the process whole lot easier.  But even then, holding a sixty pound bag of sand is no easy task. That is how the rolling table made it's way from the garage to the backyard. And then the cardboard sheet of the packaging was used to guide the sand from the tilted bag on the table to the hole in the base. That all felt like a lot of good optimizations that we did.  This was Gafoor's birthday gift to Kittu on his tenth birthday. He had called me on the day of the party, and said that he wanted to drop by ...

Curries just have a way to find us.  First, it was Shannu's chana dal and jeera rice. Healthy tasty homely food. Just as the fridge started to look empty, Manu rings the bell bringing in Anjali's super healthy jeera rice and beans curry.  Healthy controlled food that one would get in a high end hospital. Ok - how about healthy food that a diet strict movie star would get. Then it was Ramshi's idiyappam and egg curry. One way ticket to Kerala. The beef biriyani was there too but it is the idiyappam and egg curry that took me home. Relatively new to US, I had felt the same nostalgia effect with Ramshi's egg puffs at a community get-together earlier. Following week, we had Nithya's kappa meen curry, and chicken varutharachathe. When Vijesh brought it in, I thought the curries were already made. But when I ate it the next day, they just came back alive. It was a quiet day - time for lunch.  The fish curry just woke me right up. The feat was repeated next day with Nithya...

The traffic was pretty bad, and that let me see how majestic and beautiful the wind mills looked against the silver sky. A row of five six wind mill silhouettes rotating majestically against the silver sky plate. As I got closer,  the view reduced to one wind mill in all it's grandeur.  I was to start at 5:00 PM, and reach by 5:45 PM for the party that is supposed to start at 6:00 PM.  GPS lady told me to turn right and I turned and got into a dark  parking lot. I came right out, and took the turn right after the wall, saw "Sky Zone" on the building, and parked right next to the gate.  There were multiple doors all around the building, and I feared that I might walk through all the wrong ones before getting to the right counter. But no, I got to the right counter in first attempt. By now, it was already 6 PM.  Manu came in, and he had a very different perspective on the traffic. He did not enjoy the windmill silhouettes. Abil was there with his wisdom and s...

I asked the kids to have lunch while I made the first trip to drop the chairs and table at the Tracy Hills club house. Club house parking lot was full, and I could not recognize any of the people who were walking in the parking lot. Did I get the venue wrong? I double checked the whatsapp group, and then called Manu. Manu said that some of the folks had just left the club house after doing the initial decoration setup, and that Anjali is on the way. Meanwhile I had one of the kids from the birthday party next door open the gate for me, and I parked the table and chairs outside the hall. Just as I was about to leave, Anjali reached with her kids, and opened the hall door. I left the furniture inside, and came back again with my kids.  There were quite a few people in the hall already.  It was 2:45 PM almost. Some more whatsapp reminders, and we had everyone.  Manu did a quick welcome, and passed on the mike to Prakashettan. Prakashettan did a speech, asking for a moment of...

  Murali invited us along with a few other neighbor families over to his home for dinner on the occasion of Diwali. The house was all dressed up with lights and decor -- inside and outside. We had our conversations - house owner topics of backyard work, cellphone reception, internet connectivity, sound bar recommendations, and then some software conversations around Musk, cyber truck, flying cars etc. Kiran had completed his state-of-the-art backyard work, last time we had caught up, the waterfall work was pending. It was all done now. Manu kept up the life of the conversations with his inimitable energy.   After our catch-up conversations, we had our vegetarian dinner that Murali had arranged from Peacock restaurant in Dublin. The food was really nice. I am on a noom diet right now. I had to take multiple servings regardless. Relaxed a bit after the filling food.  Next up, a few of the kids performed to dance songs played on TV. Murali's elder daughter, Manoh...