What's Cooking!!!

Age : 0-21
Place : Sangli, India (My home town)

I need a tea. I will shout, “Aai, Mala Chaha De” (Mother, give me tea).
It is not a request, but an order! Same about the food! Anything you want, just tell mom and she will make it for you!

Eating habits : Only Veg.

Age : 21-24
Place : Mumbai, India (Amachi Mumbai)

I need a tea. Go out side appt, ask Bhaiyya, “Ek cutting dena Bhai”.

My first 24 years, I hardly cooked anything, not even used to make Tea, so forget about Cooking!! And I never thought I would!

Eating habits : Mostly Veg. Used to eat Non-veg very rarely (say once in a month)

Age : 24-25
Place : UStayAlone

I need a tea. Then what you stupid??? Go and make yourself!! No body around to give order or request!

My first 24 years, I hardly used to have non-Veg Food. NEVER cooked there!

My First one and half months in UStay Alone, we used to have either Chicken or Fish everyday. I had to and I started liking it also! But the best part was, I was living with 3 good cooks, Shrihari, Avijit n' Sharad. All of them were married, but their wives were in India at that time. So they were doing “good karma” of feeding me and my friend Sabari! At that time, the worst thing me and Sabari, used to do was to wash our dishes! Cooking ?? Who says you need to cook ?

Good time n' Good dre@m$ always come to an end! All the good cooks had to shift as their family had come here. Me and Sabari were the only bachelors. We both knew that we should not live together as both of us can't cook. So I decided to stay with Sandeep and Sanjay!

Sanjay was a good n' "veggy" cook! So I was really happy that I could eat more veggy stuff now. He and my other friends, Inderpuneet and Deepak, were my GURUs. I literally started cooking by looking at these people.

Good Times n’ Bad Times!! Two months! That's all! Now no body of them were around!

Sanjay and Inder shifted to different projects and different states while Sandeep and Deepak went back to India. Then I started living with my current roomie , "buddy". The funny part is both of us are competing for the title "The Laziest person in the milky way galaxy". Here is the typical conversation(?) between us!
Our principle of cooking was simple….”Whoever is more hungry will cook on that day”! No need to tell ya that most of the time we used to eat outside!

The weekends would be fun!
The “scene” on Saturday morning :

We have woke up at 11 AM and watching some TV program. Its 1 PM now. Both of us are hungry, but expecting that the other guy will get up for cooking. But Naaahhh!

So I look at him and ask, “So what should we do for Lunch today.”
Buddy will look at me as if he is just awake from sleep. When the words “L U N C H” hit his ears, he will remember something. Don’t worry I will also be thinking on the same page. Yeeeeeeeeesss… our favorite hotel ..”Mallik Biryani House”!

So he will give me a wicked grin and I will answer back to him with the same. Then both of us will shout, “ Chalo Mallik…..!”

Bad Times n’ Good Times!! Two months! That's all!

Soon Chandan, my friend from India, realized that we were spending too much money on food outside. Also he observed that eating the outside junk food we are becoming Pale! (Don't ask how did he observe us from India. I used to send him our photos from here you STUPID!!) So he landed in our appt straight from Mumbai!

His GOOD LUCK..!! what else I can say. He was very enthusiastic and was always eager to make new recipes by “googling” them. So me and buddy decided to give him a complete support from our side and gave him a complete freedom to make any dish he wanted to! We never tried to interfere in his cooking. We decided that we should help him improve his cooking skills by giving him chance to do all the cooking stuff alone. We even helped him by suggesting few good menus and he made them. It was our complete support and dedication to his cooking skills, (dedication here stands for "only eating all the good menus" that he prepared.......just a clarification!) that made him a better cook in very few days! And I am very happy that he understood our "gr8" efforts in helping him achieve this feat!

This time, “Good Time” was for 3 months!

Why it ended, what happened next and answer all those questions in the next blog :D