Puttu and kadala.
Again.
I don’t know a single person who has got bored of eating puttu for breakfast. But 30 days at a stretch is a bit of a stretch. It is enough to make people think of very drastic measures. Now, if the dinner is fruits and soup, you have had it. You will start dreaming of chicken tandoori, beef fry, and all other sins at odd times. It could even force a nervous breakdown.
“Sara, I admit puttu is my favourite, but the same puttu and kadala for one full month is too much. Can’t you ask the cook to prepare something different. Even bread-omelette will do.”
“Go ask your Modiji. The grocer doesn’t take PayTM-ShayTM or dollar-shollar and I am not wasting precious domestic currency on a packet of bread and a dozen eggs.”
“Now you blame Modi, it is exactly because of assistants like you he had to demonetise all those lakhs of crores of rupees. You good for nothing ~!#%#$^$%.” To make my point I threw the cup of tea on the floor, was just about to throw the puttu and kadala as well, but luckily stopped myself in time. All that yoga-bhoga I do works at times, though I haven’t shed any weight so far. Sara, like me, also has a temper, if I do something like that, she might just stop cooking or worse still, make puttu and kadala for the next one year.
“If the maid doesn’t come, you will sweep the floor today,” Sara picked up the newspaper and started reading.
“See Sara, you don’t get the point. I will explain.”
“What is there to explain?”
“You know why Modi became PM?”
“He was Chief Minister for 15 years and wanted a change. What was there for the taking? The PM’s post.”
“It’s not as easy as that.”
“Of course not. You know of my 11-month undercover operation. I am so bored of it that I just stopped it.”
“What will you do then? Half your money came from that assignment. And my salary.”
“Don’t worry. Since I don’t have a CM’s job on offer, I will go undercover somewhere else. What I am saying is Modi became PM because he was bored being CM and it has nothing to do with ambition. It was the same with Manmohan Singh. He wasn’t doing much and when Sonia offered him the post he just took it. Singh was bored of doing nothing. Boredom is nourishment of ambition.”
“OK. What does that have to do with my cooking?” Sara sometimes amazes me with her stupidity. I have to explain everything to her.
“Just like macro-economics and micro-economics, there is macro-boredom and micro-boredom.”
“And what is that?”
“Micro-boredom has to do with small things in life. Like eating puttu every day. Take Modiji for instance. Every day he eats dhokla, rice, dal, roti and kadak chai. Just imagine doing this every day of the month, every month of the year, every year of the decade. A good aide, or cook in this instance, will make small changes. Make dal tadka instead of dal makhani one day, upma instead of dhokla, vada-sambhar instead of dahi-bhalla.”
“Feeki chai instead of kadak chai.”
“No, no, no. Never. Never touch the chai. The whole day will be ruined if the chai is out of sync, and you don’t want your PM’s chai to be spoilt. It is a bit like the kattan chai I have every morning.”
“OK.”
“Now when the cook fails you, you start thinking. ‘What is the point of life if all I am eating is dhokla and dal-chaval.’ This thought process is a tricky thing. You never know where it takes you. Philosophy, spirituality, you could start thinking about anything.”
“OK.”
“The first two years, the PM was busy with foreign affairs, at the expense of internal affairs, some losers like Rahul say.”
“Oh, please. How can you randomly call people losers?”
“But he did lose an election, Sara. Getting back to the point, after two years, one fine day Modiji gets yet another plate of dhokla and the thought process starts. ‘I have done enough of foreign affairs, more than what Sushmaji has done, it is time I helped out Jaitleyji a little. What kind of a Prime Minister doesn’t help his ministers?’”
“OK.”
“And then he eats the dal-roti, yet again, it is not helping at all. He is encouraged to think further. ‘The GST is done, but it was the brainchild of Atal or Manmohan or whoever, and I am pretty much doing what they did. What is there for me to do?’ Every time he gets the same dhokla and dal-roti, he starts thinking. He is a man who doesn’t settle for the second best, he couldn’t have done nothing less than a surgical strike on the economy.”
At this point, Sara ended the conversation and left the room. She returned after 15 minutes.
“Kutty, here is bread-omelette for you. If you were bored of puttu and kadala, you should have just told me instead of cooking up a story.”
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