A decadent and sinful celebration!

Vish and I clocked 8 years together as a married couple, and with a toddler on a week day, this was pretty much the highlight of our day (after a satiating meal of home made pasta and bruschetta - yes, you see I am finding my way back to the kitchen :p)!

This is an Irish car bomb cake - A chocolate Guinness cake with a subtle flavor of Irish whiskey. The frosting is whipped cream cheese with a hint of whiskey for the layers and Baileys for the top. Here's the recipe I followed. And if you are not drooling already, here's the picture of the show stopper of the evening.

A generation lost.

Today my nani (mom's mom) passed away...

...what she has left behind is memories - of huge jars of amle ka murabba, meethe aate ke cheele, suji ke pue, aloo ki roti (so that I would eat aloo paratha during those fussy teen years when crash diets were the norm), daal and rice from the solar cooker, hand knitted baby sweaters and nappies, her gentle voice (In all these years, I had never heard a shout or an angry tone), her subtle sense of humor, her liberal thinking, her spectacles, her freckled hands that were always soft, the pallu on her head, the red bindi, the grey curls, the bend of her spine as she said her prayers, and also the hesitant footsteps, the forgotten words, the empty silent eyes, and the fading touch with reality in the last few years. 

With her going, I have no grandparents left. She has taken with her a whole generation of "parents". 

Life is cruel; it is brutal.

Yesterday

Through a dusty window with a broken pane,

I peeked at the lane that seemed left behind -

Not really though, it did continue to eternity,

But nevertheless there were paths that lay uncrossed.

I contemplated reliving that abandoned haven;

What is it about the days gone by,

That they always seem so perfect in introspection?

Why is today the happiest from tomorrow's point of view?

The mind's the devil you must give your due to -

It concocts this web of rose tinted nostalgia.

I often fall prey to it, but that day, I didn't;

I opened the pane wide enough and looked at Yesterday.

There it was curled up in its smug satisfaction of having passed.

I stirred it a little, rattled it some more, and gave it a gentle shake -

And - memories fell out like the crisp leaves of a vibrant fall

Not all were warm rays of the sun, cold wintry days were wrapped in too.

"Why do you hide the chill", I asked Yesterday.

"You choose to remember the warmth", it shot back.

"How so very naive of me", I wondered out aloud.

"How else would you carry my burden", offered Yesterday.

This.

(P.S. This was meant to be published around Nov-end/December during my stay in Delhi but got stuck in my Drafts folder. Here it is, now.)

This grey haze enveloping confused skies;

This nip in the air that makes you wrap your arms around yourself;

This shortening of the day and the lengthening of twilight;

This celebration of the short spurt of warm sun rays that were up until now very unwelcome;

This series of haloed lamps on the roadside vendors' carts;

This crackling of roasting peanuts and popping corn;

This feeling of loved fuzziness and dazed dreamy state that only the cold can bring;

This is the Delhi Winter!

And, boy, have I missed this!