The Burning Khichadi!!

Nice title, no? Brain child of my roomie Nakul. After the usual slogging of 20 mins on decision of what needs to be prepared, we finally decided to prepare Khichadi. :)

Why do we slog on daily basis on this decision? Its quite boring to decide what to prepare and with my self being veggie, these (poor or rather helpless) guys are left with not much options. So what happens is we end up with Raita :D. As per Ravi (My other roomie) that this is the only thing which makes my prepared food interesting otherwise he prepares curries better than me ;). So you must have understood by now like what does comprise of this decision making.

So now next question, why Khichadi?. Since I was on-call support person this weekend, I was having comp-off on Monday. We prepare lunch for next day the previous night and hence this night Ravi wanted to prepare food just enough for tonight, so that I am left with good options to prepare myself at home next day and he gets a chance to eat outside. I was not giving in, as it meant to prepare food for alone the next day and main reason was these guys were eating outside without me :(. However, as you know Ravi is a good sales-man, he sold paratha and curd to me for next day and earned his own lunch outside :D

We have two pressure cookers at our place (Remember, importance of cooker from my other blog :P), but none of them work as desired. The whole preparation, properly cut onion, chilly, cabbage and potato along with green peas and lots of oil/spices turned into carbon as our cooker's safety valve burned :( As this safety valve burnt, all water converted into steam released and khichadi too burnt. Luckily we could save enough for our dinner tonight with extra supplement of two bowls of Bhel and Ice-cream :P. Anyways, it was all fun with explosion like sounds and comments by all. Best part was the ownership taken by Ravi to clean it (dont imagine Ravi as a very responsible guy), for a matter of fact, he likes that burnt khichadi and he ate it saying why should we waste it :) Somehow, we could finish the burning Khichadi and cleared cooker enough so that it can be washed.

The Essentials of America

I thought of writing some nice and interesting post today... so here we go :

Roti ... Kapda aur Makaan are still basic necessities of life in India (Now when I say nice and interesting post, dont think of these necessities as Mithun's famous titles. ;) )

Coming to the point what are basic necessities of life in US. Here is my list :

A) Cooker

B) Headphone

C) Ability to smile at anyone

Now isn't it weird? However, as always I got my points :

A) Cooker : Mexican, Italian, Mediterranean or Asian, whatever they may be called... under name of vegetarian food they wrap up all salads they have in a wheat or maida (I dont know what is maida called in English) roti. It makes me feel like a child. My mom used to prepare these rolls with a tomato ketch-up when I used to refuse sabzis in child-hood. So my Saviour is cooker. Easiest thing to prepare is daal and you can give it whatever flavor you want. Though I have not tried with every flavor, I still feel safe with daal :D

B) Headphone : Your phone may not have MP3 player. You can not afford an i-pod. You dont even have a MP3 player. Still you need headphone. Why? To protect you my friend. Though it is not that cold for anyone who is been here from long time... but for new-comers like me... the breeze when it enters my ears... I feel like ... :D . I guess you better understand importance of headphone in life.

C) Ability to smile at everyone : How do they know me ? Is she smiling at me ;) ? Am I looking something different ? These were my first thought when an unknown couple gave me warm smile. This is the culture over here ... to smile ... even when you had a good firing from your boss, even when you kept awake whole night for some or other issue ... you got to smile :D

So anyways ... jokes apart ... it is nice to cook your own food ... makes you feel importance of your parents.

Reaching NY!!

Almost all of them, to whom I have talked after reaching NY, have asked me the question... "How do you feel here?". Now, thats difficult question to answer... why... because I feel differently ... when I am at places... like I feel almost defenseless when I reach WTC station and I see the site of World Trade Center being constructed... where as few lanes ahead... when I reach Wall Street ... I feel excited as well as nervous... as this is the place where anything related to finances which will impact whole world happens. Anyways... answer is its good and place is well organized and disciplined.

After leaving Pune-Airport at around 11:30 AM IST (3rd Apr), I boarded Indigo Airlines to reach Ahmedabad at 2:30 AM IST. To my astonishment, I found international terminal of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport as locked. After enquiring a bit around there, I learnt that I dont have any place to dump my 49 Kgs of luggage. Hence, I just kept waiting for 30 mins infront of domestic terminal. In that span of time, near about 30 cab-drivers approached me and I said to everyone that I dont want to go. Finally, one more cab-driver came to me and as it is truly said that business is a gujrati's religion, he some how convinced me to book a hotel room upto evening. If I compare to this cab-driver in Gujrat to a cab-driver in Pune, there is a hell lot of difference. This man kept helping me in carrying luggage. He took me to nice hotel and took my luggage properly till room. It was so nice, that I got a feeling like this is a crooked plan to take away my belongings :)

Anyways after a sleepy day at Ahmedabad I finally checked-out from hotel room at 10:30 PM and reached international terminal, which to my delight was open and allowed me to check-in. I checked-in my luggage and kept waiting for Immigration check to take place. Police men over the security check looked to me and gave me a look like ... "shit.. first timers !! .. so many questions". Due to that I did not try to ask him any question and went ahead to board flight AI-191. AI-191 was comfortably good. Best part was on a three seat, they just allotted two seats. I was too happy to see that... it was not over-crowded and happily dumped my extra baggage on middle seat :) I postmortem the screen ahead of and remote in my seat :D and tried to watch every movie on the go. Till Frankfurt, I did not even realize, half of the journey was done. Food was ok types. They did not include chapatti and just replaced it with bread every time. Substitute works but does not gives satisfaction :P

After a thorough check of me(shoes, jacket, watch and belt) and my hand baggage, they finally allowed me to board my own flight. I did not understand the whole purpose of that check as we were supposed to be on same flight.

When we left Frankfurt, it was already 09:35 AM local time and we were already more than an hour late due to traffic (Runways are more crowded than roadways)

Now, Pilot has started playing a lot of videos about New York, culture, process and commutation. Mean while I received I-94 form which I filled and started watching my 3^rd movie in a row. After hour or so cabin-crew announced that we will be reaching Newark airport in few minutes. Every one started collecting their things. We locked our seat-belts. And nearly after 30 minutes we finally landed on Liberty International Airport, Newark. We were directed to visitors line to get immigration clearance. Now, here tragedy happened, moment I reached officer, he told me that I have not filled departure form and asked me to fill it and come again. I filled that form and again stood in that line. By the time my number came, the officer over the window went away. Again I had to jump to some other line. In between, all this, 3 more flights landed and queue was already quite long.

It took around 1 hour to get that thing over and finally I went to collect my luggage. Then in 2 mins I was out of the Airport... standing free… feeling the cold breeze of NY !!