“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”
-Harriet Van Horne

Excerpts from my Diary:

February 12^th

After one month of initial hotel stay, Me and Sanju just moved into this apartment with Arvind and Pratyush, guys from Cognizant. Arvind and Pratyush also came to US just two weeks back. Finally had some home made food after one month of pizzas and burgers. Besides, when you have come on short term onsite assignments, you can't afford to waste dollars by eating from ouside all the time. Sanju and Arvind are really good cooks. Arvind's sambar tasted just like the one you get at Saravana Bhavan at T nagar. Sanju made great bindhi sabzi. Pratyush didnt know much of cooking, so he cut the vegetables and as for me, well my only cooking experience involves an extremely courageous act of making Maggi Noodles , which ended up in damaging Mom's beloved non-stick vessel beyond recognition. So only contribution I could make was washing the dishes. Need to learn cooking soon, washing dishes is no fun.

March 6^th

Dear Diary, you would be proud to know that I am well on way to become an accomplished cook. Which is a good thing in more than one ways. I dont have to wash dishes all the time and besides if software industry is hit by another recession and I am fired and all, I think I can easily become a Chef at some restaurant. We dont have any hard and fast rules as to who should cook when because basically all of us enjoy cooking and everyday any two of us enter into the kitchen at random. Its fun. I dont miss home made food.

April 25^th

I dont know whats happening to the guys. Nobody has been volunteering to cook these days. All have become very lazy. Last week I had to cook for three consecutive days. Arvind and Sanju go to play tennis as soon as they are back from work and come back late in the night. Pratyush has suddenly fallen in love with his old college mate who's now in the east coast. He's obviously on phone all the time. So that leaves only me to do the cooking duties. Cutting vegetables and washing dishes day after day is getting quite boring. I think its high time to make some “Kitchen Rules”.

May 15^th

Last friday we had a big fight as to who is supposed to cook that night. Finally we had a meeting and decided to bring some process into the whole thing. We pasted a “Kitchen Rules”chart and a calender on the wall. From now on everybody will take turns and sign their initials on the calender on the days they cook. Things have returned back to some sort of normalcy now. Everybody is reluctant though, but rules are rules. Food doesn't taste that good. The less said about Arvind's sambaar, the better. Everybody tries to finish it of in minimum time possible. How it tastes is of nobody's concern.

June 10^th

Ordered pizza tonight. Had dinner from India Cook House yesterday night and made some noodles for myself the night before that. The “Kitchen Rules” has gone down the drain, quite literally. It happened quite fast though I could see it coming. When the kind of food thats being made went from bland to plain inedible, cooking just stopped. It was a mutual decision and everybody were quite happy with that. On the plus side, the camaraderie that was missing in the last couple of months has returned back. The tension in the air that used to be there earlier when nobody enters into the kitchen is gone. Kitchen has now become part of our indoor SCG. If your straight drive lands in the kitchen, it a boundary. A good amount of hard earned dollars is going to India Cook House and Dosa Place instead of my Citi NRE account, but as they say, Health is Wealth.