5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Mortality & Manifestations
I don't know if I'm just getting older, but the weeks are flowing into months, and the months are swiftly turning into a year at an alarming speed. It makes me afraid of my mortality! Not that I'm afraid of 'passing on', but hopefully when that time comes, it's uneventful and peaceful. But I have loads of things I want to do.
My famous, unpublished books that are lying half-finished on my desktop are one, or the bartending class I wanted to attend, my singing, my salsa classes, and my 'climb-every-mountain' mantra have not been followed to a T! I have successfully manifested most of my dreams. But I am a human being, and we always want more!
Now my aching bones have turned me into a more realistic being, and I suppose now I'll have to climb every mountain metaphorically! Now, for sure, I have stopped pleasing and playing for an audience (I couldn't help my actor genes now, could I?), and I have got real about a lot of things.
As a social being, I am friendly, but I reiterate that 'everyone' isn't my friend. Recently, I tried to count my real friends, and believe me, I couldn't get past the fingers on my first hand. I was elated! Just as I was doing a happy dance, my phone rang, and it was my friend Prasad Bidapa, whom I have known most of my life. We watched each other grow professionally and were always happy and proud of each other. I have wept over his shoulder many times, and we have giggled over a shared bit of gossip. We have also been there for each other, and if he needs me to attend an event at the top of Mt Kilimanjaro, he knows I will be there. He called just to check in on me as we hadn't crossed paths for some time. This gesture warmed the cockles of my heart! Prasad is a 'busy-bee', yet he needed to know if his friend was well. That's what friends are for.
My week has been dotted with long impromptu 'food soirees' with family and friends like family in attendance. I think everyone is suffering with a sense of ennui, with the prospect of dressing up and going to another pointless event where one bumps into the same people, who give you the same polite smiles and have nothing new to say or do. Give me the opportunity to wear my 'jammies' with a home-cooked meal, great madeira (saved for those family occasions), raucous laughter and non-stop talking any day!
I was thrilled to be invited back to the swanky JW Marriott to sample the cuisine of the famed restaurant Fireback from Goa. I love the authentic Thai restaurant, and I didn't need more persuasion to sample their cuisine in namma ooru. The name is inspired by the Thai national bird, the Siamese Fireback and also alludes to the fire-grilled cooking behind many of the restaurant's dishes.
Their chef, Kamal Kant Joshi, was on hand lovingly taking us through his very imaginative new menu while the dishy mixologist Ravi Rai kept us enthralled with his Thai-inspired cocktails, which had our table of friends, Aloma Lobo, Neetu Singh and the suave GM Gaurav Sinha in 'high spirits'!
Khop-khun-khrap for all the love.
(The writer's views are personal)
