The Gut-feeling

Cooking is one day feeling like you are a magician and the other day, wishing you had Alladin's genie. I can't make out which days win. But on my genie days, it's mostly because of Rishi that I force myself to make something meaningful. He makes no bones about his displeasure when the food is bad but he's a boy of few words when it's upto his taste. But nowadays I get to know...if he wants to leave the table and sit with the plate on the sofa with the TV on, that means he's loving the food.

Rishi's birthday today. We called his friends home and cut the cake for the first time...In his early years he wasn't very sociable. Later on, it mostly happened that the birthday fell in Dasara holidays so there wasn't enough number to call and celebrate. Today he was happy, eagerly waiting for his huge list of friends in the building to arrive and they did, in their usual style. I like to see them together in such parties mostly because they break my stereotypical notion that urban kids are not having enough fun. They may not be climbing trees, roaming in wilderness and eating the now near-extinct fruits but they are happy too. Their boisterous laughs in the corridor wake us up from our afternoon naps but they also make me smile and feel better.