OF SAMOSAS AND TOMATOES

 

OF SAMOSAS AND TOMATOES

Let me start with a disclaimer ‘This post is strictly vegetarian, and that's why I shall not be talking about Sausages. In any case, I do not eat sausages or anything non-vegetarian. Maybe once I did. But the aging process has not allowed my palate to succumb to its beckonings. See though I started with a disclaimer I still talk about it. But why this sudden fascination for samosas and tomatoes you may ask. Well, like you, I have also wondered. Maybe it’s because I found that samosas can be equally spicy and tomatoes can be juicy. Though I always knew, it was only yesterday that it was reaffirmed. And how, you may ask again. That‘s a long story. If you have the patience then read on.

It all started with a dream in the afternoon, and let me tell you that afternoon dreams can be quite weird. But in any case, I do fall asleep in the afternoon after eating a sumptuous lunch prepared by my wife (mind you she is a good cook). This of course is a daily routine(story). Whatever it is, when I take my position on the couch to relax after all that effort to watch some inane serials on the TV my eyelids droop, and the sheer effort needed to keep them open to make out what is happening on the screen was not worth the additional effort. It is when my head starts rocking and eerie sounds emanate (your guess is as good as mine from where) that my wife sitting next to me would shake me up (literally) and say “Why don’t you go to the bedroom stretch out and have a good sleep. At least I can watch the TV uninterrupted by your snoring.” So off I would go and do as instructed.

That’s what happened two days ago. I hit the bed and the next thing I knew I was in the midst of a party where a conglomeration of my close friends and colleagues had gathered. Taken by surprise, I found a chair next to a very close friend of mine and sat down. Let’s call him R, for you never know whether he would take umbrage in being the subject of a dream. So I asked him-

“Boss, what’s happening here?”

“What’s happening? Have you forgotten? Today we are having a Samosa party and I thought you were never going to land up. It’s closing time now.”

“What Samosa party? I don’t remember being invited,” I replied.

“Come on, I also rang you up this morning and reminded you of this get-together. Boss you are growing old,” he replied.

“So are you,” I said, “anyway tell me why do you say Samosa party?”

“Don’t you remember that this is our Batch Reunion get-together? We thought we would do something different when someone hit upon the idea of a Samosa party where we could recall our bygone years and what lies in store and eat samosas. It’s a sort of stock-taking. They even asked who all were participating so that they could order enough samosas. You had also confirmed. You know there is this famous Samosawala from Jhumrithalaiya whose samosas have made it to the Guinness Book. With a lot of cajoling, he accepted our order (usually he does not accept anything below 1000 samosas per order). We had somehow managed to extend our order to 500 samosas.”

“Ok, since I have already landed here, I might as well have some samosas,” I said.

“Sorry boss, it appears that the samosas have finished. You were too late, The get-together is now coming to an end. Better luck next time. In any case, you may come over to my house in Chembur. There is a shop in front of my place where you get the best Vada Pavs in Mumbai,” R apologetically replied.

Suddenly I felt someone shaking me up again. It was my wife.

“You have been sleeping for the last two hours, it is now 4.30 in the evening, time for your evening walk,” She said and went into the kitchen to make coffee.

But the real story begins now. Last evening around 4 pm when I had just shaken myself from my afternoon slumber, I felt an irresistible urge to eat samosas. The previous day's hangover had carried over to the next day only this time it was not a dream. Maybe because my wishes had remained unfulfilled in the last day’s dream. But that’s how all my dreams have been, I would end up missing the bus or l am left searching for something I could never identify. It would all be incomplete. That’s what happened to the samosas.  So I decided to ring up my friend R and tell him about the dream. You can imagine my surprise when he said-

“But Subbu, I was at a party yesterday afternoon and I did have samosas. A few of us had got together for lunch.”

Well, that was the last straw. But how did the samosas creep into my dream? Maybe, as Freud would say it is a disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish. I would disagree since there were no samosas left and hence no fulfillment. So I sought to take refuge in what Carl Jung had to say “If we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly, if we carry it around with us and turn it over and over, something almost always comes of it”.

Since I did not want to carry over my repressed wish to my next dream, I decided that come what may, I would have them that evening. So I walked over to the snack stall near my house to get them. Imagine my disappointment when I was told that the samosas were over but they had excellent Kachoris. For a while, I stood there staring at the waiter when I remembered what Jung had said that something always comes out of it. If it be so, I said to myself ‘let it be Kachoris’, so I told him to pack a dozen of them and took it home.

“I thought you were going to get samosas and now you have a dozen kachoris. Do you intend to eat all of them?” my wife asked.

“No, no, you can also have some of them,” I said

“Well I am sure you are still going to dream of samosas tonight,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders.

Well, that was not the end of it. The kachoris had disappeared and it was late at night. The wife had gone to sleep. I felt a sudden urge once again, only this time to have something sweet before going to bed, preferably gulab jamun. I knew that it was not possible as I heard the clock chime 12 am.

That’s when I tip-toed to the Fridge, a clandestine operation since I did not wish to wake up my wife. And there they were red and round as I reached out to take two tomatoes ( If you have been wondering when the tomatoes will make their appearance It was now). I cut them into slices and garnished them with sugar. 

To tell you the truth, that night the tomatoes were tastier than the Gulab Jamuns. 

That night I did not have any dreams. The Kachoris and the tomatoes had done the trick.

On second thoughts I think I should have titled this post - ‘Of Samosas and Gulab Jamuns and Kachoris and Tomatoes