A Bowl of Elusive

What’s your purpose in life? That is such a loaded question, isn’t it? I am thirty-two years old, going to be thirty-three in a few months and I sure as hell don’t know my purpose. I remember a few years ago, when asked what I truly desired, I would say, “a tension-free life, where I didn’t have a stressful job, with tyrannical bosses and upcoming deadlines breathing down my neck all the time”, and yet, today when I have it, life is still stressful, albeit for different reasons. My wife, who is way smarter than I am, told me that your purpose should be different than your desire or your ambition. For her, it’s service – to children & humanity. Her purpose is a noble one and I wish I could say I had the same. That got me thinking – does your upbringing shape your purpose? My wife was raised in a devout Christian household, where the concept of church and community was instilled in her early on. But was that the sole reason for her having such an honor-worthy purpose in life? Probabl

A certain someone (who shall not be named) thinks that the elaborate mise-en-place that I do for every meal is a waste of time - she believes that since all of it will inevitably end up in our tummy, we should not waste time seeking culinary perfection like I do. "Eye roll, eye roll. The blasphemy." I know, right! My friends, who have a background in culinary arts, are already bleeding from their eyes and ears while reading this. You see, most people who join hotel management have a fascination for cooking. Whether they later pursue it as a career or not is irrelevant, because once you join culinary arts training and learn the basics, you can't help falling in love with the process. A lot of young adults who haven't had the same inclination might not get it but the art of cooking is sacred and people like me thrive in the glory of a well-cooked meal. I admit there were parts of cooking I wasn't a big fan of - like doing the dishes, cleaning up the kitchen platform

Have you ever wondered what is the point to all this? I am talking about life. Why do we live? What do we live for? Someone who had met me a decade ago would be surprised at my asking these questions. I believed in indulgent excesses and living for the decadent pleasures of life. By that, I mean food mostly. I had a small family, including my grandparents and uncle and I never gave death a thought. Then in the last decade, I lost all of them. I made some serious mistakes in life, hurt people in the process and here I am, at thirty years old, alone, regretful and as per the latest reports, diabetic. So, I am asking myself, what am I living for? All these years, I had something to look forward to, but now it is all gone. I have these feelings that I feel like sharing with people, but when I call them, words fail me. You see I am unable to express the extent of the loneliness I feel or the all-consuming pointlessness of life in general. Lately, I have been doing a little bit of cost-benef

I remember all of us sitting in the dining hall at our place in Sambalpur. I wasn’t more than five years old at the time. My grandfather was seated in his usual wooden recliner, with my grandmother by his side in a matching chair, while my father sat at the dining table peeling mangoes for everyone to eat. I was on the floor fiddling with some toy of some kind while my father was entertaining his parents with anecdotes from his time in the armed forces. After a while, the conversation shifted to me and how I was such a big responsibility, especially since my father was raising me alone. My father looked at me with pride and announced that I’d become “a doctor or an engineer” when I grow up.  My father’s plan was to be hands-on with my upbringing and to a large extent he was. But it was short-lived, as just five years later, he died of kidney failure and I came under my grandparents’ care. They were good people and their style of parenting involved giving me a wider berth to grow creati

A strange thought cropped up on my mind today. What if humans didn’t need sex? I know the whole purpose of sex is reproduction, but what if human beings didn’t need sex to reproduce. What if they just grew people in labs? Or what if people lost the urge to have sex one day? How would that change the world? What started as a random weird thought took the form of an anthropological debate inside my head. Would romance even exist if sex didn’t? There’s parental love, there’s love between siblings and friends, but would there ever be the romantic love between couples if sex wasn’t in the equation at the first place? For that matter, would couples exist if not for sex? People woo each other and court each other because there’s that sexual tension, that chemistry which comes from the potential of sexual congress. Wonder what would be the base of relationships if the sexual tension was eliminated completely. Would relationships even exist or would people just live alone in single pers

I was born at the Air Force base in Chandigarh. My father left the force a couple of years after my birth and we moved around the country while he worked various jobs. Then after he died, I came to live with my grandparents in my hometown. I was ten years old. By this time, I had formed a somewhat confused identity due to all the places I’d lived in, and putting down roots seemed a little difficult. I would constantly feel like an outsider. I spoke my native tongue like I spoke my second and third languages, clearly but maybe “too clearly for a local guy”. And this affected the way I was perceived in school. People found me weird, I guess, however much I tried to seem normal. It was tough to make friends. I went to a lot of trouble initially to make people happy in the hope of securing their friendship in return. But I soon realized that they just thought I was being too needy. So, I stopped trying so hard. I stopped trying like 15 years ago. And that shaped my personality f

There are days like these when sleep eludes me. I'm not particularly stressed tonight but I just can't seem to get my head down on the pillow. What's that you're asking me?  Am I thinking about something? Hell yeah, I am. I am thinking about everything. I'm thinking about the one that got away. I am thinking about that cute classmate from school who texted me the other day. I am thinking about my grandma who's back at my ancestral house in Sambalpur and how she'd be waking up in another hour or so and would go about her morning rituals, prayers, etc. And I'm thinking about tomorrow. It's another day and it's dangerously close now. And I'm still awake. The problem with this scenario lies in the aftermath. I'm gonna be drowsy all day tomorrow. And I'll have chest pain due to gas. Gas. Kind of a gross topic to bring up on my blog, isn't it? Moving on... I haven't found time to work on my stories in weeks.