No one is really yours
Everyone is just playing their roles
If you think, they are yours
Believe me, my friend, you’re wrong
There are moments of light
When you feel bright
Your hope rises, and dreams shine
If you think, they are yours
Believe me, my friend, you’re wrong
When you love, they love you back
When you respect, they respect you back
But in moment of truth, they hold back
Then you realise, the square one is back
Then you realise, you’re all alone
Everyone is just playing their role
I hadn’t thought I’d write about this until the day I baked because I realised my page isn’t just a travel blog, it is about sharing experiences of exploring myself. Doing anything new is exploringoneself. Bringing out hidden capabilities and developing new skills. Therefore, here we go.
Since I was a teen, I have always enjoyed being home alone. With my husband travelling to Africa, I was going to be on my own for 10 days – one more thing to check off as first times. I had made a list of things I would do which broadly consisted of watching movies / tv series that I like, trying my hands at baking, and shopping!!! Movies / tv series didn’t turn out that well until 4th/5th day and being a ‘skinflint’, shopping was also regular, nothing special. So let’s talk about what happened with baking.
It was Friday evening. First weekend alone, he has never left me alone in these years. I decided to bake Shepherd’s Pie and checked the recipe online. I had all the ingredients (or so I thought) to make ‘my’ version of the pie – that’s a better way to put it than to say I made the pie from whatever I had available. As soon as I began gathering the ingredients, I realised I didn’t have butter. Cannot prepare the potato mash without butter! All right, I decided to quickly pop out to a co-op next door. The guy on the counter said he cannot take card payment for less than £5. Duh!
While walking back home to get some cash, thoughts filled my mind. God has mysterious ways of playing games when you are on the roll to have fun. I think He enjoys putting little obstacles, perhaps to check how determined you are! I always love playing these little Chess games with Him. I also missed India so much – in India, all local shopkeepers know you and in a situation like this they say, “Koi baat nahi behenji, kal de dena..” (Don’t worry ma’am, pay tomorrow).
Following the recipe outline, I prepared the ingredients, heated the oven and now it was time to be patient. I kept checking from the oven ‘window’ for the potato layer to turn a bit golden. I ended up baking longer than recommended in the recipe but the outcome was simply delicious!
Yes it is a lot. A lot for me. It served me for lunch and dinner for the next day as well.
Delighted with my first experience, next on list was scones. I had checked ingredients, shopped in advance, had checked the recipe several times and had also observed a friend bake them nearly a week ago. The waiting time was difficult to pass which I managed, although checking frequently how my scones were doing. It was relishing to watch the scones rise. A feeling of accomplishment. I took them out and found out they had risen into a weird shape! However when I tasted them after they had cooled, they were really good. Every ingredient was in its correct proportion. Although I could have let them bake for a little longer and made them little smaller in size.
Second straight success boosted my confidence. Next day was the short bread day. Same story – all ingredients checked, batter prepared – had to keep adding flour to get the correct thickness because I added too much butter – but the rest remains the same. The wait, the peeping through the window, opening and checking the aroma – the same emotions. Once done and cooled, I took a piece, and… ..and they were delicious just that we cannot name them shortbread!! They were soft as a cookie. Too much butter I believe.
But hey, that’s what we all do. We all make mistakes the first time round – at least I am brave to write it on the blog!
Anyhow I hope you enjoyed the read and that it triggered memories of similar stories. Stay tuned with this page for more fun stories 😊
Written by: Chahna D.
Edited by: Milauni T.
I have read many, many books over more than a decade – English, Gujarati, Fiction, Thriller, Action, some non-fiction and always dreamed of writing a book review but never picked up a pen, until now (picked up my keyboard, in literal words!).
The book I recently read did not really touch my soul or leave a lasting impression like many other books have. But, today morning, without giving much thought, I simply opened a word doc and started typing. Perhaps because I am more confident in writing now or because this was an easy read, it was also easy for me to write a review. Nevertheless, I am stepping into a new genre of writing.
Name of the book: The One You Cannot Have
Author: Preeti Shenoy
As the title suggests, it is about an unfinished love story. A young girl and a young boy, Shruti and Aman, find magical love in their college days and spend the best 4 years of their lives. Bunking classes, grabbing every opportunity to be together, working on projects together, etc is surely something we all can relate to. Dreaming about having a future together, caring unconditionally for each other and understanding even a flick of an eye made them ‘made for each other’ soulmates. Only until life took its own course.
In present day, they both live different lives. Shruti is married to a very nice guy from her community chosen by her parents and Aman is wrapping up his 2 years of life in the U.K., which he had chosen as respite after his harsh break-up. Shruti is fairly happy with her marriage and has buried (or let’s say has tried very hard and she thinks she is successful until circumstances change) Aman and the time they had spent. On the other hand, Aman is still single and has failed any attempt to even think of a relationship.
Aman moves to Bangalore in the hope to start a new life, meets his old boss who is a friend (Vikram) and joins his company to help him get a new project hit the ground. Knowing of his return to India, Anjali contacts him well before he was to fly and fixes a date. Aman agrees reluctantly only to be polite and to get her off his back. Anjali is Deepika’s (Vikram’s wife’s) cousin, works at a magazine company as a writer. She has her own column and writes about day-to-day struggles / emotional journeys of women. One date leading to another, Aman and Anjali get along well, and Anjali has finally found a guy who fits all her requirements of a life partner. She gives out clear signals of being interested in a relationship, but Aman is terrified. He likes Anjali. After a lifetime, someone has genuinely made him laugh and made him feel important. He likes the upbeat, full-of-life, successful, independent and beautiful Anjali but his past, his pain stops him from making any advances.
Shruti, at the same time, faces a head-first fall in her marriage when Rishabh finds out about her relationship with Aman. Rishabh knows that the relationship ended before marriage but the fact that Shruti lied to him when he had asked her about being in any previous relationship, eats Rishabh from inside. He can no longer trust Shruti and feels to have been wronged and cheated. Shruti confesses, apologises, gets angry, becomes outrageous, tries everything she can think of, but nothing eases Rishabh’s pain. Rishabh’s parents’ visit during the same time complicates things even further. After being broken from inside for months, she finally decides to write to Aman. She strongly believes it is only him who can pull her out from this darkness.
What happens after is for you to find out by reading the book. The author has given excellent plot to the story by taking a reader through past and present times parallelly as that’s how real life is, isn’t it? We never really leave our past, it’s always with us – only buried, sometimes even forgotten, until something triggers it. The author takes us inside the minds of each key character and has put best effort to personify each of them. The language used is quite colloquial and some readers might find it naïve. The tone and tense of the language gets monotonous at many points and inclusion of a lot of not required / redundant information like literally describing a conversation in passive past tense frequently throughout the book can get to a reader. The author could have used that space to express deeper emotions and essence of conversation rather than simply translating it. I found those passages boring and empty. Having said so, the curiosity that was created kept me gripped on until I finished the book.
Have a happy read…
You can buy the book at https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-You-Cannot-Have/dp/9383260688/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1535099333&sr=8-1&keywords=the+one+you+cannot+have
himalayaswithin 