Sour Grapes
Non-fiction by Chaitra Pai
 

I don't know why I am having this 'Jaani Dushmani' with rawa. I always end up messing up with it. Last week I had cooked a very salty Upma. Yesterday I woke up with this magnificent idea of preparing rulav-pitta-polo for breakfast, here after referred to as RPP . Although I had just given a thought the night before as to what my breakfast was, I hadn't actually thought of the procedure to prepare it. By some common sense , well I do use it at times, I knew one didn't need any grinding to prepare the same. Used all my 512MB RAM , in other words logged into my memory zone and tried to recall the taste of RPP my mother used to prepare. We had a timetable at home and this was our standard breakfast every Saturday, the reason being my mother performing vrith every Saturday. The vrith demanded one not to eat any rice-cooked dish, although I wonder what rice/paddy had done to experience such discrimination. So being the case and RPP being prepared on a weekly basis I should have known. But then I had always avoided eating it. After a few minutes' search in the disk , the taste got slowly downloaded. Along with the taste came the colour, odour too.
 "Its me and Haish, only two of us.One glass of rawa into the vessel. A little bit of sugar and salt. Shall I put a little more sugar..No No..Harish doesn't like sweet...Enough.",.Took some ginger and searched for green chillies. Oh, the chillies had riped and turned red. "Who cares ", I thought and smashed the two together, added the paste to the dosa batter. "Hurray the batter is ready..Its so simple...You don't have to eat or cook earlier to prepare it.."..I beamed at myself...Just took a ladle full of batter and poured it over the hot pan...Well, it got a shape of some unknown continent. Was it Antarctica or Australia. Realizing that my geography was weak, I dropped the idea of analyzing the shape of the dosa and consoled myself that no matter what the shape was finally it had to be cut into pieces before eating. Unwantedly the old Esop's tale of  "Grapes are sour" came into my mind. The dosa got cooked and I  slowly tried to peel the dosa off the pan. No, it was not as easy as I expected. "Oh please...Comeoff baby" I said..."uuhun..No. It didn't. "Comeout  honey, come out dear..."Tried woooing it with ghee, oil...tampered with the flame...No use...My patience was soon depleting.."Come out silly...".It refused to come off. "Come out donkey...".It didn't budge."So you are that stubborn! Wait let me teach you ", I decided I was going to peel it off by hook or crook and forcibly peeled it off. The result-It came as bits and pieces. Oh, my dosa was a flop...Consoled myself again with "grapes are sour" story and called Harish for breakfast.
 Harish came with great expectations into the kitchen..."Wah smells yummy", he said. I didn't say anything. "I love RPP" said H. No reply from me. "Finally I opened the lid and showed him the great creation of RPP. I was expecting some comment, some laugh, some tease and equipped myself with all defenses in anticipation of all that. But then my husband said nothing; took up a piece, ate it and said "It is tasty. I like it". I thought, "Grapes are sweet; they are not sour always..."

 

Jaani Dushmani-> Hard-core rivalry
Upma->A breakfast dish
Rawa->Rawa, a kind of flour of which dishes are made
vrith->a religious ritual
rulav-pitta-polo->A breakfast dish resembling pancake