A dinner party and the curious case of the knock on my door....

I finally managed to cook up a storm in my kitchen last evening. Yeayyyyyy! The mission being feeding 5 hungry boys and time given was two hours inclusive of the time spent buying the chicken, the cheese, the mushroom, babycorn and a bottle of white wine. So I made pasta in white sauce which was accompanied by store bought garlic bread.( I can’t wait to learn how to bake bread). I came home quite irritated with the boys to have left me to do all the cooking on my own but again this isn’t new. They have always invited themselves over without any hesitation and I always presume the role of the Official Chef and me feels its more like a crown of thorns now. Sigh! But honestly I was amazed at my own multitasking and organizing skills as I started off my assignment with single minded determination doing the chopping and peeling while simultaneously boiling the penne . By the time the penne was done, I drained the water and laid it to dry tossing some refined oil on it so that it doesn’t stick and become messy. I finished washing and chopping the mushrooms, baby corn , half a kilo of onions, two tomatoes and peeling the garlic which was the most irritating bit. I made the pasta first because I wasn’t so confident about it as much as chicken curry that one can make with my eyes closed. Instead of making the traditional white sauce with flour and butter as the base I used milk and heaps of cheese and that was the perfect alternative as the pasta turned out divine and the boys were raving about it even this morning in office. The Chicken Curry didn’t have that many takers since half of them were vegetarian and the ones who were non-veg had already stuffed themselves with pasta and gotten completely wasted on alcohol.

We were listening to such sideyyyyy songs by somebody called Sharry Mann and the song was called Chandigarh da chaska. Heard this unknown song by Mohit Chauhan called Mai Ne Meriye which was more like a folk song when he reminisces his home in Himachal and he went on and on about Kasauli and Shimla. J and R were tripping on these songs until Vik put his foot down saying he wanted to listen to Sayonnee and there I was changing the music and having my wine from the wine bottle directly. I was doing this after almost 4 years. I mean drinking wine right out of a wine bottle and refusing to share my wine. The boys found it so funny that I wouldn’t even part with a single drop of wine. They were dying to make some random cocktails out of beer, wine and whiskey but I wouldn’t budge. They owed it to me after all the cooking I had done. I was so content just to sip the wine and feel the wine bottle in my hand , listen to music and watch them create funny chaos and crack shady jokes. I didn’t do much at all after my marathon cooking session. Even the feeling of tiredness was a sweet one, as if all that toiling was worth it.

The party ended at 12:30 when some strange sound was heard and it was as if someone had knocked on my door and there was no one in reality. There was silence in the room for 10 seconds and then the debating began if all of us heard the knock or not. Me in my inebriated state said it happens all the time and I am pretty used to it. They were stunned. These idiots left within 20 minutes flat, running away like headless chickens cos they got sooo scared. Hahahaha! This morning they kept trying to sell the idea of changing houses to me saying my place is haunted and how can I stay there alone and how real the knock was and how convinced they are that there was a presence that night. I do not believe and I don’t even want to think along those lines. How sad! Hahaha!

Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE, 2001: A Space Odyssey

PS: I slept with my lamp on last night all thanks to these stupid bums who have planted the seeds of an imaginary ghost in my head.