So, it's over. The beginning of one more week.
An invoice got cleared today. So tomorrow I will go and get fancy groceries.
I think I am really doing a lot at work. So I treated myself to gobhi manchurian today. I love gobhi manchurian. I prefer it to veg manchurian. I had it with some long grained rice. It was very tasty. But I am feeling a little queasy now.
I was really unwell last night and this morning. I think I coughed up blood but can't say. I am in such a dense fog of sleep in the morning that I don't realise what is real and what is imagination. The thing is that lately a couple of friends and a guest had come over who all smoked a lot. And I had forgotten how sensitive I am to cigarette smoke. This exact same thing used to happen to me in Pune and in Noida, I was living with someone who smoked all the time. No wonder I was miserable.
I was feeling so sick that I thought I will leave for Vashi. But my father and brother turned up. That was really nice. Since it's not like my brother to bring me any good news ever, he was telling me about some Russian or Swedish study that has predicted the many variants of Covid and other virus that will start spreading more virulently within this year. Then he made some snarky comment about my tee-shirt, ate one phirni, and went. My father ate another phirni.
I had 5-6 bowls that V had bought me. He always gets me those many and when I get them, I make a mental calculation of how I will space it out during the week. Here is my phirni schedule, basically the times I enjoy it the most:
1. Early morning on a day where workload is light. If I am up at 4 and there's just the slimmest line of dawn creasing the sky...I switch on my fairy lights, open the windows, peel off the foil from the clay pot, and eat the cool, creamy dessert.
2. After a rough client call, the sort you have to break your back preparing for, getting dry-mouthed and nervous, the knot in your stomach tightening...and then the release after call is done. Then I like to take a moment and have my phirni to celebrate the fact that I survived talking to so many human beings.
3. When I am reading some beautiful, meaningful, sad, and loving yet heady. So, basically, Salman Rushdie. Or if I am not reading him, then thinking about any of his works. But phirni I usually associate with Shalimar the Clown or Enchantress of Florence.
4. When I am watching a love story or something romantic on YouTube.
5. When I am writing in my diary or sketching with my inkpen.
Anyway I had scheduled my next phirni for tomorrow but I guess I will space it out. I mean, I suppose I could go out and buy the phirni myself instead of waiting for people to get it for me. But...to me, phirni is a lot more than dessert. It's this shaft of light that falls on a tiny flower growing in a dank cave, bereft of sunshine. It's grace.
Also, if I do get the chance to step out, I will go to a salon and have my hair washed. It is so relaxing, having someone stroke your hair, lather and soften your tresses with shampoo, massage your scalp as they work in the conditioner, then the warm water washing off all your tiredness. Then they wrap your hair in large, fluffy, vanilla-scented towels...so nice and luxurious.
If I do get a shampoo done, I will come back and have a phirni.
Maybe next time I will write about caramel custard.
Shit! My stomach is really paining badly! Cigarette smoke really is tough to take...
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