Greedy guts!

I was happy, very happy with life so far. It all started with my trip to Shimla for a story. I got to stay at the Wildflower Hall, an Oberoi resort, on a higher altitude than Shimla in a place called Chharabara. I felt like a princess.

I used to get up early in the morning and do yoga out in the open with only the gushing sound of the wind through the tall cedars and spruces and the occasional twitterings of a lone bird. Thereafter I would go on wild strawberry trails through the woods around the resort. Sip on wine and settle down for long lunches while staring at the pouring rain through the bay windows of the restaurant. Roam around and take in the beauty of the old buildings surrounding the Mall. Or even stop in at a mini zoo and see sloth bears, brown bears and black bears in all their incredible fatness pacing around their pits or just lying around and once in a while shaking their heads to shoo away pestering crows and flies. I found them incredibly cute though the person with me did warn me that they are anything but that. "Once a man tried to shake hands with a brown bear in this very pit. The bear pulled him in and thumped him all around the pit," he told me. I couldn't stop laughing hysterically at the story -- I could actually visualise it playing before my eyes. And the comic element tickled me more than the scary side to it (I know it was not justified at all, but when did we react the way we are supposed to!)

I returned and after zapping in my cover story in a matter of days hurried off to Calcutta to attend my brother's reception. Which however turned out to be a wedding! It was not exactly to my parents liking because my brother went ahead and had a registry marriage. It is something I don't like him for at all, because it has given birth to a very dysfunctional family. And it is very annoying because I am the outlet for my mother's woes. Also I do not happen to be the most sympathetic listener to her.

Nonetheless I did have a good time there because that is where I started my fondue trail at KK's Fusion with a Bourguignonne Fondue (a pot of hot oil on a wicker of flame is served with a selection of marinated raw meats and seafood and it is almost like tapas because you dip the cooked dunks into an assortment of tangy and cheesy sauces) and a Cheese & Spinach Fondue (that was paired with tender kebabs, grilled fish yakitoris and crumbly batter-fried chicken). Along with it I had their Crepe Fantasia for dessert which turned out to be a chocolate pancake stuffed with vanilla icecream doused with whisky and topped up with slices of mango. They flambéed it on the table itself. It was the perfect way to wind up dinner for sure.

Back in Delhi I continued on the trail and tried out some fondues at Mocha. Where they serve the cheese one with crisply done bread sticks and red, deep fried potato wedges with skin. A whole egg also comes with it, with the invitation to scramble it in the fondue. But I am not very fond of scrambled egg not cooked well that remains kind of raw, the way the Swiss apparently like it, so we did not attempt to break it into the fondue. I couldn't stop dipping into the yummy fondue which was as cheesy as it gets with three kinds of cheese melted into the pot. So at one go I was tasting a blend of Gruyère, Emmenthal and Cheddar. We of course overdid it when we chose to dig into a herbed chicken pie as well. But even with our tummies threatening to explode, we did dunk profiteroles, vanilla cookies, Angel Hair Cakes and marshmallows into the dark chocolate fondue they served. My next stop was Tabula Rasa where they offered us a mean cognac-flavoured pool of chocolate. It was right out of my chocolate dreams.

So with so much of happiness in my bag, I guess it was not meant to be that I should have been sitting in a cafe in Mcleodganj, even as I am going clickety clack on this keyboard, slurping hot soup down my system. I had come with packed bags to office to take the Volvo from wherever it started. Everything was done except the booking for the Volvo. Which is where we erred big time and this is the end result that I am wallowing in a well of self-pity.

The bad thing about feeling low is, at least for me, that I start counting all the things I don't have in life. I think about this Bombay guy I really like and I cannot ever have in my life, I think about the unsuitable guys I go out with (I don't know why), I think about my sad family, I think about the official trips I should have been on and wasn't on...the reasons then seem to go on and on.

I guess I am greedy. Greedy for happiness. I also guess that I will have to wait.