Another regular Pune morning…

Come to think of it, living alone changes even the most basic of definitions. A regular Pune morning seems far removed from the former twenty-two years of my life. While some people here wake up to the ‘Tale of the Eccentric Roommate’ and rush to the rare treat of a vacant bathroom, others wake up to cook a would-be delicious stew of cabbage and bitter gourd. While some delight over their absent roommate whose morning shift renders the room pleasantly all theirs, others fidget and fight over the volume meter on television not in accordance with His Majesty’s orders.

A walk to work includes a hike through dangerous rocks that line my lane.

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The sweetness of the sweet sabjis

What do you do when you can’t cook or don’t have a kitchen or don’t have the time or don’t have, oh well, you get the idea – so what do you do? Naturally, you eat out. But what do you do when you miss salt and spice and all things nice in all that you order? You then order paneer. Coming to you in delicious sounding varieties like paneer tikka masala, paneer butter masala and paneer pasanda, you soon find yourself trapped in the alluring paneer cycle, for lack of anything else worth risking.

If you  happen to be a Northern-er used to tadkewali daal that’s thick and syrupy and spicy sabjis that have more than a generous sprinkling of nature’s priciest spices, then your taste buds are bound to be in for major acclimatization when you arrive in Maharashtra.