#7-Delicate Darling Usha

One of my best friends-an epitome of femininity! She was best known as 'delicate darling' as she was everything a real girl ought to be. She was very delicate--she oohed and aahed at the smallest non-existent blemish on her skin, complained of a pain in the first one-third of her little finger( nursed it with ice-cubes and wet cloth)and generally took a lot of time dressing up! It was a fascination for us to watch her dress up, even for such a trivial chore as dinner. Every morning before going to college and every evening afterwards, most of us would line up in front of the huge mirrors at the end of the corridor in 'Narmada' hostel just to see her pamper her face.

Her routine(normal) was like this--she would first stare at herself in the mirror, trying to find newly-formed blemishes(to us, invisible). Then she would try to rub them off with a soft cloth. Then came the special--soap application. We did not have so many lotions, moisturisers, liquid soaps as we have now--but Ush made it a point to buy the best.She would carefully lather up her face and wash off with warm water so carefully that it took almost ten minutes for the entire ritual.Then slowly she'd pat dry her face.She'd then apply talcum powder to every mm of her face, and round it off with another long session of kajal and bindi.A bit more kajal in left eye, a bit less in the right--blow! The ritual would start off again from soap-wash!If the bindi was not round enough, again, and again.
Ush was by no standards a beauty queen,but she was never tired of beautifying herself.Her long hair got the beauty treatment every weekend( even when there was water-shortage)and all her clothes were neat and ironed.
She was always 'sssss'ing, ie complaining that someone shook her hand hard, or that someone patted her back hard. It was always--'ayyo, it's paining'. For her, her bed was too hard, or the chair too straight, the bus too bouncy or the fruit too sour. Her teeth pained, her hands pained, her feet pained and we were generally pained to see her pained!
Oh darling, darling Usha, delicate darling you are!!

Part#2: Dorakunaa Ituvanti Seva(i)?

It was not that I did not know any basics of cooking--we had a subject called Home-Science in school which had a lot of topics covering health, nutrition and cooking. As we were enthusiastic only about eating then(Isn't anybody, anytime?)we urged our teacher to only teach us recipes. We had a lot of terms to learn--frying, sauteing, roasting, broiling, blanching, etc. We were very eager about the practicals though and believe me, I played a major role in converting all our classes into only cookery-classes! We learnt to handle the dishes with care, decorate them and garnish them with the necessary ingredients. But alas, we learnt lots of sweet dishes--maida cake, Mysore Pak, kesari,etc and we just had a brush with sambhar,curry,roti,etc. Little did I know then that even with all this training, I wouldn't be able to please my husband easily.

My mother wasn't a bad cook either--only trouble was that Raju had a distinct marker on his tongue which never forgave anything slightly alien to what he felt was true Tamil cooking.

The first thing Raju asked me about my culinary skills was whether I knew how to make Sevai--rice noodles and 'Aavakkai'mango pickle. Then the readymade rice noodles were unavailable--everything had to be made at home.If this were the case these days, I would just have bought 'Concord' rice noodles and 'MTR' or 'Chinni's' pickles and made him believe that these were the ultimate in those items.

Firstly we had to borrow 'Sevai Naazhi'---a very robotic-looking instrument from someone we hardly knew. Actually the maid in our house then, Muniyamma, found one for us from some other house she worked in. She showed us which part of the 'naazhi' was static and which moved. Then we , that is amma and I had to ask some other maami how to go about making the 'Sevai'. I had seen this item being made with 'omappodi acchu'--the device used for making 'omappodi', but Raju wanted it done robotically--a robot operated manually.

All pitched in to make'Sevai'( I was all the while singing--Dorakunaa ituvanti Seva(i)!)--Muniyamma, amma, appa and me--Raju was the director of course! With lots of sweating,tips and tricks from appa, amma and Muniyamma, we managed to extract some passable uncooked sevai between us. Then we steamed the noodly thing and tried different forms of garnishing--everything on demand from the Director! We made somewhat edible lemon sevai and thengai sevai.

Whether we learnt to make Sevai in earnest or not, we did have a wonderful team-building exercise! Otherwise how can so many cooks(me, amma, appa, Muniyamma)not spoil the 'broth'? Raju must have felt sorry after all this for, he never asked us for 'Sevai' again!Good for all of us.