Bloody Aloo Paratha

The day started fine enough. I finished watching The Magnificent Seven and other than the fact they killed off some characters unnecessarily in the end I quite enjoyed the movie. I was quite in love with McQueen by now so I started watching another movie called The Sand Pebbles in which he plays a navy engineer. I fell asleep in the first fifteen minutes so I switched it off. I now realise that he was nominated for an Oscar for the movie. May be I'll try watching it again tomorrow and if I fall asleep I'll simply give up. I wasn't deterred and started watching Bullitt in which he plays a policeman. It is an inordinately slow film and when there was a twenty minute car chase I fell asleep again and decided I needed a nap a lot more than mcQueen's baby blue eyes.

I asked Anshuman yesterday what he would like to eat and of course pat came the reply,"Aloo Parathas." So I thought may be this time will be different. I mean how bad can it be? So I boiled the potatoes and peeled them lovingly with immense patience and my long nails helped. I cut the dhaniya patta nice and fine. I made the stuffing with spices which looked really nice and I was quite pleased with myself. The dough was ready but there was no ghee in the house so I drove to the grocery store. I bought bread, butter, tea and ghee. I paid and left. I got home changed and opened the plastic bag to find that the guy at the grocery store had bagged the ghee and butter in a separate bag and I had forgotten it. I couldn't believe it and raved and ranted about how can they use two bags to put in four items. I mean it just doesn't make sense. As if there aren't enough bloody plastic bags in the world.

Anyway all my raving and ranting wasn't going to get me the ghee so I changed back into a pair of pants and drove back to the grocery. Finally I managed to roll out a deceptively perfect looking paratha which got stuck on to the tawa and as I tried to get it off it crumbled into fucking pieces. I took a deep breath and threw it into the dustbin. I rolled out another perfect looking paratha which did not get stuck but didn't get cooked very well either. I was very unhappy by now. After another attempt I was ready to give up but I still had a little dough and some stuffing left so I made a little paratha which finally turned out to be perfect in every way. Anshuman actually ate two and a half parathas and said,They're the best parathas I've ever had." but I'm quite certain he didn't want to risk my wrath knowing the foul mood I was in.

So the lessons learnt today are as follows- one, a great looking and very cool actor will not be able to keep you awake if the film itself is boring, two- when you go to the grocery store, carry your own bag and check all the items, three- if you try long and hard enough you will eventually make a perfect bloody aloo paratha.