This is a piece of fiction. Don't take it personally.
I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day. He is a conscientious man. The problem with him is that he thinks too hard... sometimes so hard that he forgets what he was thinking about in the first place. It's quite complicated with him. He begins thinking and then somewhere down the thought process, he loses the thread and goes off on a tangent only to realise that he's lost the end of the original thread and has forgotten what it was all about and then continues to wander aimlessly in the complicated, twisted maze of his erratic, deep thoughts.
So, like I was saying, he and I were having a conversation. We were at his place. He'd just returned after buying his week's quota of groceries. Now, this friend of mine, let's call him Titoo (I am sure he doesn't want to be named, and sorry, dude, I couldn't come up with a better name!), is an exceptional man and an out and out foodie who loves his chicken tikkas and Chinese. But sometimes he takes his exceptions way too far. Till that day, he had never bought groceries, much less got down to cooking it at home. His philosophy in life till then had been, "let someone else cook it, I'll eat it and pay for it".
So, I was understandably quite shocked and surprised when I saw all the groceries at his home. When I reached his place, he was busy trying to cut a lettuce leaf into a perfect circle to sit atop the cheese slice and onion rings that he had meticulously planted on one half of a bun. In one hand he held a pair of scissors and in the other the lettuce leaf. A scale and a pencil lay beside the chopping board. Beads of perspiration shined on his forehead and dripped down into his eyes.
With slow, painstaking meticulousness he managed to cut a perfect circle, or something resembling a perfect circle to place in his bun. Pleased with himself, he looked up at me and smiled like a delinquent juvenile who's managed to do something heroic.
Still quite shocked, I asked him, "What, exacly, are you doing?"
"I am making lunch," came his reply.
"For who? You don't have a dog or cat or any pet who would like to eat that."
"No, no, it's for me."
Now that was a vexing statement coming from him. This man who had in his past 33 years only entered the kitchen twice by count--both times ending barely short of a disaster--was making lunch for himself.
"But you can't cook. You can't even boil water. You turn on the geyser when you want to make yourself some black coffee."
Grinning like a mad scientist with drool running down one side of his lips and hair growing out of his ears, he looked at me, placed the other half of the bun atop the lettuce leaf and in excruciating slow motion lifted it to his mouth and took a dinosaur-sized bite of it.
As he moved his jaws up and down in that masticating motion, he said, "Lackf a bit of falt, pepper and oregano, otherwife itf ofay."
"Well, have you considered sprinkling some salt on it or in it before eating half the bun in one go?"
Stunned that such a simple idea didn't strike him, he stopped chewing and looking quite sheepishly at me, he reached out and picked up the salt shaker and added some salt to the bun sandwich.
I stood there looking at him as he relished each bite of the sandwich with muffled mouthful mutterings of how fantastic the sandwich was etc.
I was getting curiouser and curiouser as to the reason why he was making his own lunch. Had he fallen on bad times? No, he couldn't have. The bugger comes from a family that is rich enough for him to live comfortably without having to move a toenail to earn it.
Sandwich finished, he washed it down with a diet coke! A diet coke for a man who thought beer was water! Diet coke! Was he ill? No, couldn't be. He has the constitution of a tank with multiple armours that has been let loose around an anthill.
"Dude, care to explain what's happening? Since when have you started making your own meals and begun drinking diet coke?"
"Just today."
"Why?"
"Actually, I want to lead a life of no sin."
"Oh, so you are turning vegetarian and are not going to eat any more meat, is that it?"
"No, no. I am not going to give up non-vegetarian. It's just that I don't want any food to lead me to commit a crime or anything."
"Food leading you to crime?"
"Yeah, you know it was in the newspaper the other day that eating chowmein leads to rape as it imbalances the hormones or something like that. Some great guy came out with this finding after an extended research."
"Really? Tell me something, what if Pinky (his girlfriend, name changed for understandable reasons!) eats chowmein and comes and rapes you, would you hate her for it?"
"She won't rape me."
"Why? After all she'll have had chowmein."
"Dude, I broke up with her."
"Oh Christ! Why did you have to go do such a daft thing? After birth, Pinky was the best thing that happened to you."
"Yeah, I know. I wanted to make sure that she wouldn't rape me or vice versa."
"You've lost it."
"No, dude, I haven't lost it. In fact, I don't want to end up raping a woman after eating something that is likely to cause my hormones to act up and drive me to do something mad. What do you think my mom and dad would say if they found their son, that's me, in case you didn't know, being prosecuted for rape or something worse? I've decided that I won't be going to any places where there are women who wear short clothes as that also leads to rape."
"I can understand your dilemma, but what are you going to eat?"
"Pinky's agreed to cook for me."
Oh boy, this was getting confusing for me. What kind of a twisted tale was it that he was telling me. I was definitely sure that this wasn't the time or the season for April fool's day.
"But didn't you just break up with her?"
"I did. It's complicated. We won't be boyfriend-girlfriend, we won't date, or go out for movies, but we'll eat together and she'll cook some nice home food."
"Okay," I said, nodding my head in a state of disbelief.
"And yeah, I've told her to wear something that covers her up properly."
Let me tell you something about Pinky. Pinky is the hot girl from next door who you want to marry but who your mother thinks isn't good enough for you. And yeah, she only wears shorts or jeans or such clothes that highlight her curvy body.
"Dude, I seriously think you need psychiatric help. Let me call Pinky. Between me and her we'll take you to a good doc, what say?"
"No, no. I am perfectly fine. See how lovely and juicy this radish looks. Imagine this in a paratha with some nice curd and a cup of tea," he said, as he fished out a radish from his grocery bag.
I called Pinky.
Pinky picks up. Sounds low, as if she's been crying.
"H..h..hello."
"Pinky, get to Titoo's place immediately."
"Wh... what happened?"
"He's lost it, says he's broken up with you, asked you to cook for him and that he's only going to eat home-cooked food."
"Yes, he did that."
"Are you going to take this idiot's antics lying down? I am leaving his place now, by the time I come back in the evening, he had better be sorted out."
"Okay." Now she sounded a bit upbeat. I think it was simply the idea of beating Titoo to pulp at work in her mind.
That evening, rather, later that evening, I reached Titoo's place.
The door was locked from inside. There wasn't a sound coming from the place.
"Oye Titoo, open the door, you jackass," I hollered as I rang the bell.
I heard some shuffling going on inside and then came a sound.
"Dude, can you like come back tomorrow morning?"
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, I am fine."
"What did you have for lunch?"
"Uh... Chowmein."
"What about Pinky? Is she ok?"
"Uh... yeah... she's fine... sort of... "
Now that was a worrisome answer.
"What do you mean sort of?"
"Uh... she had chowmein and came here."
At first I didn't quite understand... and then it struck me.
Laughing, I went back to my car, got in and drove off thankful that my friend had been cured.
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