Effort
January 26, 2006
A week ago was my husband Bob’s birthday. I won’t say how old he is but suffice it to say that he is well past the age when you can count the candles on the cake but young enough that when you invert the two digits that make up his age the resulting number is well within normal life expectancy.
Finding Bob a thoughtful gift has been difficult for years partly because he doesn’t ask for much so there is no singular “must have” for him. There are only four things that he revels in: family, food, cricket, and Hindi films/music. My initial thought was to get him tickets to see a live cricket match (preferably in Mumbai) or maybe tickets to a Bollywood entertainment extravaganza, which keeps many of these actors and actresses busy when they are not filming. But given that at the time we had not setup internet access (which I use for researching these types of things) in our flat I decided to save these for another occasion and focus on food and family. First was the birthday cake of course. I knew that he liked chocolate but he wasn’t too fond of the typical chocolate cakes sold in most bakeries here. I asked my sister-in-law, the veteran Mumbaiker, for advice on bakeries. She gave me a few names but then suggested that rather than go through a bakery I might want to call a woman named Roshini who lived in Bandra (as did we) who apparently made only one type of cake, but it was a very special chocolate cake. Her only caveat was that she had never tried this woman personally but had heard rave reviews about her cakes from others who had. I leapt on this knowing that Bob wasn’t too fond of the standard chocolate fare found in Indian bakeries. Now on to family. Unfortunately Bob’s sister and family live in South Bombay, which from Bandra (on the Northern side of Mumbai) could take up to 1.5 hours one way on a busy workday. And as it was, Bob’s birthday fell on a Thursday. We decided that the logical course was to go with the cake to South Bombay on Saturday and do the cake-cutting then. I proceeded to call up Roshini and place the order for a Saturday morning cake pick-up.
I also wanted to plan a special dinner for Bob on his actual birthday. I knew that one of his favorite dishes was chicken biriyani. We had not purchased meat or poultry in Mumbai as of yet so I inquired about shopping options from our maid. My maid suggested a cold storage place and told me that there was a good place in Pali Hill (part of Bandra). The day before Bob’s birthday I took the maid and Nikhitita, who anyway always came with me to pick up Sandrine from school (she gets done at 2:45 pm) and then we all went to Pali Hill. As we drove past, I was dismayed to find that the place she knew of was closed. She said that she knew of another. That establishment and yet another one we passed were closed. I was perplexed. Why on a Wednesday afternoon? Were they all closed on Wednesdays? Finally we stopped at another cold storage place (the last one that she knew of) and the maid got out to see why it was shuttered down. She came back and said that the sign stated that it was closed from 1 to 4 pm. “Why is that?” I inquired. “It must be their nap time,” she replied. I pointed to all the other open shops around us and said, “Apparently only cold storage guys need to take naps.” She laughed. Since it was already 10 minutes to 4 pm after all of our running around, we decided to wait. Nikhitita was getting agitated in her car seat so the maid, two kids, and I got out to position ourselves in front of the shop, while the driver looked for parking. Another woman was already queued up and tapping her foot impatiently as she waited. With an exasperated look on her face, she quipped, “They are always very late but I put up with it because their meat is very good.” She was right. The cold storage owner and his staff only returned a quarter of an hour past the posted return time. But we finally had the chicken which we needed for the biriyani.
As I think back on other of Bob’s birthdays, I won’t lie. There were many where I gave up trying to figure out what he wanted and simply made a trip to the local mall and picked up some mundane gift. But there were also times when I made chicken biriyani or chocolate cake for him from scratch. And it is strange but that effort was different than the effort here. I planned what to do, found the recipes, bought the ingredients, and actually made the biriyani and chocolate cake with my own two hands. This year the maid prepared the biriyani and as it turned out the driver picked up the cake on Saturday morning. In past years it had been my solo effort to get things ready for his birthday. Although the end result was similar this year it took the effort of many more people. Of course I had decided what to do for that day and then there was my cold storage adventure with the maid, driver, and two kids from which I learned that cold storage purveyors need to nap in the afternoons.
On Saturday the day we were to cut his cake, it turned out that Bob had an opportunity to play cricket for half the day with his colleagues from work. So in a way I was able to give Bob a little bit of family, food, and cricket for his birthday. What about Hindi films or music? Well, our anniversary is coming up…
A week ago was my husband Bob’s birthday. I won’t say how old he is but suffice it to say that he is well past the age when you can count the candles on the cake but young enough that when you invert the two digits that make up his age the resulting number is well within normal life expectancy.
Finding Bob a thoughtful gift has been difficult for years partly because he doesn’t ask for much so there is no singular “must have” for him. There are only four things that he revels in: family, food, cricket, and Hindi films/music. My initial thought was to get him tickets to see a live cricket match (preferably in Mumbai) or maybe tickets to a Bollywood entertainment extravaganza, which keeps many of these actors and actresses busy when they are not filming. But given that at the time we had not setup internet access (which I use for researching these types of things) in our flat I decided to save these for another occasion and focus on food and family. First was the birthday cake of course. I knew that he liked chocolate but he wasn’t too fond of the typical chocolate cakes sold in most bakeries here. I asked my sister-in-law, the veteran Mumbaiker, for advice on bakeries. She gave me a few names but then suggested that rather than go through a bakery I might want to call a woman named Roshini who lived in Bandra (as did we) who apparently made only one type of cake, but it was a very special chocolate cake. Her only caveat was that she had never tried this woman personally but had heard rave reviews about her cakes from others who had. I leapt on this knowing that Bob wasn’t too fond of the standard chocolate fare found in Indian bakeries. Now on to family. Unfortunately Bob’s sister and family live in South Bombay, which from Bandra (on the Northern side of Mumbai) could take up to 1.5 hours one way on a busy workday. And as it was, Bob’s birthday fell on a Thursday. We decided that the logical course was to go with the cake to South Bombay on Saturday and do the cake-cutting then. I proceeded to call up Roshini and place the order for a Saturday morning cake pick-up.
I also wanted to plan a special dinner for Bob on his actual birthday. I knew that one of his favorite dishes was chicken biriyani. We had not purchased meat or poultry in Mumbai as of yet so I inquired about shopping options from our maid. My maid suggested a cold storage place and told me that there was a good place in Pali Hill (part of Bandra). The day before Bob’s birthday I took the maid and Nikhitita, who anyway always came with me to pick up Sandrine from school (she gets done at 2:45 pm) and then we all went to Pali Hill. As we drove past, I was dismayed to find that the place she knew of was closed. She said that she knew of another. That establishment and yet another one we passed were closed. I was perplexed. Why on a Wednesday afternoon? Were they all closed on Wednesdays? Finally we stopped at another cold storage place (the last one that she knew of) and the maid got out to see why it was shuttered down. She came back and said that the sign stated that it was closed from 1 to 4 pm. “Why is that?” I inquired. “It must be their nap time,” she replied. I pointed to all the other open shops around us and said, “Apparently only cold storage guys need to take naps.” She laughed. Since it was already 10 minutes to 4 pm after all of our running around, we decided to wait. Nikhitita was getting agitated in her car seat so the maid, two kids, and I got out to position ourselves in front of the shop, while the driver looked for parking. Another woman was already queued up and tapping her foot impatiently as she waited. With an exasperated look on her face, she quipped, “They are always very late but I put up with it because their meat is very good.” She was right. The cold storage owner and his staff only returned a quarter of an hour past the posted return time. But we finally had the chicken which we needed for the biriyani.
As I think back on other of Bob’s birthdays, I won’t lie. There were many where I gave up trying to figure out what he wanted and simply made a trip to the local mall and picked up some mundane gift. But there were also times when I made chicken biriyani or chocolate cake for him from scratch. And it is strange but that effort was different than the effort here. I planned what to do, found the recipes, bought the ingredients, and actually made the biriyani and chocolate cake with my own two hands. This year the maid prepared the biriyani and as it turned out the driver picked up the cake on Saturday morning. In past years it had been my solo effort to get things ready for his birthday. Although the end result was similar this year it took the effort of many more people. Of course I had decided what to do for that day and then there was my cold storage adventure with the maid, driver, and two kids from which I learned that cold storage purveyors need to nap in the afternoons.
On Saturday the day we were to cut his cake, it turned out that Bob had an opportunity to play cricket for half the day with his colleagues from work. So in a way I was able to give Bob a little bit of family, food, and cricket for his birthday. What about Hindi films or music? Well, our anniversary is coming up…
posted by Danakka @ 3:42 AM
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