Somewhere in the  corner of my mind, I always had a thought that I should learning cooking since I was 16. But I never found time.  It"s not just the time factor, I  was lazy. At home, I never got a chance to cook! There was no need for that. As am staying away from home (hostel) because of  studies, whenever I go home my mom would perpare delicious, mouth watering dishes all the day. As she would be busy in kitchen all the time, I used to sit on the platform, I used to chatter all the stuff about my hostel, friends and so on.; while my mom is busy preparing dishes.I used to seldom help her with the things like peeling the vegetables (nothing more than that). Now I realise that I never watched how she is preparing the things. Not even once! But I have rough idea about many things according to my own probability and statistics.This week is festive week and all the friends went home. So getting bored, I thought of giving a shot to cooking. Ofcourse this was the only escape from the pathetic mess. I made my room heater as electric heater for cooking and I bought all the stuff for making "Upma". So I started cooking. First I gave a ring to my mom to know the procedure of how to go about and started making it step by step.Then came some disasters. Every 2 minutes the power connection got tripped. So I have to run through the corridor to the junction box and make it work again.And then I tasted the water to check if the amount of salt is enough or not. First it was more than required, so I added some more water and then the amount of salt was less than required and i again added water and so on.. I did  this for a couple of times till it tasted fine.Then finally I completed all the steps. Finally Upma was ready! Of course it tasted fantastic.. But I learnt that it takes lot of patience to learn this art.But it"s not a big deal!

When I was small, I was always being haunted by some big (my grandpa used to say those were big) questions. Some of them were:"Who is God? Where does he live? Why some people are poor and some people are rich?"  These were the topics of discussions at bedtime every day. My grandpa used to patiently answer  me and made me understand the things. He used to say: God  is  our belief; and he lives  inside everybody; he will be active in good people and will be sleeping in bad people. And then came my questions like: Then what are Ayodhya and why there are temples;  why are some people good and some are bad? so on... Every day I used to learn something. I miss my grand pa now! Even now at 19, I am having a myraid of questions like that. Why are the richer getting richer and the poorer becoming poorer? What is the government doing? Why is it not able to balance them? Why should some people suffer when we are enjoying luxuries? Why should only government care and why should we not care about the suffering India? This goes on.. Hope some fine day I"ll be able to answer all these questions.. May be thats in the near future or when my grandchildren ask me those questions again.. But, I miss my grandpa a lot !!!!!