The Kovalam Promontory | Pic Credits & Rights: Soni Somarajan
We sat there, on many evenings, as the sun set and the promontory would slowly develop into a craggy outline merging with the liquid ink of the Arabian Sea.
We sat there, weary in our smelly chef coats, as our own sweat and the tang of the sea-breeze enveloped the faces with a sticky patina.
We sat there, as the gala of lights came on at dusk, the then Ashok Beach Resort, a Charles Correa creation built in the swinging 60s, at the height of the counter-culture.
We sat there, the mind numbed by the day’s flurry of activities, taking our time out, with or without friends, wishing that there was a respite from the long stroll back home.
We sat there, knowing that a tomorrow would come, to do things all over again in a circus of routine, but oblivious to the good chance that we would write about it in the distant future, lost in the haze of pervasive nostalgia.
As I am now.
Smelly Chefcoat, check. Counter culture trippin’ – check. Thinkin’ about a future wthat would allow to reminisce ..umm..:) When all you could think was, how the hell am I going to mug up that 5 course menu recipes for the next day :-P..
Biju, thx for writing in. But before the memorized menu recipes could be brought to fruition, as in the act of cooking, there was the lost case called the POA(plan of action), a written exercise which I found bewildering, confusing and worthy of hair-tearing, nonetheless. No matter how much I thought I had turned out a genius of a plan, there was the sheer perplexity of things going majorly wrong.
Hahah!!!! Perplexity?! I thought it was the most natural thing to happen those days.. the simplest thing to happen was it going wrong… or did you mean the perplexity on our faces?! hehee… the beautifully thought-out POAs going wrong?!
Stan, super-chefs like you never had to face perplexity of any kind, I can be sure of that. Lesser mortals like me, in a chef-coat and brandishing a chef knife, literally met the Hell’s Kitchen at least 10 years before it debuted on TV 🙂