“And you cut the onions” Urvish as always decided the chores for us and Vivek and I obliged.
“When you knew we were going to make Maggi, why you didn’t buy a cut onion pack from …”
“Bin Harif” I added to Vivek’s protest. He felt happy that I supported his cause even though I wasn’t the one shedding the tears. I was content with the job of opening Maggi packets onto a plate.
Mostly whenever we 3 had decided to venture into the kitchen, cutting onion was the most dreaded chore. so Urvish, the clever; had outsourced that task. He would always bring a packet of cut onions from a Gujarati snack shop called Bin Harif. The shop owners would cut the onions for decorating their snacks but Urvish was good at paying any price to avoid manual labor. Well, Urvish always bought it except those days, when he wanted to annoy Vivek.
It was a routine in our college days. We used to spend almost the entire day outside the college and when we were tired of eating outside food, eating self-made Maggi at my house, brought us some sense of satisfaction. While the so-called 2-minute Maggi exclusively took us 15 minutes to cook, eating together always brought Urvish and me more joy.
No one wanted to wash utensils after eating Maggi, so our solution was simple. We would take the Maggi in a big bowl, place it in the center, and sit around it. We used to attack the bowl with our respective spoons. I, being a coconspirator, used to take control of the TV remote and change it to a movie channel, deliberately putting on a movie, which would interest Vivek.
With our spoons, we dug in the piping-hot Maggi bowl. When I say we, I meant Urvish and me, whereas Vivek was the tentative one. Slowly taking each spoon in, taking his time, savoring the taste.
“Mandy, how do you guys eat such hot food” skeptical Vivek asked, while still chewing his first spoonful of Maggi.
Urvish and I were barely surviving the tongue-burning sensation, so we didn’t revert. We battled for a few more seconds before gulping the food down. The hot Maggi did a number on our tongues. With our tongues temporarily suspended, eating hot Maggi was easy for us. We were eating spoon after spoon of the tasty Maggi whereas Vivek was still enjoying his first bite. From the corner of my eye, I caught Vivek staring at the speed of our spoons returning to the bowl.
“Arni looks damn good, in this ‘True Lies’ na?” I said to open a new topic. It successfully diverted Vivek’s attention. Considering Vivek’s passion for bodybuilding, it was an easy bet. Then for the next 10-15 minutes, Vivek explained to us how much effort it took for Arnold to build his body. When he tried taking another spoon of Maggi, by then the bowl was half empty. No, I meant to say it was half full (one must always look at the +ve side of things)
This continued till the end of the bowl was exposed. Vivek remembered feeling hungry on the way back to his home. Urvish used this opportunity to praise his fast metabolism to digest the Maggi. Vivek bought in the explanation for nearly a month. Only later he realized our swindle. Since then “Go to hell, I am taking a separate plate” (to put it mildly), was his standard response every time we cooked Maggi together.
While all of us moved on in our lives, Vivek and Urvish, moved continents as well. Sometimes, I feel my Pune is way far from Australia and the USA. Over a group WhatApp video call, Vivek still can talk a lot about The Rock (he has a new idol now. Move away Arnold, here comes the Dwayne Johnson). And, Urvish still prefers not to move from his place, unless the house is on fire.
I did manage to travel to Australia and meet Vivek. I did try my best to pull off the same swindle again, but he has the annoying habit of remembering things a bit too vividly.
Despite a lot of changes, I guess we remained somewhere the same.