The Anytime Sandwich

It's past 2:30 and I'm hungry and I'm lucky that our PG fridge is well stocked.
So I will whip up (more like clumsily assemble) myself a sandwich.

Here's a list of my top 5 anytime sandwiches:


Egg salad (usually over-salted, with ketchup and chunks of cold butter. Eggs slices-cold and hard boiled)


Cucumber and cheese spread. ( Black pepper is the trick.Also, I don't get why some people grill their cucumber sandwiches. It loses the crunch and gets soggy. And anything with such high water content when grilled like that will stay hot for long and keep you waiting/burn the tongue.)


Haldiram's Sev Bhujia. (I mostly over-ketchup it. Always better with cheese. Like most things.)


PBJ (chunky, grape/strawberry/mixed fruit, with milk)


Tomato Onion and Cheese (My mum's usual midnight snack, I dunno why she abstains from onion and cheese?)

And if you go to Baroda, the Grilled Chicken and Cheese at Goodies' Cafeteria in Fatehgunj is what you should try out because it's made by Gods, is shaped in semicircles, NEVER seems microwaved and oozes with generous awesomeness. There're vegetarian alternatives and it comes with chips. I crave it quite often.

I also remember an amazing open face mushroom sandwich I ate quite long ago at The Tea Centre, Mumbai. It's such a wonderful place to sit in even if one isn't a tea drinker. Lots of great information on the walls.

Now, my top 10 reasons to eat a sandwich:

1. They cover most food groups.
2. They're messy and fun and require no cutlery (If I had it my way, no plates either)
3. There's very little or no cooking involved so almost anyone can make one.
4. There's so much room to experiment. And so many condiments to combine.
5. They can be stacked or stuffed as high as one wants. It's great exercise for the jaw.
6. They're a good way to make someone eat their crusts because they tend to ooze.
   
   (making sandwich)
7. Some like it hot, some like it cold. There're ways to make them taste amazing either way.
8. They're  a very easy way to disguise ingredients like leftover veggies, healthy greens, split chillies.
9. They're the right size for a snack box, specially the snug, flat, squarish tupperware.
10. Sandwiches can be split with friends. And in any number with no consequential loss of ingredients in any given part.

And late night hunger is reason enough and there're things waiting in cupboards and refrigerators to be consumed before sunrise. I decided to make a Bhujia sandwich. I had just what I needed!

With the exception of cheese spread. 

But it was delightful! Here's what we need:

Haldiram's Sev Bhujia. Haldiram's. Nothing else. 

Amul Butter (the butter was so soft right now, I could use it for icing! However, cold chunks are serendipitous fun)

Bread of choice.

Ketchup. Loads.

Sliced Onion  (optional, recommended)

Take two slices, butter one, spread cheese on the other. Mound first the onions, then the bhujia. Squirt ketchup. Slice into triangles and munch. Ta-da!

This sandwich has a joyful crunchiness to it and is very filling. It was something my mum would make for my brother very often for breakfast and like most tastes that I acquire as a hand-me-down, I developed one for these, I didn't think I had room for one and I just had two. 

Now that I'm fed.

I think I'll go to bed.

BUT...only after I watch this Dexter's Lab short: 

Always cracks me up.

Hats it .

Rot-a-trot

Yellow, putrid,

Stained door

Open wide

Open more

Open, gasping like a mouth

Open like a seasoned whore

Llike the fangs of an angered God

Open like the morning shore...

I could try pushing harder or pound on these doors with the pure strength that my body saves, in recesses so deep that I have barely heard their pulse. The strength I save for an extreme need of survival. I dispel the slightest fear that resides in my knuckles. The idea of getting hurt is more painful in thought. The act of it is a numbing rhythm. A grateful release from the swelling veins of my knuckles pushing against doors that I cannot defeat.

Let it be then, let it stand in merciless, unchanging hold. I turn away. I turn instead to the window in the laboratory to face the pure, blinding white where a soft gray would bruise and blossom underfoot as I would walk upon it. But the fury that brews in my head creates a heavy cloud, making it harder to see through the oily panes. So I let it go. A fleeting cloud of red escaping and losing itself in the stark white landscape that preserves everything imaginable under its snow. A swirling, plasmic red. What I made of the hate you left in me

Like a bookmark in pages too boring.

Like a swizzle stick in something that tastes of nothing.

Like fish food. 

Like a pest-stricken bunch of grapes.

Like a bottle of medicine for a once-upon-a-time disease.

Forgotten at a state of toxic potential.

When hate rots and its open sores gather venom inside you, the easiest thing is to strike at something relatively unresponsive in the way. To wait at the pavement for the next slow trickle of strangers to snarl at. Or the next insect to crush underfoot. Or the next day's papers to shred. Controlled unleashment thrust upon us by modern human ethical societies, when in another life I could be a poisonous beetle striking at fellow beings.

Instead we leave ourselves with no choice but to shrink into cocoons that we weave around us and let them slowly consume us. As though there wasn't enough binding us anyway. 

There  always is a smaller form of existence that will feed on what rots. And because the parasitic sting you left in me feeds your sickly sniggers, you should know how small you are. But you are many and enjoy multiplying in infectitious pools around me. Feeding, breeding, thriving and ploughing the poisoned skin that I can't wait to shed.

If I could exit this mad lab I would. If I could crawl out of this loathsome culture of rancid emotions I would. If I could, with a loud swash and thrust, escape this pool and this uncomfortably warm, itchy controlled environment to tear open the feverish pulse and drain myself of the venom, I would. If only I gathered the salvage and strength to break open these doors. If only I could uncover the snow instead with the exhausting effort to imagine what lies beneath it.If  I could gather it in mounds and preserve in it all that is decaying. And I would never turn back to your laboratory where you could inject me with your hate.

If only I knew what I sought that made me rot.

And even if you tell me it's ok to dream about it again

I would not.

isochronous

It is a peculiarly celestial sight.

You turn at your speed and i turn at mine. 

And if I see you or not, becomes my day or night.