… with a couple we met 22 years back!!

Exactly a month back – I had written about accidentally running into this young man’s grandparents in Kalyani at somebody else’s  house. Today, I finally got to meet him and spend some quality time with him. At the end, when it came to taking the mandatory picture to be posted on my blog, he did the best version of “rolling one’s eyes” that a one year old could muster 🙂 Might need some practice on how to do that without moving the head though 🙂

In the meanwhile, in our long walks, he taught me how to say “Throw me up in the air”, “No, I am not going to eat anything”, “No, I am not going to sleep now”, “No, you cannot stop walking now” 🙂

Best time in the world! This is the one reason I love to go to the Bengali Pujas – there is always some small kid to spend some time with…

Catching up with a junior from 1983-85 era and also a running mate and social friend in the Atlanta Bengali circle…

Only one thing can top off a musical evening on a Friday to decompress – an hour or so with Amitesh and Anusuya for drinks. I am still amazed that Anusuya laughs at my old jokes 🙂

Here was the challenge:
Our friend Magesh came over with his wife Sripriya and his parents last evening for dinner at our place. A few things bind Magesh and me together. Other than the fact that we studied in the same engineering college and worked in the same start up company, we also share the fact that none of our parents approve of us having alcohol. And Magesh and I are certainly not above a glass or two in the evening. On top of the fact that he cannot drink in front of his parents, I cannot either. Somehow, his mom has formed a very high opinion of me from our initial meetings. You will be amazed how speaking a few Tamil words and in general aligning with her son in case of any debate can endear yourself to any Tamilian mother suitably proud of her son!!

So the challenge was to come up with cocktails that could pass by as extremely innocuous soft drinks. The first task was to make sure that the cocktail was absolutely colorless. It had to be served in similar glasses as Sprite and such that the parents would be having to rise above all suspicions. It had to have a few bubbles, just to remove all doubts.

The second challenge was the aroma. It had to be very subtle and even then it had to stay very close to fruits and vegetables that are very common to an Indian nose. (Any uncommon smell might have given rise to unnecessary curiosity). Eventually, I went with cucumber for the first drink and orange for the second one.

Finally, the drinks had to be shorn of any garnish. The visual clues might have given away. So, needed some concentrated drops of liquer to top off without getting the advantage of the constant drip of the garnish.

The evening could not have gone any smoother. Everybody had a great time. The offending glasses were for everybody to see – as you can see in the picture – but none came away any the wiser 🙂

It was a great evening!!

… which can only mean lots of silly jokes and laughter over some esoteric cocktails…

The bar closed. But the evening was young… And downtown Alpharetta was not that cold… 🙂