Zen @ Chocolate Puttu

The morning after Holi... I was greeted on the steps of SAV by our receptionist, Yogitha, with a big mound of chocolate. And even before I had finished it, in comes Dinesh with a plate full of the good stuff. Chunks and slabs and scrapings, like the discards of someone who was carving a big chocolate sculpture, and having no use or emotion for these beautiful shapeless pieces he had chipped off, had just given them away...

It was a pile of Toberlone that Dr. Jinzy Jaleel Anzar's father had brought along with him during his visit to Delhi, to spread cheer among its denizens, particularly us. The gross happiness of the city must have increased thanks to all the smiles all around SAV. 

But it was too much of a (very) good thing for the people here. Half an hour later, I was still holding the plate half filled with chocolate chunks with no takers. So I did what I have always wanted to do (since this morning, at least) - eat Swiss Chocolate with Malayalee Puttu (as everyone knows what Malayalee Puttu is, I will explain what Swiss chocolate is - It is chocolate that is particularly delightful to eat and apparently made in  Switzerland, though I'm not sure, perhaps it is outsourced. Malayalee Puttu, on the other hand, can be made anywhere - one of its primary advantages over Swiss Chocolate. All it requires is a steam producing unit and a cylinder to fill in rice/wheat powder that is placed over it; and something to prevent uninterrupted communication between the two )

Wise sayings say that if you are the Master of you Senses, then you can enjoy the whole world, the whole world is here to serve you... As the taste of the chocolate covered Puttu registered in the brain, I reflected how true that was. Cocoa from somewhere, lovingly grown by the Earth, planted and harvested by some nice farmer who sold it to a guy somewhere in Switzerland who had this brilliant technique to make it into rich chocolates; mixed with the steamed rice cake made with joy by Murugan from powdered rice which was one day on a stalk in some lush Indian paddy field, husked, bending the plant that bore it along with its brothers... All of this existed/exists just to provide the taste that I was experiencing now... 

What a smorgasbord of enjoyable experiences this world is! Everyone is a king, with all these senses to serve him, and senses are the ministers, with all these sense-objects to amuse them. And the aggregation of all these sense-objects, visible life, is the ultimate jester, the most intelligent of the lot, which does many    antics in all sort of costumes, all the while silently mocking the senses for their inability to truly comprehend it, to know its hidden parts.