My experiments with food

My perfect weekend

As an actor, my days are usually busy and packed to the core. It is rarely that I get a weekend off work. But if I do get one, I take an additional day off, starting from Friday. So that makes it three good days with my family and all my activities revolve around them.

My mother makes it a point to cook my favourite dishes on Friday, especially those that I don’t get to eat through the week. Morning begins with ‘matar paneer’ and ‘phulka’ for breakfast and my mother is brilliant at it. I spend the remaining day watching television. I don’t stick to just one programme but keep swapping channels.

In the evening, I play with my dog, Pooh. She’s more human than you can imagine and can sense just about any feeling of mine. I have two younger siblings — brother Jaiwardhan, who is in college, and sister Ishita, who is a chartered accountant. I wait for them to return and we spend a lot of time together. There’s eight years of difference between my brother and I. He’s more like a son to me. Compared with a lot of youngsters these days, he’s very respectful towards everyone.

Sometimes, I also go to my parents’ boutique ‘Kriti’ and spend a few hours there. When it comes to dinner, we always order some Chinese food from one of the restaurants on 100 Feet Road in Indiranagar. My parents go to bed by 10 pm but my brother, sister and I watch television till about 1 in the morning. On Saturdays, both my sister and I wake up only by noon and that’s only after Pooh comes scratching at the door. He won’t stop doing it till we open it for her. We have a brunch that my sister and I prepare. Cooking, for me, is a great way to de-stress. I am good at making non-vegetarian dishes and prefer to call myself an “experimental cook”. I make ‘chilli chicken’ and ‘paratha’ really well and my family loves it.

I recently developed a fetish for baking as well, which I learnt from the internet. On one of the weekends, I had baked eclairs. The first few batches burnt but I was determined to make it and finally succeeded and made almost 30 pieces. It finished in no time. I hardly venture out on a Saturday and if I do, it will be for shopping although I am lazy to do that. In fact, online shopping comes to the rescue for people like me. I end up shopping clothes, shoes, jewellery and everything that I find interesting. My mother, sister and I sometimes go to the malls as well.

Saturday nights are spent at home and we end up sleeping very late. Sunday brunch is my mother’s cooking, which is ‘Bhatura’ and ‘Channa Masala’. We have our favourite ‘tomato curry’ and rice later in the evening. After this, my mother, sister and I head out while my father and brother stay back at home. The three of us never return home without buying all the essential groceries for the week. We make it a point to pick up cakes, ‘chicken puff’ and our favourite pastries from select joints.

We each have very distinct tastes and end up driving all over town to buy what we like. We try and have an early dinner on Sunday night and sleep early. My family means the world to me, so my weekends are dedicated to them. Some people may dub it ‘boring’ when they hear me say that I do nothing over the weekend and prefer staying at home. But, I would call weekends at home with my family as ‘perfect’ because I am able to do things that I never get to do through the week. A weekend all to myself, is a luxury in my profession.

A few of my favourite things

  Chilli chicken
  Photography
  Shoes
  Jewellery
  Styling people