Louis and I are fortunate to have known and count many Indians among our network as great friends. Even though we have always enjoyed the local Indian fare, it is through our Indian friends that we'd learnt to understand and appreciate the culture a little better, along with the great curries, dals and myriad creativity of the cuisine.
And becos a number of them are vegetarians, I've learnt to make a few vegetarian dishes along the way and picked up other dishes from my own little limited collection of Indian cookbooks to create my own favourite home-cooked Indian dishes.
We really dig the diverse and tantalising Indian cuisine and on the occasions that I do make some of these dishes at home, Louis would be happily mopping up the curries with roti/naan or covering the top of his basmati rice with it.
Today's Deepavali, as it is known in Singapore. For many of our friends who are of Northern Indian origins, it is called Diwali. I guess they mean the same thing, just that its called differently depending on whether its in Tamil or Hindi.
Our neighbour right across from our units are Indians. Other than the nodding of heads and the occasional smiles when we see each other on our way home or in the estate, we have not really built much rapport or talked much to.
However, in recent months especially, they have been particularly friendly towards our little girl, smiling and talking to her when they see her at the lift lobby. Maybe its becos Faith smiles a lot even to strangers or kids just have this knack to break the ice even among the most reticent of adults.
This morning, the door-bell rang at lunchtime. When we opened the door, it was to find our neighbours with 2 big bulging plastic bags, filled with containers of briyani, chicken and mutton curries, prawn masala dishes and Indian sweets.
We were absolutely surprised and touched by their gesture. In fact, when I was reading early this morning in the living room at 4-ish am (I've become an insomniac ever since I'm conceiving #2), I could already smell the tantalising aroma of curries wafting through the corridors and into our unit.
They must have been hard at work, chopping, cutting and preparing to cook all the curries and great food fresh for the festive season.
It was a lot of food for the 2 of us and Louis brought most of the food for our in-laws. The great thing about curries is that they keep well and taste even better a day or more after cooking.
So, Louis and I are going to have us a great lunch today, compliments of our neighbours.
To all our Indian friends out there, Happy Deepavali or Diwali!
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