When you’re following your passion, you won’t need to be motivated.

There was a time when, I used to struggle to manage my blog with my self-imposed technology phobia and wondered if I would ever make it to today.

But today, sitting in the office of a very popular brand of Chennai, ready to sign the mega project….my hands are shaking and I could hear every beat of my heart. And I am ready to test my wings again!

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”~ Phil Jackson

“Hi Sanjeeta, there is a shoot on 14^th, are you free?”

 “Yes”

 “See you there!”

This is the conversation with Kunal before most of the food photo-shoot assignments we do together.

“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.” ~ Campbell.

Mid-term holidays for children had started and we finalized a pretty destination for our vacation. Two photo-shoot calls and I had to re-schedule our trip and change it to a weekend getaway.

The photo-shoot this time was an independent project for Isha Life restaurant in Chennai. I was approached by Meena ji for this project sometime back.

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.” ~ Frederick Keonig

Sitting around the bonfire, sipping creamy and delicious Makki ki Raab in small sakora or earthenware pot, is one of the sweetest memories from my occasional winter visits to our family home in Bhilwara, Rajasthan.

Granny  would light the ‘chulha’ or hearth made from a mixture of cow dung and clay as early as 4 am in the morning. The indigenous chulha provided much needed warmth during the chilly winter days.

There is nothing that heals the soul quite like, a hearty meal, vacation with family and time spent in the company of good friends.

We had a small get-together at our home some time back for which ‘traditional Indian dishes’ was unanimously picked by all families for dinner menu.

We selected some of the popular dishes from Indian cuisine and wrote down the main ingredients used to make those recipes. Tomato gravy, coconut milk, cashew paste, brown onion, yogurt, tamarind paste, no-onion and no-garlic and so on.

“Amma, could you believe that I made close to 140 perfect looking Kozhukattais (steamed rice dumplings) yesterday for the shoot… Iniya  the actress who acted in the commercial, rushed towards me after the shoot and asked if she could take a few of those brown coloured yummy Kozhukattais  home.” I paused for a while sipping the strong & frothy filter coffee and stretched my legs to sit comfortably on the large wooden swing in my mother-in-law’s living room.

“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it’s much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!” ~ Gaiman.

I received a huge parcel which carried two beautiful cook books ‘Cafe Spice‘ and ‘Silk Road‘ published by Tuttle publications sometime back.

Among so many other things in life, pre-planning is one another important life-lessons I learnt from my mom.

I still remember how she would murmur her task list and keep moving in and out of kitchen, just before hitting the bed everyday.

She hurriedly kneads the chapatti (flat bread) dough to refrigerate, select the lentil (daal) and vegetables to be cooked, check her stored bottles of homemade tomato puree and ground ginger-garlic paste stacked in fridge, keep the empty vessel (pateela) on dinning table for milkman and quickly choose a saree to be worn the next day to her office.

Back then, this daily ritual of hers sounded absurd to me but I realized soon that pre-planning is an importance tool in managing today’s stressful life.

“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.” ~ Joseph Campbell

Infact, I had no plans or any set goals for my life before jumping onto the bandwagon of food blogging. The only time when I needed to make a so called ‘plan’ was when I had to visit the grocery store, my doctor’s clinic, parents meet at school, activity classes for kids or to deposit cheques in the bank.

Life has suddenly become very fast and busy with a sudden spur of activities over the last few years.

It all started with scribbling recipes and struggling to click good food photos for Lite Bite, seven years back. And now I feel really lucky enough to stumble on a way of life that I not only like, but love to live.

There are three completed food photo-shoot assignments which are pending to be written about on Lite Bite. But I could not resist to pen down the experience and all the fun that went into yesterdays’ shoot for ‘The Park Hyatt’ with Kunal Daswani.