Sivan’s Thoughts: Cooking and food during the COVID-19 Curfew

Sunday, Day 16 of the curfew. The Woman pulls out a bottle from the wine fridge and declares to The Man. “Well, Punk, it looks like this is our last one.”

The Woman pops the cork and pours two generous glasses. They head out of the door for their daily ritual of watching the sunset from our rooftop.

When they come back into the flat, The Woman looks around in the freezer and pulls out the mullet roe, also known as the Taiwanese caviar. I’ve heard The Man claim that it tastes a bit like cheese, but meatier and more complex than the dairy variety. While that doesn’t sound very appealing to a peacock like me, it’s The Man’s favorite snack–he had discovered it during his first Chinese New Year in Taiwan. Since then, his mother-in-law packs a few vacuum-sealed pieces into their suitcases after their new year visit. That’s nice of her!

“Let’s have this with our last bottle of wine,” The Woman says holding up the leaf-shaped caviar.

The mother-in-law (The Woman’s mother) standing before the Chinese New Year’s spread she had prepared. The arrows point to the caviar, gently fried with Taiwanese rice wine and paired with fresh apples and green onion.

As The Man fries the caviar with Taiwanese rice wine, The Woman watches and sips on her wine. She looks thoughtful. “I think drying out for a few weeks, maybe even a month–it will be good for us,” she says. (I’m not convinced.) While they’ll adapt to a dry lockdown, I hope a semblance of normality returns to our home soon–and that includes a steady, non-rationed flow of wine.

Once the caviar is ready, The Man brings it to the coffee table. They relish it with their last glass of wine while binge-watching Ozark.


Monday, Day 17 of the curfew. The Woman is doing grocery shopping via WhatsApp messages and phone calls. They’ve been receiving shipments of cured meats and cheeses, but fresh produce has been harder to find. I catch snippets of her conversation as The Cat struts off to the balcony.

“Yes, 2 chickens and 20 eggs please.”

“Do you have any garlic? 500 grams please.”

Throughout the day, she goes downstairs and brings bags of groceries into the flat. Finally, the chicken and egg delivery arrives in the evening. She squeals as she tenderly puts down a bag of 20 eggs. “Look, Punk, we finally have eggs! Isn’t it funny that it’s easier to get chorizo these days than eggs?”

The Man unwraps the chicken from its bag. “Wow, that chicken looks weird without skin,” The Woman says, watching The Man cut up the skinless pink carcass with two legs and wings.

“Yeah, I think it’s common for the butcher in this part of the world to do this. It’s easier to skin the chicken than to pluck out all the feathers.” The Man says.

“Well, I guess we are not having roast chicken for a while, huh.”

“I am going to make a stew,” The Man says.

Once the stew is ready, I watch as The Man and The Woman have multiple helpings. It is tomato-based with chicken, British-style sausages, okra, and Italian rice. It’s seasoned with Old Bay and red pepper powder. I’ve learned that Old Bay is a staple in our household. The Man had brought it from his hometown, Madison, IN (in the U.S.) to Wan Chai, Hong Kong. When they moved here, they brought it with them to Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka.


Tuesday, Day 18 of the curfew. The Woman wakes up with a scratchy throat. Her nose is stuffed-up and she’s lethargic. “Hey, Punk,” she says to The Man. “Do you think it’s possible to catch the Coronavirus just from interacting with the people who have been delivering food to us?”

“Probably not, Punk Bunny. But you should wear a mask when you meet them next time.”

The Woman finds some cold medicine and swallows a pill with water. She feels sluggish and sick all day yet she manages to work in front of her laptop and do her exercises too. I wish I could help her feel better. At night, she takes a different pill, a pink one. “Well, I can’t get drunk but at least I can have cold medicine with Codeine…”

The Woman goes to bed, leaving The Man with me in the living room. He watches YouTube clips on cooking and motorcycles. Before midnight, he turns off the lights and joins The Woman in the bedroom.

I feel a little abandoned, especially since The Cat hasn’t been coming around for visits. She has been social distancing with her family since way before this COVID-19 curfew. To my dismay, I have been left alone on my loyal perch. Since she has discovered the great balcony, she’d rather spend time with her new friends, such as the yappy squirrels and the obnoxious crows who live on the mango tree next to our balcony. At night, she hangs out with the fruit bats, who flap around their mighty wings around our home. Such is my life during these hard-ish times. This is Sivan, reporting from Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka.

Inspired and edited by Mohini Khadaria.

Sivan’s Thoughts: Groceries, alcohol, and sunsets during the COVID-19 Curfew

My name is Sivan. I will be reporting from Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka on indoor life under the COVID-19 curfew.

I am Sivan, an antique peacock reporting from Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka. If you are new here, be sure to check out the last post: “My Life and Hardish Times” by Sivan.

It’s Friday and The Man is sitting at the dining table giving a class online. Earlier in the day, The Man and The Woman had a discussion about the curfew that will start at 6 p.m. and end at 6 a.m. At around 4:30 p.m., The Woman comes out of the study. She takes a piece of paper and scrawls in large letters “The curfew starts at 6 p.m. tonight and ends at 6 a.m. on MONDAY MORNING.”

The Man looks away from the screen and shrugs as if saying, “What do you want me to do about it?”

The Woman scribbles again and holds up the paper for The Man to see. “Stop teaching. We need to go to the grocery store NOW.”

They grab a few shopping bags and head out the door. I hope that they will accomplish what they ventured out to do. Shortly after they leave, they’re back. Empty-handed. Apparently the shop had already closed.

It’s Saturday. The Woman goes into the kitchen to see how much liquor is left. There was only 1/3 of a bottle of gin. Meanwhile, The Man is falling asleep on the couch. “You drank all our gin,” she scowls. “The curfew has been extended until Tuesday and when it gets lifted, the liquor stores won’t be open.”

The Man doesn’t say anything. He is asleep on the couch.

It’s Tuesday morning and the curfew is lifted. At 7:30 a.m., their friends Rebecca and Conrad come by the flat to go grocery shopping with The Man and The Woman. Rebecca and Conrad are their new friends that live down the street. Due to social distancing, they don’t greet each other with a hug and a kiss like they normally do. They just smile at each other. “I can’t believe I am excited to go grocery shopping,” The Woman says.

Less than an hour later, The Man comes home with Conrad to fill up water bottles. Based on their conversation, it seems that the queue at the grocery store snaked around the whole block and down the street. In order to prepare to stand in line under the hot sun for the whole morning, they came back to get more water.

The tail end of a 4.5-hour long queue.

Then, a couple of hours later, The Woman comes home. She leads a large, bald, white man into the flat. He is carrying a box. Before he leaves, he opens the box to show The Woman the content: 12 bottles of wine. She leaves the house shortly again.

Two hours later, The Man and The Woman come home with their groceries. The Woman showed The Man the box. “We should be okay for a while,” she says. “Perhaps when the curfew lifts again on Friday, we can order some of the cheaper stuff so we don’t drink all the good stuff,” she chuckles.

But then they find out that the curfew will not be lifted on Friday after all. There is no word on when the curfew will be lifted again. The 12 bottles of wine will have to last indefinitely. Good thing I don’t drink!

The stunning sunset over the Indian Ocean.

The lack of alcohol indefinitely is a bleak thought that disturbs them. But they decide to make the best of it. They fill two glasses with wine and head up to the rooftop to enjoy the sunset over the Indian Ocean. They have enough groceries and wine to last them for a while, and at least they have each other. And to top it off, they are stuck in the beautiful Mount Lavinia with the best guard peacock in the world. And The Cat’s here too.

Inspired and edited by Mohini Khadaria.

“My Life and Hard-ish Times” by Sivan

My name is Sivan. Some of you may know me already–I belong to The Man, The Woman, and The Cat, pictured below. This portrait was our family’s New Year’s greeting, and as you can see, The Cat hadn’t quite warmed up to me, yet.

The Man, The Woman, The Cat. And me.

I came from a Hindu temple in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka. When the temple was renovating several years ago, they sold me to a dealer. I ended up in an antique store in Galle, which is a fort that was built by the Portuguese in 1588 and later expanded and fortified by the Dutch in the 17th century. Nowadays, it’s recognized as one of the remarkable cultural and architectural wonders of Sri Lanka. It is a tourist hotspot that attracts a constant flow of people from all over the world.

The Man and The Woman had moved to Sri Lanka in December. They treated themselves to a trip to Galle right after Christmas as a quick getaway from the city. They stepped into the antique store close to their hotel before they returned to Colombo. It was The Woman who found me first. Even though The Man was interested in a different peacock, he gave in to his wife’s choice (smart man). While I might be seemingly invaluable, The Man made a deal with the shopkeeper and paid the rupees to take me home with them.

Since then, The Man placed me on top of a tall blue bookcase, which is the highest point in the flat. Perfect for a royal peacock like me. The Woman spent the whole afternoon looking up “popular Sri Lankan boy names” to come up with one that suited me best. During the first week, The Cat sulked from the corner and gave me weird looks. But eventually, she succumbed to my charms and visited me often.

Since I perch facing the front door, no one can enter or leave the flat without my detection. In a way, I am a guard peacock to ensure that no unsavory characters come into my home. I don’t approve of some of the delivery people who bring The Man and The Woman furniture for our home–they sometimes walk into the flat with their shoes on. Very. Uncool. The Cat also seems to detest all delivery people–she would run and hide as soon as she heard or smelled them.

Besides the delivery people, The Man and The Woman keep a fascinating company. They’ve made some wonderful local friends. There are Saeeda and Eranda, a couple of young, local creatives in Colombo.

Stunning heirloom jewellery from Sour Metal by Saeeda Deen.

Saeeda runs two jewelry brands. Sour Metal repurposes vintage jewelry and Sri Lankan heirlooms. Samsara specializes in silver and rough stone jewelry. If that wasn’t enticing enough, both companies practice sustainability all the while embracing Sri Lankan roots and natural resources. I feel like I’d make for a perfect ambassador for Saeeda’s two brands.

Eranda works in management/HR but has other pursuits such as selling beard oil and helping his wife expand her businesses. The Man had fixed them beef tacos. They were delicious. Throughout the night, they drank cocktails and talked about jewelry, culture, and the future of design in Sri Lanka. I quietly observed from the top of the bookcase.

The Fabulous Fabienne Francotte, on the opening night of her show in Colombo, “I Don’t Know But I Remember.”

 Fabienne Francotte, a Belgium-born artist and her husband, Tung Lai, the former EU Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, also visited our home. The Man fixed our guests dinner, starting with cured meats, cheese, and bread, followed by a thick pumpkin soup. For the entrée, The Man served his world-famous Bolognese, made with the recipe he got from his Italian-American uncle. Throughout the night, they laughed and discussed everything from their travels to literature to art. The two women spoke about collaborating on a project. I also couldn’t help but notice that between the four of them, they drank five bottles of wine. This is something they can’t do anymore during the COVID-19 curfew, but that’s a story for a different time.

Up until recently, The Man and The Woman went out during the day–leaving me and The Cat to our own devices. However, for the last couple of weeks, they’ve been at home all day watching the news. I have been hearing about this COVID-19 business, which sounds terrible and is bringing the world to a halt. Now it seems that they will be home all day, all night, for the foreseeable future. I suppose it is up to me, their guard peacock, Sivan, to document all that’s happening in the flat during this difficult time.

Stay tuned.

Inspired and edited by Mohini Khadaria.