The most ridiculous inherent contradiction that was ever uttered by any sane (or at least under influence) human being was along the lines of this: In my humble opinion…

An opinion can’t be humble…just like an elephant can’t fit in the backseat of a Tata Nano, not even if he folds his legs. An opinion is your take on the world or the things in it, how then can it be humble. Sure it can be presented with humility but that too has the paradoxical putridity of how humble can a 100-carat diamond present be…

In short, opinions are sharp, big and defined…they may need refinement and could even lack precision but a good one should be as friendly as a nuclear missile. That’s how you tell a good opinion.

Sure you invite the tag opinionated but that’s not all a bad thing – you get used to living alone eventually.

My show has always been about an opinion. If you notice, the camera never goes off between the time the dish is brought and I take my first bite and comment. It is perhaps the only thing that manages to intrigue on the show.

Else, I have been accused of killing food twice – once when it is being prepared and once when I dead-pan comment on it. I could use more emotion I am told but, in my defence, I am not allowed to drink on the job. Waitaminute…aargh!!!

Back to the point, the intrigue of the show hangs on what comes out of my mouth once I bite into something – the intrigue of the immediate. Not what I will blurt post three bites, two takes and five make-up jobs later (although there are none, can’t you tell!?).

The idea was always to play on spontaneity and speedy suspense. Now I am opinionated. I am as opinionated as any Indian who likes his political drama interspersed with a few innings of cricket. I have a take on everything – from movies to the people who go to watch them, from food to drink to lack of them – I am so opinionated that I find myself judging my own self and I find it hard to be living with me all the time.

Trouble is, in spite of my opinions I hardly seem to improve…Thing is, like all of us, I have a vision of life, the world and everything in-between and when things appear different, it sparks an opinion. The chicken-egg here is how did I come to have that opinion in the first place?

Well, I sure wasn’t born with it, it evolved. Through my experiences and exposures, it came to be. And it is never complete, it is always evolving. And it is so for all of us, opinion grows and matures even when we refuse to.

So, if you ever have an opinion, splash it. The caveat is, bring it when you are asked for it: Free anything is worth what you pay for it, a free lunch costs even more. Through my blogs, I invite and solicit opinion.

I like to be told how I am faring, how I can improve. It is my way of bouncing a hundred tiny graphite balls off my blank canvas and hoping a meaningful sketch evolves from it. Usually, it does.

Recently someone left a comment on my previous blog, “Of Crime and…” and it made me think. I like my meat au bleu and unknowingly I seem to have pushed it upon others.

The idea wasn’t as much to thrust as to let people know what I feel and it could be the popular accepted opinion in certain parts of the world. But, I guess, in my zeal to outlaw over-cooked meats, I think I have irked a few.

In my defence, first, the science – the more you cook meat, the more the proteins coagulate, the juices escape and the meat becomes chewier, tougher. It is incorrect to think that raw meat is chewier.