The cream roll syndrome

The other day my father in law visited us, for the first time in 2 years. As all parents do when visiting there offspring living far off, he cam loaded with goodies. Little home made delicacies that we wish we could make but never learn to. Delicacies that get lodged in our brains as memories that beg to be relived. That tasty aam ka achar that only mummy can make, the ghar ka ghee, gajar ka halwa that tastes so good because there is so much of mummy’s love in it, along with all that desi ghee.

For days before his short visit, there were umpteen phone calls, frantic emails and one oft repeated question, ghar se kya laon? Never one to let opportunities go waste, we always had something to add…thodi si vadiyan, thoda sa achar, thodi si fresh raw veggies (that always befuddles airport baggage check personnel), thoda se aam, thodi se woh Sharma wale ke fresh cream rolls….yummy.

Eventually, the much awaited cream rolls arrived; we rushed to bite into them like they were royal dishes especially created for us by the finest cooks in the land. Afterall did’nt we remember them as the tastiest bit of snack from high school, the coveted cream rolls that the thela wale bhaiya outside school doled out at a few rupees apiece and was always sold out by lunch break! But what’s this? Why do they taste so rubbery, why is the cream so ……sugary? Why is it all not how we remembered it?

Alas, we were hit by the cream roll syndrome. It creeps up on you stealthily, always when you are at your most vulnerable, trying to recreate that moment/taste/image that made your heart fly or your senses go wild when you were a child! As we grow up it gets worse, afflicting us, ruining more of our childhoods cherished memories.

Haven’t we all experienced its effect at one time of the other? It may not be the cream roll syndrome fro you, it cold be the pastry syndrome, the samosa syndrome, the mera gaon mera desh syndrome. The name may differ but the sadness over the loss of treasured memories remains the same.

That favorite cricket ka maidan that suddenly seems far less grand, can’t see why you humiliated yourself time and again for that young lady across the street, the roadside chaat that you saved and scrimped for, that kaleidoscopic t-shirt that today seems too colorful to even be a duster.

Memories that time added an extra sheen to, that nostalgia polished till they become Solomon’s gold!

Clamour for glamour- do film celebs click with the junta?

Considering the plethora of celluloid-celebs that contest/campaign, only few go back with victories/good memories election year after election year. The people have made wild swings between euphoric support to the proverbial foot in the A**. Take for example Shekhar Suman who lost this time or Sunil Dutt who won emphatically enough for the people to transfer their allegiance to his daughter just as trustingly.

On the other hand, the story of a glamorous actress of the 70s being hounded by the public during a promotional rally for her father is well known. Apparently the people blocked highways for kms around the venue to catch a glimse of her but eventually her late father lost even his deposit. Hence the people saw ‘the kaano ki baali, gallon ki laali and Bengal ki sari’ and went back to choose the guy they thought would work best for them!

So stars and star value obviously does not guarantee or even bolster the chances of a victory, their own or anothers. But every election national and regional parties try to woo film and t.v. stars for what?

Ideological bankruptcy? Is anyone still flogging this long dead cat? So what replaces this void….development and movie stars? Ad guru Suhel Seth says, "Today, every hero wants to be a neta and every villain in politics wants to be a hero. The Sabarmati Ashram has been replaced by Film City as the politician's temple of worship. The tragedy is that Ayodhya and development have sadly got less media mileage than Dhanno and Basanti! It shows the political parties in poor light, almost as if they were ideologically bankrupt!"
Eye Candy? Well for one film stars can do what politicians are exceedingly failing at (despite the daroo, damdi and danda on offer), they bring in crowds. One film star guarantees a large opening, after that it’s the politicians who have to make or break the situation. Celina Jaitley, Madhuri Dixit, Brangelina, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry all endorsed one candidate or the other.
A touch of stardust? A little sprinkling of this dust may sometimes equal box office bonanza. Salman Khan not only pulled in the crowds but also proved lucky for 5 of the 7 candidates he campaigned for, so there must be some strength in the film star=victory conviction. Matinee queen, multi-millionaire Oprah Winfrey (who has made a career out of endorsing) put her rather substantial might behind the then one of the two democrat aspirants, Barrack Obama. It did not hurt that she has quite the pull with the ladies and African Americans that definitely converted into very large financial contributions to the Obama nomination campaign and very probably to votes towards his election.
Media savvy? Years of being harried and hounded by the media gives them the savvy to shadow box with layered, irksome and down right pesky questions and people. This however may not be consistent with all as seen in the foot in mouth disease that constantly afflicts our most famous ex-bahurani, Smriti Irani as also with Dharmendra who made the gaffe of his political career by being quoted as ‘I don’t know about the BJP ideology is but if made a dictator of this country, I’ll clean up this mess’, it took him sometime to clean that mess up!

Pop star at 47, a fairy tale in the making?

A dowdy, matronly, apparently virginal cat lady from the backwaters of Scotland has done it! Susan Boyle has become the talk of the town (yet not Indian towns) and topic of water cooler gossip around the world.

As a participant of Britain’s Got Talent, a talent hunt show in UK, she generated a collective gasp of appreciation from a skeptical audience and panel of judges waiting to tear her to pieces. And why would THAT generate this mass hysteria, you may ask with genuine wonder. And I might agree with you whole heartedly but for the fact that critics and admirers across the seven seas have been waxing eloquent over her for the past 2 weeks.

Well check out her photograph and you’ll accept that she looks more like a frumpy, middle-aged couch potato than an aspiring professional singer. And that’s where the audience, used to the vocal driveling of pretty plastic pop aspirants, got the surprise of their lives when she serenaded them with her spectacular rendition of ‘I Dream A Dream’ from Les Miserables. To the audience and judges credit, there was a long round of heart felt applause and well deserved coining of the “NEXT SINGING SENSATION”, a title so far reserved for wannabe Miley Cyruses (Britney Spears having gone out of Teen favor).

The producers must be patting their ego-laden backs for having casually presented the world with such a ‘discovery’, though obviously they knew what a rough (only in appearance) diamond they had on their hands since all participants have to go through a screening process. Yet they predictably tried to make this a grand ‘onscreen’ discovery (what else in this age of reality TV) by presenting her as part of the notional group of misfits and weirdoes that are specially selected for entertainment in between the serious business of Talent Hunt.

The in studio audience and the acerbic Simon C. looked down their noses at this frumpy woman and nearly booed her before being flabbergasted by her voice. This raises two questions:

As much as Susan Boyle is being promoted as a singing sensation, her looks are getting plenty attention too (quite a few observers already suggesting an extreme makeover). The fact that she is 47 and noones idea of pretty stumps everyone, enough to show how we now expect all packages to be complete, pretty face=pretty voice or vice versa. Hence the first question, would there be as much celebration for Susan Boyle (in just a preliminary round of talent hunt) if she were another pretty young thing? Does skill matter more when the skilled is marred or ugly because it warms our heart to see beauty (of voice) juxtaposed with ugliness (of face and body)?


Also Susans’ deprived background (she is barely trained, never employed and has for the past few decades solely looked after her ailing mother, hence no boyfriend) is being bandied about as much as praise for her voice. This leads to the second question, does her humble background add/lead to the aura around her obvious skill? Would everyone be as awestruck if she sang like a nightingale AND was a silk stocking trust fund kid? Do we tend to romanticize struggle, refer Kailash Kher and Rabbi Shergill?

Despite the discomfort of these questions, Susan qualifies to be called a Jewel, deserving the 50 million hits to her Youtube video (historical) and is the object of adoration of the many fan sites devoted to her. Whatever the result of the show, she has temporarily won the hearts of the public, Oprah Winfrey AND Good Morning America producers among others.

Defying all logic she has stayed in public memory for more than a week. It is to be seen if she manages to compete with elections and IPL to attract the attention of Indian media soon. Just remembered Abhijeet Sawant….where art thou?

PS: check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

Bleed India?

Its 5 years and another election, another season to bleed the country dry! Who says that we have a slow economic growth rate or even that recession has hit the world economy? Sample this:
§ 14% of national contestants are corepatis
§ Compared to 2004, some contestants assets have grown by a whopping 3000% (and if these are industrialists, career politicians are not far behind)
§ The highest figure this year comes from congress candidate L. Rajagopalan who has DECLARED assets worth 299 crores, understandably so as he is the owner of Lanco.
§ The Karnataka Congress president R.V. Deshpande has finally declared his assets (after refusing to do so) and has shown 1611% growth from 9cr. to 145 cr. But he is a MLA so I suppose it doesn’t count.
§ Both the Congress and BJP are neck and neck with 12 crorepatis each in Karnataka Assembly of the 42 sitting crorepati MLAs. But again it’s a regional figure and doesn’t count as much; after all Capt. Gopinath still comes a distant 7th on the richest contestants list this year.
§ In Delhi a contestant, BL Sharma, declared that after years as a sitting BJP MP (1991, 96) from Delhi (having trounced HKL Bhagat) has nothing more than a paltry Rs.500 in hand and Rs. 15 lakhs in his wife’s name. Oh the Indian politician, nothing but serving the poor and needy!

Everyone heard how NONE of our esteemed national leaders even own a car! Ofcourse they don’t, when there is an entire official cavalcade at their disposal, what better use can there be of the taxpayers’ money!

In all this discussion, we never notice how noone pays a cents notice to the assets declaration of the left party contestants. Surely not because they, in their Bourgeois hating, have no assets altogether?

Well that’s it then, even though our salaries may be increasing at snails pace, someone can claim to be part of the continuously SHINING INDIA.

The Flying Objects of our desire?

With all this discussion going on about the shoe felony….given the chance and reason, who would you throw a footwear of choice at (lets keep it limited to footwear though God knows all of us would like to throw much more deadly objects at quite a few people)?

Let’s stay with politics for a while and contemplate on why Mr. Chidambaram became the target of the projectile. For obvious reasons it could not have been his predecessor, too much of a lightweight to be taken seriously. We all would have laughed it off like we do while throwing empty peanut shells at monkeys in their cages at the zoo.

Could it have been Mr. J. Tytler, the actual intended of the INTENT of throwing? Can’t say if Mr. Tytler puts himself in the eye of such a projectile often. Afterall all those who sin, sleep light and tread nimbly. Alternately if such a thing would have happened there could have been a general national murdering of shoes, just imagine a life without shoes? What would the kachcha wala RSS do, no brown shoes to go with the shirt shorts and topi? So there would finally be common ground among the Congress/allies and BJP/allies to not let such a thing happen.

The PM does not make a fair target (no comments there) and the SUPER PM would make a poorer choice (women should only get shoes, belans, things on fire, they themselves thrown at them in the privacy of their homes not publicly).

Let’s take Mr. Advani now, would I not love to hurl a thing or two at him? But wouldn’t Mr. Modi make a better statement (since he so loves to hurl hate speech at everyone around for being born non-hindu), or maybe Mr. Lalu (for having the gall to appoint his wife as CM and setting an example for his followers in crime) or maybe even Mayawatiji for having her goons hurl punches at non-birthday chanda-contributing citizens of her STATE. This is just too much confusion; I’d rather save my chappals for another pollitical day.

Or maybe I’ll just add injury to broken injury by sending away a thought or two towards SRK for his hairbrained schemes of multiple captains.

But truly I’d throw a couple of desi ghee laden laddoos at Aishwarya Rai for continuing to be as fake and frigid as ever, so unlike the warmth of ghar-ka-desi-ghee and boondi ke laddoos.

The curious case of the FLYING SHOE!

And suddenly A humble piece of footwear has become the MASCOT for political dissent. If George W. Bush and Wen Jiabao (the Chinese premier) are to be believed, the shoe is mightier than the pen, instantly imprinting embarrassment, indelibly!

Our suave Chidu is now in exalted company.

Gone are the days of the humble pie (Bill Gates), green goo (Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise) and champagne (Leonardo De Caprio), the FLYING SHOE has arrived.

Just a thought……would it have made more of a statement if the object thrown had been the lowly CHAPPAL rather than a Reebok, size 8 or otherwise? Apart from giving the chappal sales a push (if tales of surging Turkish made shoes in Iraq are to be believed), would it have given the BJP combine more righteous reason to harangue about the UNINDIANESS of the Sikh riots?

Never mind the gracious pardon from ‘Chidu’, Tytler remains free as a bird AND the grand old partys’ candidate for the umpteenth time.

Holi ke rang......

This year was sadly one of the most lackluster Holis for us, reminding me of years and years past when Holi would invariably fall somewhere in the close vicinity or the middle of all important EXAMS! Those were the days of pretending to study while the ears were glued to the colored and coloring revelers having a great time outside.

Holi days in PATNA were to be strictly restricted to your own immediate locality unless you wished to be bombarded with cow dung. In Rajasthan, Holi is so amazing that it’s a peak tourist season, though why firangs would want to get pelted with painfully stiff wax pellets full of color eludes me.

But memories of B school come back the most; I suppose that must be the case with most people. It was the time of imminent end of the world if this or that assignment wasn’t completed on time, all nighters and partying for no reason atall. Obviously Holi presented immense possibilities of fun (some naughty) and reasons to just crash for the whole day.

At my B school we used to have all organic Holis, very healthy and environment friendly. Bhaang for the initiated and then a plunge in a pit full of rotten eggs and tomatoes mixed with gooey-sticky mud. Many would agree that it’s very therapeutic to just whale about in the smelly slime like buffaloes.

Ofcourse we would respectfully invite all the professors and then dump them into the pit. Some would also use this opportunity to get back at the Profs. for the occasional poor grade or exceptionally boring session.

Well those are days past, current economic conditions seem to have hit the spirit of Holi. Plenty of the working amongst us were in office slogging away rather than sleeping off the exertions of getting painted green and blue and the scrubbing later.

Yet I look outside my home at the tennis court (the designated Holi arena) still full of red and green puddles and take heart. Next year we might be the one painting the place red and quietly stow away the colours to the back of the cabinet.

Minddddd it..

I am a huge Rajni fan. Can't understand a word of most of his regional movies but then you don't watch them for the dialogue!So in reverance, here are some of my favourite Rajni FACTS. Mind it, don't take it too lightly or else.....

Rajanikanth's acting is so good that he even makes onions cry.

Rajanikanths’ calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd, no one fools Rajanikanth.

When Rajnikant does a push up, he isn't lifting himself up. He's pushing the earth down.

The Bermuda Triangle used to be the Bermuda square, until Rajnikant kicked one of the corners off.

Outer space exists because it’s afraid to be on the same planet as Rajnikant.

There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; Rajnikant lives in Chennai.

Where there is a will there is a way. Where there is Rajnikant there's no other way.

Rajnikant can divide by zero.

Where would we be without Rajni Saar.....

Paraskavedekatriaphobia????

Today is Friday the 13th, yet again. It’s the second one this year and with another to come, there is plenty of room to maneuver for doomsday prophesiers and sundry other God Men and their theories.

The fear for the day is real enough to warrant a phobia named after it, paraskavedekatriaphobia.There is atleast one movie made in Hollywood on the topic each year with the famous FRIDAY THE 13th topping the list. Not to be left behind we have 13B from Bollywood this year. Don’t know about the movie itself but the number 13 cant have been too bad for it as a few MSians found it funny enough to write home about.

There are facts and there is fiction about this day and some of them are here….

The actual origin of the superstition appears to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil - a gathering of thirteen - and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath. (wow that seems to have come from our neck of woods rather than in distant Scandinavia)

Some historians peg the superstition to the thirteen people who attended the Last Supper (neither Jesus nor Judas came out of that one OK)…Dan Brown made a ton of money there, guess 13 isn’t his unlucky number.

The Knights Templar were a monastic military order founded in Jerusalem in 1118 C.E., whose mission was to protect Christian pilgrims during the Crusades. Over the next two centuries, the Knights Templar became extraordinarily powerful and wealthy. Threatened by that power and eager to acquire their wealth, King Philip secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13, 1307 - Friday the 13th. And there began history’s biggest hunt for mythical GOLD and POWER, guess some of us just don’t learn.

According to folklorists, there is no written evidence for a "Friday the 13th" superstition before the 19th century. The earliest known documented reference in English occurs in an 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini. He regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.

In 1907, eccentric Boston stockbroker Thomas Lawson published a book called Friday the Thirteenth, which told of an evil businessman's attempt to crash the stock market on the unluckiest day of the month. Thanks to an extensive ad campaign, the book sold well: nearly 28,000 copies within the first week.

There is also a 1993 study published in the British Medical Journal provocatively titled, "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?" They made the following conclusion… "Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended.

"Do we in India really care for the whole effect or is it just another import? So what are our own local or regional superstitions? My mother would have a fit if we wanted to get our hair cut on Tuesdays!

A standing ovation..........

To the theatre scene at Bangalore, it’s alive and kicking. Not having experienced it in Delhi or Bombay comparisons are not possible, nonetheless Bengaluru rocks. The sheer variety of languages boggles the mind….Kannada, Telgu, Tamil, Bengali, Hindi, English etc.

Last month alone, we’ve had the good fortune of seeing some of the well known plays of our times.Naseeruddin Shah’s Motley Crew dazzled with solo renditions of Ismat Chugtai’s three plays in ‘Ismat apaa ke naam’. Heeba Shah’s ‘Chui Mui’ was adequate and Neseeruddin Shah had the audience eating out of his hands within minutes of his raunchy, over the top, garishly colourful (verbally) ‘Gharwali’. But without doubt Ratna Pathak Shah endured with her gossipy old aunt turn in ‘Mughal Bachche’. She was luminous and made you long to see more of her on celluloid screen.

Chowdiah Memorial Hall was understandably full of the city’s literati and glitterati, hobnobbing with each other over society gossip, coffee and plenty of page 3 photo ops. This when the event was publicized no more than a couple of days before and tickets were at Rs 1000-2000 for corporate types and Rs. 500 for us ordinary mortals.

Also last week NSD inaugurated its first campus outside of Delhi (at Guru Nanak auditorium on Wheelers Road) with 4 of its best known plays. We missed out on the first, ‘Acharya Tartuffe’ but fortunately for us ‘Ghasiram Kotwal’ was well publicized and conveniently timed (at 7 p.m. as opposed to 2:30 p.m. initially).Oh what a performance it was!

Coming from the bare bones presentation of ‘Ismat apaa ke naam’, we were overwhelmed and left gaping at the colours, costumes and the naach-gaana. The live orchestra harked back to the era of silent movies with traveling music troupes.Written by Vijay Tendulkar and probably one of his best known plays performed here by the Reportary Company, ‘Ghasiram’ is an apt commentary on our life and times.

It uses lavni among other traditional art forms. The actor playing Nana Phadnawis deserves special mention. His dancing eyes leering at the honest housewives of ‘Poona Shaher’, grubby hands and overall evilness disgusted and revolted! Bravo!!!!

My husband tells me that the next play ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai’, a view of the last days of HIV ward in a hospital was dirty, colorful and entertaining. I should know as he launches into large tracts the rather RICH dialogue in the middle of the most inopportune moments.

The last of the series was a dense adaptation of or in my view a literal translation of Kafka, named ‘Kafka-ek Adhyay’. Either the actors were too young or Kafka unsuitable to adaptation because I caught myself translating the dialoques in English before absorbing them on more than one occasion. And I disagree with my husband that it eventually grows on you.

The lead actor had a serious case of ‘Shahrukhitis’ and since the play was on neither end of the language or adaptation spectrum (omkara v/s evita) it hangs hopelessly in the middle.

Nevertheless quite an experience and at no cost though we wouldn’t mind paying considering the literary horse manure we’ve seen on many an occasion at a steep price.Keep bringing them on people!

The lords and masters of Bangalore.....

Every Bangalorean can recount countless tales of excesses of the lords and masters of the city….the autowallas! They ignore you in the hour of frantic need, overcharge you, double charge you at 7 p.m. and in general reduce you to fuming tears if not outright mad rages!

I have borne with many a high and mighty auto walla, who does not so much as deign to look in your direction while contemplating whether or not to do the high honor of transporting you in the vicinity of your destination. Then they absolutely ignore your instructions to follow a certain route or at the very least give you a look of total disgust when you might suggest a better and shorter alternative. Ofcourse the lesser we talk of their galloping meters the better.

I live in one of the Nagars of Bangalore; in an apartment complex which to my utter surprise is quite a landmark…it would put any US President to shame! It gives me heart palpitations just to contemplate flagging down an auto to my place during rush hour from anywhere further north from Cunningham, even with the mandatory 20 bucks extra.

My sister loves to regale acquaintances with stories of how she and her friends were chucked out of an auto in the middle of Brigade Street for discussing the issue of the famous thespian Raj Kumar and his much YOUNGER heroines in less than reverential terms. The case of money grabbing Ramalinga Raju has been regurgitated by so many overcharging auto drivers as justification that it isn’t even worth mentioning.

And to top it all, every once in a while we all have to sit back and cool our heels during the strikes and bandhs by the autodrivers association in demand for higher rates. So once again we bow to the pressure, pay higher and forget about the extra 10 or so bucks because CHANGE is always ILLA.

Once in a while though, an angel of mercy totally makes you gush with complete admiration at their professionalism and honesty. They give their community a much needed good name!

Bangalore has one of the better networks of city transport yet we are totally and utterly dependent on autos. With the ever delayed Namma Metro starting only on a limited route in 2010 (if atall), the current status is sadly here to stay!

As they say This IsNamma Bangalore…. Jai ho!!

And we all cook together....

While the saas bahu saga was keeping the country in salivating hypnosis over petty family squabbles, early morning makeup and garish sarees a quite revolution was taking place in Indian television…..food shows are the new rage of the idiot box.

It started with a few shows on Discovery Travel and Living and now you can pick any lifestyle, news or family channel, at any time of the day or night and are bound to come across atleast one food oriented show…..in the kitchen or out.

There are new stars around the block and you me and any Tom Dick and Harry could be the next in line. There is Anthony Bourdain, Kylie Kwong, Vir Sanghvi, Anjum Anand, a couple of unknowns (to me) on NDTV Good Times, a few hosts on various news channels (whose only qualification as traveling food critics is their VERY ample girth), sure proof that the job needs no skill other than the ability to ooh and aah over all types of delectable but more often than not disgustingly ugly food.

I am a self confessed loyalist of Nigella Feasts. My husband complains of multiple reruns that I insist on watching even though I could regurgitate the days’ recipes within seconds of the beginning of the show. There is something thoroughly reassuring about:
1) watching someone else slog away in the kitchen (with no sweat, dirty utensils, cuts and burns to mar the beauty of it all)
2)AND look like she eats atleast large portions of whatever she cooks if not the whole thing (are we in danger of passive calorie intake here???)

Ofcourse I could never imagine actually cooking any of the potentially heart attack inducing chocolate laden cakes, pastries, cookies etal that Ms. Lawson bakes in each episode….but who cares. The producers never imagined these as educational or cookery-tips show anyway!

Lately, I see that there is a subtle shift in Indian television programming towards more ‘meaningful’ issues (taking a very flexible view of meaningful) but cookery shows have me currently hooked, line and sinker.With a surfeit of self professed food critics vying to be on TV, I am totally spoilt for choice and consistently snub my nose at all manner of mindless programmes.

Long live 24 hour TV!!

Has Bihar done a vanishing act?

There is simply not enough news to stand up to the Lalu days of yore when any lull in news would be delightfully filled in by the first familys antics, and there are enough of them to fill respectable hours of newsreel.
My family moved to Patna when I was little, apparently after my mother wished a misplaced desire to VISIT a city that has such a beautiful and clean airport (this is the early eighties) on a return journey from Gawhati. Obviously the God above was listening and to my mothers horror, my father had to move to Patna for work.
Lalu Yadav had just won the first of his many Chief Ministerial tenures and a ‘hawa’ of change was flowing in the state. We lived in a neighborhood of bumihars and understandably there was great brouhaha about the rise of the lowly Yadavs.
The one thing that I clearly remember as part of this change was that the local dudhwala stopped bringing his cows right upto the colony for milking sessions and now all had to visit his dairy to pick up the daily litre or two. What scandal! What fun for us kids to watch the elders foam at the mouth over it all!
The eleventh child of Lalu Yadav made good news and there were plenty of jokes to enjoy on the issue of the Bihari cricket team.
We studied in the best missionary school in town and had to frequently trudge in knee deep rain water just to reach the school gates during the monsoon. You could be hours late and simply show your squelching shoes and soggy skirt as an excuse.
If we forgot to do our home work, all we had to do was look innocently at the teacher with watery eyes and recount the harrowing tale of ‘no bijli’ all night. We pulled many an all nighter (many times a week too) when there would be no electricity and there would be no line man to be found in the whole city who would agree to fix the cut/sagging lines to this or that electricity pole. It did not matter who you were or how much you were willing to pay as bribe, if your local line man is not happy, forget the electricity for a few days.
Even when there would be electricity, either the wattage would be so low or there would be only one phase, that tubelights were a joke! High wattage bulbs sold like cakes on Christmas and you had to keep a large supply because the electricity surges would make them pop like crackers.
There were no roads because contractors would simply spread large pieces of bricks (and no mud layer on top) and simply wait for the traffic to pound it down…lo and behold there is the newly made road!
Heaven help if there was durga puja, sarswati puja or any other assorted pujas because the city would simply shut down and you could do nothing but wear your Sunday best and go mingle in the surging crowds at the various pandals.
Summer holidays were always to be spent at our grandparents place on the other end of the country and the long journey to the destination would be tiring but a happy one. The return journey always was full of strange events and you could SMELL the station LONG before it actually came, AC couch notwithstanding.
Noone had heard of reservations and people would DEMAND that they be allowed to share your berth with you. There would be so many passengers sleeping on the floor that you could simply forget the idea of a late night visit to the loo. Once my mother threw out (the train) a box of our own possessions because the person sleeping between our berths was heard rummaging through it deep in the night and when discovered ran away to the horror of all passengers who thought he had planted a bomb (this was during the events terrorising PUNJAB)!
But the Patna of my childhood would always be filled with memories of being the gang leader of the gaggle of neighbourhood kids. Nothing scared us and we would go around the place terrorizing all and sundry on holis and diwalis.
Things may have changed now and then they may never, its hard to take out the spirit of the place no matter how much the white wash.
The last few years of the last century have been more eventful than ever before especially because we would see the news coverage from afar and things always sound worse than they are on the ground. But lately there is not a peep from the state!
No stories of excesses, no examples of the most corrupt and backward state. Unless it is for another railway line in the village of some distant relative of the Railway minister, nothing makes the news channels or even the back pages of the fattest news paper.
Has Bihar gone out of fashion? Or has Bihar bashing lost its pleasure. Surely things cannot have changed so radically that the media cannot find some juicy piece of tidbit.

where did the dusty old books go yaar?

There is something intoxicating about the smell of musty old books that cannot be beaten by the sound of a crackling new one hot off the press. Being a younger sibling, I always got a lot of those ‘hand me downs’. Each year I would pray that the NCERT would make a few changes in the course curriculum or atleast add a new chapter to their age old books, that way I’d have a bonafide reason to get a new one myself.

Only much later I started appreciating the notes in the margin helpfully annotated by my elder sibling. I’d sometimes have the answers while the unsuspecting class was still mulling over the questions!

Since I’m a voracious reader (slasher-thrillers, sci-fi, arts, meaningful stuff, biographies, you name it..), I’ve spent countless hours prowling the streets of many a city looking for a good bargain. There is the famed Daryaganj in old Delhi that is running more on its past glory than any real material, the thadi market near Gandhi Maidan in Patna where I found some amazing stuff and the owners of the dinghy little shops near the railway station in Baroda who present you with the book before you have finished mentioning the title.

When I first came to Bangalore, there were a few ‘chai ki dukaan’ type of tin boxes outside the opera house out near the end of Brigade street. They sold everything from pirated CDs to seriously dog-eared phoren magazines to the latest sizzler on the New York Times bestseller list….this from a time when everything wasn’t so freely downloadable. They apparently got razed down by the juggernaut of the brand brigade when it rolled down Brigade street a few years ago.

Ofcourse we always have Blossoms’ on church street. They have stuck their used book section on the first floor but who cares. There are books and books and more books, the air is musty enough to give you a hangover. Infact their sales people even know where to burrow in to find the most obscure author/title you can dare to name.

Then there is Book Corner near K.C. Das. It’s a lot smaller and stocks far fewer titles but you can browse there for hours without bumping into another determined book-lover every 20 cms. Both of these take back their old titles for half price and I’ve yet to beat out a more advantageous bargain from either….but there is hope, still!

There are the thadi stalls at church street, near coffee house and barton centre on M.G. but these are subject to hard bargaining and you never know whether you’ve been had or have had a good deal. The ‘sabzi-cart’ style book stall behind commercial fall in the same category and to be visited only under conditions of extreme literary-withdrawl symptoms. The lesser said of the lending libraries in Indira Nagar the better.

But in my quest for ever better deals, I’ve found a flat Rs.25 thadi stall near Bombay store on M.G. if you are not very discerning and patient enough to rummage through the haphazard pile; there might be a few pleasant surprises.

The search continues…..for Shangri la..of musty old books!

oh namma bengaluru..

I love Bangalore! I am not a born Bangalorean, like most people I know, but just as well I fell in love with the place at first sight, 10 years ago.

When I first came here, it was a village, town and metropolis all rolled into one ...in its own unique concoction. The weather was perfect, the tree lined roads, lanes and back alleys were just heaven!

Those were the times of short hot and sunny days and long cool and pleasant evenings (brought on by a light drizzle that came with clockwork precision whenever it became uncomfortably hot).

Brigade street did not look like a sorry cousin of times square. 100 ft road in indira nagar had not yet discovered the brand brigade and CMH was not yet balding away like a middle aged man loosing his hair.

Malleswaram was quaint and affordable and RT nagar far from being the posh residential area that it now aspires to be.

Infact the old airport was practically outside the city and Kemp Fort was like Appu Ghar, meriting a special picnic style visit. Noone had yet imagined the new airport amidst the lush farmland.And here we are today, vast tree-less expanses and way too much traffic.

Oh namma Bengaluru!

For those yearning to see the good old days, you can get a glimpse here:http://www.discoverbangalore.com/oldbangalore.htm

oh sexy mamma.....

Did I miss some sort of cultural transformation/revolution/advancement? This song plays multiple times on my favored FM channel and so today I paid attention to the lyrics and was flabbergasted! When did it become okay to call someone’s, anyone’s mumma sexy? Have I become a member of some generation way too past? That scared me enough to go check out the lyrics online and to my immense relief they are oh sexy mamma as opposed to oh sexy ‘mumma’!

Now I’m no expert on any cultural nuances but I believe the context here is a young girl who is addressed in the manner of a desirable young lady in the tradition of black/negro (I’m not sure if that’s acceptable terminology) community’s language not in reference to bollywood cinemas’ maaaa.........While I write this in wonderment, a song plays in the background with lyrics to the effect marjani marjani khasmanu khani marjani…..i’m afraid to decipher anything beyond this point.

Now I’m as tolerant as the next human being but at what point in time did it become fashionable to use such language to the beat of a rock song? Apparently it’s famous enough to warrant censure from our garden variety religious fundamentalists. Not to forget that a certain community preferred not to be in the title of the same movie for some reason that is not entirely clear so far.

But I’m digressing…..whatever happened to lyrics? Good old days of music aside….did we run out of enough Hindi AND the queens’ English to come to this turn in bollywood music? No offence to lovers of either ditty, the music is definitely foot tapping but I’d rather clamp the years of my young nephew shut (coz he’s too young to know any better than dance away to the tune) than sing along.

Happy listening anyway…….

THE GENESIS

Greetings and Welcome, to my ramblings!

First thing first, apologies to all my Gujju bhais and bens who might stumble upon this in hopes of spiritual insights into this culinary delight.

Undhiyu just seemed appropriate to equate my blog to, the gastronomical equivalent of every veggie under the sun mashed together with a generous dollop of grease. Us Punjus have tried to take a stab at this dish with the 'mixed vegetable' but we all know its not a spot on the real thing!

So heres' my potpourri of thoughts!