I (will) write here too ...!!!

Finally I have manged to write and post the blog-post. And that makes one more addition to my 'I write here too' list... Yayy !!!

Check this out

http://blah.burrp.com/

** Show off **

When it rains...

The air was chilly, water drops were hitting my face real hard. It was pouring cats and dogs. I couldn’t make out was there at arms length. With water all over my specs, the visibility was even lesser (How I wish my specs had wipers!) Everyone was running for shelter, there was huge crowd below the Domlur flyover and slow moving traffic on the road. And there was I, driving slowly and steadily, navigating my way through puddles of water. I must have driven for hardly a kilometer or so. Till the time I reached the place I was totally drenched, water dripping from jeans, shoes. My jacket was helpless in the piercing rain. My hands were totally frozen and I was shivering with cold. Thankfully there was helmet so head was intact. The disadvantage was that I could take much water in my mouth. The rain water tastes soo sweet.

Oh no… I am not describing one of my dreams. It happened… it happened yesterday night when it rained in Bangalore. And it was not just yesterday that it rained. The rain gods have taken pity on us Bangaloreans melting away in the April heat and have been pouring frequently since last week. Yesterday was their strongest performance and first time, I got drenched in rain. There was no emergency as such to go driving in the rain. I just wanted to go. I wish I could spread my arms and run in the rain. At least I got to enjoy the drive :-).

The temperature display near my office reads 25 degrees which is huge relief for us from the 40degrees just a week ago. The air still has intoxicating smell of wet soil, cool breeze greets me every time I open my window. I can sit for hours in my gallery with a cup of coffee watching the planes fly past. Ahh… so beautiful! But the sad part is that I will have to go away from this bliss for a while in the land of frequent power cuts and scorching heat. That is correct, I am going home for a week. Till then all you Bangalore people enjoy the rain and pray that it rains till I come back. And others burning in heat, be jealous at Bangalore people :-D.

Google acts cranky !!!

Have you ever used Google reader, the new crawler from Google which manages your subscription to blogs and news sites etc? With this you don’t need to remember/bookmark all your favorite blog sites, news sites and check for updates all the time. The dear reader does the job for you. All you need to give all the links you love, to it and sit back and relax. It will frequently check for updates and get them at your page-step. Nice utility I must say, glorified version of RSS reader I believe. Now being the ‘Google worshipper’, it is my first duty to utilize whatever they bring on. I use gmail, even though I know they might be indexing my mails for their commercial purpose. I am frequent to orkut, though it makes my personal life public, I am still sticking to Blogger despite people trying to influnce me a lot about wordpress… and of course the one and only Google search is life line of we softies. There is… No... there was almost a blind trust that whatever it says has to be correct until the reader gave me wrong entries.

This Sunday morning I open my reader page with much enthu to catch updates on all ma favorite blogs. I see whole 6 entries for a blog that I love reading and which hasn’t been updated for a while. I get very happy and read through the entries. The gal was whining about getting old and matrimonial ads and all. Wait a sec… didn’t she just get married couple of months ago. Is she writing about someone else? I recheck again… am I reading other gal’s blog who is at same state. Nope… It’s the first gal who got married. I check the date updated. Its today morning 10am time. There is one Friday the 13th post which makes me believe that these have to be recent posts (Last Friday was Friday the 13th …the evil day; if you didn’t notice :-) ). So I open the blog to see what going wrong and bingo ! Looks like the reader played April fool prank. They threw last year's 6 posts at me!

Beware people, there is a bug in reader… don’t trust it blindly :-D !!! Tomorrow it will give you news from yesteryears and you might not bother to check the actual info. Imagine you reading about blasts in Bombay and frantically calling all you relatives/friends to check on them when nothing has happened. Google can have that kinda influence you see!

Talking of April fool pranks; none can beat Googlies to come up with intelligent ideas. You all must remember the lunar jobs they were offering couple of years ago. This year there was TiSP(BETA)... hilarious concept. The way have explained almost makes you believe that such things can be true. Read more about it here

New Blog !!!

I have realized that I have been wrting too much about food these days. So I thought why should not I open a new blog and share my love ... like I already I have one for songs.

So here it is... my foodie blog

Hope you will like it :-)

When I go to Pune…

Yeah I was there again (Don’t ask me the reason why !!!) As I had said earlier Pune is a city which is expected to be loved by all Marathi people and it is assumed by all (including myself) that I will also be settling down there someday or other. The thought of going there scars me for no reason. My cousin claims once you go to Pune you can’t live anywhere. I used to think same for Mumbai. But I managed to survive in Bangalore, in fact I am practically in love with this city. I remember first six months of my stay here when I was frantically searching for opportunities to leave the city but the it hasn’t let me go yet :-). Who knows… I might like Pune, as well! Anyways who has seen the future!!! Let’s talk about things I did in Pune.

I had the whole afternoon to spare and was very very hungry till the time I was free. I asked cousin to take me to a place where I can have good Marathi food. I miss the food many times, you see. It’s not like I don’t like the food I have here but then … home food is after all home food. The taste you grow up will never leave you. Like for me, any dish is made perfectly when it tastes and smells just like mom’s. We went to this place called ‘Café Shreyas’ where they have dining hall. They have Marathi style thali with everything served unlimited.

Now the concept of typical Marathi food is vague. Like the language, Marathi food changes its taste every 10 miles. The western Maharashtrian food is the spiciest of all. Any thing prefixed with ‘Kolhapuri’ is the hottest food around. It is the kind of food that will heat up your ears and get water from your nose (That’s the kinda expression a friend uses; if a food items manages to heat up your senses particularly the ear lobes and make eyes and nose water it is hot; “Yaar yeh to kaan me dhua wala khana hai” she goes) The Kolhapuri mutton/chicken rassa (curry) is world famous in Maharashtra :-D. And Puneri food is the sweetest. They would put sugar in everything, from sabji to samabar. In the part of state where I come from, we like to put lot of garlic and onions in every dish. Ours is the region where sabjis are available only during rainy season, so we have habit of preserving vegetables year round. And the dried vegetables, lentils, different kinds of pickles are regulars in our food. My town being close to Andra and Karnataka border, the food has both the state influences. So the delicacies like ‘Bisi bele bhath’, ‘Puliogare’ were not complete strangers to me. The north Karnataka food is very close to the kinda food we have. In all, I feel specialty of Marathi food is that we preserve original taste of the ingredients and we use very less spices as compared to northie and southie food. I should actually try to put together simple recipes sometime.

What would be my idea of a perfect thali…?? Hmmm… let me think. It can be either Jowar roti (jolda roti as they call it in Karnataka), peanut chutney mixed with curd (aka yogurt), raw onion; that’s the ‘gaon ka treat’ or just aamras (mangoes from our farm are better than those five star alphansos) and roti or poori; or the elaborate festive food. The plate has sixteen vegetables (dry and gravy), at least 5-6 kinds of chutneys, 3-4 kinds of papads, bhajiyas, sweet rice, plain rice, aamti (marathi version of rasam), sambar type dal, plain daal and most important of all... weak point of every Marathi manus, the puran poli with loads of ghee on it. And yes every food item has to be served on defined place in the plate, and in defined order. So first and foremost there has to be a pinch of salt put in the dish. Vegetables are served on the right hand side and chutneys/salads on the left hand side of the dish. Ahhh… you should just see the way it is served, the site itself is fulfilling. Well I can go on and on about it, but lets get back to the description of food I had :-D

There was aloo curry, another curry (I donno name of the sabji in English or Hindi), aamti, daal with tamrind, dry sabji, cucumber raita (koshimbir), 2 types of bhajiyas, papad, masala poories, plain poories, phulkas, dal-rice, star of the plate unlimited dahiwadas aaaaand aamras (yummmm!!!). Wow… we must have hogged like anything. It didn’t digest for whole day. It all culminated with sweeet natural watermelon ice crème. To add to the foodie pleasures, I bought myself pack of bakharwadis and kaju katalis from the Chitale Bandhu. I had to walk back home from the airport to make a little room in my tummy.

I want more journeys like that !!!

Coffee time gyaan

Its usual coffee time and coffee place (gallery outside ) at office. There is a mango tree and raw mangos hanging all over it.
Guy1(pointing towards it): Hey see those mangoes. They look nice. (To me) You like them?
Me: Oh yeh. I like them a lot. They taste soooo good.
Guy1 (To guy2): I can’t understand how can they eat such things, raw mangos, guavas, tamrinds, chats. (To me) You must like them a lot
Me: Like them? I love all those things. I can’t understand how you don’t like them !!!
Guy 2: Girls always like weird things.
Me: Yeah… I think that’s why they like guys !!!