The 'Rocking' place

“How come you haven’t been to ‘Purple Haze’?!”
“Oh well I never got a company! Besides it’s a pub!!!”
“You can’t call yourself a rock music fan in Bangalore unless you have been there”
“Uh oh”
“Well no worries. As long as I am here I will be the company”
“Oh wow!!!”
“Let’s not delay the first visit then!”
"Yoooooo"

That was the conversation between a friend(actually friend of a friend) and me. It was very nice of him to keep his words and invite me over. We hit the place on a weekday, last Tuesday to be precise. I was expecting no crowd but the place was already full by the time we reached there. It is just like any other pub, dark, small, smoky and loud. I won’t be able to identify single piece of furniture if saw it in broad daylight. What makes it stand apart is the music that they play! They are known to play the best rock/metal in town or that’s what I am told. When I entered the place, quite a few heads turned. Oh no I was not looking stunning or anything. Your truly was wearing a pink chudidar kutra for the visit. I guess they were pretty surprised to see a gawar looking gal banging head to the rock music tunes. If you have ever wondered, ‘Haah who wears desi cloths to such place’, you have the answer now!

Boy-o-boy, what music they play. The music is system is what metal music needs… the music just gets into your head. Best part is, they have huge screens put everywhere and video of every song is played along. They played many of my favorites like Metallica, Linkin Park, Ozzy’s ‘Mama I am coming home’. I can’t comment on food and other things cause all I had was veg Manchurian which was pretty nice. We were very much absorbed in the music to eat anything. There were some ladies showing off their head banging skills little too much… or were they advertising their hair or probably the liquor was taking its toll. I don’t know what it was, but they made a pretty picture to watch whenever I were bored looking at the video screen.

And yes, don’t let you imagination run amok and eye-brows raise with the thought ‘Whaaaat, you went to a pub!!!’ (and start conspiracy like some people already did… :-P). That’s the place for great music. I can’t help but go… you see :-D Awesome place to be!

If you like rock music by any chance, you know where to go in Bangalore! (If you don’t have company, you also know whom to call :-D).

There goes another one ...

Ahh.. here goes another weekend and I wait for the next one right from Monday with sleepy eyes. It takes really really long time for me to boot up on Mondays. First half is generally wasted in remembering what exactly I did last week. Have you seen the movie 'Fifty First Dates'? My situation is somewhat like the lead character. I need to learn my work with a blank mind every Monday ! I know how hard it is when my manger comes to on Monday morning and asks me something I look at his face with puzzled expressions and most of the times I cannot answer to his questions... the answer is sleeping somewhere in dark long corner in the mind and the processing speed of my mind gets terrible terribly slow. I have these Start-of-the week crisis all the time.

Tell me, do you ever have such start of week crisis in office? I mean do you ever go blank and cannot work at all? Last week, my start week crisis continued till mid-week and when it got unable to bear any more, I ran away from office. And found a perfect place to unwind... the "Crossword". There is no better way to relax one's mind than reading books. They talk to you, they teach you, amuse you, excite you, they cry with you and they sooth you... they are the perfect companions!!! I ended up adding 5 more books to my library, the count now goes to solid 25! I wanted to buy my favorite book 'Love Story' but someone tells me romantic books should be gifted and not bought. As per him, getting a romantic book as gift is always good omen to your relationships. Funny beliefs, isn't it? (But I did gift 'Pride and Prejudice' to a friend :-) )
I was browsing through the Indian author section and one thing that strikes me is there are not many Marathi people writing in English. Its not that there are no good writers back home but it seems most of them prefer to express in Marathi. I wonder what all those NRI babies are doing… And I digress!

I should not forget to describe about my weekend. Did I tell you that it’s beautiful outside? It’s neither too hot nor rainy; it’s cloudy all the day and drizzles once in a while. At nights it’s just amazing to sit in my gallery with a book in hand. I finished ‘A walk to remember’ Friday night, beautiful book in beautiful might :-). Apart from that there was mad shopping spree. I recommend what Shrisha calls as ‘retail therapy’ for all as cure of all gloomy mood types. Walk through the buzzing shopping streets, peep through nicely decorated windows, wonder though rows of racks stacked racks, try on beautiful cloths or just look at the people shopping… little girls looking at stuffed toys with saucer eyes, fat lady drooling on short skirt, wife nagging husband to buy her the new appliance in market… your bad mood will vanish in no time. And if there is little money in pocket, there isn’t greater pleasure than coming home loaded with lots of shopping bags :-D. I bought one of those Abhishek Baccha styln hair-bands... people say it looks cool !!!

There was this friend met after a long time… and it couldn’t have been better :-)

Life gets hectic in office and I already wait for next weekend!!!


PS :- I am on Technorati Profile are you there too ?

Also, Have you checked the new windows version of Apple Safari browser. Its awsome !

Three movies, a concert and Rum Ice Roy

It’s been a long time since I have written a post about ‘how my weekend was?’ There were lame weekends or I was just lazy to write about them (Lazy is synonymous to me!) Weekends come and go away before I recount anyy details about it. This weekend was no different apart from the ‘Aerosmith’ concert that I have written about in previous post. Three rock-concerts old and I couldn’t be happier. DNA people please get ‘U2’ and ‘Linkin Park’ to Bangalore before I get old to jump in the concerts or lose interest in Rock music (who knows!). On the second thought, I wouldn’t mind listening to ‘GnR’, ‘Goo Goo Dolls’, ‘Metallica’ and ‘Bon Jovi’ live :-) (Human mind is greedy you see)

Though the weekend went insignificantly there was happening week for a change! Three movies watched in a week. It’s been a while since I watched movies during weekdays though my office is in the heart of the city and there are at least 3 theatres within 10 mins reach from here. It is always laziness plus too much of work and I can’t sit at a place for such a long time ;-). This week was definite change with three movies being watched.

Shrek 3:- For a change my company did this good deed of giving away free tickets for the movie it has provided technology for. How proud I feel to tell this!! If you are animation fan and you happen to watch Shrek series you will definitely appreciate the animation created by DreamWorks and rendered on servers provided by my dear company. Rendering for animation of this kind requires high end servers and we provide them! Moral of the story is, there was a contest to win free tickets for the movie and a colleague of mine got 4 tickets to the show in PVR cinema Europa screen. Can you beat that? First day show tickets that too in the most hep theatre of Bangalore! How can I miss such a golden chance? The tickets were collected bunking group wide meeting! The story is not that great, they have tried to add too much of senti-aap touch and made Shrek behave more human like. I adored him more in first two parts. But the animation is awesome! The new character Arthur looks damn cute!

Life… in a Metro :- ‘I didn’t like the movie because it is too realistic’ was the first review I got in this movie and it made more that curious to watch it. It was running houseful for a while and finally we managed to get tickets for Wed 10 pm show. Getting ticket episode itself will make topic for another post! The movie is too realistic for sure. It feels like we are peeping into our neighbor’s life and sometimes our own too! The stories of love, betrayal, infidelity run parallel crossing each other every now and then. The movie handles a good topic but does not disturb you or make you think about the degrading morality in our modern lives. In the end, it goes the ‘happily ever after’ way. What disturbed me more was the writer didn’t allow the married women (Shilpa), to follow her heart and go against her cheating husband. Instead she became typical ‘Bhartiya Naari’ who sacrifices her love and self-respect for the sake of family. What nonsense!!! Do watch it for Irrfan Khan. He is not used much but he sure makes his presence felt in the movie.
I was telling my mother about this movie. I said I don’t think you would like to watch this movie; it would shatter the typical Indian mind like it did for my friend. She plainly says, ‘you know what these things have been there in our society since long. Aren’t there stories of infidelity even in our purana’s? It’s just that these days we have advanced media so the things are being discussed openly and women are getting strong to oppose/expose them’. Mom, you surprise me as always!

Cheeni Kum :- I liked this one more from previous two. Nice subject, good direction and cinematography and amazing actors made the movie worth watching. One dialogue that I remember right now is when Amitabh is trying to convince Tabu’s father about their relationship. He says “Why should you have problem when you daughter is not marrying someone younger than her?” It is generally said that women mature before guys do. They should marry guys at least couple of years older than them so they are on same page. We Indians go little overboard in this theory and consider it immoral when a woman marries a man younger than her. I say why we should have problem in that if two people are ready to spend their lives with each other and fine with the age difference. On the other hand, there are lot of girls who search for security, comfort in their husbands just like they received from their fathers. Just as a guy likes to compare his wife with his mother and expect her to cook, care like his mother did what is wrong if a girl searches for her father in terms of maturity and understanding.
What is your take on this?

And I should not forget to mention ‘Rum Ice Roy’, you are right it is name of ice cream which has rum in it and lot of rum for that matter. Sunday night was ‘Corner House’ time after a long time. I thought of trying this one as name sounded interesting and hoping it will have unrecognizable traces of liquor. But my-o-my, it lives up its name, had the rum taste for real (Don’t ask me how I know taste of Rum ;-))

… I am too bored with work today, hence all this blabbering!

Aerosmith rocked Bangalore ...!!!

After all the confusions and whining… the Aerosmith show has been attended. (For starters, like my dear brother and Apoorv, Aerosmith is the cult rock band and their songs are like anthem for rock fans worldwide). It’s just the next day morning I don’t have hangover of it. I don’t know what it was… the humidity or the stupid crowd or too much of expectation or the band itself.

First it was the friend who was supposed to come with me. He decided to play prank on me and till the last moment kept telling me that he is not going to come. Then we were late for the show. The gates were supposed to open at 5:30 and we reached there by 5. I thought now I won’t even get the glimpse of the stage. But surprisingly there were not many people around. Ooh… has too man bands taken away interest of Bangaloreans or was it the highly priced tickets? I was expecting people crowding the place since morning, after all this is not just another band. They are the ‘Bad boys from Boston’ touted as one of the all time best bands in Rock history. This time the organizers also didn’t seem in the mood of making the show much popular. They had started publicizing for the show just couple of weeks ago. And on the day of event there was much confusion about the exact place of show. You must know that palace ground is a huge huge place. So unless you define exact place to enter, you are bound to get lost in taking rounds of the place and half of the roads are one way. They had not put directions properly so we ended up circling the place in crawling traffic. Thank god we were on bike, I saw many people talking the long walk (almost 2-3kms). Inside there was confusion about which line to stand in for the entry. They had common entrance for both the ticket types. Then there were separate lines for gals in a sideey corner. Even after being so late, we were able to get place pretty much near the stage. Unfortunately there were too many tall guys around me so I couldn’t see much as usual. Rock shows is one of the times when I badly wish that I were taller or least other people were shorted than me. I had to jump and keep searching for the view. My neck still hearts with that pain .
So we were inside by 6 pm. The crowd has just started to build up. We were expecting some band to open and help us kill the time before concert starts. Apart from contestants of some stupid air-guitar contest (one of them won a guitar signed by Aerosmith … luck man!!) and some firangs walking around to check the setting and clicking snaps in various poses, there was no activity on the stage. It was unbelievably hot, and despite all the no-smoking signs there were lot of chimneys around, by 8 pm we were soaking in sweat (how I wished for rain). After a while people started booing and shouting for the show to start… some creative mind started shouting ‘Angrezo Bharat Chhodo!’ After minutes of testing and retesting, they appeared on the stage. The video that preceded their appearance showed their journey through times and finally Indian flag covering the whole screen. There was also a Ganesha Idol sitting next to the drums, Pretty Interesting I say. Steve Tyler was wearing his trademark funky cloths. This time it was a female-ish looking hat, huge butterfly hanging around the neck and too many straps on the microphone. He is too dramatic on stage. They started with ‘Taste Of India’ followed by ‘Love in the Elevator’. They sang ‘Eat the Rich’, ‘Living on the Edge’, ‘Dream On’, ‘Jaded’, ‘Sweet Emotion’, ‘Falling in love is hard on Knees’, ‘What it takes’ among others. Joe Perry sang a number too. He looked cool and according to him the best thing that India has given to the world is ‘Kamasutra’!!! One of the good things was that they had made a ramp, so I got good glimpse of Steve and Joe. Joe is amazing on guitar.

Like me, most of the crowd was hoping to listen ‘Janie’s got a gun’, ‘Angel’ ‘Dude looks like a lady’. We kept shouting hoping they will sing but no success. Two hours of non-stop singing, dancing around stage. For one song Steve was wearing the Karnataka style pagari! Till the end we were hoping they will sing ‘Janie’. But they just vanished backstage. The crowd kept cheering for more and suddenly Steve came on stage ‘I hear someone wanting more songs. How about one more song?’ And he started ‘I don’t want a miss a thing’. That was crowning of the show, I say. We all sang together with the song. It was great show but could have been better.

But what the heck … I listened to Aerosmith live in concert... yayy!!!

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.

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 !!!

Memories of food

n;t This post is triggered from Shirsha’s question “do you have memories of taste?” I have the weird memory system. I never know what will be correlated with what. I have vivid memories of smell, like I had posted here. So is true about taste/food. I like to call them memories of a die-hard foodie.

Like with the book I read, autobiography of famous Marathi writer P.K. Atre(fondly known as ‘Acharya Atre’) called “Karheche Pani”, huuuuge book, I remeber taste of ginger. I read that book during summer vacations of 7th or 8th class along with ‘aalepak’. This is an interesting thing made of ginger + honey, to be eaten as mouth freshener. My aunt had got loads of packets for us. And I had them accompanying me all the time while reading the book. Whenever I see that book, the gingery taste lingers on my tongue. Yeah… I like ginger and garlic too, they are regular performers in my food preparations. Do you know that garlic is very good for heart patients (or people having hypertension problems) and they are advised to have it raw? And plain daal with garlic tadka in ghee tastes heaven :-). We are digressing here... no !

Another taste one is the sweet-sour taste of pani-puri (aka gol-gappe, puchka) that we used to feast on during college days. None makes pani-puri like that guy makes, puries stuffed with cooked black chana and filled with cool sweet water plus sour liquid with hint of pudina… yum! The sour taste is overpowering but the sweet would play little games with the tongue. I still remember that taste! I haven’t tasted pani puri like that anywhere else. There were days when we had only pani-puri for dinner. Or hint of dinner and loot of pani puri. Sometimes we would carry them all the way to hostel. Now I must tell you how far this place was from our hostel, it was like going to other town altogether. My college was some 20 + km away from that place. The best way to get there was the college bus which was available only when we were toiling (??) in college. Otherwise we would have to share auto ride and change at least 3 autos (yeah autos used tun like city-buses. ‘We will go only from this point to that… aana hai to aao nahi to jao’) which would cost around 12 to 16 bucks one way. (It was very very big deal for us those days). So we had to spend around 25 to 30 bucks to have pani puri worth 10 max 15 rs. And we had the back-to-hostel-by-7:30 restriction so we were always in short of time. Many times couple of us would go to get pani puris for all of us. Best part used be when we would gulp on the pani after having pani puris. It would burn our throat, bring tears to eyes but we were not the ones to give up. I still can picturize 5 of us huddled in my room, using paper as carpet, the paani-puri stuff spread all over and gulping down puris one after another.

Ahhh… those were the days. Another food thing I remember from college days is the yummiest tandoori-chicken. Yeah yeah yeah… I was non-vegie once upon a time and tadoori chicken was my beloved dish. Studying in a city with abundent Punjabi peoepl, we had access to most amazing Punjabi food. There was a dhaba called A1 tandoor which served best of all tandoors better than any of the 'star'y hotels around. One fine day me and a roomie decided to have chicken and ventured our way to it. With full josh we ordered for full plate of tandoor, chicken 65 and rice. The tandoor was really really huge. We were hell bent on not wasting single piece of it and ended up eating for hours to finish the tandoor. Not to mention we skipped food for next two days. Tandoor smell always reminds me of that session.
There were couple of dhabas behind the Gurudwara which served thick Punjabi parathas. One paratha would be enough for a meal. But the taste I remember more is the chai they served. They would give it in big lassi glasses, made with more milk and boiled a lot. It had the dhaba smelll… I want that chai!

Another weird memory is of the aloo sabji. In Mumbai, we used got dabba(tiffin) in office. Our dabbawala was very fond aloo (like all other mess-walas). He used make boiled potato sabji, the way we make for masla dosa, but with less spices. So it tasted like boiled potatos with salt and oil. Guys called it masala sabji and always used to joke that this guy wants to give us joy of having masala dosa.

Well... I can go on writing forever about these foodie memories. May be some other time :-)

Another good weekend goes by…

Alas!!! The weekend comes and swooshes away without even letting us sink completely in the pleasures of being away from office and all the work related crap. And you realize importance of weekend even more when you have to drag yourself and your bike, off course for close to 2 km in the noisy, crawling traffic (I was literally walking) and then climb flight of stairs all the way to 4th floor because all lifts decide to take a Monday morning break.

It feels like I am dragging life with the hope of getting good weekends :-D. The perfect weekend should start with perfect Saturday. For me, it’s a day when you finish all your weeks pending quota of sleep. I like to get up at late afternoon, get fresh, eat something and then again doze off. Maximum would be to go out somewhere for dinner. My lazy bone takes over completely this day (I think all my bones are affected by this lazy bone). I don’t even take the effort to cook if there is none at home. Earlier mom used to call me up on Saturday mornings and try to wake me up without any success. Now she has accepted it as one those ‘bad habits’ I have picked up as a result of staying away from home. But this Saturday was not one these perfect Saturdays (for my sleep). I had to get up early in the morning to finish some work by 12. So I was officially up by 8am but allowed myself to steal long naps till 12. Apart from that it was goooood weekend.

There were lots of movies watched. First one to be mentioned is ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ (with a ‘y’ and not ‘i’). This has been on my to-watch list since long, strongly recommended by A. And I must say it was worth it. The only other movie of Will Smith I have seen is ‘Hitch’ where he is good. I have seen ‘MIB’ in bits and pieces and there was a series called ‘Fresh prince of Bell air’ made during start of his career. So basically I didn’t have too many prejudices apart from the fact that this is his Oscar nominated performance. It’s a story of transition of an ordinary guy from declared loser to topper in his class equipped with nothing but believe in himself, hardwork and dedication to his dreams. I love this dialog when he preaches to his son ‘If you have a dream. You got to protect it. Don’t even let anyone tell you that you can’t do this. Not even me’. Will Smith excels in portraying agony of helpless father, smitten by situation still hanging on to his dreams and working his way up. It has touchy father-son angle.

Another father-son movie, I watched was ‘Finding Nemo’, one of the best animation movies ever made. The father ‘Marlin’ is totally different from Will Smith’s father character ‘Chris’. He is over protective, over cautious towards his son ‘Nemo’. But finally he breaks all the fears to save him. Ahh… these my-dady-strongest type movies appeal me a lot :-). I love the character Dory in ‘Finding Nemo’. This is a must watch movie for all animation lovers. And so is ‘Cars’, another animation movie I watched this weekend. Its my third time and the more I see it the more I love it.

Been to Forum (‘the’ mall of Bangalore) after so many days. Once upon a time it was the place, I was found practically every weekend. Now it has lost its charm with too much of crowd. Nevertheless we had good time hanging around, shopping for cute stuff and watching the crowd.

This was a gooood weekend and Sunday morning encounter with expectedly unexpected (or was it unexpectedly expected) people didn’t hamper the fun a bit!

The main to-buy this weekend was ‘Kandisa’ CD. Indian Ocean is the music of season for me. They make amazing music. Interestingly I had to search 3-4 music shop before I finally got hold of the album. This is one CD worth having in my collection. The song ‘Kandisa’ rocks as always. ‘Ma Rewa’ is equally amazing. Now I am searching for ‘Jhini’. You can see the song video on youtube (Check it out here http://youtube.com/watch?v=NhKYn0dg-K4 ) but not able to get the complete mp3 version. Please pass on the complete song if you have it. I sing along with them whole day today
‘Ma rewa sssssss… tharo paani nirmal khal khal bahata jaye re…’

Why I like Wednesdays …

Wednesday is my favorite day of the week. Oh… I know that reaction… ‘What? You crazy gal? It’s not a weekend. It’s WEEKDAY… mid week day!!!’ Well that’s me, I like this day :-). Today was good as I got good food, good company and good news.

It was the sports day at office and all my enthu-team was to go to the ground to play. Somehow I didn’t feel like going there. Yeah, I am acting like one of those boring people who like to sit back in cozy place and do the boring work instead of going out and enjoying. You can delete the ‘doing work’ part for me :-). I don’t have any reason for not going apart from I didn’t feel like, however lame it may sound. Moreover its getting soooo horribly hot outside these days, the thought of stepping out during day time is unthinkable. I decided to stay back and may be run away home early considering that none will be in office during afternoon.

I was having chat with S and got myself company for lunch. Midweek-midday lunch with friend, how cool is that!! Basically I wanted to show off my nu-nu hair style (Am I getting to ‘show-off’y about it ??) We had lunch at ‘Mast Kalandar’ on CMH road. This place is couple of kilometers away from my office and interestingly I didn’t feel the sun at all while driving there. Now this restaurant is cool eat out chain mostly serving northie food, total ‘ghar ka khana’ type. The funky orange-green interiors totally live up to their ‘Eat Happy’ punch line. We feasted on gobi and mutter parathas, they too had some funky names which don’t remember at all. It was fun. We should this more often.

Do you know that this food chain is started by some softies*? And it is quite a hit amongst good food-seekers here. Gosh, I too want to start something like this before I burn out in the office AC. Back to office, I was surfing about this chain and came across these two burrp blogs BangaloreBelly and Burrp. Cool blogs. Must-check-out for those who like food and want try out different varieties of food. Also registered myself at Burrp as a reviewer too! Did you know about another techie restaurant called DalFryday in Bangalore. The name sounds pretty cool. I am gonna try it some day. What?? Don’t you know that I big time foodie and my idea of eating out is to try out new one and not to be regular member of same idly/pizza place next door :-D.

Back to office, I got the good news. I am gonna be masi in couple of months.. yay!!! This will be first child in my group...I am sooooo excited!!! Ahh… Wednesdays are always good, isn’t it ? :-)

Softie == Software Engineer and not the ice-cream type.

I have picked up Shirsha’s blog habit of describing about ‘how my weekend was?’ Here comes description of another one :-).
This weekend was the ‘movie weekend’, I watched close to 5 movies and a music show (yes!!!). I say close to 5 because I left the theatre in between for movie because it was too horrible to watch… Mel Gibson’s movie ‘Apocalypto’. I donno what has made him to make a movie like that; least he should not call it a movie and sell is a documentary on primitive human beings. It was the first movie I started the weekend with and made my cousin to leave the theatre within 40 minutes after they started to dissect human parts one by one (Ewwww!!!). But back home watched better movies. My friend’s husband is a great movie fan and has nice collection of cds/dvds. Oooh… I forgot to mention, I was in Pune this weekend… Yayy!!!
I had some work in the city so had flown in for the weekend and stayed with this friend of mine... a little bit of work to be finished on Friday morning and then lot of fun with friends, cousins and most important with dearest sis. She came down all the way to meet me. There were so many people to meet. Most of our time was spent in going from one place to another. We must have traveled complete length of Pune for more than once. The city is supposed to be a dream place for every Marathi person but somehow I never took much liking for it. The roads are pathetic and so is traffic and pollution. I felt like a total stranger there and missed Bangalore buzz. The friend said I have bad habit of getting attached to things. I guess she is right. I used to feel same when I left Mumbai.
This friend I stayed with, was my roomie in Mumbai and one of those caring roomies I am always blessed with. Those were the days when all I knew was to go to office and come back home and sleep. I couldn’t cook or clean, couldn’t even make a cuppa tea. Those two gals pampered me like a baby. The story of how good (totally burnt) rice I had made for a sick friend is still popular with Mumbai friends group. So when I went to her place this time, I so much wanted to demonstrate my cooking skills. After all the plans, we settled down on making aloo-parathas. They were yummy as usual.

Apart from ‘Apocalypto’, other movies I watched were (in the order of watching) ‘My Super Ex-Girl Friend’ (Funny concept), ‘Hitch’ (Can watch this one again and again), ‘HTPL’ (The kids wanted to watch it once again), ‘Remember the Titans’ (Really good one). And last but not the least was the song extravaganza ‘Ayushyawar Bolu Kahi’ (translated as ‘Lets talk something about life’), as innovative program started by two young musicians Salil Kulkarni and Sandip Khare. The man Sandip Khare is miracle with words. Its been really long since I have listened to such beautiful Marathi poems and songs. I missed attending it when they had come to Bangalore. I can’t help but recite this poem ‘Evdhach Na’.
“Evdhach na… Ekte jagu
Amach hasa, amach rad
Gheun samore ektech baghu

Ratrial kon duparla kon
Janmaala avghya ya purlay kon
Shwaasaala shwaas kshanaala kshanaala kshaan
Diwsaala diwas jodat jagu
Evdhach na…

Anganala kumpan hotach kadhi
Gharala aangan hotach kadhi
Gharaache bhaas, Anagnaache bhaas
Kupanache bhaasach bhogat jagu…
Evdhach na…

Aalaat aalat tar aalaat tumchech paay
Gelaat tar gelat konaala kaay
Swatach paay swatach waat
Swtach sobat houn jagu
Evdhach na…

Maatiche ghar maatiche daar
Maatich ghar maatich daar
Maatichya dehala maatche waar
Maatich khari maatich bari
Maatit maati mislat jagu
Evdhach na… “

I will try to translate it some time… Will have to use my linguistic skills at the best :-).

Evening to remember....

They say… everything that starts well should end well…

So was true about my weekend. It started with the most amazing musical performance I have attended yet! If you know me you know that I am the biggest music lover… any kind of music be it rock or classical is good for me. There always song playing my head. Do all people have song of the day… like my today’s song is Numb/Encore- Lynkin Park!
So my roomie wanted to go for this show “Concert for Bangalore” (or something like that)… I agreed because my favorite musician of all times… Ustad Zakir Husain was going to play. All my study hours(though they were not too long :D) in school were spent with his music playing on the background. The man is pure magic on tabla!!! There used to other classical music performances in house too. Dad being big fan of classical music, most of our mornings used to start with Bismilla Khan’s sanai or Ravi Shankar’s sitar. But after leaving home, I was more oriented towards vocals than instrumental music.

So when I decided to go for this concert it was more of, ‘ok I can give her company…’ we managed to drag one more friend along with us (big time rock fan like me). Oh I forgot to mention the other musician, legendary Ustad Amjad Ali khan. Apparently they were playing together after more than a decade in Bangalore.

The evening started late due the traffic jams and all chaos. The ground was more or less full and I was surprised to see young crowd outnumbering uncles and aunties. We were sitting far far away from the stage. Everything there looked like colored dots moving around. Amjad Ali khan started the concert with the note ‘we haven’t even talked about what we will be playing tonight. Everything we play is decided as the mood sets and cannot be repeated again. Call it simplicity, magic or difficulty of our music. This performance is especially for you Bangalore!’ Wow… How amazing is that! And his fingers started moving smoothly on the sarod. The music was so enchanting that I never felt the need to stand up and ‘see’ them perform. It’s the kind of music that touched the heart and enlightens your senses… you can actually ‘feel’ it. There was kinda smile on everyone’s face that tells you are absolutely delighted, through out the performance and the heads were nodding automatically with every twist in the symphony. I have zero understanding of the ragas to tell what all they played. There was some evening ragas, holi raga and prayer to Ganesha. And there was the full moon to witness it all.

I have been to couple of live music performances… mostly rock. They were mind blowing. But the rock music bangs in the head, and this music plays softly with your heart. Ahhh… I am so happy that I was there. I still have that smile on my face. And the thought that I might not be able to attend the ‘Iron Maiden’ conert, hurts less :-).

The weekend ended with laugh riot called ‘Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd’ a.k.a HTPL. I haven’t heard people talking too good things about it but I liked it. It’s a nice concept, could have been better, but still… a good try. There was this scene which I should not miss to mention:

Background: They are the perfect couple. Been together for 16 years and never had a single fight. They have choices, likes dislikes, cloths and even bags too! Too sweet to digest!! One morning the gal discovers that her man has been absconding for hours. She get angry and they have their first fight. After lot of convincing, the guy agrees to tell her the secret. He takes her to a lonely place at wee hours.

Guy: Dekho, abhi job hi kuch tum dekhegi usase darna nahi. Always remember that I love you.
Gal: What are you saying ? You are freaking me out.
Guy: This has to come out one day. Please say that you won’t get angry with me.
Gal: Please tell me what is it? I am freaking.
Gal: Dekho sambhalke.
(He stands up and zooooooom. He is a super hero!)
Gal: Oh I am so happy.
Guy is puzzled. She stands up and zooooooom. She is the super gal too ! Bravo !!!

Gal: Isiliye hum logon me aaj tak zagada nahi hua. Super man aur super women 16 saal me sirf ek baar zagadate hai

Me was ROTFL :-) :-) :-)

In between there was Jalebi and Baigna ka bharta (yummy!), at ‘Chilly Pepper’. Though it has Chinese name, the place serves amazing northie food… truly ‘exceptional food’ as their tag line goes. And the huge soooper scooper at corner house… I just can’t get enough of ice-cream these days :-). Friends and F.R.I.E.N.D.S. were there all along to keep nice company. Though I missed a trekking trip… but will make that soon:-).

Birthday Celebrations

Today is one of my roomie’s birthday. This will be probably the last birthday she will be celebrating with us. We decided to give her surprise… knocked on her door at midnight. She opened her door to find cake with candles and diyas lighted all around it in front of her door. Ahh… girls love surprises!!!

Birthday celebrations in general have very good memories for me… especially from the hostel days. It was like a tradition in our girls’ hostel to celebrate birthdays at the stroke of midnight… all the girls would gather together, we would cut cake, put cream on b’day girls face, give her bumps and have dance n songs...total halla-gulla. It used be helluva fun. (Yeah, no party would be complete without my performance off course) In fact our first ragging “assignment” was to celebrate one of the girl’s birthday. FE (that’s what they called first year engineering students) hostel was bit away from the senior hostel so we were asked to go on the terrace and shout as loud as we could so that our seniors could listen to it :-). And we actually did that. The principle’s quarter was nearer to our hostel than the senior hostel. He had to send security guard to silence us :-D.

Next year, we shifted to another hostel. There my room was quite near to the warden’s quarters so we were bound to get scolding from him once in a while but we were not the giving-up types. Yeah, he was the kadus types for first couple of months :-(.

There was one time when all of us had returned from vacations and were celebrating 2 of my roommates’ birthdays. The party was at its peak when the warden knocked on my room. He was fuming with anger, as usual gave us lecture on importance of being descent when you are staying in vicinity of your teachers and all.

Then all of a sudden, he asked one of the girls standing next to the door, “You go stand in front of my house and let these girls make noise. Then you will realize how much disturbing it is for us”.
Poor girl was stunned for a moment and next moment we know she was walking out of the room. Warden was not expecting this at all.
He called her back “N, kuthe chalala tumhi?” (Where are you going N).
She answered innocently “Sir, tumhich sangitale na ” (Sir, you only asked to go to your house).
(We still tease N for this incident.)
He didn’t know what to say for a moment. We all were trying hard to suppress our laughter.
He ordered the security guard with him to take away the music system. We burst out in laughter, the moment he left; only the owner of music system was in tears. Thankfully it was returned within few moments and the guard asked us to play it at low volume. Not to mention our party continued again in full swing though the music was playing at low volume :-).

Those were the days … :-)

GuruBhai GuruBhai … Ala re ala !!!

It was after sooooo many days that I got to watch a movie right in the first week of its release. Thanks to my friend working next to the theatre who voluntarily got me tickets and the friend accompanying me actually didn’t chuck the plans (yeah, that was very important :D). And all the effort was worth it.

Abhishek Bacchan has finally arrived. He is awesome, the way he transforms from simple “gaon ka ladka” to the top businessman, his dialogues, confidence in every movement. His character is very well written and so is Aish’s. I liked her performance for a change. Sad news is the reel life couple is going to tie knot in real life too very soon. (How heartbreaking for me… ** sigh **). Madhvan is completely wasted though. They could have used him more… he looks too cute with few kilos lost. There is no doubt that the character Guru is based on Dhirubhai, from the Gujrati background to his paralysis attack… everything is “inspired” from Dhirubhai Ambai’s life :-). Maniratnam has excelled in every department. Rehman’s music is good as usual, particularly the “Jage hai der tak…” number is used beautifully all over as background score. It goes very well with the whole movie theme. I must say our hindi movies are improving at a fast pace. This one is a must watch for all Abhishek and Good movie lovers!

So were the other two movies I watched this weekend… “Pyaar ke side effects” and “Happy feet”. “Pyaar Ke …” is good movie. Though not suitable for every taste, I loved it. Particularly the dialogue “Pyaar kaunsi badi baat hai. Pahale shaadi, honeymoon, ghar, bacche aur baad me pyaar ho hi jaata hai”… Quite relevant to sort of situation I am going through right now :-). “Happy feet” is too good on animation front, the story and all is ok ok. (May be because I was not in a good mood to grasp it properly :-)). Overall good weekend, though my much wanted outing trip didn’t happen :-(. There was free food and good copmany in TGIF :-).

And yeah finally I have started the much awaited Guitar class… yippiee!!!

Ahh… it’s always fun to have your office in the heart of the city. You can go partying anytime. And with a office group like mine, it’s more fun :-). Fridays are fundays and these days they are McD days. Today there were bunch of sweet desi-angrez* kids using the whole McD area as their play ground. They were sprawled over the floor like it were a garden and playing with their pokeman goodies and proud moms looking over. And there were two chinki kids watching them with saucer eyes. I almost asked the attendant “Can I take home one of them :-)”. There is no other beautiful sight than watching kids engulfed in play.
The other good news is, they gonna open a multiplex in the Sigma Mall soon (soon == within a week or so). So its gonna be movie time everyday… yippie. We have even chalked out a plan to sell tickets in black ;-).
Any takers there?!!!

Talking of side-businesses, there’s one more brilliant plan in making, dubba-supply company in Bangalore!! We have heard a lot about Mumbai dubbawalhas and their efficient supply chain etc etc. Now no more of it… we will be creating a revolutionary dubba-supply system with saaptware-engineering brain advantage.
I will be in charge of food (hence the best food quality guaranteed :-D) and other two guys will be handling delivery. Our dubbas will have GPS enabled so you will be able to track their delivery status second by second using your cell phones. You will be able to tailor your menu as per your likes; to be chosen from wide range of items. You can chose your menu and place the order online or even can get the list on your cell!
Everything will be served hot and fresh to your plate!!!

So rush your entries today, we believe in quality and not quantity.
Limited spots left!!!

(*desi-angrez = desi kids who use angrezi more than their mothertongue. Something which I really hate to see :-( )

Of vacation, journeys and (missed) plans

I am back after long vacations! Today is going be spent savoring on sweets and chocos from all over the world (some people returning from US) :-).

It was hell of vacations, I say. I didn’t want to spend the furlough period (that’s what the vacations are called in my company) at home so the obvious plan was to go to Mumbai. The place I love and miss very much. Since I had very less time (3 and half days to meet 3 uncles and numerous friends and do shopping too!), I had planned the whole trip again and again so that I won’t miss a thing. But as it is rightly said … ‘the more you plan more things are bound to go haywire’. As per original plan I was going to stay for couple of days at home then go to Nani’s place and from there to Mumbai stay there for 4 days and head back to Bangalore.

Plans started missing right from the moment I stepped out to catch a train back home. I was on the road at around 8:20pm to catch a train at 10:20pm. There were hardly any empty autos and available autowallas were true to Bangalore tradition, simply refusing to come to the railway station. I was almost in tears. Finally a friend dropped me to the station, just in time. Worst part was the train started almost 30 mins late :-(.

At home, it was fun fighting with sis, meeting school friends and lots of gyaan from mom. My first greeting at home was “What have to done to your hair!” (my dear mom of course :-) ). We were supposed to leave on Wednesday morning for Nanded, my nani’s (mom’s mom) place and catch train for Mumbai from there. Sis was also planning to leave at the same time. But lazy gal wouldn’t get up in the morning so her departure was delayed and so was ours. My nani is always over-enthu when it comes to treating her grandchildren. She wants to make 100 different dishes at the same time. This time was no different :-). But whatever she makes is too delicious to resist to eat.

Left for Mumbai by train on Thursday evening. When we had reached near Jalna, a fellow commuter informed that there was a train accident near Manmad station and the train might be delayed. We thought this might be some minor station and traffic should be resumed soon. It turned out to be a major one… a carriage train and passenger train brushed each other, fortunately no lived were lost. We were held at Jalna station from 9pm till well after midnight when the finally announced that the train has been cancelled and it would not go any further. Bullshit! What were supposed to do at the midnight! Fortunately there was another train coming from behind which would go till Aurangabad which is an hour’s journey from Jalna. So we decide to take halt at my uncle’s place leaving there. Rang him up at 1am telling we are coming. Once inside other train, the passengers had no idea that their train will go till Aurangabad (that’s like only half way to Mumbai) so they won’t let us even stand in the sleeper coach and the train was moving at snails pace. Mom was already tired by all this hustle. The train finally pulled at A’bad station at 2am and there were not many autowalhas again. Uncle came rubbing his eyes and we were home by 3am. I so much wanted to leave in the morning by bus but uncle wanted me to cancel the Mumbai plan altogether. Finally we convinced him to get tickets for evening bus. The bus was very nice, it had births just like train sleeper coach. What followed next two and half days was hopping from one uncles place to another and snatching few hrs to meet couple of friends (only :-(). If you idea of Mumbai geography, I was hopping from Vashi to Nerul to Dombivali and back which is like making 2-3 (or more) full rounds of Bangalore :-).

This trip gave me few realizations.
First that, with all the running around, I have visited almost 90% of my relatives residing in Maharashtra. The train wreck ensured my visit to A’bad which was not at all planned. I was meeting most of them after a gap of almost two years.

Second one; my relatives plus food makes a lethal combination. All their love is stuffed in food (I had to have lunch thrice a day!). Next time I plan a visit home I will be fasting for at least a week in advance to be able to digest all that food :-).

Third; I am very much ‘Bangalore’d. Here I am big advocate for how good Mumbai is and all. But there I found myself advocating for Bangalore, trying to educate people about Bangalore culture and comparing everything with Bangalore; road conditions, traffic discipline, autowalha’s and people’s attitude in general, the language, lifestyle. I don’t speak ‘Mumbaiya’ language anymore L. It was actually hard to digest for a while that people around me speak a language that I can understand :-) … I felt as if I was in a wonderland!

I MUST not end without saying thanks to two of my sweetest friends. When leaving for home, I was not able to get a single auto. I called up U asking if he could drop me to the station. Poor guy was all hungry, tired from day’s work and had almost reached home. He came right through and drove me to the station on his bike. It was bad bad ride in the heavy traffic and with my heavier luggage :-).
And while coming back to Bangalore, I was planning to meet another friend at the Bombay airport. I had called him there at 5 pm and had flight at 6:20pm. He came all the way from Andheri and I reached the airport at around 5:45pm due to traffic and timing miscalculations giving me just enough time to say “Hi” and “Bbye” in same breath. And he didn’t complain a bit.

Ahh… I want to go back there again!

Merry Christmas

This weekend was full of fun. I did write about the ‘rocking’ part but that’s not the only good time I had. It started with dinner at a friends place on Friday night followed by amazing (raised to the power n and n tends to infinity :-) ) Christmas Party on Saturday morning. Now you will ask, Party in the morning? Yeah it was hell of a party. First ever Christmas party I attended and it will not be the last one for sure :-).

This year round, I have been involved with small time volunteering work here and there but this was different. Imagine having close to 2500 children around you singing, dancing, jumping, clapping (sunshine claps and star claps and rocket claps, have you ever heard of them?)! Just the idea of having so many kids together at one place is scary and how you keep the glued together for continuous four hours? You have to be part of such function to get the answer. There were just kids, their teachers and we volunteers, no ‘dignitaries’, no speeches, praising each other n stuff like that. And there was face-painting, magic show, rock show, dance performances, singing, Santa clause, gifts all exclusively for kids and by kids.

What were we in-charge of? Work! The work ranges from decorating the place, to packing food parcels, painting the kids faces (Christmas trees, Santas, hearts, stars, smileys), dancing on the stage (yeah, one school needed volunteers to dance with the kids. Not to mention I was the first one to go!), taking kids to the loo, clearing the place (we actually swept the whole basketball court!). Some volunteers had started early morning (around 4 am or so) to collect kids from their schools. Everybody was working in such a close coordination; nobody was needed to be given instructions twice. And how many of them I knew to start with? None! Isn’t that the true spirit of working together?

The party was called “Chrysallis 2006” and is organized every year in Bangalore for under-privileged children by organization called Chrysallis. You can join the yahoo group here and orkut community here.

If you love kids, this is the place to be!

Rapture of the Deep

They came, they rocked and they won hearts!!!

The BAAPs of rock were here and they rocked Bangalore like never before (as least for me :-) )

First time I came to know about the band “Deep Purple” was when Kalpana Chawala died. She was a great fan of their music and had carried their music to the space! Next time was when I copied rock music collection from my colleague’s machine. I loved “Hush” and “My woman from Tokyo”. But to be honest I was never die hard fan like I am of Bryan Adams or even my recent favorite list additions like Dire Straits or Metallica :-). Yeah yeah yeah… I am becoming a metal fan!. So why did I go for the show? To attend a live concert that too a rock concert! How could I lose such an opportunity and it turned out to be the best one. Oh yeah I have been to BA concert earlier but I was too away from the stage and couldn’t see more than a black clad figure jumping on the stage. How I wished I were 10 feet tall!

This time no mistakes made. We were there much before the gate opening time. ( I mean my friend was there at 3 pm to be right at front of the line. Yours truly reached leisurely at 5 :D). We were right in front of the stage, in 2nd or 3rd row (Mind you, that is hardly 10 feet or so away from the stage!). A local band played to start with. They were not bad. The guitarists were good and vocalist was eye-candy ;-). Then there was again break of half hour. I was already tired of standing for 3 hours. Three hours standing among crazy smoking stinking freaks, no place to move and no Deep Purple :-(.

Then they came out of purple haze. What followed was 2 hours of non-stop head banging and foot tapping music. Sigh I have no proper words to describe it. Steve Morse rocks on the guitar. The pieces he played on guitar were tooo mind boggling. So is the lead singer Ian Gillan, perfect entertainer with his ‘air guitar’. No talking, only music and serious music for that matter. If I had not seen in person I would have never believed the kind of music was being played by guys in their 50s. Unstoppable and unbelievable energy! “Smoke on the water” is still banging in my head. The recorded versions sound so lame now! The crowd could not stop screaming in excitement. My throat is still sore and feet hurt like anything. But who is complaining :-).
What a rocking show!! Whaaaaat a rocking show!!!

In the words of the band vocalist Ian Gillan, I would say “What a perfect way to end a rocking year!”

Samanewali line se!

Have you ever seen a movie sitting just next to the screen? The actors look like coming on your face and the sound is loud enough to turn you deaf. The front row public is the real “public”, they won’t mind whistling, clapping or even dancing to funky song tunes. And if the movie is packed with cracking dialogues and “dinchak” music then ‘kya kahane’ ! Have you ever watched movie in a village theatre where people are rubbing noses to the screen and ready to jump with every dialogue. They will throw money for the dancing heroine, boo at the villain. Believe me it’s a site worth watching than any other movie. In the town where I grew up, the front row fever is carried till last row. So you will hear whistles for every song/dialogue coming from all over the theatre and yeah, there will be bulbs flashing along the movie screen on hero-heroine’s entry and during song sequences :-).

I have seen quite a few movies sitting in front row. Naah not in my native, I would never dare to go there :-). Fortunately Bengalooru people are too sophisticated in front row as well, they won’t utter a single word of protest even if the cinema screen goes blank for 5 minutes right in the middle of nail biting climax, except for some people like us. I have enjoyed movies like “Bunty aur Bubbly” and “Lage Raho Munnabhai” more due to my company. For B&B, there were only two people making noises in the theatre, one guy whistling to “Kajrare” tunes, other guy clapping and singing loudly. A girl, sitting next to them was hiding her face from stares of whole theatre. The scene was different for “Lage Raho …”, surprisingly the whole theatre was screaming and so was the crazy bunch of 8 sitting right next to the screen. This time the girl wanted to dance but nobody allowed her :-(.

And may be she was expecting same kinda fun when she got tickets in front row for Dhoom-2. But to her bad luck, the movie didn’t provide enough masala for that. Now you won’t expect guys whistling at Hritik Roshan (He is tooooo gooood… *Sigh* I can’t whistle loudly). How much will anyone waste energy on artificial Aish anyways?
Overall it was good movie, worth watching if you promise yourself not to remember laws of physics (especially anything related to gravity) in the theatre :-).

Weekend trek

Someone has complained that I am getting too senti with my poems. So I have decided to stop writing (I mean posting :-)), unless I come with a funny poem. Yeah that's what I want to write next time. Mission humorous poem! Also my brother is taking pains to read my poems and I want to save him from that (for the time being :-)).

Here is my account for a weekend trek I had been to. I had started writing it loong time ago but just was lazy to finish it till today :-D. Tell me if you like it.

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What is your dream place like?

Well... mine would be a place with loots of greenery and fresh air and away from all the hustles of city life. Sounds like heaven naa?? It does to me; and guess what, I had chance to come closer to what I dream of.

Last Friday, my friend asked if I could join him for a biking trip. Biking trip? Now this something I have never done. Given my special affinity with two-wheelers, specially the back seats (I was thrown off bike TWICE!), I am always bit hesitant to be in non-driver's seat. But he promised to be good driver plus early morning trip to fresh nature is irresistible, Isn't it? So the plan was to start at 5 in the morning, drive all the way to the place called "Savandurga", around 60 km away from Bangalore, go around for some time and come back by lunch time. Good plan, I can finish my sleep after coming back :-). I had absolutely no idea about what the place is like.

So like an "acchi bacchi" I got up 4 o'clock, was ready by 5 (This has to be special mention cause only I know how it is painful to get up sooo early on a Saturday morning :D). U picked me up and we were supposed to meet other people joining us whom I didn't know at all. They turned out to be nice people, a couple and two more guys, everyone being enthu and regular trekker/explorer. Most imp thing, no one knew exact route to the place :-). So there was usual ritual of asking auto driver for direction and everybody insisting he knows the better route. It's the best part of traveling on Indian roads; everyone is more than willing to tell you direction and their own free opinion about the road condition and everything else. We being the least literate about road followed our fellow bikers all the way. It was amazing to see the amount traffic on roads at those wee hours, do these people ever sleep? After asking here and there we set out for our (unknown!!) destination.

There was no chance to steal some sleep on bike ride because I had little confidence on my driver's direction sense (cause he thinks even 8 km is tooo away to remember directions :P) and the road was too bad to allow me not noticing the bumps for a while. Also he threatened me that he might fall asleep while driving so I had to be on vigil :-D. But being awake was worth the view around... absolutely breathtaking! There were huge rocks spread on the green background, like brat has spread his pebbles all over in a green garden. Bikes were stopped at a place to take pictures around It was beautiful site and while we were busy admiring the view S exclaimed, "That's the place we have to go!" pointing to a looong standing peak, it was solid rock structure with a cloud ring around its crest like a white crown on its head. And my reaction was "What? Weren't we supposed to just bike around". I was not prepared to actually trek :D.

We reached the mountain base huffing-puffing.. drivers exhausted with driving the bikes with skill of rally-biker, finding patches of road in the pot-holes and poor bikes exhausted of climbing the rough road (?). Apparently this place is an "eco-tourism" spot and there is park at the bottom for weak-hearted people like me and fort + temple at the top for trekkers and devotees. It looked like a steep rising above our head and boy oh boy I was scared to climb that up (seriously). We crossed lot of locals on our way up and climbing up the slope seemed to daily ritual for them :). At the bottom of the mountain there was again confusion on which path to take. A bunch of enthu kids took us to right place. The way up is clearly marked with arrows and we were advised not the leave the path if we wished to come back alive. The way up WAS steep. Since it was solid rock it was difficult to climb up wit shoes on. The best solution was to tie shoes around neck... yeah yeah yeah most of us did that. And no, I didn't, cause I was wearing slip-ons :D.
Me and S almost gave up twice on the way up but the toiling was worth it. It was a beeeeeautiful day with not too bright sun and not too many clouds. It showered in between but that was just for few seconds.

We were around 3000+ feet above the sea level. There was not a considerably big human population in the range of sight, save the small town at hill base. On one side I could see there were solid rock hills with huge rocks place on each other in unbelievable asymmetry. Looked like they could fall any time and crush 10 people at once. Patches of green grass grown everywhere they could find place in between those rocks. On the other side there was huge flat land with lush green fields and a river twisting between them. Since the morning was little bit cloudy, I could see patches of sunlight scattered on the green fields. It was astonishing sight, one circle of the field lightened with sunlight like taking center stage in the clouded area around it, river water adding sparkle to it. The sight took away all the fatigue. I wanted to get drenched on the mountain top... but no luck :-(. Just took a nap the fast blowing wind.

Ahhh... now that's the place I would love to build my home and settle down for life. We were actually discussing the idea of building a direct path from there to our offices, may be another flyover for our dear Bengalooru. How wonderful that would be!!
Go trekking people!