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 !

...

I never told him how much I loved him… neither did he. It was not his kind of conversation… to be verbal about his feelings especially something like this. He wouldn’t even say ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. The sparkle in his eyes or that big grin was enough for us to know that he was happy that he was extremely happy :-). I saw it whenever I scored good rank, got a prize, came home from hostel and when I graduated.

He taught me to walk, to read, to love the music... he taught me to fight the odds. I learnt how be independent from him. We would discuss about all the things in world from the school subjects to world politics. Sometimes he would tell stories about how he used walk kilometers for school or how he used watch movie every night in college. Once I needed some help for school project, he poured over all his medical books to get me the most accurate information. He was like that … always got the best for us.

I missed those sparkling eyes when I got my job, my first salary… moments he had so much wanted to witness. I miss my source of inspiration… my tower of strength.

I hate to write this post in past tense. I wish I could make it present.

... I wish I could call up and say ‘Happy Father’s Day’ to him today.

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!!!

Life in a ... Metro

Watched Life in a .... Metro yesterday, night show after long long time. Its a nice movie. Will write the review aram se. For the time being here is my favorite piece of conversation from the movie

Monty - Irrfan Khan
Shruti - Konkona Sen

Both of them are relaxing by sea shore, after finishing shaadi-shopping for Monty. (These might not be the exact words used by the characters... )

Monty: Chalo meri to shaadi ho jayegi do dino me. Ab tum bhi shaadi kar lo
Shruti: Haa kar lungi lekin meri pasand ka ladka to milna chahiye. Ab tak aisa koi mila nahi jisase mai shaadi karu
Monty: Accha yeh batao tumhe kaisa ladka chahiye
Shruti: You know smart, understanding, caring, loving. Thoda sensitive ho, fun loving ho...
Monty: To tumhe aisa ladka nahi mila nahi aaj tak
Shruti: Nahi yaar. Aise ladake milate nahi aaj kal. Kismae yeh baat acchi to woh kharab hai.
Monty: Pata hai mera ek dost hai usane na 5 saal pahale ek car kharidi hai lekin aaj tak bahar nahi nikali. Waise ki waisi padi hai garage me. Batoao kyu?
Shruti: Ummm... kyunki wo tumhra dost hai. Tumhare jaisa hi pagal hoga
Monty: Are nahi. Pata hai wo kya kahata hai...?? Mai tab tak car nahi chalaunga jab tak shahar ke saare signal green nahi ho jaate
Shruti: Lekin wo jab tak car bahar nahi nikalega use pata kaise chalega ke signal green hai ke nahi
Monty: Wahi to mai tumhe bol raha huu Shruti, take out the car, take your chance !

Interesting no !

Irrfan Khan is amazing. I can watch movie again just for him.

More coming up on my life in this soon-to-be Metro and fear of commitment.

I am back … finally !

It’s been almost a month that I have written anything. I can give hundreds of reasons for the disappearance. Of course laziness tops the list (I know I know, this will be reason for any of the things that I don’t do or even I do :-D). Then I had my family around for a while. It’s terrible to adjust for few days after they are gone. Mom is not there to bug me in the morning to get up, cook nice food in the evening or there is no sis to fight with. I realized that it’s been almost 3 years that I have stayed under same roof with my sis... talk about pains of staying away from home :-(. I so much miss fighting with her and playing AoM (Age of Mythology for the uninitiated). It was lying around on my lappy for a while but I didn’t touch it until she came. Its fun playing those games with her, fighting for control, planning strategies and calling each other by names in the game. We used to play demos of AoE on home computer for whole days but couldn’t spend that much time here :-(. Every time I switched on lappy to write something, we would end up starting the game and playing it for hours.

Then there was the Blah blog to write for. Now I have become comfortable writing there and it’s fun to write with so many different people. I met all the fellow Blahgers (that’s what we call ourselves) from Bangalore, this weekend and it was helluva fun. I never thought I will even open my mouth in front of complete strangers and ended up spending almost spending 2 hours of animated conversation. All of us are coming from different cultures and different professions. There were people not only from different part of the country but different parts of the word. Now I think that was something great. Checkout for the snaps and account of the meet here. The meet was held at a place called BrewHaHa. This place is as interesting as its name. It’s a coffee shop place gaming joint. I never got time to check out the games but I am sure gonna make more trips there. Now that my favorite coffee shop ‘Inch’ is closed for a reason unknown :-(.

There are so many things to write about… the monsoon showers Bangalore is blessed with, Mumbai-Pune express highway drive and the vada-paav, Two amazing books that I read ‘Shantaram’ and ‘The Namesake’ and the sweet movie ‘Cheeni Kum’. Read review on Blah here (Yes I wrote it … It is called shameless promotion of your writing :-D). Will return before people start thinking that this blog is shutting down.

Curse my laziness and hectic work schedule if I don’t return soon !!!

PS1 :-> Right now, I am very sad because after getting tickets for the ‘Aerosmith’ show, the friend accompanying me has decided to give more preference to work :-(. Gwwwwad... please send me friends who like Rock music (none of the existing ones like it :-( )and like to attend the live show and will come with me. I don’t want to miss the show !!!

PS2 :-> Now I am gonna be 'Aunty' officially. In next couple of months a tiny member is gonna arrive in my family... Yoooo !!!

One more year goes by …

Today I turn a year older. I mean now I have become really ‘OLD’. Not just kids but teenagers and even some uncles too call me aunty :-(. So much old that, the hoopla about b’day celebration, cake cutting, gifts, new dresses and all is not exciting me much. That’s the sign of turning old isn’t it? :D. A friend asked me what’s your birthday wish, ‘to act like my age’ was my reply. Really it’s a bigger deal for someone like me. It means no more acting cranky, no more hopping around like a baby, no more ‘anger attacks’, no more kung-fu hassles with sis, no more throwing tantrums during marriage related discussions, no more acting like bad gal with mom, no more mimicking people (I do that a lot), no more late morning snores on weekends, no more acting lazy, lot more concentrating on work and less wondering of mind, lot more acting sober and lot less running away from people, no more excuses of ‘I am still young no!’ blah blah.... Ooooh oooh… that’s lot of changes needed to be done with increasing age, isn’t it? ( On a second thought I feel I should let go of that wish and be as I am :-D, what do ya people say? )

Today was good with roomies keeping the hostel tradition of cutting cake at stroke of midnight and painting my face with choco cream, friends n family calling up to wish me. Having mom and sis around makes this day more special. I remember last year was all whiny about turning old. Probably because I was all alone in the foreign land far far away… only cake I cut was a blue berry muffin (which happens to be my favorite, but come on… muffin for a birthday cake !) And it was my first step to the other (wrong) side of twenties.

In a way, it has been hell of year, bizarre would be a better word or what my mom describes as ‘Gaddhe Panchvishi’ (Literally translated as ‘Donkey age of 25’ loosely meaning ‘When 25 you are/act like a donkey’) :-D. Jokes apart, I think mom is not totally wrong. Life was never more exciting with unexpected things happening all the time that I wouldn’t even dream of doing. Once a self-proclaimed pundit had told me that my life is gonna be a normal, predictable one. If this is the definition of normal life, then I wonder how not-normal life would be !!!

I look forward to this year with lot of hopes and dreams. (I hope I will start being a good gal this year :-D) … !!!

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 !!!

Weird ... !!!

Its 2 o’clock and I suddenly remember that I need to catch a train at 3. I need to go somewhere for very urgent work and I cannot miss the train in any case. The train-station is around half an hour drive from my place so I have half an hour more to get ready. Suddenly I realized I haven’t packed my bag yet… I don’t even have a bag with me. I search frantically in the neighborhood for a bag. A friend come to rescue and lends me her bag. I pray mom is not around cause she absolutely hates my last minute running around. She calls it “tahan lagali ki vihir khodane” (Digging well only when I am thirsty). Then I realize my cloths are not washed at all. Mom comes to rescue and puts them in washing machine without saying a bit. My heart beat starts racing and I get hysteric looking for my stuff. Interestingly I still of some more time to go. I start searching for iron (what the hell has happened to me since when have I started caring about all this stuff. I am getting late!!!) Mom gives me the cold look and helps me pack. I am frantically running around and I realize that there is just 10 minutes before the train leaves. I take the first vehicle and rush towards the station. There is huge traffic jam and it feels like ages before I reach the station. I am almost in tears; my heart is racing at Olympic speed. When station is near, I jump out of the vehicle and start running towards the platform. My train has given whistle and started to move. I run for the love of my life, my legs don’t seem like moving at all, my throat is dry. I am panting, sweating and dragging my luggage. The train seems unending and it is still there when I reach the platform. The train looks little weird. It has huge doors like Mumbai locals and berths like sleeper coach. I am about to throw myself inside the train when the doorbell rings and I need to answer it.

You got it right… It was just a dream. I only wish my life was so dramatic :-). This is one of the dreams I get very often, sometimes there is a train to catch, or a bus or a flight or a exam to appear for. And I get it when I am about to do one of these. Today’s occasion was a test at office for which I had reach really really early (8:30am is dawn for me :-) ). I find it weird to get same dream again and again. I think it’s more due to fear of getting late for anything or just my love for dramatic things :-), But my heartbeat is increased considerably whenever I wake up from the dream.

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.

Lazy me...

Today I was checking my blog activity statistics and realized that it has gone down this month. Last couple of months I was posting practically everyday and this month all I am able to manage is writing about my weekends. If you know me very well you will say, ‘Oh… this is very typical of you, Ashley!!!’ There are so many things (and people) that fascinate me and I tend to take up that activity with lots of vigor. But also tend to abandon many of them once I lose interest in them (or when people start acting too smart). The graph curve changes its direction exponentially. Though there are lots of other things, I have been doing despite all the problems. Anyways… I won’t make blogging one of the things I give up. Recently, I have been getting quite many complements for my writing and who doesn’t like praise you see :-D. Consider it just as lazy lapse in productivity :-).

These days I am so badly stuck in work that all I can see is blue screen, crash dump, even in dreams. By the time I reach home, my mind is totally exhausted to think of anything. It just goes blank. I don’t even remember what I did last week or even during the weekend. It was the long weekend, and I wanted to celebrate New Year, ‘Gudi Padwa’ in total Marathi style and wanted to invite friends for lunch. But our maid ran away and I ended up making aloo-parathas and Shira (Suji Halwa in Hindi), which was not that bad menu for holiday :-). Apart from that there were lots movies watched. First the epic ‘300’, fundu story and great presentation, then ‘You have got mail’, I can watch this one thousand times and the sweetest movie ‘Sound of Music’. I watched this one for the first time and I loved it. All the praise I have heard about it is just right. Also finished watching FRIENDS season one and half of season two. I am obsessed with the series these days. Hmm… by this time you must have realized that I was glued to my room all three days. Yes, you are right. I didn’t feel like going out and seeing other people. Now you know exactly why I like Garfield so much!!!

But I was not in total seclusion after all... been to my favorite coffee place ‘Inch’ after so many days. I just love the ambience and beverages they serve, Mint and hazelnut flavored hot chocolate being my all time favorite :-). The food is also not bad though they have very less veggie options :-(. But we tried food at a different restaurant called ‘Hot Walk’ (or was it ‘Hot Wok’ ??), a Chinese place near CMH road, Nice cosy place with good food and good ambience.

And how can I forget the most important thing, the makeover that my hair have got. Sunday afternoon, my roomie declared that I must get a haircut. I thought of trying this hep salon a friend had suggested long time ago. We needed to take appointment to get a hair cut there! With the money I paid for my hair-cut, I could have bought myself round trip train tickets to my home. I know Mom is gonna freak out when she sees my shorter hair. But with all the compliments I am getting, I think the money is worth spent.

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 :-).