Life is Miscellaneous

Status message of a fellow blogger on Facebook : Drona – Where Priyanka Chopra fights the villains armed with nothing but her cleavage

I found it hilarious & told the guy (you know who you are! ;-) that he should NEVER underestimate the power of cleavage!!

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So, I need some help. I need to get initiated into the world of PINK FLOYD.

I haven’t heard much of Pink Floyd so naturally, I’m not a big fan. But everyone else around me seems to be. Friends, ex-boyfriend, people at work…Everyone. And they find it outlandish (used on purpose : notice the dictionary meaning “freakishly or grotesquely strange or odd, remote from civilized areas" : this is exactly what they think!!) that I’m not a Pink Floyd fan too. In fact, one of the girls in my team worships David Gilmore. She knows everything there is to know about him, probably even how many strands of hair he has on his chest if he has bothered to count them!!

Besides, I’ve always been more of a U2, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band person so Pink Floyd never really caught my radar. Now I need help on where to start…which of their songs should I listen to first? Any ideas?

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There’s a new breakfast place that has opened up in Calcutta….a pancakes, waffles, crepes kind of place. Very nice dark wood interiors et al. It had the potential to be an awesome breakfast jaunt BUT….the owners just HAD to ruin it so…they’ve made it VEGETARIAN!!!!! No prizes for guessing who the owners would be. Definitely not Bongs or Punjabis.

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What is this with Hollywood celebrities? Why are they so WEIRD?? I read somewhere today (I’m not going to disclose where b/c you guys will call me a trashy tabloid reader) that:

1. David Duchovney (Fox Mulder, people!!) went to rehab for s*x addiction. Man! I wonder how one become a s*x addict? I mean, I know some things are addictive…like drugs, alcohol, Rock ‘n’ Roll…but how can addiction to a good thing be perceived to be bad to the extent that it requires rehab? Besides, what do they tell you when you’re in rehab for being a s*x addict?? “You should not think of s*x all the time. You should have less s*x.” What??
2. Colin Firth took a playboy model to court because she threatened to leak a sex tape featuring the two of them. He got scared that his mother might see the tape & say that he reminds her of his father from certain angles!! What a thing to be worried about!!!!!
3. Amy Winehouse, whose singing career was speculated to have crash-landed prematurely thanks to a drug addiction, blames the DEVIL for her drug habit!! So all ye folks who ever have/do fall prey to drugs, just blame the Devil for it. It’s never your fault :-)
4. On another note, I feel kinda bad for Guy Ritchie (Madonna’s husband). The couple is getting divorced & out of their joint wealth of £300mn, only £20-30mn belong to him. The rest belongs to Madonna!!

Of The Great Debacle & Other Things

I had always lived with roommates before moving to Calcutta. Through college and my stint in Bombay. And both times I was lucky to have roommates who were from neighboring towns so they would go back home every weekend or at least every other weekend, so I could have the place to myself for at least two days every fortnight. It worked wonderfully well…I would get my space at regular intervals, and would be ready for company again by the time Monday rolled by & it was time for them to return.

At times, I used to think how nice it would be to live alone! To have the entire house to myself all the time, to not have to co-ordinate my shower time with that of my roommate in the mornings (which you can’t avoid in Bombay where you pay a bomb to live in shoebox apartments with one tiny bathroom), to be able to watch whatever program I wished to watch on television, to be able to sleep whenever I wanted to etc.

So when I moved to Calcutta I was all excited about living on my own. I got myself a pretty house with mind-blowingly well ventilated rooms, plenty of sunlight, quiet surroundings, a nice balcony & lots of trees outside my bedroom window!! It helps that the building is new and the house was freshly painted in a happy shade of pink before I moved in!!

However, five months of living alone and I’ve already had enough of it. I’ve realized that I’m not made of stuff that can handle - leave alone enjoy - living alone. I need people around me. I need people to talk to. I need someone home in the evenings.

I have come to believe that people who enjoy living alone and those who don't are inherently very different. They have a totally different set of characteristics. I just can’t fathom how some people can live alone, out of choice. And they seem to have a blast doing it too!!

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On another note, I’m reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s book ‘You Are Here’. For the uninitiated, she’s the author of the “popular” blog ‘The Compulsive Confessor’, and also writes a column in Mumbai Mirror called ‘Ms Adventures’. Sadly, her adventures are limited to drunken org*s at Zenzi, mishaps with her bra straps, being single, dating a guy, being dumped and being single again.

(Disclaimer : If there are any fans of her blog/column reading this blog, I’m sorry if I am hurting your sentiments, but I’m invoking my Fundamental Right of 'Freedom of Speech' granted to me by the Constitution of India)

Anyway, back to the book…IT IS UTTER CRAP. The material is no different from her blog - s*x, bra straps, being boy crazy, being cheated on, being dumped etc. The language is immature and straight out of high-school! The book is in first person, and though the protagonist is supposed to be a twenty-five year old, she talks like a ten-year old!! Now, I’m not a sucker for ornate, fancy-schmancy language and I’m all for authors who write in a colloquial manner, but I do expect a certain level of maturity in the writing, which is acutely missing in her book.

Which brings me to Ms Reddy Madhavan herself. I think she needs to simply take a break from trying so hard to be perceived as cool & modern. That’s the problem with her – she tries too hard. There are plenty of liberated, emancipated women in India today. One doesn’t need to be talking about one’s s*x life & dusfunctional bra straps on a public forum to be liberated. Being cool, modern & liberated is an attitude, not something brought about through words. Someone needs to tell her that. To me she comes across as someone who is trying desperately to prove a point where there is none to prove, to people who really don’t care!!

The latest update on her blog is that she's single again. Surprise, surprise...I wonder why!! Afterall, don't guys just love it when their girlfriends splash the details of their love lives & stories of how psychotic they were before they met the guy, on the web for the whole world to read!!

Anyway, on to other things…

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Winter is finally approaching in Calcutta! YAY!! All of a sudden, the weather changed yesterday. There was just that slight bit of nip in the air the night before, the morning was cooler than usual, and on my way to work - at around 10am - I noticed that the sun had to make an effort to shine!!

Can’t tell you how excited I am!! I love winters!! Not that I get all excited about sub-zero temperature & all, but I can handle cold much better than I can handle heat. Besides I love the feeling of being warm & fuzzy inside my home when it’s freezing outside! I love the winter sun! And I love wearing sweaters and socks and gloves and woollen caps and scarves and all that jazz when it's cold….what fun!!

Puja Hangover

The Pujas are finally over. A pall of gloom has descended over Calcutta as people have just finished bidding adieu to their favorite Goddess and pandals are being razed to the ground ruthlessly. No wonder the craftsmen who erected the pandals choose to stay away while they're being demolished.

This was my first Durga Puja in Calcutta. When people told me Pujo in Calcutta is crazy, I did not quite know what they meant. Now I do.

The past one week has been a whirlwind of activity. Hanging out till 4 in the morning every single day, sleepless mornings thanks to the 'dhaak' (drum) that is beaten at pandals during aarti, gallivanting in the sun all day, messed up meal times, gorging on street food etc. have left me with a strained foot, an upset stomach and temperature from all that over-exertion. Phew!!

Having spent 5 years in Mumbai, I can’t help but compare Durga Puja with Ganpati. They are drastically different. In Mumbai, there is only one section of society that is enthusiastic about Ganpati. The rest limit themselves to darshan. Durga Puja however, is the favorite festival of Bengalis. It is to Bongs what Diwali is to Mumbai. The festival is preceded by one month of shopping for family, friends & relatives. People must have at least 5 new outfits, one for every day of the Pujo. They spend lavishly & they love to eat! They just don’t tire of it!! People swarm the street like ants & you just can't understand where they came from!!

Hopefully, I’ll be able to recover over the weekend. Y’all have a good weekend!!

The Face of Durga at Maddox Square Park

Will give you goose bumps if you are there.....

The Festival of Calcutta

I am not the most religious person you will meet but when religious festivals are celebrated with such fervor as Durga Puja in Calcutta and Ganpati in Bombay, I cannot help but get swept in the tide.

Durga Puja has begun in Calcutta. One of the many joyful things it has brought with itself is one whole week of holidays from work!! How can one not love a festival that can compel even cold-blooded capitalist companies to submit to its stature?

There are pandals (tent-like structures inside which Goddess Durga’s idols are placed) or pujas all over the city. The idols are beautiful and awe-inspiring to say the least. The entire city is lit, not only areas where there are pujas. The big pujas are surrounded by food and games stalls. The big parks in the city also have rides such as the giant wheel, the pirate ship etc. that not only the kids but even the adults enjoy. The malls and theatres are empty, instead everyone is out revelling on the streets, irrespective of which community and social strata they belong to. It’s clean fun…no rowdy men throwing colors at you or groping you.

Durga Puja in Calcutta is all about food and people roaming the streets all dressed up and having fun. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some pics of Durga idols. So until the next post, Happy Pujo everyone!!

Proud to be an Indian?

I don’t understand why Indians whose mother tongue isn’t Hindi take pride in not being able to speak the language.

Hindi is our national language after all, and irrespective of one’s mother tongue, one must know how to speak the language, I feel. There is no pride in not being able to speak your national language. It’s another thing that you prefer to communicate with your family & friends in your mother tongue. That is natural and absolutely fine, but running down Hindi as a language you do not need to know because it is not your mother tongue, isn’t.

Then there is another species of people (from Hindi speaking backgrounds) who cannot speak Hindi correctly or without a Western accent, in spite of having grown up in India! Errrrr…just which planet do they think they have come from??

You are very unlikely to find a European who prefers to speak in English rather than his national language, unless in a business environment. In fact, most Europeans aren't even conversant with English, and that is not because there are no avenues for them to learn English, but because they take pride in their language. Why are Indians the only people in the world with such a dearth of self-esteem. What complex are we suffering from??

Again, I think it’s fine if one prefers to communicate in English more frequently but why are such people ashamed to speak in Hindi? Or admit that they are as comfortable with Hindi as they are with English? Why do they deliberately speak Hindi with grammatical errors and mispronounciations? Why do they fumble for words that are otherwise commonly used, pretending they do not know them?

Speaking in Hindi does not make one “down-market”. It’s not “cool” to not know Hindi, it’s downright shameful. No wonder our country is a victim of a lack of nationalism.

The Sorry State of Affairs

Did you know that you need a special permit from the Government of Arunachal Pradesh if you want to visit the state?

I discovered this recently. Most people that I told this to had a very ethnocentric (I’m taking the liberty of stretching this word to fit this context) reaction. Most people’s reaction is : “They are a part of India, why do Indians require a permit? What’s so special about Arunachal Pradesh that we require a permit to visit the state?”

Very few people have asked “Why?”,i.e., very few people have tried to view this situation from the point of view of Arunachal Pradesh or North East in general.

The North East is probably the most neglected part of India. The Government of India pays little heed to that part of the country, while it pampers states such as Punjab, Maharashtra & Gujarat, probably because they are the "cash cow" states of India. The insurgencies in the North Eastern states are ignored while the government is busy pandering to the whims & fancies of Bal Thakerey & Narendra Modi, who have literally held the country to ransom!!

Even worse, the Indian government has clubbed the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland & Tripura and christened them the "Seven Sister States", which is symbolic of their isolation from mainstream India, nevermind the wide ethnic and religious diversity within the region. On the contrary, the government should take special care to ensure the states feel that they are a part of India because geographically, they are isolated from the rest of India except through the Siliguri Corridor, a narrow corridor flanked by China to the north & Bangladesh & Myanmar to the south, which makes it vulnerable to foreign infiltration.

If we neglect a part of our own country and give them step-motherly treatment, how can we expect them to consider themselves to be a part of us? We take them for granted, yet we want them to feel cared for. No wonder the states want independence from India!!

But then, that has been the story of India all along.

Restaurant Woes

One thing that ticks me off completely is bad service at premium restaurants.

I recently went to a restaurant that serves Indian, Thai & Continental food. It is situated in the IT hub of the city and is not exactly cheap, the average price being Rs 250-300 per dish. The food wasn’t great and the service was pathetic.

We ordered a Crispy Fried Lamb (a Chinese preparation) for starters. The waiter dropped the food all over the table while serving and did not clear it up until we asked him to. When we did, his expression was as if we’d asked him to do something that WE were supposed to do!!

For main course, I ordered a Neopolitaine Chicken Pasta (which comes in a tomato-based sauce) that was supposed to be served along with garlic bread. What I got instead of garlic bread was plain white bread with garlic butter on it!!! The bread wasn’t even toasted. Apparently, they had run out of the bread that is used to make garlic bread but they did not even bother to inform me about it and instead served such rubbish!!!!!

My friend ordered a second Nan which took 20 minutes to come! Fifteen minutes after he ordered, another waiter came to my friend to ask if he had ordered another Nan!!!

My point is, one doesn’t bother or complain about bad service if one is going to a cheap restaurant. But one’s expectations are completely different if it is even a moderately premium restaurant – you expect the food & service to be commensurate with the amount you’re paying.





The photograph above is of the interior of the restaurant I'm talking about. If they're savvy enough to have their picture up on the net, they should also by sophisticated enough to offer good service.

Weekend Update

Went out for breakfast in the morning...came back home & slept...followed by a long hot shower...ordered in lunch...watched the pouring ran with a cup of tea & a book in hand...slept again to the sound of pouring rain...

Looking forward to a night out with friends...a movie followed by a couple of drinks & a live band playing...

Does not get better than this...I'm sure Moonshine would approve :)

Oh Calcutta : Calcutta Chapter

This post is right up The Knife's ally!

A friend and I went to Oh Calcutta for dinner. I was surprised at the differences in the menu between Oh Calcutta in Mumbai & Calcutta.

The Mumbai restaurant offers a wide range of chicken & mutton dishes where as the menu in the Calcutta restaurant is overloaded with fish. Understandably so.

We started our dinner with Fish Fingers. The Mumbai restaurant serves a pungent mustard sauce with the fish, called Kasundi. It goes very well with fish fry & fish fingers. But the Calcutta restaurant served a sauce that was a mix of mustard, mayonnaise & sweet mango chutney. It tasted good too.

For main course we ordered Boneless Hilsa, or Ilish as it's also called, and Chittagong Chicken along with steamed rice.

Ilish is a delicacy fish that is available only during certain times of the year. It lives in sea water for the most part but can travel upto 1200km inland to deposit it's eggs. Fresh water Ilish is supposed to taste better than salt water Ilish. In India, Ilish is found in the Ganges near the Bay of Bengal and in the Narmada river in Gujarat, where it is known by another name. It is oilier and therefore heavier than other types of fresh water fish but is supposed to be tastier as well. Also, it smells less pungent than other types of fish. The Ilish we ordered came in a mustard gravy which went very well with steamed rice.

The Chittagong Chicken however was a far cry from the mildly flavored Ilish. It was spicy as can be! It was a Bangladeshi dish with a tomato & onion gravy & plenty of red chilli powder!!

Overall, we had a nice meal and rounded it off with a bowl of mishti doi :)