St Mary’s island half an hour away by a ferry ride from Malpe harbor is breathtakingly beautiful and a photographer’s delight.Its calm serene and almost other wordly.The beach and sea at this small island is the most splendid i have seen in this region.as some one put it Vijay Malya must shoot his calendar here first.If you visit Udupi do not miss it for its like Seychelles locally at seventy rupees.
Christmas like diwali transcends religions and races.As a kid in school I always enjoyed Xmas celebrations the most.Its easy to understand why.First of all there was this exotic factor to it; because you did not celebrate it at home you thought you did something special.And then there is of course Santa Claus ,the biggest brand ever in my opinion. Santa came and gave us gifts(we knew much later that it was our teacher as santa and our parents had secretly given the gifts to her) and he is a jolly good person to dance with. The funny costume with the wiggling stomach made you feel warm and nice.Lastly there is that huge collection of children’s tales and carols and songs to draw inspiration from. Afterall most stories have the goodness of christmas in them which is perhaps so wonderfully brought to life in Christmas Carol.Then there was the fact that we were taught really good carols like the one below-
You better watch out,
You better not cry,
Better not pout,
I’m telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He’s making a list,
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out
Who’s naughty and nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you’re sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!
Oh, you better watch out!
You better not cry.
Better not pout,
I’m telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town.
Santa Claus is coming to town!
Thats one of my favourites.Importantly christmas embodies the spirit of goodness,charity,caring and the mood of gaiety.
When young the celebrations at school were always wonderful with carols and santa and gifts.the play of the three kings was staged every year and it all eneded in a lot of dancing,singing and a riot of color.Since then i have always felt drawn to this festival.Its also that part of the year when i tune into DD to watch the story of Jesus and i have done that almost every year and finally there are those gifts and sweets from friends who celebrate christmas.When its time to sing merry christmas and a happy new year you know its the time for fun filled holidays as a child and till today that spirit hangs on.
Here’s wishing all of you a merry christmas!!!( a bit early but nevertheless)
What the vibrant city of Bengalooru does consciously with Bengalooru habba its quiter counterpart Chennai has been doing routinely with maargazhi. Its almost unconscious like some endemic clock that programs a city together during the month of dec-jan every year.i do not know the reason for the significance of the month nor the origin of the customs followed during that period. At a point when I am finding it increasingly difficult to find time to be in Chennai its this month I miss the most.
The thing with maargazhi is that it transcends communities and castes .I lived for 21 years in Nungambakkam .I liked it there; you saw different kinds of people unlike mambalam or triplicane. Even now I find areas such as the latter suffocating because you see people only in one mold always. Anyways now I no longer live in Nungambakkam but somewhere in me I shall always belong there.
You know its maargazhi when ullikayam (garlic) and venkayam(onion) become a strictly enforced taboo. It always is but no one cares .No amount of begging and throwing tantrums would work with your mother. So its also the month I eat out often. You see when something is forbidden its all the more irresistible. Its like when, though you may be an insomniac for days before vaikunta ekadeshi you sleep at nine and eat for three people that day. But apart from no garlic maargazhi is also the month you get up early. When I was younger and more at home it used to be five or six, now it’s a more earthly eight or nine. For a person like me who sleeps at five and gets up at two in holidays(you escape the hot sun that way) such early timings is a sin but its impossible to sleep later than nine even if you wished. For, Maargazhi is the month of the fourth veda of tamil , that of aandal’s thirrupavai. So, every channel and hence every household blares that and in some like mine my mother recites that loud enough to make my sleep uncomfortable and yet not disturb the neighbours. It’s an achievement that none of my friends in college have been able to achieve. She has this strategic point outside my bedroom that lets her disturb my utopia, keep an eye on the kitchen, watch T.V and chat to the aunty outside. When you hear elle illankiliye innam urunkudiyo you give up and get up. That’s the point she knows she will break me and hence takes the high pitch there. Its thirrupavai that’s so integral to this month, so wonderfully framed it’s my greatest regret that I don’t know thirrupavai properly. It is chanted everyday in the morning. You hear it in temples, mutts, households, TV, in the katcheris in the evening or the discourses in the morning it’s all pervading during those few weeks.
Apart from thirrupavai it’s also the month of discourses in the morning. Every sabha, auditorium or even schools has one. But what maargazhi is world famous for is its concerts in the evenings called katcheris. from junior artistes to the best you see all of them. while traditionally a carnatic stronghold you can also get to hear music from around the globe at that time. the crowds flock all the concerts, toursists come to the city and its when daily conversations begin with “inniki sudha enga padraa paaru?” each one has their favourite artiste, the connosieurs devour the chance, critics descend like a plague and newspapers devote sections to musical reviews, aunties debate who is the best this season ,the sarees and jewellery of singers become the latest fashion statement and little children(like I was a long time ago) lose their evening cartoons. Today as a part of SPICMACAY I realize why the movement or concerts fail to excite me as it does to some of my friends, its because when you are a part of maargazhi ,concerts are what the city breathes and you as a part of it fall into the rhythm. A lot of things pale in comparison to that.
Rangolis are another aspect of the month.i no longer see them in my street but when I was 12 or 13 I used to get up and assist(more like disrupt) my mom’s rangoli. You could see a whole lot of kids and aunties doing the same, everyday every house has this huge rangoli in front of them. I was generally given a small one to fill up seperately next to my mother’s. Not a single soul later in the day would appreciate my piece of art. Everyone even your maid will point at the bigger one and seem impervious to the beautiful small one next to it. You see I had my limitations I was given only those shades not needed in the main one and I experimented a bit(like not filling it all inside the white outlines) and apparently it wasn’t that appealing.
Lastly its that time of the year when you get venpongal with ghee everyday. prasadam in each temple out does the other and idlis and vadas and sambar mirror the spirit of the city more then than anytime of the year.
Yesterday was one of those days when you had a lot to tell but was lazy enough not to do so.Apart from the fact that i came down with a bad cold and sore throat and my laptop is teetering over the edge with a con virus , it was a pretty uneventful day. The virus in my laptop is a porn watcher’s delight. It made me give 2 significant frustrated outbursts.One was about how i dont even watch porn and yet the virus , ppl found that funny. So funny that every person who has so far promised to set my laptop right has laughed at me, my comp or in the case of shiny ended up watching movies on it.This led to the other outburst- more a cry that went ‘ i dont want windows’…you see with Windows its like the ants in the basement story. There are ants all over the place in the room next to yours. yet you believe it wont be your room next.It takes a good few bites to realize and go and get a lakshman rekha.This moral holds ofcourse for the average laptotting ,non-open crazy ,non-geeky,non-Gates basher whose ultimete utilisation of the comp is watching movies,like me.
Then there was this speech in the afternoon organized by SPICMACAY. I dont even remember the guy’s name. He was ok, conservative,praising the media and believing in Utopian ideals .The worst part was that heair gave the sppech in Kannada. Now thats discriminatory in a national institute of technology.
Back in school i used to have this wonderful long discussions on a lot of topics. We fought, badgered but always discussed. It mattered to argue whether reservations are right or not,about dvaita and advaita, open relationships,whats diff btw american girls and indian ones,that Scarlett O Haara was perfectly justifiable or the run of the mill Tamilnadu politics. It did nothing but to increase phone bills, reduce the concentration in class hours and lead to small phases of ‘i wont talk with you’.
It also strengthened bonds of friendship,made you understand people better,helped you to while your time in sanskrit classes and most importantly it molded me into a debator and a pretty successful one at that till i crash landed at NITK.The prob was a large number of ppl i met as a naive first year did not take such discussions in the right sense. They called it giving fundae and still do .The thing with such discussions is that they are meant ultimately to be taken in the right sense,its not about who is better its about what you think. Of course opinions vary for some wierd reason and you need to live by that.
Lastly I read IWoz and realsized that Wozniac belongs to a rare breed of ppl.If its indeed the triumph of the nerds then its the triumph of this guy more than the other for Gates is like a poisonous ivy in your backyard and a shrewd bussisnessman(at some level they mean the same
) and Jobs ofcourse is this rockstar cum politician cum visionary cum streetfighter all rolled into one. My god there is no geekiness in him, he is the larger than life CEO whose charm is at best irresistible.As for Michael Dell,packard and others we will leave it for another day.
P.S: the answer to that question abt the girls is .. mind you i quote,” To an American girl its important that you always have a boyfriend and to an Indian girl its important that you ever had one”. I dont own anypart of that statement its been copyrighted elsewhere.
As for the guys by mutual consent we came to conclude not much of a difference . afterall after a certain drop it does not matter if its left or right.
Everyone in India knows the horrendous episode of the vastra haran. there is enough emotion in there to overwhelm any self respecting woman. However , the reason why it is so poignant in the story is because it irreversibly marks the turn towards the war. Contrary to what may seem obvious, the Great War is essentially a huge tragedy propounding peace and not war. It shows war in all its glory to make us realize that war is cruel, there is no winner and there is nothing called a righteous war. Yudhishtira says this from the beginning, Bhima after ghattotkach dies and Arjuna after Abhimanyu’s slaughter realizes that. The only person who remains unfazed is draupadi. She takes her sorrow on the stride and seeks revenge for her humiliation. She is not to be understood as a war mongerer ; she was well learned and well versed. She says clearly she feels for bhishma, drona and all the others but that they need to pay for their sin of siding with the wrong side.she even consoles herself on the murder of the upapandavas saying it’s the cruel side to a war.
The clear demarcation in the story is the vastra haran which sets the wrong apart from the right, unpardonable from the pardonable and justifies the carnage that follows. the issue in the story of inheritance is a tricky one .Duryodhana’s claim to the throne is as justified as yudhishtira’s. even the wax palace incident could be dismissed as political conspiracy but what cannot be dispelled is cheer haran. it is so crucial to the story with the miracle so very important that I sometimes wonder if it’s a concoction of the poet or a true incident. If the war was for mere territory kurukshetra would have never become a dhramakshetra .All the great moments of drama emanate from that single incident, its matched not in its entirety by Abhimanyu’s death. What anointed draupadi as a godess and a sati is also that single chapter. Mahabharatha is great as a story because it’s a magnum opus with a moral. Morals are important because they streamline the society. That an outrage on womanhood is unpardonable can be understood. what is righteousness and why it pays dividends can also be seen. Practically morals help a society to function smoothly. Years before in less advanced communities they held the social fabric together and eased functioning.
What is right and wrong is relative and subject to the society. If burglary is taught to be right then it shall be right but the point to be noted is that it was crucial for only one to be right either burglary or being against it. The great war chose its own standards of morality and that’s why it is appealing. While the illiad and odissi are great they don’t measure up to the Indian epics because there is nothing you learn from them. What do you come to know? That beautiful women are treacherous? For Helen goes back to Minalaus. That makes a farce out of the entire war and you feel sorry for the valiant Hector.
All stories need not have a moral but epics that are passed down generations and define a nation need to, for they are the mirrors of an ancient world and you want to see a pretty face there.
Today morning I had vada at Veena stores in Malleswaram. It was to say the least as always heavenly. Their karabath and idly are good too but my favourite is the ubiquitous south indian vada. that taste is unparalled.Crisp on the outside and soft on the inside it melts in your mouth. Even home doesnt come a close second and not even when the vada is made in the grinding stone or the kalloral.i have lived in three cities the past three years and all three are a south indian gourmand’s delight. Chennai,Bangalore and Mangalore-Surathkal.Over the years I have come to have my own favourite places. Though i dont look the part, i love food when delicious. I am the kind who will walk a mile to eat vada in one place and idly in another place for the taste. Here are a few places worth going to grab a bite or just reminiscing those glorious days when they did exist.
The adyar bakeries are everywhere in Chennai like their Iyengar counterparts in Bangalore but one such adyar bakery made the best bun butter jam i have tasted.Even now most of these bakeries make good stuff; far better than the Mcrenetts anyday. While on bakeries there is one next to psbb tproad called choice bakery.An all time PSBB favourite it makes the best pizzas i have had in Chennai. Full of cheese and floating on sauce they come cheap and hot.And the small samosas and chole batturas in that tproad canteen always hold a special place.Then come the idlies and dosas and Murugan Idly kadai makes them best. Saravana Bhavan with its sambar and chutney comes a close second.The best butter masala however goes to Kamath hotel in Udupi.
I love chaats and generally try out pani puris in most shops in a locality however I am not the kind who swears by the roadside paanipuri wala.If you are in chennai have chaats in Gangotree .try their paani puri and dahi puri. they are the best i have hadtill date. The best bhelpuris i have had is from chitchat in pondy bazaar. their noodles are also the best.I do however swearby the roadside bhelpuri wala and preferthat to anyother.Sai Ram chats in bangalore did not impress me much.There is one small van which makes chineese foods by the road behind barista at 8th main and 18th cross street in malleshwaram. Their mixed noodles and spanish(act spinach) manchurian are the best. The best gobi manchurin however comes from IISC s kabini canteen at 12 rupees a plate.I dont like mangalore food much. it has too much sweet with some wierd dishes like mango curries,cashew pallya and buns.However while in the city try cheese naan at amazon in empire mall foodcourt. it puts mosts pizzas to shame. Chinese at Moti mahal and sandwiches at Crumbs. My favourite place is though Bittu’s with the best panner pepper fry i have tasted coming from there.
i must however round this piece off with desserts. Here goes ; chocolate trouffle at sweetcharriot, death by chocolate at corner house,sweets at brijwasi’s in chennai ,blackforest and kulfi at the Taj and if you ever get the chance wheat halwa from irrutu kadai in tirunelvelli.
Yesterday while watching We The People on NDTV , i was struck by the sheer stupidity of the program. I am not a torch bearing supporter of CNN-IBN either, but at some level there is more sanity. Even Srinivas Jain can be credited with good decent reporting. In fact he is one of my favourites. But Barkha Dutt has so been used to playing the emotional cards with such appaling regularity that its shocking. Seriously, why would you invite Simi Garewal,Luke kenny,Ratna Pathak Shah to comment on Mumbai terror attacks? To be fair to Kenny he atleast made sense. Garewal dished out non sense while Ratna Shah shouted a lot and made very little sense.
there was the regular muslim victim who has absolutely become necessary to show on national television. While Barkha Dutt tried to keep him crying as much as possible, across the set another guy was speaking of ‘cleansing’. Clearly, both could have been avoided.Media needs to be commended for their brave reporting but surely a person of Barkha Dutt’s stature can refrain from resorting to cheap gimmicks.And please while we are angry at the Maharashtra CM for taking along RGV, its time to ponder why do we need the Bollywood industry to analyse terror attacks on the nation.
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