Finally hitting the roads again..

Its been weeks ..days

Off  on a  GypsyFeet trip.Now that winter is here (those in Mumbai, yes the rest of the country is taking out the woollens,while you sweat under soaring mercury levels), our winter trips are all lined up.

I will be taking a group of girls for the GypsyFeet Fab 3 trip,  post which I shall meander around in the North East ,setting up more homestays and getting in touch with local guides.

So , join us for anyone of these trips , for your winter holidays.. Unless you plan to work right through the winter?

I love winters at home. Primarily because of the food.Of course. Magh Bihu is in the air.Every house you go to will still serve you pitha (rice cake),laru (coconut ladoos) and proper tea (not the milky chai,which I hate).

Winter means wrapping up in my old Naga Shawl and indulging in the favourite pastime of all Assames ” Jui Phua and Adda Maara” ( a deadly combination of sitting by the bonfire and gossiping late nights- this activity along with the afternoon siesta has been responsible for the current state of affairs of North East.Don’t blame the insurgents.)

Bogori (a kind of wild berry,donot know the English equivalent of it.Any Assamese,Unmana?QuirkyMon?)

Jolphai (a kind of olive, which is best had boiled and mashed with mustard oil and chillies..am almost salivating as I write this)

Dhekia (Fronds- yes we eat this.My personal favourite)

Koldil (Fruit of the Banana Plant)

Ou Tenga (Elephant Apple).

and of course Maas (fish).

Slurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp…Should I do a detailed post on Assamese cuisine?

 

Of Rs.6000 a plate Butter Chicken and Rs.25 a plate chicken curry.

Where in the world will you get fish curry for 15 Rs. Or chicken curry for 20 Rs. Dahi Vada for Rs.3.

Yes, my dear friends ,or should I say comrades, we are in JNU.Where yours truly spent the two most decadent years of her life.

I was in Delhi last week for some work, and till the night before had no clue where I would stay. Most people I knew have moved out . I need not have worried.There is always someone you know who would know someone who would be in JNU. Once a student, it is difficult to break ties. Comrades in crime from JNU days ,Nilanjana, fixed me up with her old classmate, Ronald,currently doing his Phd.So the first night in JNU was spent in a guy’s hostel.  In JNU girls can stay over at the guys hostel for the night- fortunately or unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way!!The only queasy part was using the bathroom.Unless you fancy brushing your teeth  and staring ahead at the mirror reflecting some random guy’s back as he takes a leak, I wouldn’t recommend a guy’s hostel to you.I had a couple of not so pleasant early morning sights!!

Fortunately that night was also the North Eastern’s night in JNU.What luck -  to land up on a party night.

Alas, things have changed.No it is not some old fogey rambling, but the fact that they asked for a student’s I card, was enough to shock me to silence.Apparently,last year there was a big scuffle between a Nigerian gang and a Manipuri gang, and the Dean had come down strongly on all parties within the campus.Security has increased everywhere. Checking I cards was so not JNU. But then ,of course, I was let in ,once I started singing the ” Seven Sisters of North East” song!!Now, that is so very JNU.

Here are a few glimpses of the North East night.

(Sema Naga ‘Life in a Morung ,youth dormitories’.Incidentally my host Ronald was a Sema Naga)

(  Cannot dance Bihu to save my soul.Not that I can dance anything other than the drunk chicken dance. Can you? Fun no? Not so much the next day when you wake up with a bruised knee.)

(Umm.. Aren’t  we North Easterns a pretty bunch. And I use the word ‘we’ liberally. )

( Hunk,eh?)

The N E night was exactly similar to the ones we had in our time. Different tribes and communities presenting their songs and dances, and you hollered based on your affiliation and kinship. And as was the case in my time, international students  and students from other parts of India were equally agog clicking pictures with equal enthusiasm at this “exotic exhibition”. 

Next day I visited my favorite professor.It was as if  I just stepped out his room a day back. His room was as messy as only a professor’s room can be,with books overflowing from the stacks and piled up just about everywhere. And you could just about see the top of his head, as he was buried between mounds of books.

Of course I had to have lunch at the library canteen and my school canteen.Which is where I realized, JNU still hasn’t changed.The prices  were godsend for me. And of all people to recognize me was the bhaiyya in the school canteen “Aap International Guest house mein bohut aate the na? Fish Curry Khaane Keliye? ” Two years of doing a Masters Degree and this is what I get recognized for??? Fucking Fish Curry!!!!!! Well, I am definitely not on the Dean’s honours list, as you could have guessed.

( A new addition: a  condom vending machine standing proud next to the coffee machine in Ganga Dhaba, JNU)

The walls everywhere were adorned with posters (very well painted,every one of them), all denouncing capitalism and upholding communism. The thing you keep hearing about JNU being the last bastion of communism?? Well,its got some truth to it!! Some go so far as to address each other as  Comrade XYZ. We humoured those fools.

So, a couple of days  of watching grown men pee while I brush my teeth, I decided to move to another friend’s place.An Iranian guy ,V,doing his Phd in Virology…or something. Though with his leather jacket (which I borrowed many a time,when I was not appropriately dressed for a winter party) and the party going image  I had of him, it is difficult for me to imagine him doing a Phd..I put his bulky muscles to good use by making him lug up my heavy suitcase right up to his fourth floor apartment. He made me pay for it.Big time.The last night, we were randomly driving the streets of Delhi,when V and his friend A,(an Azerbaijani guy who works in the embassy),spotted a couple of white ‘damsels in distress’, trying to get an auto at around 12 in the night. The guys turned to me with begging eyes and I gave in. Though,let me tell you,at my age, it is NOT funny to pick up random girls asking them if we could drop them   to..wherever they were going. Even if they are from countries you thought long ceased to exist – Czechoslovakia (of course I did a spell check on this) and Malta.I am surprised they even got into the car,given that this was their first night in the country. The guys later on argued that it was because I was in the car.Still, I would not recommend this to any woman travelling alone-  or in twos.Even if you are up for fun..That ended with numbers and emails been exchanged and we dropped them at Connaught Place,whereas our original destination was barely  kms from where we picked them up.At this point, I must thank the Azerbaijan government for giving me unrestricted use of their embassy car . Not sure they had any clue what the car was been used for.

In between brunches,coffee,Dinner ,late night drinks and a couple of house parties , I had the time to sneak in lunch  at a chef’s place where he was teaching Indian cooking to a Turkish chef who plans to open a Indian restaurant in Istanbul. For lunch I had smoked pork  meat,cooked with Lai Xaak (‘Spinach’). No, the Turkish chef is not planning to include this in the menu,of course .

And then came a packet for the host. A packet of th ‘in’ famous Anarkali Butter Chicken . For,hold your breath, INR 6000 (no I have NOT added any zeros, by mistake).Not a seven course meal, not oyster,not Kobe beef.This is our very own butter chicken,said to have been invented by accident at the Moti Mahal restaurant in DaryaGanj, where if I am not mistaken, the dish will not be more than Rs.400? The food came packed not in gold laced crockery but in Tupperware.Even the Turkish chef had to shake his head in disbelief!!! The ingredients – Evian natural spring water (am already salivating),Hunt’s Tomato Paste (whatever happened to chefs taking pride in using the freshest of ingredients), Dabur Real Honey-among other things.

I say at 6000 per plate, I expect Anarkali to serve me the dish!!

At times like these, I almost do a Lal Salaam to my institution which still serves food ordinary folks like us can afford.

 

Nika says Hello..

(She has almost perfected the artificial smile for the camera)

(This ,I think, is a genuine one- the loud crackers were a bit too much for her)

( Drummer girl, all we need is a tattoo now. I hope she will be brave enough to get one,unlike her aunt, who never really found the perfect design.And now its too late.)

(Multi faceted,aren’t we? )

( Oh well, ‘Nuff said)

 

Of roasted chicken and raw fish

It’s been almost a month since I wrote a ‘proper post’ ,with my rants and issues with what is wrong with the world and why am I not been given my fair share. I continue with the sudden spate of parties-alchohol and food.Food has been of utmost importance these last 2 weeks.If  we were not plannning where to eat,we were driving amidst maddening traffic in search for the perfect sushi. So after an hour of driving at a speed of 10km/hr we finally reached Global Fusion in Bandra, which supposedly lays out a sumptuous buffet for a decent price. And as I entered and saw the wide array of sushis and sashimis and tempura, frustration gave way to amazement. There were atleast 40 different kinds of starters. And guess what? I am not even a big sushi fan.After almost 4 rounds of eating raw fish served in dainty little bowls, the Indian in me was dying for something hot and spicy. I ventured to the soup section only to realise that all along we have just been skating on the tip of the iceberg.The main course section was in a different room altogether!!!! Holy Moly.We revved up our engine and set forth with a vengeance.The place provided for clothes pin with your table number written on it,so if you wanted more than you could carry,or if something needed a bit of cooking before been served,all you had to do was clip the pin to the appropriate serving dish in the buffet table.Minutes later the waiter will come with the dish to your table.We decided the best was to clip ALL the dishes..except for the octopus thingy!!

After four hours we decided too much of super healthy Japanese food might not be that good for us.But at Rs.750, this was one heck of a value meal.(prices go up during weekends)

Diwali night we went to Moshe’s where besides burning a hole in my pocket (thanks to the 3 bottles of wine we ordered),S decided to buy some bread.The next day to complement the bread,I decided to finally try my hand at roast chicken,a dish I have been dying to make for quite some time(wow, do I sound like Nigella?)

So,after 2 hours of shopping,preparation and final cooking time, this is what I have..Voila….

(The raison d’etre of this post)

Including the recipe will take this blog to another level altogther,so I think I ought to wrap up this post fast.

 

I hate

Chocolates

Rajma, Chole’ , Daal Makhani

Gajar Ka Halwa

Milk

Jalebi ,TiraMisu, CheeseCake ,Pudding,Souffle’ (any spongy dessert)

I need support from people who donot go into orgasmic throes the moment they see/smell the aforementioned ‘delectables’.

YES.THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO HATE THEM!! Down with Rajma/Chole.  Bring on the fish!!!

 

In Pursuit of a Mirage

My travelogue on Rann of Kutch, published in today’s  Hindustan Times.
This is the unedited version.

Legend goes that when Babar was scouting for routes to find an easy way to cross the Hindu Kush mountains over to India, a wise man suggested that he follow the tracks  of the Indian Wild Ass, which in those days  roamed all over  North West India, Pakistan and Iran. When my guide DevjiBhai, saw the incredulous look on my face as he narrated this story, he simply said “Come with me for a safari. Not many can survive such tough conditions.”

(Nilgais or Blue Bulls-quite a tongue twister.)

A couple of hours later, as we rode over the bleak and barren landscape, flat as a pancake, the sun beating down on us, the salt laden winds cutting across ,DevjiBhai ‘s words kept ringing in my ears. After countless trips to the salubrious mountains, here I am on a battered jeep, driving through, what for me, was one of the most inhospitable and unwelcoming of all terrains- Little Rann of Kutch.

I couldn’t have asked for a better guide for my stay in Rann. DevjiBhai Dhamecha, a local from Dhanghadra, one of the few villages dotting the border of the sanctuary, started out as an amateur photographer, chronicling life in the sanctuary. Over the years he became the voice of Little Rann, and protecting the sanctuary has since been his sole ambition in life. We stayed at DevjiBhai‘s Kooba huts, circular mud huts with conical roofs, built on the style of Banjania tribes of Northern Gujarat.

The Rann of Kutch is a vast saline wasteland of around 30,000 sq kms, between the Gulf of Kutch and the Indus in Pakistan and is the largest declared biosphere in India. This inhospitable terrain is an effective deterrent for illegal immigrants – a wrong turn in this endless desert could indeed prove fatal. This vast expanse was once an extension of the Arabian Sea, but centuries of silting have turned it into an extensive mudflat, inundated during the monsoons, salty and cracked in the other seasons. The Rann (salt marshes in Hindi), was a navigable lake during the time of Alexander.

Surprisingly enough, the Rann has five distinct wetlands which are a rich habitat for a wide range of water and terrestrial birds including the famed flamingoes. We took the highway which ran alongside the sanctuary to a marshy area where DevjiBhai assured me I would still be able to see a few of those remaining migratory birds – given that it is almost summer now and they have flown back to cooler climes. I expected to spot a few desultory birds, and was pleasantly surprised to see rows and rows of birds, carpeting the entire marsh – a colorful tapestry of the white Demoiselle Cranes, the Pink flamingoes and red-wattled Lapwing, interspersed with the Little Cormorant, Pelicans, Lesser Flamingoes, Herons and Egrets. In the winters, I can only imagine this place turning into a bird lover’s paradise.

Flamingos and Egrets and Damesoille Cranes

Trying to get a better shot of the birds, I waded through the black mud as quietly as I could. My foot slipped and I was unsteady for a moment. Enough to alert the birds and I witnessed the magnificent sight where the entire lot took to the air en masse, and the only sound I heard was the distinct flapping of a thousand pairs of wings.

On the way back to the Kooba huts, we were lucky enough to cross a group of Maldharis, as they were packing up for the next leg of their journey. The Maldharis are nomadic herdsmen who migrate annually after the winters from Kutch and Saurashtra to Madhya Pradesh. From their long black headscarves and magical symbols tattooed on the arms, we were told that they were the Rabaris, believed to be descendants of the Huns who invaded India in the 5^th century. The women were tall and well built and clearly very business savvy as they demanded 300 rupees before I could even take off the lens cover from my camera!

The next day’s safari, far inside the sanctuary, transported me to a different panorama altogether. In a landscape where nothingness defined everything, it was DevjiBhai’s experience that guided us around the flat land and a bare horizon broken only by the occasional salt pan or sometimes a bet (plateau or elevated island).

The only other tire tracks we saw were that of salt trucks. Gujarat is the largest salt producer in India and a third of it comes from the salt pans of Rann. And due credit must be given to the hardy Agarias, the traditional salt workers, who battle hard conditions ,camping in the midst of the desert to eke out a living from the salt pans. It is important for the water to keep flowing through the salt pan without interruption so that salt crystals are formed properly-which makes it imperative for the Agarias to pitch tents with family, in the summer heat. As the summer heat intensifies, the salt in the blistered earth is transformed into a radiant dazzling whiteness “Even after an Agaria is cremated, the soles of his feet remain intact “, rues DevjiBhai who himself hails from a family of salt workers. “Years of toiling bare feet in the salt pans harden their skin to the extent that even fire cannot burn it.”

(Agaria Salt Worker)

I was prepared to see mirages in the desert, of course, but that still did not bar me from making the classic blooper, the first time I spotted a ‘lake’ far off in the horizon. In my defense, I actually thought it was an artificial water body constructed by the salt workers. A few moments later I saw a couple of trucks hovering above the shimmering reflection and I was finally convinced that it was a mirage after all.

As we moved away from the salt pans, the hard cracked earth gave way to the softer sand of the deserts, where we drove across herds of the chestnut brown Wild Asses (Equus Hemionus Khur).Locally known as the Ghud Khur, it is one of the sturdiest animals able to withstand the desert heat and survive on scrubby grass and food of prosopsis- the few saline resistant plants that can grow here. The Rann is the home of the last surviving Asiatic Wild Asses and along with the Blue Bulls (Nilgais) they are most easily spotted fauna in the desert.

In the monsoons, tidal waters flood the land and the land becomes totally submerged as the Rann fills up with seasonal brackish water ideal for shrimps. The desert metamorphosises to a huge fishing pond and the Agarias give way to the local Maachlimars who then use boats for shrimp cultivation. That explained the rather surreal scene of boats lying abandoned in the midst of the barren deserts!

Evening set in and as the jeep took one last turn, I saw smoke coming up far away from an Agaria camp. A family of salt workers preparing for dinner maybe? For me it was a step into a difficult hostile terrain – I could enjoy the novelty of this unique terrain, unparalleled in the world, comforted by the fact that I was just hours away from the comforts of city life. But for that family of Agarias, the summer has just started. And with it the beginning of hard toil under the relentless sun, with not even a tree for shade.

(Salt Pans)

 

There is hope for me yet..

Though I think that is NOT what the soap maker meant.Dove started the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. It purports to be “an agent of change to educate and inspire girls on a wider definition of beauty and to make them feel more confident about themselves”.

Cruel Question (and the winner gets a dove soap “the moisturising cream” as they call themselves):

On a beauty scale of 1 to 10,how do you ,honestly, rate yourself. No point being modest ,right?

And please, I donot want to know your inner beauty.I am talking about looks that have helped create a favorable first impression, looks that have helped you charm your way out of a murder.

 

Redrawing the maps

While the nation awaits with bated breath for news of..umm..national importance- a part of our country might just be erased for ever. Sorry if that sounded over dramatic,but then we didn’t win the last war against China did we?November this year, the Dalai Lama plans to visit the Tawang, which has the biggest monastery in India. China is not happy with this, but apparently China doesn’t want the whole of China,but just parts in and around Tawang!!”The intended visit has already sparked consternation in China, which claims about 90,000 sq km of Arunachal Pradesh along their border as part of its territory, and could become another irritant in ties already dogged by a border dispute.”

Sometime back, a few officials from Arunachal on  an jaunt to China was refused visa by the Chinese authorities because ‘they are already residents of China’.

 

Conversations in my head

If you are too busy to meet me ,then stop wasting my time chatting online.

You donot have to sign off every conversation with a “we MUST meet”, when clearly you make no efforts to do the same.It is ok.Neither of us is really dying to meet each other. We are just scratching each other’s back,and need I tell you the pleasure in that.

When I have a house party, I generally call n+1 people, knowing fully well that ‘n’ will turn up. You,dear friend, need not go into such pains to lie to me as to why you cannot make it.You are the “+1″ buffer zone.

It’s called good manners to reciprocate invitations for parties or other outings.Just ask.Be it movie,dinner,drive or passes to the hippest party in town. Its upto me to decide whether I accept your invitations.

I do waste time in uploading pictures on Facebook. Acknowledge if I have taken pains to tag you,please.

I am on a sabbatical.I have not kept my brains on hibernation.

Whew!!! Blogging helps..It is so therapeutic.If I were in US I would have said ‘I just saved myself $100 in sessions with my shrink’.Here, well I just saved my lungs by blogging instead of smoking.

IMP ANNEX:

The header has been changed to facilitate blog reading during office hours.This is in honour dear friend Rati.

Conversation with Rati on a Monday afternoon.

ratibajpai: reading ur blog is like reading an imp financial site. No one figures out anything

me: ITS THAAAT BAD????

ratibajpai: No but if I chat with you I can be easily caught by someone standing behind

me: ooh ,now i get it

ratibajpai: ur blog is awesome- i was talking abt safety factor

me: hehe maybe i should change the header to something better

ratibajpai: i always hide ur header then its perfect.ppl will think am reading something very imp

 

Status Update

Just when you run out of ideas for a post,along comes a facebook link that you MUST click and MUST do your bit to spread another bit of totally random information..

Assuming you have clicked on the link and have read it, what do you think of it? Yes please go back and click on the link.

Whenever I have written about facebook it was never really in a laudatory overtone .(Two different links this time,in case you didn’t click the second word.Whew that’s quite a lot of plugging ).

I think I jumped the gun on that one.Because the real torture was yet to come -when our friends started taking random quizzes by the  minute, or opening fortune cookies,or generating random stats or playing some farm game( what is it btw) or generally get on everyone’s nerves…Somebody please explain this farm game to me.and Mafia Wars.No wait.Something tells me I am better off without them.

Some one on my friends’  list published the results of another statistical calculation (on his friends) and just to make sure we missed the point he wrote “Random Shit” .As opposed to the gazillion other things he keeps updating, which of course is very illuminating.Like, which Friends character are you.

Another keeps updating his status every time he moves places.I donot mean countries or cities. Anytime he moves more than a meter, he feels it warrants a status update.So it goes like this – “X is in HRC”,”X is in Olive”,”X is in Four Season”.Next what? “X is in the kitchen”,”X is in the loo”?.Surprisingly X never seem to be in a normal average place , like Shanti Sagar.

Yet another updates her status as “Was wonderin hw mch longer I ws goin 2 hav 2 w8 2 b put out ov my misery!”.sic(k) Apparently she has stopped communicating in English and decided to go the Tolkien way with create her own language.Lest people start understanding her status messages.

And there is one who unabashedly keeps promoting her venture .

I am thinking of deleting her from my friend’s list.