Eating out in Bangalore

The last few weeks have been a blur of socializing, madly mugging Spanish verbs, and zipping about the city on strange errands for parents and grandparents. All resulting in me having, and not really minding, eating out a lot. A lot.

I'm a little tubbier than I was last week, but once I go back to Delhi I won't be able to do this, not much anyway. Food of the kind that costs 200 rupees here costs about three times as much there. And is usually not better.

Some Delhi foods though I really miss. Like crispy chilli potatoes, especially of the form found in north campus. At every place that offers this in Bangalore I have ordered it, sometimes to the despair of companions, who have tired of eating potatoes at nearly every meal. Today, at a restaurant called Rendezvous in Koramangala we were served french fries with masses of chopped and fried green chillies. Nice, but not the real thing.

In the same way I long for the gobhi manchurian that places like Sukh Sagar, Megh Sagar and the others in Bangalore do, so oilily (not a word? but fun to type) and so yummily. Gobhi manchurian in Delhi is a disappointing affair. Gloopy and wrong.

My hunt for the perfect lasagne in Bangalore continues too. As I leave in less than a week I doubt I'll get any closer on this visit.

Oh well.

P.S- Rendezvous is the reincarnated version of Friends, that used to lurk in a lane parallel to the one on which the Koramangala Corner House in on. It has acceptable beef steaks (not to be found everywhere), and an extensive menu. I tried a strange drink called Pussy Foot- coke and pineapple juice (not to be repeated). I would have liked to have liked the place more. It's got a pleasant airy feel to it, with rubber wood furniture, and an attentive but not-too-enthu waiter. Didn't like the sauce in my pasta bake much though. And the garlic on the bread was a particularly tenacious sort. Despite having brushed twice, since returning home, the ghost of garlic breads past still haunts me.

new found enthusiasm for crabmeat.
must.have.more.

more tv

i have a faster internet connection now. this means that i can watch what i want, shortly after it airs.

in large part due to cat deeley (so charming), i have become addicted to so you think you can dance. this particular dance routine, i've watched about five times so far. and i think i'll be getting on to youtube to hunt it down again. and since i've just learnt how to put youtube clips here-




the same week in which i have watched the untouchables, watched a documentary on deep-dish pizzas, am having something of a mood overload.


also (totally unrelated)i have recently discovered
i) the wombats
ii)the pigeon detectives
the music is nice. but i'd listen to them anyway- such fun names.

True Blood

Is such a fun show. And had me hooked from the opening sequence. The song and the montage, and the whole Gothic-South thing. Especially the slow-motion snake.



Having spent the last two days watching both seasons back to back I can't wait for season 3. Must go out and locate the books. I remember not understanding the fuss that everyone made about Buffy, or about Angel (boring boring boring). But this one is sex and drugs, then vampire-sex and vampire-drugs. With that Jace Everett song always in the background.

heh

before jane campion found her and made the piano anna paquin's only acting experience was as a skunk in a school play.
heh

Tennis musings.

I'm watching Cilic hurtle towards losing to Del Potro. From whom he took the frist set. And he looked so comfy at the beginning of the second.
I do miss Ancic. These new ones aren't quite the same. Djokovic is a brooding, sulky young man, and Nadal wears ugly clothes. Ancic was always well behaved, clothed in unoffensive colours and garments, and possessed of a lovely serve and volley game. Which fell apart on more than one occassion- but he was so pretty too. The makes up for many things.
Now Cilic is one of the few on the tour, who can still pull out a decent serve and volley game. I really want him to do that now. Or I'll be very annoyed that I stayed up till four to watch a match, and it didn't end as desired. Hmph.

Dinner at Agashiye

went to dinner with my father and some of his students. to a place called Agashiye. twas a most beautiful house, wood-worked and latticed, opposite a mosque, in a neighbourhood that bore an eerie resemblance to the cantonement area in bangalore. all very seventy-years-ago in feel.
with that lovely amdavadi breeze.
but the food. oh dear. i do not like sugar in my dal, and in my potatoes, and in my paneer, and in my moong ki sabji. no i do not. the rose flavoured ice cream was wonderful though.

channeling carly simon

so much anger.
joan jett, and some alanis morissette.
no one should forgive this kind of behaviour.
when my mum has a bad feeling about a boy, next time i shall listen to her. will save me the hassle.

an overwhelming feeling of ick

so today i took an auto home. when i got off and handed him money it was to realise that he had my change in one hand and his penis in the other. i do not like being masturbated at. am having an overwhelming feeling of ick.

New Post

A new post for the new year, just to remind myself, and the two of you reading this that the blog isn’t dead. Yet.

My aunty Leela is though. She had Alzheimer’s and arthritis and eczema, which is a pretty ghastly combination of diseases to have to live with.

Among the other people who died was Pandin- a friend from class (1st-5th).
I’m not very interested in children born- until they can talk and develop personalities. I prefer old people- the sad thing is old people don’t always stay old for long enough. They die.

Pandin was only 24 though. Or 25, I’m not really sure. We travelled together in Thailand when we were small. His mother bought me a painting-engraving of an elephant on rice flour paper that the monks at the monastery we visited made. We ate lotus hearts and other aqueous water plant parts. Pandin liked touching people’s ears- other eleven year olds objected to this, but I remember not minding the occasional inspection much.

This isn’t meant to be an elegiac post. I was only doing the accounts. I have the niggling feeling that I’m forgetting important people. But let’s move on.
I did mean to make a few remarks about whether or not one can ever really know another person, and if so how. I recall reading posts of this sort- that attempt to skirt the line between personal revelation and profound truth, but just end up as an exercise in over sharing. So I shall continue to work on that (the post), weed out all possible details that would aid discerning readers (yes mummy I mean you- I know you still check this thing even though I’ve been trying to will its erasure from your memory) make inferences to events that have actually occurred. While the nick name and the anonymity it pretends to confer is a joke, I really am happier crying about my life on the phone. Plus I remember griping about confessional blogs once too often to turn mine into one as well.

In other news I made the second of my twice yearly expeditions to Rishi Valley. Returned in the most fancy bus; with seats that reclined nearly a hundred and eighty degrees, plug points for cell phones, speakers near every seat, leather upholstery and more detailing, that probably escaped my attention. Four kilometres out of Madanapalli there isn’t a mobile phone signal. The incongruity. Climbed many rocks in RV, encountered, at close quarters one tree frog, one spider (large) and one lizard (large with livid pink and orange spots). The lizard bothered my sister, the spider bothered me, and the both of us ignored the tree frog- which peacefully sat on the ledge near the door and watched us walk in and out of the room. There were also many fire ants which we successfully evaded. With the thorns we were less successful- I fell into many nasty piles of them. My arms, unprotected by denim as they were, look like they have survived a hideous slashing, some sort of failed suicide attempt.

And here- having written more than I have in the last three months, I shall stop. Congratulate me. My blog. It lives.