Orderly Disorder

If you have eating troubles, I can assure you that have landed on the wrong page. All I have done is literally translated - Eating Locho - into plain speak english, ie Eating troubles. Being brought up in Bombay, I am fairly familiar with the Bombay street lingo, which has a fair sprinkling and huge influence from the native Marathi and Gujarati colloquial. Locha traces its etymology to Gujarati and means trouble and hence Locho , the plural of Locha means troubles. While locha was made popular by Raju Hirani when he had Munnabhai mouth an unusual combination of words - "Chemical locha" . And in yet another another Raju Hirani caper, he has Kareena describe Gujarati food - Dhokla Faafda Handva Thepla Khakra - as missiles. But our Surti's take the cake. They have redefined the traditional missile' khaman into a hugely popular variant called Locho .  I was in Surat last week and savoured this awesome variant of Surti food at the Gopal Locho ...

There were two things typical to India that I thought were difficult to automate. First was our staple bread -  roti  or  chapati  and next  paan . I recently saw some very neat rotimaker videos on the internet. Till they do not invent and automate paan making, our neighbourhood friendly paanwala will continue to offer us our dose of Indian after mint with all the warmth and personal touch that a  Paan maker would lack.  My friendly neighbourhood paanwala is Pandit ji, as I address him fondly - my way of honouring and addressing a person who is so skilled in his craft - he is a maestro at the science and art of making paan . Pandit ji has now been vending  paan  from the same location for the past twenty eight years. He always has a smile on his face and like most of his ilk has the ambidextrous capabilities so much required in this trade. He has the abilities of whipping up paan of different specifications with the same cool...

Thirteen days ago a dear friend of mine lost her father. She had sent out text messages informing her family and friends of his demise.  I chose to call a few days later to speak with her and convey my condolement and my advice, something I learnt years ago from another friend - Do not dwell in his death, instead celebrate his life time. She said that she and her family were just doing that. She had sent out text inviting people to attend a morning meeting today . It was the thirteenth day after his demise. It was not the usual prayer meeting. Nor was the text a usual terse message. They were calling to invite people to share and celebrate his life.  The family had spent the last thirteen days collecting memorabilia from her father's lifetime - pictures, sketches, telegrams, letters , his art kit and many more. They reached out to his friends and colleagues, many long lost, in India and abroad and stitched together video and audio bytes of their connect with her fathe...

It's easy to get peeved by our indisciplined traffic in India. Most Indians weave traffic snarls by the way we drive or we encourage or rather do not discourage those who drive us. The trouble now is that we are getting quite adept at causing human traffic jams in the air. Yes - when we fly . Any frequent air traveller in India knows the routine. Queue up for entering the airport, deposit baggage ( if any), check in & collect boarding card if not web checked in, x-ray handbags and mobile devices at security, queue up for security frisk, board bus or walk through aerobridge to enplane. Simple. Now here is where we invent commotion. Many travellers tend to carry more than the allowed number of handbags or have overweight handbags or both. Then we saunter past the aisle and with swift well practiced moves we randomly juggle the already placed handbags of other passengers to suit our needs. Once plonked on our seat, we like to make our last minute, always so urgent p...

As Indians, we revel in the mediocrity of halfness. We start by embracing halfness and then end up embodying it willingly. As generations wither, our mindsets have cognitively accepted halfness as the complete. We half our soup - one by two, we half our tea - cutting chai and we also half our phone calls - missed call - the other half of the call is completed by the caller with more credit balance. We also work half day , usually on Saturday's. Many of us see nothing wrong with this. We shrug our shoulders and cook up a half inverted smile and defend this by saying that - "We are just frugal". I may give currency to the frugality bit when it comes to expending, but who can explain the frugal mentality when it comes to delivering results.  We construct a sea bridge in two and half times the originally estimated time with three and half times cost overrun and then with huge fanfare we inaugurate the landmark sea bridge - with only half the lanes...

I was visiting Gulmarg the second time, this one after a gap of a score and five years. Gulmarg in recent years has caught the fancy of the elite skiers, predominantly from Europe who fancy powder skiing here and the pro's get their thrills with the Heli-Skiing options. Our local guide informs me that that regular international skiers say that Gulmarg slopes give the European Alps a run for their money. Not a skier yet, so I have no way to rate Gulmarg and I choose to bask in this shared glory. Gulmarg, I am informed, is a non resident village. Primarily a tourist destination it is served by locals who live in the base town of Tangmarg. They travel to the hilltop daily to eke out their livelihood as tourist guides, horsemen and service oriented jobs in the few and increasing hotels of Gulmarg. It has the most breathtaking looking saucer shaped meadow which houses the world's highest green golf course. Maharani Shiv ji Temple built 1915 served as the Dogra Royal T...

A fair part of last weekend was invested in reorganising all my books at home. It was not much to my surprise that my ratio of read to unread books was rather dismal and I hastily and rather sheepishly made a mental note not to be tempted of buying another book from the next mailer sent by Flipkart . Or while passing by a bookshop at the airport or at the mall. But books ( except the one's in school and college) and me have a love love relationship. As it turned out I was invited to attend a Jane Austen Book Club meet at a refreshingly well appointed, old world charm kind of bookstore - 'Kitabkhana' - situated right behind the Hutatma Chowk Memorial at Fountain. After the event I had a good fifty minutes or so to kill before my next appointment , our annual iftari food savouring in Bohri Mohalla & Mohammed Ali Road. I decided to invest this time in browsing around Kitabkhana. Trust me that I did start in earnest, remembering my resolve not to fall prey into buy...

At school we rarely came across the history of Bhutan. But it always figured in our geography lessons as our neighbour country. I confess having basic knowledge about Bhutan before my maiden trip earlier this month and was glad that I did not web crawl for any more information, barring for a cursory look at the weather this time of the year. Here is the first of my postcards from Thimphu, Bhutan. India and all virtually Indians are consumed in the GDP race. What a welcome thought it is to visit Bhutan and interact with the Bhutanese where they value and actually place GNH ( Gross National Happiness )  higher than GDP. GNH simply explained is more of a social indicator measuring quality of life in spite of the pressures of material aspirations in the era of modern economic development. Aboard the Druk Air ( Bhutan's national airline) one cannot miss the smiling countenance of  HH Jigme Wangchuck and his wife, the queen Jetsun Pema, staring at us from the immigration f...

It was half past nine on a bright and sunny Lahore morning when three of us decided to set off from our luxurious abode at the Lahore Gymkhana, in our quest for the quintessential Lahori Halwa Puri and Alu Choley. A few friendly enquiries and some calls to our local friends we were advised to hit the Old Anarkali Food Street. Our navigator and chauffeur Abbasi was glad we chose this area as he confirmed that this is where the local old timers would come and indulge in their matutinal gluttony. House on Old Anarkali Street Abbasi dropped us in the centre of the street and we started our perambulatory recce of the street. Most of the shops looked half open or rather half shut and on enquiring we learnt that we were late for breakfast as most of these eateries open just before dawn to serve breakfast to the pious just after their fajr namaz . A couple of helpful locals guided us to a seemingly busy eatery serving Samosa's, Halwa Puri & Choley. Apu was not his us...

For as long as I have had the travel bug in me, I have wanted to visit Pakistan and specifically go to Lahore. I remember making a life list a couple of years ago and Pakistan figured top on the list of places I wanted to visit.  I am asked by many - 'Why Pakistan?' - considering the strained relationship between our countries. I have the answer in two parts for them. a) My maternal grandparents hail from Lahore. As a kid, I remember spending almost every summer and winter break in Kanpur, where my maternal family shifted after the partition, and being nurtured with stories of Lahore, it's splendour and their life and times there. I was brain tattooed with Lahore and its stories. b) We are culturally akin. [I am a Punjabi] We speak the same language, have similar tastes in dress and food. We share a common bond of folk, sufi poetry and music - composed and sung in the same ragas across both the borders. And we share the same history. Punjab for the uninitiated is ...