A milestone achieved…

A job change (not again!)? A promotion? A raise (not so soon)? An engagement? A wedding? A baby born to a relative?

No, none of these. But a milestone has been achieved in my life today. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the cooking gas cylinder which served me for 8 long months in Bangalore finally ran out of gas today. It had to be refilled. So, in last eight months I have cooked enough to exhaust one gas cylinder. Would you classify me as en experienced cook? Of course, you have to adjust for the full fledged cooking done by mom for almost 12-13 days during her stay here and similar thing done by a relative for almost 10 days. But still…

I will miss that first gas cylinder of my life. It made people look surprised! At the mention that it has been going on and on ever since I got it soon after coming to Bangalore. It made my mom ask almost everytime towards the end of our weekly telephone conversation,”And your cylinder? It’s still going on?” It made the helpful friend, who wanted to give away his two cylinders to me, say, “Probably I’ll give them to someone else. You do not seem to need them.” Its gone friends – after accompanying me for 8 complete months and probably a little more…

And the time it chose to go off. Friends were visiting. I was all enthu to display my cooking skills and had put in hordes of potatoes to boil in pressure cooker. Meanwhile, had started making dough of the flour. And showing a complete disregard for the extreme inconvenience of situation, it went off. No potatoes boiled, no pooris made! Thanks to friendly neighbours, cooking still went on. But the gas cylinder, dear readers – it went off in its own style – arrogant, proud, uncaring, unreliable… And in the 8 long months, I had almost forgotten that I may have to get it refilled

The world is not worth trusting. What has happened is not an indicator of what is going to happen. Too bad!

Crosswords in Indiranagar

I almost jumped with joy when I received this communication from Shoppers’ Stop that a Crosswords has come up in Indiranagar and at a very identifiable place too – 12th Main, 5th Cross. Went there today. The size of the store fell far short of my expectations. Bad that my sense of measurement is, I always thought 4000 Sq. feet would mean a space much bigger than that

But still – even if a small one, it will be a good place to spend time once in a while. And I had a paniful realization that I have never splurged freely on books since I started working. I always seemed to have more money in my hand for that purpose in my student life… What the hell! One of these days, I am going to splurge – come what may

By the way, for those looking for an English Translation of “Umrao Jaan” Novel, I saw one copy from Rupa Publications for aroun 300 bucks. Probably you can try to check out for one in a book-store near you. Of course, the price does not beat Rs. 50 that I had paid for Hindi (rather Urdu in Devnagri) edition in Lucknow

Technorati : Bangalore, Book Store, Crosswords, Indiranagar, Umrao Jaan Novel

Shivagange

Its not necessary to praise every place you visit by sacrificing your weekend, is it? So, this time I am not going to praise it. Okay, don’t take that to mean that I have a negative recommendation for just everybody. Depends on your mood, purpose and expectations. So, just read on.

We went to this place called Shivagange, around 70 kms from Bangalore, last Saturday. There were three of us in total. We were warned that nothing suitable can be gotten for lunch there. So, I exercised my newly found cooking skills at making roti and sabji and packed it up too. In fact I had planned it even before the warning came through because of my previous trysts with South Indian food (no insults intended – its just that I do not like it) on the trips. That was the only good decision taken I suppose

Well – so this place has a rather tough climb uphill. And what you are supposed to get as a treat at the end of the terribly tiring trip is a statue of Nandi carved out of the rocks. When we had just started climbing up we saw a statue of Nandi and then laughed at ourselves at attaching too much of importance to that. The real treat was waiting up there, right? Now the place misguides you with the decent stairs made in the beginning of the climb. They end soon and all you are left with is the single option of making your way through the rocks. Some unhygienic “Ganne ka juice”, “Neembu Paani” and cucumber are the things you can console yourself with. Right when you are thinking that you have been adventurous for quite sometime by climbing through those rocks, you get to see another stair. Just that this time it is steep as hell, and many a time the steps are so small that you have keep your legs at ninety degrees to your body to let them fit it. After a while, you are simply clinging to the railings to get up. Reminds of those old Hindi Movies with an old lady clinging to whatever comes in her way and somehow managing to reach “bhagwaan ke dwaar” to pray for her son bleeding profusely in the hospital. Well – we did not have any such desperation either. Still we clinged on and climbed on. For that real treat. And when we finally reached there, we saw a statue not only much smaller than the one we had seen at the beginning of the climb, but smaller than several others you will see scattered around in the city of Bangalore too. The population density of monkeys made mockery of any plans we were still left with of eating our food at the top of the hill. We hardly felt like staying there much longer. I was so disappointed that I forgot to even look for the “Suicide Point” where Queen Shantala is supposed to have committed suicide from. Well – that’s a tourist spot – I can’t help it.

However, if you like climbing for the sake of it. Do go ahead. And its not bad for weight loss either. I lost a full 200 gms

A musical evening…

It was after years that I realized the relaxing effects of music. Yes – years. Good poetry crafted in soothing music, and having time to concentrate on just that. Haven’t known it in years. Not since the days when I used to learn music and there were times, when there was just that around you. In my college life the popular musical feats were too full of things I did not like. Loud music, meaningless or shallow lyrics, only occasionally having the things I liked. And somewhere in the race of life, I missed out on the moments of respite SPICMACAY programmes could have provided. I regret that. And particularly so today. Had and still have a huge collection of music of my liking on my computer. But in that, the concentration part was missing. Being the kind of person I am, it was almost impossible for me to leave everything aside and just listen to the music. It never happened. Its never will happen. I will continue to find things to do while the computer is playing music.

Today in Jagjit Singh’s concert, the bliss was recreated. I think my experience with live concerts was pretty much NIL. Except for the programmes by some of the musical bands that came to IITK and IIML. As I said, they were too full of things I did not like. So, never stayed through them for long. (Of course, not that it helped much. With that wretchedly loud music and a bit too effective speakers, there was little you could avoid so long as you are in the campus and even few kilometers around it.

But anyway. Coming back to today’s musical evening. It started off with this. And then went on. One after the other. Post interval, it only went from good to better and some of the all time favourites were sung by him. It was a wonderful feeling to have left everything out and just be in that. I wish I am able to make it to more such events. It should do some good to my mental health (No, no – do not worry. I am not mentally challenged as of now ).

Artist’s arrogance was pretty much there. With him being quite rude about the sound system settings and once commenting upon (of all the things) lights on the stage. He wanted the lights to be changed. When they were changed he was still like, “कोई और Light नहीं है?” I don’t know. May be there are valid reasons. May be I am nowhere close to being like an artist. But I wish some of this unnecessary display of arrogance could be done away with.

There was one thing I missed. There was almost no communication with the audience. I think the show would have better been named “Jagjit Singh Non-Stop”, rather than “Jagjit Singh Face to Face”. Probably one the biggest attractions for fans of a live show is that they get to see a more human face of the person they admire. So, when an almost revered singer talks about incidents related to a song, or cracks jokes, audience gets to see a non-God-like, and more of “like-me” kind of person there. That’s the charm. He did not do anything like that. Only once was there an attempt to crack a joke and it was well received. Some people may want to discredit this idea by saying that artists need not (and possible should not) care to have showmanship. They may not be completely wrong. But I would say that you need not have showmanship for doing this. You can connect to the audience by simply being a human once in a while.

There was another interesting thing I noticed. Possibly for those who go to such events frequently, its not such a news. But as a first timer, I really found it a good thing. The main artist gave opportunity to those accompanying him on various instruments to exclusively showcase their talents several times. And this was done without breaking the flow of things. And yes – they were really good and at times invited rightly deserved loud applauds from the audience.

Technorati : Bangalore, Concert, Face to Face, Ghazal, Jagjit Singh

Dedicated to Bangalore life!

तरस गई हूँ मैं
पथरा गई आँखें।
देख चुकी रास्ता
कई बार जा के।

पूछा पड़ोसियों से
उसे देखा है कहीं।
पागल समझते हैं
मुझे लोग सभी।

बहुत मन्नतें माँगी
बहुत रोई, गिड़गिड़ाई।
कितने संदेशे भेजे पर
काम वाली आज फिर नहीं आई।

–

जाओ बढ़ो,
बिना हॉर्न बजाए,
मुझे बाईं ओर से
एक इंच की भी दूरी दिए बिना
ओवरटेक करो
चलाओ अपनी गाड़ी
साँप की तरह रेंगते हुए
करो आगे उसे
इधर से, उधर से
जान आफ़त में डालते हुए।
क्या होगा अगर आगे मुझसे निकल भी गए तो?
अगले जाम में
या अगले सिगनल पर
हमें फिर मिलना है।
फिर एक ही जगह से
सब शुरु करना है।

लेकिन फिर भी
जाओ, बढ़ो।

–

– Sometimes you just have to find a way to laugh on things! Despite the title of the post, I do not claim that these experiences are limited to just Bangalore.

Technorati : Funny, Hindi, Poetry

Never again…

shall I accept to reach a new place at a short notice. There were several small things to be done this weekend and by 5 or so in the evening, they were all done. Fairly satisfactory day. Had nothing else to do. Decided to watch “Do Beegha Zameen” whose CD was lying with me. Pretty much into the movie, when I received a call from Prashant Bhaiya asking whether I would want to go for a play in St. John’s auditorium. He had got two tickets booked through a friend, but could not use it anymore. Although the time was limited, but since I could start straight away, I decided to game for it. Called up a friend to find out the location and it seemed fairly straight forward to reach there. It is opposite to BDA complex on Inner Ring Road (Koramangala). So, I confirmed with his friend and started on. It was all right and I located BDA. There would have to be a “U” turn somewhere, bit since it was almost time, I decided to park near BDA and cross the road. It was all right till then and then I made the mistake. I was unable to see any board of the auditorium on the other side of the road. So, I decided to confirm with an auto-wallah (on other occasions I have always found them to be the safe bet for taking directions). And he asked me to take right after going straight for a while. I thought the entrance would be from some other direction and took the way. But it was after asking two more people on the way and further taking the directions that I realized that all of them were sending me to St. John’s hospital. And guess what. I was afraid this might happen. So, with all of them I had confirmed after taking the direction that it was for the auditorium!!! Then on the way just escaped an accident on a dark street. The way it happened that even I had to believe that it was my fault and I said sorry to the other person who was shouting and all. But was really wondering as to how I missed the other vehicle if it was so close. Only later did I realize that the idiot hadn’t switched on his bike’s headlight on that totally dark road… And damn! He got away by shouting at me and eliciting an apology too. Well yes, I do feel like an idiot thinking of that.Thankfully, I had messaged the person who was waiting for me to get in and she had left my ticket with a volunteer, else I would have felt guilty about making her miss the play too. Anyway – through all this, I reached the hospital and asked about the auditorium. They gave me the direction all right – but it turned out that I had to take the service road and not main road to take the left turn that was needed. Grr… At the crossing the signal was green and I decided the wrong thing in the hurry and went straight. Terrible. It was a one way and I had no idea as to where I was going. But there appeared to be a way on the other side of the road too, though I was not sure, why there was no traffic on it. Anyway, I risked a “U” turn and when I reached back at the crossing I realized that I had done the wrong thing yet again. Going to the main road from there was not allowed!! Stayed there for a while like a fool (as if there was an option!). And then the traffic police waalah. “Entry is prohibited on this road, madam.” Ahem! “I am sorry, but I did not know.” “Don’t you see it is written there?” Well! Firstly I did not enter it from the place where it was written. And then, the way it was written – that small board in a dark corner – I wonder who would notice it. But anyway. Arguing with him would have been another disastrous step from my side. I just managed to convert my irritated expression into a guilty one and asked him as to how do I get back on the main road. Lo! I have to go back on that road – go to Madiwala – take thousands of turns to complete the quadrilateral and then get back on main road. Another right decision – I decided to oblige him. At that he relented and told me that for this time I can go straight on the main road. Ah! I got back. Took a “U” turn from the next place I could. I still could not locate the board of the auditorium, but I suppose I knew the place now. Still I was so ridiculously late and in such a bad mood that I decided to come back home.

If only I had taken the right decision in the beginning, I would either have been enjoying the play or “Do Beegha Zameen” instead of writing this cribbing post.

I have more woes against the Bangalore roads, traffic and traffic-police. But that later. And yeah – I know I am not alone. Still…

Maps and Roads

Being a book-worm would not teach you everything – we know that. Ability to read a map can not help you reach the places – Bangalore tells us.

Pondering-Over-The-Eicher-Map-Me: “Oh – this is simple. I am sure I can reach here easily. The road A goes straight and meets Road B at the deadend and no one ways either…”

Helpful-Bangalore-Veteran-Friend: “No – there is diversion here. The flyover is being built. You have to turn left, then follow the traffic for couple of more turns and then..”

Self-assured-Me: “No, no. You are surely confused. The flyover is on the way from your office to your home and the other one is also on the crossing of road X and road Y…”

Proud-Bangalore-Veteran-Friend: “I am living in Bangalore for n years.”

Unmoved-Me: “So?”

Reconciling-Bangalore-Veteran-Friend: “So, I know that there aren’t just those two fly-overs. There is one being constructed here too.”

Sarcastic-Me:”How many flyovers are being construted in Bangalore?”

Irritated-Bangalore-Veteran-Friend: “I do not know.”

Playful-Because-Don’t-Know-What-Else-To-Be-Me: “What have you been doing in Bangalore for n years then?”

Responding-Accordingly-Bangalore-Veteran-Friend: “Not counting the number of flyovers under construction. I’d rather count the stars in the sky.”

The conversation isn’t real, but it could well have been. When shall I be able to tread the roads that I see on the map in Bangalore?

There she arrives…

A “small town girl” in a big and growing city…

April 1st – I take a fancy to getting a photograph clicked in old-fashioned way – you know going to a studio and posing after applying little make-up and combing your hair with the help of accessories kept inside that warm (hot!), darkish room?

Well, we ended up going to one of the more well-known of the “chain of studios” in the city. Kind of unsure if anybody still gets a photo clicked inside a studio, hesistated for a while and then asked a staff there. He pointed to the last counter. Went there – unsure again. But then saw what was written above the counter… It was something about making your look “heavenly” whether “you want to be a model, are getting married soon or just for the heck of getting a portrait”. The third reason gave me some assurance. So, I asked about it.

“Sorry madame, the studio closes at 8. You can take an appointment for tomorrow.”

‘Oh! How awful. The studio is closed “

Anyway, I’ll come tomorrow, but then for some reason thought should ask the cost… It turned out that it “starts at Rs. 699″…

Ah! Yes – my wishes are priceless, but not so much. ‘Thank you God for saving me the embarrasment. The studio is closed ‘

But at least getting a photo clicked in the studio is not out of fashion. Anyway, it required little bit of walk on CMH road to find an old-fashioned studio doing the job for 70 bucks for two 6″X8″ copies. But I did it (am yet to collect them, but that’s besides the point).

Lucknow and Kanpur were big enough cities for the places of my upbringing. But Bangalore is a different cake for sure. Its bigger, isn’t it? Then, with its one-ways and dug up roads and dangerous (yeah – that’s the word) footpaths, uncertainties in BMP about the parking decisions it adds to the complexities of living in a big city.

Shopping (Trying to shop, that is) is commercial street was another adventure altogether. Here was the dilemma – if we go to the branded shops its better to go in one of the malls. Those shops are bigger there. The fun in commercial street, supposedly, was to get things cheaper and explore different shops. So, entered the roadside shops. They had things on display, but God save me from their sales people. They just won’t leave you on your own and it becomes so terribly embarrassing and irritating that I almost ran away from a couple of them. They lost a potential long term customer!! Earlier I thought that this over-activism of sales people lied in the age old problem of combating shop-lifting, but later I got to know that it was more of the incentive system that was causing it. Apparently whosoever gets a customer to buy something he/she pulled out, gets an incentive or something of that sort. Phew!! Oh – most certainly. I am not amongst those who enjoy shopping. My place is not in the commercial street.

Technorati : Bangalore, Shopping

I want to work

“Mujhe shaadi nahin karni hai, mujhe naukri karni hai…” (I do not want to get married, I want to work) – that’s the biggest dream several girls in this country have in their childhood. With time it lapses into obscurity for a large number of them. Some make it and today, on the first day at the first job (ignoring the internships), I can not help smiling over the feeling that how simplistic the dream was when it was first conceived. Nevertheless it feels good to find that it has been achieved (I am emphasizing on the second part of it, first part comes only from the context in which it was usually expressed . Do not blame me for inconsistency if I get married someday ) ).

“Mujhe shaadi nahin karni hai, mujhe naukri karni hai…” (I do not want to get married, I want to work) – that’s the biggest dream several girls in this country have in their childhood. With time it lapses into obscurity for a large number of them. Some make it and today, on the first day at the first job (ignoring the internships), I can not help smiling over the feeling that how simplistic the dream was when it was first conceived. Nevertheless it feels good to find that it has been achieved (I am emphasizing on the second part of it, first part comes only from the context in which it was usually expressed . Do not blame me for inconsistency if I get married someday ) ).

The circumstances are such that it does not look that big a dream and it did when conceived, but then that’s how the life is, right?

The last few days have generated a lot of things I would want to write about. Let me see how much can I really manage. The new life brings with itself new constraints. But one thing I want to strive for is that I do not stop writing… Let me hope I am successful.