Ruse, Muse, Obtuse

Flashes of brilliance often end up in sheer stupidity. A couple of things happened to me which made me smile, cringe and question the existence of human intelligence at the same time.

The most recent of which involved me opening my monthly bill for my mobile phone. The first thing that caught my attention was that they had referred to me as Mrs!!! that dreaded three letter word made me cringe and not the fact that the bill was overcharging me. The congenial environment at home has been approaching war like status over the past couple of years to changes my status from Ms to Mrs. It's been fun resisting for the most part but at times the constant tug of war becomes a nag. I was told by customer care that it is a long process to change my title back from Mrs to Miss. So when that someone had wrongly entered the data onto their computer, it made a mockery of my struggle. Sigh...this will be a good laugh or is it a sign for changing times?

Here is one of the funniest and weirdest lines that a guy has used on me. So it was pretty obvious that the guy was trying to impress me and one day when i was escorting my neighbor's 3 year old son back to his house, we run into this guy. After the usual polite greetings, the guy obviously at a loss of things to say asks," is this your son?". Ahem, "yeah right and i got 3 more in the house screaming for milk".me and my friends had a good laugh over it and rest assured the guy never tried to talk to me after that incident.

I love technology.
I love the numerous inventions that make our lives simpler(?) /richer.
I love the mobile phones which makes us accessible anywhere/ anytime even when we want to be left alone.
I love computers that have reduced tonnes and tonnes to dusty files piled on our work station to miles and miles of entangled cables.
I love digital cameras that lets us shoot 1000's of pictures, are small enough to be stuffed in the pockets of our tightest pair of jeans and leave us with links from friends with 1000's of pictures with no description.
I love emails which let us keep in touch with so many people we'd not have kept in touch with otherwise and the tonnes of spam that comes with it.
I love the automatic faucets which work when u place our hands under them....but today i don't like them very much....there was power outage today and the restrooms apparently receive the least priority from the power back-ups...there is one emergency lamp which gives a twilight feel to the entire rest room..and the faucets don't work...so me and this other girl stood in the twilight awaiting dawn.

YES!!! YES!!! we made it!! Took us a test run just to learn where to go and how to get things done but we did it.

I guess all the whining paid off when a couple of guys in my office decided that they'd come along with me n Rads to Rishikesh and Haridwar. Nine of us were supposed to go but in the end there just the four of us.

Nothin like
*being sleep deprived and drinking beer at 7:00 am
*Watching the guys with us flinch and look at us accusingly when asked for their emergency contacts and made to sign a disclaimatory documents ( I swear they wanted to back out at that time).
* happily wading into the ganges with life jackets on and trying to swim in the ice cold water
*Jumping off the raft and floating beside it downstream.
*being told by the guide that the water is 60 feet deep!!!
*Floating on your back down the river
*swimming downstream and guiding the raft by pulling the string tied on ur hand.
*going thru rapids which almost toss one off the boat
*Then being told by the guide that there was a huge whirlpool there last week!!
*Paddling and listening to all the stories of the guide, brad Pitt had used his company when he came to india.
*Eating hot poori's, sabji and halwa at haridwar
*Watching the evening Aarthi there
*Being forced to listen to hindi songs which play only on road side tea shops.
* Getting so exhausted when we were back, that Rads missed her train cuz we overslept and the alarm was too tired to ring.
* Happily declaring that I've taken enough dips in the ganges for me n seven generations of my family.

SO check...everything was achieved in this trip. The rafting, the food, the fun!!

Love that lasts for ever, First love they say is the sweetest. Last night my heart was conquered again by my first love at Karim's.

Karim's is a restaurant open since 1913(?) and the forefathers of the family that owns the place used to be chef's in the Mughal Emperor's kitchen. Apparently butter chicken was invented here and the place has been mentioned in NGC.
We parked at CP and took a metro to chawdi bazaar. The station is the deepest that the Delhi metro has gone. Easy to believe since we had to go 4 floors up to reach the road. The stark contrast between the modern air conditioned metro station and the Old Delhi is the first thing that hit us. We took a rickety cycle rickshaw to Karim's. The ride took us along the boundaries of the Jamma Masjid. It is lovely to look at in the night. The places is pretty crowded even at 9:30 with traffic consisting of pedestrians and cycle rickshaws. The ambience makes you feel like you are in a different dimension.
We walked through a narrow alley to enter the world of Karim's.
Its not a formal dining place so you might end up sharing your table with a couple of other people. The waiter who served is the ultimate consultant. He decided how much, what we need to eat and in what sequence!!!! We deifinitely need to learn consulting skills from the guy and had a good time teasing the MBA's on taking pointers from him.

All the aroma's had triggered a massive appetite. But the waiter insisted on serving Raan first which has a 20 min wait and refused to serve us anything else. It was totally worth it. This was followed by sheek Kabab's where so soft and the chicken tandoori, just awesome. We had no space for the roti and shajahani chicken after that.

The Raan

One of the guys in our group managed to eat most of the Raan and only the bones was left when he was done. We bet that a goat is growing in his belly now.
To finish up our cullinary experience we had kheer. Which can not be missed, no matter how stuffed you are one has to absolutely eat this. It is thick kheer with broken rice which are chilled in small clay vessels, never tasted anything like it!!!

The Kheer


Karim's is a must place for all non-veg food lovers. There are a couple of options for the poor vegetarians who get mixed up with "masahaari's" too.
If you are there and confused about what to eat..just use the WC Inc (Waiter's Consulting Inc)
So yeah I love food.