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.

Hari ki pauri at 7:00 am

So my dearest friend R and I decided to get out of the city for the weekend. As with all travel reservations made 2 days in advance during the peak summer vacations all trains leading to the hills were booked. Now you have to understand that once we’ve been bitten by the bug to get out of the city we absolutely have to as the need consumes us, at this time we are solemnly reminded that we have officially lost it. None the less in an act of desperation we decide to tug along with Rs parents to haridwar, they for religious reasons and we for everything but. R had a very unpleasant experience getting from her city to delhi, considering the train was late by a quarter of a day, but not lacking enthusiasm as by then we had found a group going white water rafting and we were to join them on sunday.
Getting up early on saturday is my least favourite thing to do hence i skip going to my aunts place in the morning and decide to meet R and her family on the way and also not answering about 3 early morning calls ( Please note there is no point in calling me before 12 pm on saturdays). I happily waited at the bus stop for 1.5 hours for R to pick me up. My wait becomes impatient only when my ipod is not working. But due to some fore sight(the source of which still eludes me) i had a full battery, which gave me the luxury to reflect on some of iron’s maidens biggest songs, resist the temptation to drink jal jeera made from gutter water, consume half a bar of chocolate, observe weird people all while sitting at the bus stop on a busy road at 1:00 pm in mid delhi summer.
They finally pick me up and R has promised to buy me ice cream for making me wait so long. I wonder if i will get them along with the 100 bucks she lost in a bet to me, sigh in an alternative universe i guess.
Anyways roads in this part of the country suck. Took us 7 hours to travel 200 km on a straight flat road!! We had the pleasure of waiting at a railway crossing for 20 mins and look at sugar cane juices served in clay vessels.
We reach Haridwar to find that the room we had booked had been given away to someone else. A short quest and some flaring tempers preceded finding a hotel room for us. We had dinner at a lil dhaba. Where food is served in 5 minutes, its piping hot, tasty and cheap. The roti’s are hot off the oven and side dishes cooked in minutes.
In the morning we headed out to Hari Ki Pauri for the religious part of the journey. Everyone wanted a dip in the Ganga. I tugged along to soak in the culture. We walked all the way to Ghaat enjoying the scenery that can only exist in a Holy City. I spent a lot of the time regretting not carrying a wallet which denied me the pleasure of sampling all the tempting breakfast that was being served by the numerous halwai’s. R took a dip in the Ganga while I held onto all the family processions of camera’s wallets bags, etc and taking pictures. R was firmly told after the dip that she sould’nt shower until sunset since she had taken a holy dipped. I was dismayed since she absolutely stank due to the river being not so clean. (I mean it is one of very polluted rivers in the world)
we finally made it back to the hotel and got ready to leave, I had the luxury of having a cleaner ganga dip albeit under the shower. After being made to eat water melon and having our bags stuffed with granola bars we were finally ready to goto rishikesh to go white water rafting. I had been unable to contact the group.
The people at the bus stop are not very bright out there, we were sent from one end of the bustop to the other a few times to board a bus and we finally took an auto to Rishikesh. We reached there just about noon and well there were no slots for us to go rafting. I personally believe its all a conspiracy!! Sadly we booked a bus back to delhi and headed out to laxman jhula. might as well go site seeing. The way to laxman jhula is very interesting. It goes down winding path and takes a good 20 minutes to get there from the road.
There are two bridges in rishikesh over the ganges, Ram and Laxman jhula’s respectively. On our side of the laxman jhula there was a German Bakery and Cafe. So we had au gratin, pesto, lemon cake and apple pie for lunch. All food is strictly vegetarian since its bang opposite the temple. But heck by now we were happy we missed rafting else we would’ve never found this place. It takes talent to find a european restraunt in a strictly holy town. We were close to missing our bus back so we had to run across laxman jhula ttake a jeep to ram jhula and cross over it before getting in another auto to our bus stop. Please note climbing a 1000 stairs from ram jhula to get to the road in the blazing afternoon sun is not my idea of burning the fat acquired during lunch.
Journey back was uneventful but R had to rush to the station to get a train back from delhi and she’ll inform u of it when she gets herself to blog about it.
The "FIND"

Highlights of the trip
*Buying watermelon from a roadside vendor
*eating at the dhaba in haridwar . I will goto haridwar again because i absolutely love the food there.
*the early morning food at the sweet shops
* telling R she stinks
* the site of people coming down the river after their rafting experience
*the german bakery
Religious or not…haridwar is great to goto just for the food.
Bottom line: R&D are adventurous but foodie’s first!

~R u owe me another 100 bucks for putting this post up first

I have been to several Indian weddings these include weddings from different regions and different religions. One common thread in all these weddings is their absolute capability to put a major dent in your savings/future savings. I never understood what the fuss was about, why do we feel the need to invite 300 - 1000 people to show -up congratulate us, smile, eat and walk away. Nor do i understand the zillions of mini rituals that go on before and after the weddings.
The weddings in the summer are the worst last time i went armed with antacids and ORS, and believe me when i tell you everyone came asking for it. I have been to weddings of my cousins, uncles and aunts. Figured it is better when you belong to the grooms party, but i was dead wrong..there is still so much work and so much food and a zillion lil festivities.
Of course another most irritating part about weddings is the million matchmakers “when are u getting married?”,” you will be getting married next”, ” let me find u a nice groom” etcc etc phew man most of the time i just want to say “Go away”, “mind your own business”!!! and some other choice words.
My question is why can’t things be simple!! i get tonnes of responses ranging from it’s tradition to its a once in a life time event, it’ fun ( i don’t consider dolled up in heavy silk sarees in 40 degreee celcius weather, and changing clothes several times a day as FUN) etc. I will have to resign myself to put up with the whims and fancies of everyone so wholly connected or unconnected to me and strangle my consience on the strain i am placing on the planet when i do finally get married.
WEll anyways i am in the midst of another wedding and it is hot…so yeah i am ranting because i had to re-pack some gifts since they wer’nt pretty enough the first time!!!