Abhinav Bhatt

Puchka 101

Tell me, what pleases a female most. Yes, you can run your imagination wild. Without digressing, try to think that what gives her the much-wanted cheer, the confidence of being a woman, the tears of joy in her eyes, the beautiful crunching sound to her ears and the ultimate kick, again figuratively.

Sigh, brush up your GK man and look around the chaat-vaalaas around you. Before you kill the neighbor’s cat out of curiosity, the answer is: Gol-Gappe. Yes, you read it correctly. Also, known as Patase, Paani Patasi, Paani-Puri, Water-Balls, Puchka and what not. What a creation and innovative item to eat! Nowadays, or who knows even when your dad wan’t born, they serve Gol-Gappas with Vodka. People!

So if people from foreign land or general posh people, who have never tasted the water bomb, let me give you a small description of what happens and how. People, of all ages, color, smells and gender, usually in evening, come out of their home/offices and reach their favorite Paani Puri destinations. The scene is usually like this. A thin lean dark wheatish shade guy with nominal thin mustache owns the stall. It is surrounded by a plethora of humans. Mostly girls. And that guy is always a guy. As in, I have never seen a female Gol Gappe Wali. Sounds little weird but who doesn’t want to eat Gol Gappes from a woman. I want. Anyways, the Gol-Gappe wala is one of the finest multitasker present in the country. The parallel processing the guy does can beat the best computers. One hand goes into the big pile of Paapdi and other hand keeps mixing the ingredients. No hand knows what other is doing. Class. Then he attends all the hungry tongues as-much-number-as-you-can-imagine at a time. While one hand is serving, the other hand keep mixing the awesomest-water-ever so that no sedimentation happens. Bloody, the guy knows Physics as well. Now when the girl/woman gets one gol-gappa in her plate, this is what happens. Please read in slow motion. Ultra Slow motion if you can afford.

She picks up the water filled ball, however big it might be, puts in her mouth, completely and closes her mouth. Yeah, you have to close. This is not any job. This is gol-gappaing. As soon as she closes her mouth, the walls of the ball start the process of crumbling down. While the walls are breaking down, the crushing and crackling sound it makes, can give any sound a run for their money. No human can imitate the sound. That’s how sound the sound is. Slowly, as it is a slow motion read, the wall get broken down. Now, first the salty, Jaljeera-ish, can be sweet-ish as well depending upon the ingredients, splashes around the mouth, touching each nook and corner of the area and giving ultimate pleasure. Then when most of the water has flown under the bridge called as Uvula (totally SFW organ, chill), the main masala of the subject comes out. Mostly it is mashed potato mixed with usual spices, Chutney but it can have Chanas and Curd and similar stuff as well owing to geography and demand. This masala gives the user something to chew upon and thus in totality, gives a pleasure no one can give, day or night. Tell me, have you ever experienced this elsewhere? And when guys eat this, they can achieve the level of satisfaction they seek. Ahem.

So next time when you eat the delicacy, remember, you read it first on this blog.

Now, I am not saying that the delicacy named Gol Gappas are sole property of women-folk, not at all. All the male guys I know relish it equally but I am yet to see a female who doesn’t like Gol-Gappe. If you are a female and reading this, and don’t like Gol-Gappe, seriously?

One small P.S.:

All my usual blog posts have flashy titles to attract the attention of innocent people of the Internet who, so this also has one, so that you feel at home. I do so much to retain my customers I should have been born as a Sweet-Shop owner. On a very serious note, I am yet to find such kind of tasty brilliance in Bangalore. And why did I write such a random useless post? Because I can. Also, this post doesn’t contain any picture. Strategy. To make your imagination run wild. You forgot?

One long P.S.:

Well, I have been called names for the blog shifting frenzy, I was involved in recently. I divorced my beloved Y2A Slog, with whom I shared all kinds of events and thoughts I came across in my college days. It kept itself continued after the college for one and a half years but during that time it was treated like Sourav Ganguly in his last few years as a Cricketer before he was finally ousted and given a GPL (BPL for people with less OQ i.e. Offensive Quotient). Then came our rude dude Hit Wicked which, more or less, was more frustrated with itself than the beautiful but cruel world around it. And probably, it lived the age it deserved. Now I don’t like to move over blogs just like that because blogs are kind of Horcruxes. It hurt every time I moved on. Sniff. Talking of moving on, the group blogs, I was/am a part of, are lingering between life and death anyways so forgetting them is not a crime. Still killing the blogs is a bad habit. Avoid doing it. I am not proud of that. But I don’t regret it either. Man and his affection with immaterial things. Hmm. See, one needs to settle down to his ‘spot’ only when he is fully satisfied. Even Sheldon Cooper took time to choose his place to put his tashreef, so I took time to find a place for myself. BTW on a similar note, I drilled-down options and selected a place at my apartment to sit as well. I made India win the Cricket World Cup that way.

Anyways, as the name ‘Abhinav’ means ‘New’, I have finally settled to this blog address. Which again, went through Tumblr to Posterous as the blogging platform. Talking of ‘platforms’, I have now slept at Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr and Posterous Junctions which have ‘trained’ me as an expert in Blogging sites. Anyone who wishes to delete their blog out of the platforms mentioned above, feel free to ask me to do the honors. The name will stay so you needn’t worry to mess with your blogroll and RSS Feeds and other jargons. I will try to treat this space Holy and will try to continue to shower, on this decaying within itself world, with my knowledge and much needed wit. Be happy.

Going anti-social – 1

There was something missing (my win most probably) in our duel last night, so I came back to continue our incomplete fight. But, what I encountered was an unusual sight. As the usual place of meet up was plain blank and your window was ghostly white.

I tried to peek but you were nowhere to be seen, I wondered for a while that where could have you been, but then I chuckled a sigh of relief latently seeing the space neat and clean, yes, I can be that mean.

Then I checked my phone and hoped it shouldn’t ring, without you being there I felt blood rushing back to my dead right wing, being free for the time being, all I wanted to sing.

Err, not that you have clinged on yourself on to my collar, but deviating all my attention to you makes my world look smaller. Yeah, yeah you will be heard, calm the beep down, don’t start the holler, the worlds we live in are as far apart as the region called as polar.

Because of the overdose of itself, we both end up being aggressive, I, being the rude dude, grin, you cry as if you did a sin, stop being so sensitive, for opening the ports to everyone will do you no good, people will keep using your assets till they become liabilities later, sure they would if they could, if you allow me to use the language slight offensive.

There are better people there where you have gone, for sure. They see you as you are, neither they pretend to act better, nor do they flirt just like that or seeing a feminine they drool and get lured. There are real people there who can be trusted in a better way than those who are on the other side of the door, why do you want to be such a loner when there is so much to seek out here it self more.

Too much of dependence on me will eventually make your emotions soak, as I might get myself out of this as I get further choked, talking at this unholy hour is anyways sounding like you croak, moreover I am man of very few words so better go sleep and stop making the thing a joke.

That gave everyone a chance to do something nice this time, as it was so good to see you offline.

Disclaimer: What’s that?

One Year in Bangalore

So I reached a place called Iggalur, Southern most part of Bangalore. Total green, total South India. Half of the people there speak Tamil and the others Kannada. Both languages being similar to Buffalos to me (Kaala Akshar Bhains Barabar, Sherlock). Tamil was like Pi written in all the angles possible and Kannada mostly ‘W’s. Anyways, I have no right to bash any script so not doing it. The place, Iggalur, was painted in Green and the skies painted in many different shades of grey. In fact the cloud looked like they hung lower than usual. Bliss. It was quite a pleasant change from the scotching Hyderabad heat and way better than Jaipur’s boiling year-long summers. The temperature being just what the doctor had ordered. (Shastribot effect). While Hyderabad was Eminem, for more than one reason, Bangalore was like Lucky Ali. The apartment at Iggalur had no TV and no Internet but some amazing views and silence which you could actually hear. I loved the weather more than anything. Well, I had heard about the climate of Bangalore but experiencing it first hand was something amazing. For a guy who has lived all his life at the place where you can count the drops of water when it rains, this was like repeated telecast of Sachin Tendulkar hitting straight drives. As the modern day kids say, orgasmic. Though after a few days I moved to a more suitably located part of South Bangalore mostly inhabitated by ‘Amiths’ or the North Indians.

I had chosen Bangalore over Oh-So-approachable-With-Eatable-Food-Hyderabad or The-North-Most-City-In-South-India-Pune (Sorry Chennai, you are good only from a distance. Touchwood.) Because it was supposed to be the ‘IT’ City. I had heard so much about it being cosmopolitan with plethora of big IT giants and abundance of opportunities to work and many college friends were living here. You know, when you come to a city, you come with a mindset. I too had some expectations with the city of Bengaluru. Heh, some of them have been met, some still wandering to be met. So now I start my, I hope, un-biased or may be biased experience of the city and mind you, it will have some fair and unfair comparisons to my hometown Jaipur and Hyderabad where I had spend the last 65 days. Since I am talking about myself, who is an Engineer by degree, I am going to talk about stuff I see. Also, this post is from an Indian who has lived all his life in those geographical parts of India which are above the Tropic of Cancer. So some biasing is justified. Yes, offense if you feel so.

While Jaipur smells mostly of spices and Elephant dung, Hyderabad can be truly described by Russel Peter’s snide comments about Indian cities in general where as you step out of your plane and you smell shit. Bengaluru is like a coffee shop. Smells good Da. Though when it rains here pretty good, there is no familiar smell of the mud that I consider very Non-Indian.

The first thing someone hits when someone enters a new city is the road. And since Bangalore was made, probably for retired people, it has roads as wide as the walkway in a garden. They took the name Garden City too literally I guess. Bangalore acts being fast paced but it is stuck in traffic jam. One wants to reach a place before time and it drains all your energy out till you reach the point. First thing to do when you come to this city, remove the word punctual from your CV. Drivers here are so insecure and rash, same as Hyderabad, as if they want to reach home quickly to check whether their wives are sleeping with neighbours or not. What they don’t realize is that even the neighbour is stuck in a traffic jam. Jaipur’s drivers are still learning how to drive though.

The buses here are the major medium for transportation and in fact, are the best maintained buses in whole of India. The revenue earned by the Government has been put to brilliant use in BMTC. Wigs off along with scalp for that. I absolutely love the reach of the bus service. They have taken full care of the pocket of people and for those who can spend slightly higher, awesome Volvo buses are at your service. With a maximum of Rs. 50, one can glide to any part of Bangalore in the Red Shiny Volvo buses with cool wind gushing inside your clothes. Even the normal buses are kept tip-top for the masses. Like every dead dog on Indian highway has an opinion about Cricket in India, similarly everyone in Bangalore has an opinion about Traffic Condition here. And since Bus stops are strategically located just near turns, and just after flyovers, Buses feel proud to be the part of the jam. Who doesn’t want to do a jig in the jam?

Though it is a tragedy that the bus service virtually goes off after 9 PM. Why Sir? Don’t people travel after 9? Only few major places have buses running after 9. If you are stuck till late, you have to resort to Auto Rickshaws. Heh, Auto rickshaw drivers. If someone has problems of High Blood pressure, I would request not to ask anything from Auto Drivers. They suck. Suck and swallow. Shit and suck and swallow. I don’t know who told their generations that IT people are rich so they charge enormous amount even for tiniest of distances. Anand Ramchandran wrote a brilliant piece about the Autos in Bangalore so better read that. I only have cuss words for them. I might kill an auto driver as well, forewarns, if provoked more.

Food wise, I like South Indian cuisine and I have eaten more rice being in a more pan-Indian family so eating 1000 varieties of rice is not a problem. But if your diet demands more wheat, I feel slightly bad for you. The food here is costly, same goes with the accommodation which is stale and on the costlier side with ordinary apartments and high amount of security money. Seriously, what could easily fed someone in 150 Rupees, here they take Rs. 300 for ahem, err, not so good food. Now I love Idly and Dosa so I enjoy them sucking each finger with each bite with Coconut chutney. DAILY. Point to note is that everything here is cooked in Andhra Style which is spicier than usual Udupi style. And when I say spicy it means loaded with green chillies as if green chillies were free. God bless your digestive system, especially during the morning rituals. Sambhar here is as ordinary as any Salman Khan movie and I assure in my hometown, Sambhar is much better. I am yet to eat Curd-Rice and Rasam. There are many North Indian joints for food but they cook North Indian food in South Indian style. Overall, I am disappointed by the restaurants here. And I am still hungry to eat real south Indian food here. I can still remember the first time I had awesomest Sambhar and Dosa in my life cooked by a Tamil neighbour aunty back in 1990s. Also, Bangalore is hill stations to people here so don’t expect cold water. Chilled water? What is that?

Well, since everyone knows you love to drink, there are plenty of pubs around. Just pay and keep peeing and peeing or puking the way you like. The liquor shops here open till 11 PM and mostly flooded with guys and girls alike. Modern, you see. If you don’t drink, don’t worry mate, come home someday and it will be lovely when mil baithenge 3 yaar, aap, main aur our ginger tea.

Places to visit? Meh. But if you are from a village in Uttar Pradesh or North India in general or Orissa/ West Bengal or combined North East or anywhere in Rajasthan (apart from Jaipur), you are going to love this place. The city has enough malls and maals and pubs and cafes in them that you were waiting for all your life. I am not going to talk about the Malls here because they are not worth it. But go to UB City mall to get inferiority complex and when you come out forget it and LOL. The Brigade Road, which seems to be having a competition of show off, is the place to be on a weekend. The roads are full of people of all shapes and sizes, with all varied sizes of eyes, the most loose or the tightest clothes possible, the ugliest and the most beautiful people possible.

Apart from old age attractions like Laal Bagh and Bangalore Palace, nothing much is there to see. My hometown had 2 aspects, one modern and one old and one could go to Malls as well as Castles on top of hills depending upon the mood. Bangalore is very similar everywhere so you don’t get to know the difference much. Though there are many places around Bangalore where one can go in weekends. Google to find out.

Umm, I feel that Bangalore is in fact a good place to work. The culture is the work culture here. People here mean business. Work more and leave the politics to NCR. The people in Bangalore come from all parts of India as possible. Also, number of Africans and Europeans can be seen, probably selling drugs or just chilling, who knows. I am most impressed with the addressing system of the houses here. You can find out the address quicker than your GPS because of the Mains and Crosses which one gets familiar with within seconds.

Bangalore, as a city, is in a hurry. Hurry to become something like Mumbai. No idea why? And in the first place, why would anyone even like to be like Mumbai? From what I have heard from real Bangaloreans, it is not what it used to be. Also, it was not made to be like this anyways. It is more hype than hip. People, who think Bangalore is the best place to live in India, have not seen India. It is, though one of the best places to live in India but certainly not the best. The best part of the city remains the weather. You cannot beat that. Although with the constant cutting of trees, exploding population and ever-growing pollution, the climate is changing more rapidly than the speed of people who read ‘offer documents are subject to market risks’. Bangalore seems like a kid who was pressed upon big responsibilities while it was still an infant. Kid did the job perfectly for making way for Indian Engineers a force to reckon with in the world and full credit goes to the people of Bangalore and South India to create job opportunities in many fields. Obama fears Bangalore and expects the Americans to give jobs to Boston and not here. Hehe, there we win. But the kid is now struggling to cope with the increasing pressure. Though still the people welcome outsiders but the odd feeling of accepting them with sour smile is slowly setting in. People here are generally cool but some of them don’t answer when asked a question in Hindi. Hope it doesn’t become Chennai. Recently a Kannada organization proposed that Kannada should be made compulsory if one wants to live in Bangalore. Rise of Kannada Manoos huh? They must also remember that the credit of city’s success should be equally shared with all Indians alike. Bangalore is way better than most of the cities in India because sometimes it lacks the Indianness which is sometimes needed and sometimes not needed. There are a lot of advantages of living here as one gets all the exposure needed. There are concerts, blogger’s meets and many major-minor events which won’t happen in most of the Indian cities. Bangalore is a big point on the world map and it is going to stay there for long. It has all the aspects of an Indian city and many aspects of a Non-Indian city. And that’s the USP.

This is neither a travel guide nor a survival guide. But this is what I feel at this moment of time about the city of Bangalore. It might change as I explore more about this city. As of now I am not sure whether I love this city or not. But certainly, I don’t hate it. This city has given me long due employment so I have utmost respect for the place and the people here.

P.S.: Fun Fact: When someone dies in an accident in Bangalore, people say either a Dog or an Engineer must have died.

Rhyming is dying

No crushes to crush, no destinations to rush,
No paints to brush, no memories to flush,
No unsuccessful infatuations, no twisted situations,
No ugly conversations, no heated discussions,
No job interviews left, no plan of bank theft,
No skills to adapt, no mistakes to correct,
No affairs to end, no fragile castles of sand,
No topics to trend, no broken relationships to mend,
No trains to stop, no height to atop,
No hurdles to hop, no dirt or blood to mop,
No bed to sleep, no hedge to creep,
No ocean so deep, no shoulder to weep,
No song to dance, no scenery to glance,
No looking through lens, no burning romance…

One day it will be back, sense it may lack,
Rhyming is dying but I’ll keep on trying.

Never Try This At Office

NSFW # 1 | The Marriage Proposal

This is what I saw in a dream a day back.

Nocturnal Talks

What’s the time? Late night? Good. Stop everything you are doing. Go to your terrace. Pity you don’t have one. If you have, forget whatever you were doing. Go to your terrace. Take one bed sheet, one pillow with you. Also, the most important thing: one transistor. Also, don’t take your mobile with you. So go with only one electronic instrument. The Radio.

Clean the roof with a broom. Sprinkle some water so that the heat of the day is soaked up and vaporises into the sky. The sky which has stars. Dark night but shining stars. The word romantic is for gays. The night with stars is just breathtaking. Look at the sky. Give a sigh. Smile. Lay out the bed sheet. Now lie down. Adjust the pillow so that you can see direct up. Settled? Good. Now turn on the transistor. It will be #win if the transistor is old and held up using rubber bands. Now start searching for Vividh Bharti. Don’t rush. Enjoy the noise in between the stations. What a lovely sound it is! The dials doing something electronically, the turning spring inside, searching for the right frequency, with sudden loudness trying to say something to you.

Tuned? Nice. Now listen to old Hindi songs. And imagine. From Devanand and Nootan coming down from the once open Qutub Minar, to older Talat Mahmood songs. From Hemant Kumar’s ‘Tum Pukaar Lo’ via Lata Mangeshkar’s ‘Lag Ja Gale K fir yeh haseen raat ho na ho’ or ‘Rasik balma’ to Kishore Kumar’s ‘Woh sham kuchh ajeeb thi, yeh shaam bhi ajeeb hai…’ Keep staring the beauty of the stars of the coldish silent night. Try to hear some sine-wave horn sound in the distance away. Smile. Relive old memories with the brilliant lyrics. Keep looking at the stars. They move. They say a lot to you. Those starry nights. Amazing.

Now savour these moments. I’ll be silent for some time.

Now while its getting further late, close your eyes. Keep the music on though. Smile more. Try to remember her. Smile again. Don’t regret what you didn’t do. Don’t think what you will do. Just stay silent, keeping your eyes closed. And sleep.

Now if you are in a saner city, around 5 AM in the morning, you will hear some Aarti (not RT) going on nearby. Smile. Ruffle your hair and get up. Try to hear from where this sound is coming. Smile. Stay there for some time, yawning.

Enough. Smile. New Day has arrived. Back to life.