Ghosts

Ghosts

I see ghosts, around and everywhere

I breathe, a chill runs through my hair

I walk, they nab me from the back

I run, my bones start to crack

I joke, they give me a sneer

I laugh, they wait for a tear

I close my eyes, I enter their lair

I touch them, they immediately disappear

I wear the armour, I raise my sword to fight

I am surrounded, they advance like the blight

I swing, and miss

I hear them laugh, its like the snake's hiss

I swing again, my body feels warm

I look around, I bleed from my arm

I open my eyes, there are mirrors on the speaking tree
I see my reflection, the ghosts are in me


Still a work in progress .... 

Food, Love and other things @Delhi

Warning: This is NOT a travel blog entry about India. Also people who are sensitive to bawdy remarks please refrain from reading. And I don't make the stereotypes, I just propagate them ( I just like saying that for effect :P)

The smoky air, the grey skies, hot sultry weather, the black river and the organized chaos on roads .... for some that defines Delhi. For some it is just fact of living in a metro city with glam ( and sham) of malls and kudiyan that defines Delhi. The make-a-buck opportunities, attracts the attention of lot more. And for some it is just home. It is how people associate themselves with a city that interests me.

Blue Line Bruisers 

  The blue line bus rides are example of how very enduring people of Delhi are, if you want the cheapest transport around Delhi, it has to be the bus. Known more for their deadly nature, the buses can give you reasons to buy new mobiles, new wallets, coming late to work, coming home late and the best part of these rides sitting next to a Haryanvi uncle talking on phone .... adding new cuss words to your vocabulary.... for instance godhe ke l*** (some might take offence to that but then some screwed up guy might look at the bright side and consider it as a compliment :P). 

Sheila aunty

  Delhi ki aunties are another part of the city that is worth noticing. I am not talking about the women who have their daily calendars beside them, wears what Ritu Beri tells them to wear, have very refined taste for food and liquor and have drivers to drive them in "Lauras". I am talking about Delhi ki desi aunty. You might see them in buses, auto-rickshaws, cars or on foot wearing the typical suits and sarees. You will not want to get on their wrong side. They will beat you black and blue. They will get that special discount even at the fixed rate shops. They will accomplish more in a day than most of us can dream of doing in a week. Combination of these aunties and blue line buses cannot be found anywhere in India. An aunty in a bus is like a landslide on a hill. They enter from the back entrance of the bus and make their way to the front of the bus. They are not like the delhi girls who might slip through the little spaces you might find in the buses, they are like the communist tank that mows down everything that comes in their way until they reach their position. Even delhi girls find it difficult escaping from such aunties and might end up being flattened (as told by my sis).

  The Extended Weekend Weight hypothesis : "An extended weekend at your relatives will make you gain at least 3-4 kgs of weight". As soon as people realize their relatives are visiting them. It is like little wedding buffet where you dont have to worry about going to buffet but the food is served hot in your plate. Each time you find yourself saying "bus ab mera hogaya bua/dadi/mami/mausi/nani/chachi/tai". One such weekend came along my way a fortnight before and I was pleased to find data supporting my hypothesis. However there was strong opposition to my food habits by my fitness freak sis who said that it was high time anna came out of the anshan and I go into one. I started thinking how I would change my diet and workout and have that Salman-in-Bodyguard type body but then I found my mind seemed to be wandering at these places--

* Little Punjab: This is a little shop located at SDA market. Hidden behind all the razzmatazz of pricey restaurants. Space enough that would seem crowded if 4 people stood in it. This serves Rajama Chawal, Paneer Chawal, Chole Chawal, Kadi Chawal and Chole-Kulcha. My fav is rajama chawal. I might dare say that these guys make awesome rajama, that I have not eaten anywhere else not even at home (Dont tell this to my mom :P). I could probably eat this kind of rajama for the rest of my life each day for lunch. This had been my staple food 2 years of college from the time I found this shop. The other interesting things are the prices, which varies from Rs 20-30 per plate, the uncle who serves it and the open eating area where you can stand-sweat-gossip-birdwatch-and-eat. Definitely worth a visit.

The weird entrance to the place

* Udupi: This is a big terrace South-Indian restaurant, modest in its pricing and has that homely feel to it. Some people might say that Sarvana Bhavan is better, to them I say you can get extra Sambhar/Chutney for free, you can have that AC comfort, that not-so-exorbitant prices but that waiter's condescending looks and his way of slipping that lesson along with hot food is unique to this place. My favourite at this place is lassi ( yes I am sure it is a South Indian restaurant) and paneer onion rava masala dosa. The best times to visit this place is in the evening after the sun is set and the place is full of people, the noise of faratas (huge fans) & coolers and your stomach is making that weird noises. Expected expenditure Rs 120- 140 per head.


* Govardhan: It is located near the Waves restaurant behind IIT. A quite and family type place. Serves finger licking north and south Indian food. My fav is paneer pasanda and garlic naan. You can find IIT professors with their students, families with small kids and college students who are there on a treat. For a daily purposes this place is costly. But the food tastes good and looks clean. This place also give home deliveries. And of course has that special discount for IIT Students (10%) makes it worth the while. Best place to order if you want have good food and your friend is paying.

* Dominos: This features in my list just because of the godsend cheese burst pizza. There had been a bet going on in my hostel if anyone could the whole pizza the other would pay for it. This seemed impossible until my juniors came along (those hungry &$@#). Be it the dinner, lunch, a birthday treat or job treat and nobody could name a good place to eat, cheese burst is a safe option.


* Karims: Gone are the days that I was a non vegetarian. But to all those chicken lovers I must say if you haven't had the butter chicken and naan at this place then you have no right to be a non vegetarian. The curry is so heavenly that the flavours of butter used, sweet pungentness of different masalas mixed in onion and tomato puree base, added to this the soft chicken pieces (for a moment I forgot I was a vegetarian) could only be made in heaven. The vegetarian version includes pieces of paneer but not as good as chicken though. Probably they should try a version with soya nuggets. The bread is also different from other naans you might have had. It is more a big soft kulcha, which served hot and had with the awesome butter chicken is a totally different experience.

Mud Pie

Blue berry cheese cake

*Big Chill: Till my visit to home recently, I had only heard about this place and its deserts. Then my friend Khanda took me there one afternoon. The desert menu had quite some stuff which I hadn't had before. As we were stupid enough to order garlic bread and pasta before moving to the deserts, we only  had the space to try two deserts; Mud pie and the blue berry cheese cake. Well I must say, we kind of wasted our money having that pasta. That bitterness somehow was dissolved by the cakes we had. These cakes had such relaxing effect that our discussion moved on how we both saw love. As we entered the weird territory, we discussed how the thing called selfless love doesn't exist. How every relationship was based on the expectation from the other. How talking about stuff would help. It is always funny when such general discussions take personal turns. And we moved on to our lives. After all we were at "big chill",  I was reminded of my crushes to the girl whom I had seen at Delhi Haat in a chudidaar. "Chilling and relaxing" (cheers to the Prince of Belair) and talking, our discussions were interrupted by the cute girls passing by the windows. Was it the "deserts" that I ate or I saw but I felt full. Digressing might not be my middle name but I do good enough job. Anyhow,  for that kind of experience I would give Big chill a thumbs up. Great place to have deserts and dive into light discussions. I will warn though, if your friend is unwilling to pay for your half  STAY AWAY :P.


* The Barbecue Nation: Ahhh what pleasure it is cook your own food and what is even more fun when the food is half cooked and all you have to do is barbecue it. These guys fulfill  the dream for me.  Be it the vegetarian and non vegetarian kebabs, they will surprise you. Think of a flavour that you might enjoy, and there will be a kebab on it: Aloo mint kebab, achari paneer, barbecued pineapples, the evergreen paneer tikka, aloo kebabs with cashew chutney ... and list goes on. The lunch buffet is the best time, you get 5 types of kebabs and in no limit or until you are about to burst open. Even my friend Magoo (who is a big eater) would skip the main course and directly have deserts. With an empty stomach and that overflowing wallet, nice place to have food. 

Raj Kachori

* Haldirams: Located all over Delhi. Be it breakfast, lunch or dinner it is a good place to have food. And you will find enough people at each of these times. I had the privilege to go this place like at 8 in the morning. Be warned it opens at 10 am, well the security guard understood my friends Khanda's love for Dhoklas and let us enter a bit early. Specials for me include raj kachori, paneer tikka, choley bahture and jalebi. Light on pocket and high in taste and feel. I should start an online petition for more of such places all over the world.

* Barista: This place is only in this list because of the chocolate excess. I like it warm enough that the chocolate is about to melt and without the scoop ice-cream along it, lets me enjoy the flavour of it.  I should probably track down their caterers and ask them to make deliveries at my home.  

* Wengers: Located at CP A-block.  Pastry shops with a lots to offer. They have an online delivery system. But the real fun is going there and experiencing the tray full of pastries, air laden with pastry & bread smells & burps. Apart from the pastries they also have some of the best kebabs and chocolates on offer. The shammi kebabs are my pick. They just dissolve in your mouth. Also this is the only place I have found the real rum balls (chocolate filled with rum) in Delhi. You cannot just have one of these and if you have too many you might just light up.


* Keventers: Located next to Wengers. After a having stomach full of snacks and pasties from Wengers, wash it down with a large bottle of milkshakes from Keventers. The bottle is so large that it could be enough to feed a family a for a day. But the feeling of fullness you feel after draining the bottle into your stomach can only be compared to an all-you-can-eat-buffet-at-a-five-star-of-course-some-company-is-paying-for-it type of things.


After writing such long post which like took me a month to write (duhh I had to revisit all these places to refresh the tastes in my mouth), I think to start writing a book. Don't be surprised if you see food guide on book stands before I even write a research paper. Before I start a self admiration society, I hope some people will visit Delhi to have good foodie weekend (and I will get paid for putting these joints names in my post).


Happy good food hunting !!

Favourite Whimsical quotes of a Narcissist

Running post edited whenever I like a quote:

Me on:

1. not drinking alcohol : I don't mind drinking it but I don't like drinking it.

2. money: Money is not the problem, spending is. *

3. wearing sunglasses inside the house: I feel naked without them. *

4. burping a lot: why fart and waste it, when you can burp and taste it. :P

   Grosser version: why shit and waste it, when you can vomit and ...... :P

5.  doing things in time: If a thing cannot be done twice, it cannot be done. Do baar kar lenge

6. good life: it is good friends, good food and a sleepy conscience (sorry Oscar Wilde)

7.  Stereotypes: I don't make stereotypes I just propagate them

more coming soon .....

*these are the ones I stole from my dad

Update: Changed the title to suit the message I wanted to convey

Why ?

What is this ? Why am I feeling this ?
What is different now ? Why do I remember ?
Why do I enjoy this ? Why don't I get sleep ?
Why is this longing ? Why do I want ?
Why cannot it be ? Why do I feel Happy with this pain ?
Will it be or not ? What  if ?
Why did this happen ? What is this pain?
Is this stupid ? Why cannot  I leave ?
Why do I imagine ? Why do I dream ?
How can I stop this ? Is this love ?
Or just girl in the ring ?

A little bit of background (:P): This piece I wrote in March 2011. I had a crush and after a while it just went away. Probably the girl satisfied my list (:P) and then I found something averse. Anyhow feel free to comment.

Diwali ki woh raat

My first Diwali away from home ....

दिवाली की वोह रात

अपनो से दूर सब को याद कर लेता हूँ |

मन ही मन सबसे बात कर लेता हूँ |

पापा के साथ पटाके खरीद लेता हूँ |
उनका कुरता पहन पटाके फोड़ लेता हूँ |

माँ के साथ पूजा कर लेता हूँ |
उसके हाथ की कचोड़ियाँ मूंह में भर लेता हूँ |

बहन को पटाखौॅ से डरा लेता हूँ |

उसके साथ चुप के मिठाई खा लेता हूँ |

दादा दादी से पैसे ले लेता हूँ |
उनके आशीर्वाद से सो वर्ष जी लेता हूँ |

बुआ के साथ हरयाणवी बोल लेता हूँ |

उसके साथ अपने लिए लड़की ढूंड लेता हूँ |

मामा के सीर पे चढ़ लेता हूँ |

उनकी सुपारी छुपा लेता हूँ |

दोस्तोँ के साथ घूम लेता हूँ |

सारे किस्से याद कर लेता हूँ |

यादोँ की लड़ियो से यह सूनी दिवाली की रात बरात कर लेता हूँ |

पल पल की इन यादोँ से एक पल और जी लेता हूँ |

Almost a perfect day

What is a perfect day ? Start the day early, get your timetable right, have good food and have fun and sleep twice-thrice during the day just to catch up on the sleep for the next day. 

 So this Sunday started quite well. As I woke up I talked to a very dear friend, then with my bua. Talking to her is always fun, gossip about family and her advice to find a girl for myself. As she doesn't want to do the matchmaking thing for me. Did my routine exercises after that, meditated, had cereal and got to work. As I was trying to complete my optimization homework (yes I still have to do homework), i was pondering on the fact why the hell am I even doing courses. I should concentrate on a finding a supervisor, write ludicrous research interest documents to express my love for the research I want to do and I should "fill gaps in my knowledge". Ohhh this the filling the gaps part which I am doing. After realizing that what I was taking as artificial variables were in fact slack variables, pk comes into the room and suggests we start cooking lunch. 

Azhu had his eyes on pk and vj, making sure that these guys didn't put to much masala into the rajma and fried-leftover-spaghetti. So after 2 hours of cooking we were having rice, spaghetti, rajma, channa masala and methi ke parantha. Come to think of it we are five nerdy bachelors whose life revolves around discussions of deathnote, movies, maths and have really awesome food everyday - \m/. FYI if some wants to cook some amazing methi paranthas click here. Sorry Manjula aunty but some how nani's indian cooking website is better. As we started watching firefly for the 3rd time, we discussed if we should leave food for anky who will be arriving soon from Kaiserslautern. Well hunger seems to overpower goodwill and reason. 

Feeling full, I got back to work. I realized my chuddie-buddy/bhai Chintu had asked me to convert some videos to 3gp for his nokia 5130 phones and send it to him. I had previously tried arista transcoder (the only ubuntu interface for 3gp conversion for a 64 bit machine)  which had given me 3gp videos without the audio and mp4 videos without the video ..weird ...... Finally azhu's new 32 bit windows 7 installation came in handy...... mobile media converter works awesomely (unfortunately the same is not available for 64 bit ubuntu, somebody needs to file a bug). As I again got back to work, sitting on my grandpa chair I was over-encumbered by food induced sleep and went to bed to catch on sleep for the next day. During the sleep, I remember pk entering my room talking about extremely cheap o2 connection and then anky coming back with his honeybee shades on.  2 hours later I found myself in the kitchen next to azhu who was cooking dal in a pressure cooker and frying the leftover rice (I dont remember how I got there may be sleep walked into the kitchen). In that inebriated state, I saw azhu prepare food and keep it in pk's room. My hunger seemed to have comeback. As azhu went to call vj from his room, I tried to control my hunger. 

As I moved towards the pressure cooker to open it against azhu's advice, i had flashes from my childhood --- I was 7 and my ma was offering me my favourite chocolates but i refused and she kept them in the cupboard. Then suddenly the hunger over-encumbered me and I was standing on a stool trying to pull out the chocolates from the cupboard. Whoosh went my stool and my head made contact with the floor. Blood started oozing from my head. My chillax little sister (3 years then) came in with a white towel and gave me the towel. As I applied the towel on my head, my sis shouted "ma mitu bhaiya ka sir phat gaya jab woh chocolate le rahe the app ki cupboard se" our eyes met, a grin appeared on her face.... (some how kids also get dark humor). 

I came out of it, as I inched closer to pressure cooker, I suddenly remembered how recently while trying to get the apartments keys duplicated at shop near McD-- I was overpowered by thoughts to have that fresh-lettuce-tomatoes-cheese-aloo-patty-veggie burger and gave the keys at the shop and hurried to McD. In the hurry to have that burger I had forgotten to ask the guy how much would it take to get the keys duplicated. Well I had the burger and returned to shop only to burn a hole in my pocket for 39 euros for 3 keys..... wtf ......  were these thoughts pointing at something, was hunger playing with my good sense to make good decisions. 

Ahh what a load of crap, I went ahead and tried to open the pressure cooker. It wasn't going to open easily but i was determined to satiate my hunger, a few cuss words later I was about to open and then pressure cooker decided to help me..... bam went the cover of the cooker to the roof ...... and hot dal on my face and everywhere except in my stomach. I rushed to basin only to open hot water and wash my face with it. ufff it was like lava was eating away my flesh. (AHHHHHHH). 

The rest of the night went by with azhu, vj and me having the leftovers. Vj one of the tallest guy i know, touched new heights, cleaned the roof standing on a table while azhu laughed his ass off.. and i applied cold water to my face. I also goto see an emergency room from the inside, talked to the doctor about how jim morrison, jimmy hendrix and ozzy osbourne might have had similar accidents but they must have been drunk. Seeing off avishek, I went back home with a black eye with cream all over my face. And sleeping off in my bed finally finishing the work I had started in the mornning. 

So what is a perfect day ? According to me seva, sadhna and satsang defines it .  Seva, I helped my friend encode videos CHECK. Satsang, I had good people around me all the time CHECK. Sadhana, I finally completed my work ... well almost half CHECK. Apart from that I got a funny story to blog about, everyone had a good laugh about a burnt face, pk has a new wall Murial in his room made of dal which he didn't ask for but the effort counts, I got insights as to what might the reason behind my impulses of stupidity-- HUNGER and a burned face.

25 Random Things

This mania had caught me up when I had joined fb. While I think of ways to kill my ego, how egotistical was I to do this or am I while I repost it.

2 I love cars and bikes.(by the way i don't noe how to drive anything :P)
3 I love paneer, chicken, mutton, bengan ka bartha, bengan aloo, aloo parantha, the list is endless .... i don't like mushrooms.
5 I love walking, running, exercising and playing cricket (even though i 'm just good at fielding).
7 I love watching movies. i aim at completing the imdb's top 250 list.
11 I feel really weird when i 'm not able to check my email for the whole day
13 I 'm finding it very difficult to write down these 25 things.
17 I am a pushover. I easily say yes to anything.
19 I really feel that slumdog millionaire has been over hyped. Would rather see TZP at the oscars!!
23 I write poems.
29 I like keeping clean. So don't be surprised if you find my room tidy.
31 I can be really lazy and careless ... sometimes.
37 I am big fan of Jessica Alba. Though her acting is not gr8. But i find here really really beautiful.
41 I really hate when people walk around listening to music on their mobile in loud speaker mode.
43 I feel like crap, when i see people bitching about each other on tv.
47 I do maintain a timetable but usually find it difficult sticking to it.
53 I love beaches.
59 I 'm big fan of sitcoms.
61 I don't drink and love it when people find it hard to believe.
67 I love when people go drunk and laugh on my stupid jokes.
71 I find it really difficult to believe that people crib about being in an IIT.
73 I believe in a supreme power but condemn all the rituals we follow.
79 I 'm really confused what type of job i want but should be well paying enough so that i cud buy a mansion near a beach and a pontiac.
83 I love cartoons. My current favourite is Shin Chan.
89 I used to break dance, and hoping that i 'll pick it up soon again
97 I am a mathematician. (I just realized there are 25 primes in the first 100 naturals)