I was just involved in a discussion on cookery shows with another buddy of mine, which followed from the last episode of season 14 in South Park and there’s many things I thought of as a result of that conversation.

After I moved out of my parents’ place, I have lived my own for almost seven years, mostly in Bangalore, Hyderabad and now Gurgaon. I’ve had to learn cooking to survive and I’ve decided that I will devote extensive time in the future towards mastering and honing my culinary skills, both as a means of addressing my strong need to eat good food and also because cooking, in my opinion is an art form that can provide much delight.

Eating out extensively during this time, both by choice and by compulsion has led to me having some observations on food that I wanted to pen down, to revisit during those times when my passion for food would probably wane in the face of life getting in the way, so that I can renew my faith in my gastronomic forays once again.

1. Local food (in India) is awesome: An open mind and an open heart are supposedly two necessary pre-requisites to being a good person. This applies to food as well and getting out of one’s food comfort zone to sample the local fare in whatever part of the country one is in makes for great experiences.

Our country has a maddening range of local food options and the difference in cuisine is evident across small distances. Karnataka food, for instance is different along the coast, in North Karnataka and even towards the south in Bangalore and Mysore. Each style of cuisine, in turn, is splendid and there’s enough variety for one to keep cycling through and not get bored of the food.

For instance, when I was living in Bangalore, there used to be this little place that served jowar rotis with different dal and curry at a reasonable rate and they’d pack it well. Being a ten minute walk away from where I stayed in Banashankari stage 3, this was an awesome place to head out to in order to have some tasty, nutritious food.

2. Never write off vegetarian food: There’s a constant tussle between vegetarians and non-vegetarians regarding the respective virtues of each type of food. I’ve been on both sides and even though I’ve enjoyed Al-Kauser’s galouti and kakori kebabs on many a wintry evening (and I am drooling as I write this) and had some fantastic conveyor belt sushi at the Yum Yum Tree, the best meals I can recall having in my entire life are vegetarian.

Great food isn’t only about the taste, but also about the time when you eat it. For instance, here’s a post I wrote nearly four years ago about the best meal I have had in my life.

Another memorable set of meals that I have consumed were the packed lunches prepared by the women’s self-help group kitchen at Anegundi. Tasty, low on oil, nutritious and brilliant beyond words.

The supposed lack of vegetarian options abroad is also a myth, with vegetarianism and vegan lifestyles percolating through into the most ardent meat consuming regions on the planet that people want to travel to. Of course, the definition of ‘vegetarian’ might vary, but that is a minor matter that is of very little concern to me personally.

3. Fine Dining is worth the money paid for it: Fine dining is part of experimenting with cuisine. Cuisines from different parts of Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and even from the Americas can all be amazing. However, for someone to cook it the right way to maintain authentic taste by using the right ingredients might cost a lot more here than it does in the place of origin of said food item.

Quite obvious, I’d reckon, considering how even across India, staple food in one place is considered reasonably exotic elsewhere. There still is no justification to charge INR 50 for a plate of idlis here in the NCR, but I’d consume it regardless, simply because any South Indian food going into a South Indian’s belly is always a good thing.

What one would pay for, insofar as fine dining is concerned is the authenticity, expertise as well as the ambience and if this is infrequent, the price paid for it however high, albeit within the bounds of affordability is well worth it.

4. Always Experiment: Every single time I end up going to a place alone, or with people that are keen on experimenting, I order something I’ve not eaten before. This is how I discovered food like Kakiage Don, Po’boys, Clam Chowder, Doro Wat with Injera and many other memorable food items that I am grateful to have consumed.

As nutrition expert Adelle Davis said, “We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us be much more than what we are.”

Lunch time. Later!

In addition, I was asked to shift out of the house I used to live in for the first eight months of my stay in Gurgaon and the need to move out four days before I was to leave the darn place for over three weeks meant that my entire setup was in shambles.

I am a compulsive loner so far as my accommodation situation is concerned and despite having had the time of my life on my trip, I was dreading getting back home and opening the door to see a house not settled into, with dust and cobwebs all over the place.

The scene that I encountered was no different from what I’d imagined. An unclean floor is always a bitch and a dusty one with white tiles that my landlord placed despite all my protests just compounded my misery further.

The weekend was spent in reorganization of my entire setup and this week has been spent in honing my cooking skills once more. The washing machine, microwave oven and fridge have made my life beautiful and have rendered me fully independent for the most part.

The inconvenience of having to open the door to a maid who might have to be micromanaged has instead given way to a twice-in-a-week cleaning that I will have to stick to. The need to cook dinner for myself, instead of the cook in the previous place who used to give me tasty food on average has also increased the burden on my daily life, while also bringing about a stronger semblance of full and complete independence.

Some of my friends remarked that I was scarily domesticated and that I was almost married in terms of the routine that I follow.

I was unable to interpret it for my mind thought of it in two ways – Am I domesticated to a point where marriage or cohabitation with a partner would not bring about too many changes into my life style? Or was it that the life style changes that marriage brings about in people have already set in within me and therefore the very task of having to “settle down” has therefore been rendered null and void?

In any case, the complete independence and therefore complete responsibility that I last enjoyed in Bangalore before I went to B-school has now once again become the story of my life as I go about doing all that I need to do to get by. I am my own cook, cleaner, washer man and man Friday and the time saved by outsourcing these activities is offset by the convenience with which I am able to work on all these activities, thereby making me more disciplined overall. Or so I hope.

I am still to document my review of 2010, wherein the total distance traveled will feature prominently in my log. In addition, I also need to work extensively on my travelogue to document the fruition of my long cherished and long awaited trip to Israel.

I think travel is my writerly muse and my mojo has returned. Please look forward to a barrage of posts in the days ahead. It will not be too boring, on that you have my word.

Being a cheap and lazy guy who doesn’t want to spend all his time at home online, I have consciously avoided getting another internet connection at home, after a previous TATA Indicom wireless modem connection outlasted its usefulness and was therefore unceremoniously discarded.

This meant that I did not check email / update my website / surf arbitly for seven whole days, and this has led to much rejoicing because it has shown me that I don’t depend on the net as much as I had previously assumed.

Nevertheless, despite the past seven days of my life having as much content as an entire season of Seinfeld, there were some random things I did manage to do, and one of them was to check out the new Swagath Garuda Mall in Jayanagar, after having written about it a few days ago.

Right at the outset, let me tell you that this building is an excuse for a mall. In fact, I would go on further to say that even a big bazaar in its place would’ve served a far better purpose, despite being among my least favourite establishments. At least the latter stacks up on half liter packets of Nestle Goodlife milk and Oreo cookies, combined with attractive discount offers on the purchase of Real Activ juice containers.

There is no common area in the mall like you have for most malls that you might’ve seen. There are only two entrances – one to climb the stairs to get to the third and fourth floors to reach the food court and INOX, and the other entrance to the Westside store, which occupies the entire ground floor.

The Landmark bookstore has no direct entrance and one has to get in through the Westside store to access it, and the entire roundabout way of accessing the few stores in that ‘mall’ would lead anyone to believe that they skipped the entire design phase during the making of this mall.

The ‘multiplex’, on a Monday afternoon, was screening three movies, one Telugu, one Kannada the other one being ‘Hello’. I’d rather have watch the same episode of ‘Hum Paanch’ six times in a row, than sit through any one of those three movies being screened at that time.

At 1600 on Monday, I think I was the only person not employed at that mall who was present there, and although I was totally thrilled about the absolute lack of people, it was quite evident that the lack of people was due to the lack of anything worthwhile to do at that place.

I wish to apologize to anyone who wants to take this apology for having gone out on a limb to engage in premature celebrations with regard to how this mall and the multiplex and bookstore within would change the face of south Bangalore as we knew it. To my immense relief, PVR isn’t that far away from this mall in any case. Maybe south Bangalore doesn’t really need a mall because we aren’t mall rats per se.

Plus I’d rather not get my “Meh” t-shirt or my “Security” t-shirt torn in any fracas that ensues from a retaliation to my righteous moral indignation.

I’ve ranted about virtually everything I can survey, including announcements at the airport loud enough to wake the dead, about cell phones and people who stand way too close to you when you are in a que.

This recent TOI article which put Madman on the front page has sought opinions from a bunch of people who’ve been strongly vocal about being all for child free zones in the country, and are willing to cough up some money to ensure some peace of mind. This particular set of posts makes for interesting reading, if this topic has caught your fancy.

I want to go watch Wall-E in the theatres shortly, but I am scared of going because of the noisy irritating kids, their noisier and more irritating parents, that will kill the movie for me. Sundays, in particular, are a bad time to hang out at a mall, which, by itself is a bad place to hang out in, in the first place.

Also, the presence of pesky badly behaved children on flights is is probably a reason why all international flights serve free alcohol, so that people that want to can drink up and crash. (Funny how using the word crash on a plane makes people cringe. It is one of the best ways of unfriending the person(s) sitting next to you.) In the absence of said free alcohol, twelve hour flights would be agonizingly painful, since the presence of kids guarantees a lack of absolute silence at all times, except during turbulence (which is quite fun to experience in retrospect).

An interesting incident that took place yesterday further fuelled me to write this post. I had been to Big Bazaar to buy chocolates to satiate my urge to gorge on sweets, which has lasted for more than a fortnight now, and alarmingly so. The chocolates counter was closed as a result of which, I picked up the next best thing, Hide and Seek Milano biscuits, and was standing in queue patiently, when some random kid who must’ve been four or five years old just walked past me, walked back towards me when she spotted the biscuit packet in my hand, and held into it and tugged it.

The shop was closing, and I had been sleeping all day and needed my sugar fix, and there was no way I was going to let a badly behaved kid snatch the pack from me. I did what I thought Wolverine would do in such a situation, I bared my teeth and growled at her in a menacing way, and since I hadn’t combed my hair after having woken up and was dressed in my favourite pair of horribly torn jeans, I could’ve passed off as a junkie who’s food shouldn’t be messed with.

The growl made the kid run for cover, and she hid behind her Mum and was taking a peek at me occasionally when she thought I wasn’t looking. The guy standing behind me in queue, who was standing too close initially saw the incident from up close, and then respectfully stepped back some distance when I went ahead to the check-out counter.

Growling and baring one’s teeth works. I’m sure if I had been even remotely badly behaved like said kid, my Dad would’ve given me a roundhouse kick. Thankfully, such instances were few and far between.

BTW, I vote in favour of child-free zones.

If contests were reformatted to be about who consumes N items of food, regardless of time, I would stand a fighting chance. But that is beside the point.

Like I mentioned before, I love to cook, but it isn’t something I have been doing too much off-late. My culinary skills came to the fore under circumstances of extreme duress. In August 2005, after having nearly experienced death (another expansion of NED) due to a severe case of bronchopneumonia that resulted in me being holed up in bed for ten days during the festival season, I developed a strong aversion towards outside food of any kind. Although the condition that affected was more towards the pulmonary region rather than the gastric region, I was nevertheless unable to eat properly for almost ten straight days and lost a whole lot of weight.

Being skinny and underweight ever since I was about four, before which I was as fat as a miniature version of Jabba the Hut, when I say I lost a whole lot of weight, I do mean it. My cheeks were hollow and for the first time after the end of engineering college, I could once again see all my ribs.

This aversion towards eating outside food regardless of its price / quality spurred me on to learn cooking and avoid outside food altogether. The slight problem of not having a kitchen until May 2006 when I moved into an apartment with a few friends kept me from having a go with the cooking utensils, but even fate could not delay the inevitable.

My three subsequent trips abroad also honed my culinary skills to a point where I could confidently claim to all and sundry that I could cook, without cooking being considered as the ability to make maggi noodles or tea. I could cook to save my life (as I have done so on a few occasions) and I guess it was one of those thigs people tend to add on their ‘life resume’ and would, more often than not make a rather desired bullet-point on it.

I currently stay alone in a house that has a kitchen in it, but I haven’t cooked food in a really long time. I would attribute my lack of enthusiasm towards cooking to two factors – I haven’t had a significant gastronomic accident that has resulted in unpleasantness and aversion towards outside food to that great an extent (touchwood) and I spend way too much time in cooking for myself.

The second factor in question is a result of the fact that I view cooking as a labour of love, and I spend time in cutting vegetables correctly so that they are of even size and are uniform, garnishing the food and generally working on making it look good before I dig in mercilessly and clean up the entire plate.

When I do end up cooking, the quantity I prepare sometimes exceeds the amount I could eat in one sitting as a result of which I spend about two hours polishing off what I’ve made. Add that to about an hour / hour and a half spent in making the food and what I now have is the clock striking 2300 hours by the time I am done eating, assuming I started preparation at 2000 hours.

Also, there’s vessels to be washed and the kitchen to be cleaned thereafter, which I end up doing myself because I am too lazy to hire a maid who’d show up and would require me to be home in the evening or be awake in the morning at a certain time, and I see myself as being above such encumbrances. I’m also too lazy to hire a cook for the same reasons. I might also be cheap, but that has been a congenital condition of mine which, somehow has nothing to do with anything concerning food.

But my craving for home cooked food has only increased over the years, and in order to cater to my needs, I have come up with the idea of cook buddy (or cook buddies, rather).

If there is a family that lives within walking distance of my house and would be willing to host me on two days of the week for having dinner at their place, I’d be willing to pay good money for it. This is in line with my being too lazy to cook unless ample motivation is provided, and would sort out considerations of proximity to my residence as well as provide me with good food in return.

I don’t ask that the family in question serve me food that is gourmet-level. I merely ask that on two days in a week, the said family or bunch of people that live together make an extra portion of whatever they’re cooking and have me over to consume it. If the food is simple, vegetarian and is home-prepared, it would fit the bill appropriately.

In return, I would be willing to be a temporary member of the family until such time that the food gets over and then leave and go home until the next time that I was scheduled to visit them. This would mean that I would be courteous, polite, I’d pass the salt when asked for and refrain from breaking wind at the table and not make unsolicited comments about anything that is wrong with them, if at all.

There are plenty of people out there who want to cook but have the disinclination to do so due to a multitude of factors. Their living situation also prevents them from eating home cooked food every single day at their place of residence as a result of which they end up eating random food outside, which is cooked without the most important ingredient that goes into making good food – love.

At the risk of sounding immodest like I always do, I would also consider myself as interesting enough company for the family to look forward to having me over on the stipulated days. They’d of course be given the opportunity to interview me and meet me before zeroing in on a prospective match for their cutlery and their dining table, but I’d be ok for that as well, as would hundreds of other people in my predicament.

I believe that the west has a similar concept in place for fulfilling the carnal needs of a person, and that rhymes with cook buddy. We are, as a society not as immoral or polygamous and hence we’d rather keep things G-rated and just roceed onward with the search for the right cook-buddy.

An off-shoot of said idea would be to invite people over to one’s place after having cooked for them, but I’d rather not propose it because I don’t like too many people coming over to my house. The ones who are welcomed with open arms at any time know who they are.

But whenever I see people eat idli-vada, I notice that they always use spoons without exception, and in most cases it is two spoons, in a manner similar to how people use forks and knives to eat food in the west. I am sure that idly and vada dishes have existed since a long time, which means that it is a recent change that has prompted people to use spoons to cut, dip and eat the idlis and the vadas in the slightly clumsy manner in which they do.

Dosas, which are also staple fare, despite also being served with sambhar and chutney are not eaten using spoons. Its probably because its not convenient for them to be consumed that way, although I have seen peculiar characters who do manage to use knives and forks to eat dosas.

As a teenager, I used to eat with a spoon all the time, and I guess my sister picked up from me as well. I did manage to get myself ridiculed for this habit of mine, but I managed to up the ante thereafter when I mastered the fine art of eating with chopsticks.

I’d start eating lunch with chopsticks and since lunch consisted mainly of rice and some sambhar or dal to go along with it, and some curry, by the time I finished eating my lunch, dinner would be served. Despite eating all that I could, my weight still remains what it was when I was 4 years of age. My width has decreased to give way to an increase in height.

Evolution has resulted in me coming back to square one and eating with my hands again. Somehow, I guess, instinctive behaviour is always the right one.

Also, next time you are at a darshini, do pay attention to the way people eat with two spoons. Just makes you feel more superior when you gorge on food with your hands.

This is also an attempt to prevent people from over-eating and also to ensure that the overall health of the community goes up. Here is further reading on the topic for those not interested in my awesome idea, which is to follow in the next paragraph.

Restaurants that are really bothered about the health of their patrons more than the profits they make (and if one such exists, I’d be quite surprised, to put it mildly) should introduce a mechanism at their entry gate which prevents people of a certain weight or above from proceeding into the restaurant.

Of course, keeping in mind the fact that skinny tall people might weigh as much as short, fat people in some cases, the entry of the patrons in the restaurant should be made based on how disproportionate they are height-weight wise. Basically, keeping in mind the height of a particular person, they shouldn’t exceed a certain weight and if they do, they should wait outside (or return home) while the rest of their family would eat good food within the restaurant.

The advantages of this are that people will become conscious of waiting outside restaurants because they are too fat, and instead si and work out to get into shape so that they can pig out at said places. The overall health of the community will see an improvement.

As I was writing this post, I also realized that this concept in turn would show me as a narrow minded person who’s angered the fat-camp. So, I figured I’ll balance it out by stating that the restaurants should also have an exit criterion, which states that a person who conforms to a particular height + weight combination can leave the place ONLY if they’ve crossed a certain weight limit, and that too only after ensuring that they’ve ingested the food properly (so as not to throw it up later on).

This will ensure that dumbass anorexic models will start looking normal and human, like the rest of us if they eat at the said awesome restaurant. I don’t know how much this has angered the thin-camp, but I hope it has had its desired effect.

The restaurant, will, obviously, reserve the right of service only to select patrons, and as a result of wanting to keep everyone out will attract more people and will become a flourishing business in itself.

Any takers for the idea?

This post can be better understood if one is to read Skimpy’s posts tagged food, specially the ones that talk about these vegetarian self-serving hotels which serve as standing joints where one can get a quick bite and move ahead to keep up with the busy pace of life.

The thing is, dishes made either directly or derived out of some or the other form of rice are the staple features on a Darshini menu, and invariably one notices that pulao is on the items list for breakfast.

The average price of any item available for breakfast at a Darshini usually ranges from about INR 6 to INR 15, and this careful pricing has some intent behind it. A plate of pulao, consequently, costs about INR 12. This is the South Indian breakfast version of pulao, which is served with ritha, and makes for decent breakfast.

The North Indian variant of the pulao, which, at most Darshinis ends up being served as a lunch or dinner item essentially is the same as its breakfast counterpart. However, for some inexplicable reason, it is priced at atleast twice the rate despite having nearly the same taste, while being accompanied by raitha and some vegetable gravy thrown in for added measure.

Cleverer people who want to eat food at the Darshini should, at the risk of wanting to compromise with food that is freshly made vis-a-vis food made a few hours earlier, pick up a parcel of the breakfast pulao, heat it up and eat it. The breakfast version has these bread crumbs in it that somehow make it tastier than one would imagine.

I live alone and comfortably in a small and compact, albeit cozy 1BHK (bedroom | hall | kitchen, for those uninitiated in house-hunting jargon ), with a little more than the basic amenities that one would require for living in a place like that. This post doesn’t lament the fact that I stay alone, I choose to live like that, I have a large ‘my space’ radius, if you know what I mean.

In addition, I do on certain occasions manage to whip up a meal in the evenings, and in the absence of a maid-servant or any other help (once again, out of my own volition) manage all the chores such as washing vessels, clothes, cleaning the place and the general maintenance and upkeep that a house like that requires.

My cooking forays have surprised some of my close friends, specially with the amount of time invested in preparing something elaborate for me to chomp on, and it comes as a surprise to them that I would do something like that, solely for myself.

The food is invariably rich in ghee/oil, and is the kind that would settle into one’s stomach and would require exercise for digestion. Its also been told, in a lot of health circles, that the quantity one eats should proportionately decrease as one approaches sleep-time, which means that a breakfast should be the heaviest meal, while lunch and dinner should end up getting progressively lighter.

Conversely, my routine and lifestyle just brings about the very opposite of that stated axiom for healthy living. Light or no breakfasts, with the urgency of having to get to the office, a long and decent quality lunch with friends, and a more often than not elaborate spread for dinner, by me, for me. This, plus some late night reading / TV watching / arbit writing results in my staying up late, and I’ve found out that with a quick 20 min power nap at the office, five and a half hours of sleep is necessary and sufficient to get by without drops in productivity levels (though I am not sure, for how long).

Now, I have this idea of jogging in order to get into shape, and by shape, I just mean a resurrection of my now weak stamina, for I shall remain as skinny as a rail for the rest of my life, regardless. I thought of jogging in the morning after waking up, and leaving the water-heater on so that the water is ready to put bath by the time I return, have an elaborate breakfastpost bath and then go to the office.

This sounds very nice in theory, but with a lot of other things to contend with during the entire time before I have to head out to the office, it just becomes cumbersome sometimes, which is where the solo living manages to bog one down.

I am currently in search of the perfect balance that will enable me to do all the work that comes out of not having anyone else to share it with, while at the same time, ensuring that there’s scope for healthy existence.

What I am looking out for, I guess is the perfect routine, that will not bore me to death eventually. Paradoxically, that is precisely what routines generally do!

Tony Fadell was the guy who originally came up with the concept of the iPod and was hired by Apple later on, and Jonathan Ive was the person responsible for its subsequent designs.
This is not a blog posting extolling their virtues or their contributions to society and to music lovers (and of late, music video and photo lovers too). I have not reached the level yet, where my blog is going to revolve around anyone but me. Tis true, empty vassals make more noise, sort of like empty vessels themselves.

Anyway, for more on these guys and the iPod, go here.

In the last posting I spoke about how the music died, ever since I started work. I thankfully have the good fortune of being able to have 24/7 access to the internet, which I shamelessly exploit by downloading mp3s, among other things.

My comp at work has a sound card, and I am given the liberty of being able to use headphones while at work, whenever it is not required that I listen to someone. This is rarely the case, with a million interruptions about this bug, or that doc update or a whole host of other things that inadvertently ensure that your listening experience is as smooth as travelling on an unserviced pre World War I era bicycle with flattened tyres on the roughest stretches of Bannerghatta road.

In addition, my material assets, allegdly portable, did not warrant being carried around because my built is not conducive to me wearing pants whose pockets are big enough to accommodate a five inch diameter discman, without it appearing as if I have a bulge in my pants. The bulge in the pants would not be such a bad thing if only God made me look more like Adam Garcia, so that it would invite pick-up lines from nubile pretty young things, and not so young nubile pretty things, and not so nubile pretty young things and so on (3 parameters, how many combinations….go figure!). But for the one single time I took it, all that the flattened lunchbox lookalike of a discman that could only play audio CDs and not mp3s invited, was looks from jackasses with mp3 players and compact ear plugs with long battery backups, who made me feel as if I was Leopold, (from Kate and Leopold) minus the charm, the good looks, the charisma, the money and the sex appeal. In short, apart from the fact that my headphones looked like I had robbed a 3 year old of her hairband, and the flattened lunchbox thing which was half out of my pockets when I sat in the office bus, I thought the music had come back to my life.

Note: travel advisory- please travel in office buses without speakers, which keep blaring songs from radiocity 91FM in the morning, for they will induce a feeling that makes motion sickness seem orgasmic!

I don’t get paid much. Come to think of it, I think the salary that I draw is about 0.0002 percent of what my CEO’s fixed deposit for his pet dog gets as interest, and that divided by 12 is what I get monthly, and minus tax cuts and so many other deductions that leave me as confounded as I did when I tried to understand women from as early as class 2, I am left with this paltry sum of money with which I can barely make ends meet (whatever the definition of that is).

The prospect of listening to music on my antiquated discman was so inviting that I totally overlooked the fact that I couldn’t carry the bulky 9V adapter with me in the bus. Hence I had to rely on batteries, and alkaline batteries are about 40 bucks a pair. I didn’t for the life of me imagine that I would have to make daily investments of that amount, to be able to listen to 13 songs on a CD burnt when I was a little less musically enlightened than I currently am. In short, it was not exactly a pleasant experience. I decided to switch to standard batteries for some time, but they ran dry so fast, (half a song listened to at volume to drown out radiocity playing on the bus) that I felt that the company that made discmen had some sort of connection with these battery manufacturers to make the lives of the ordinary consumer miserable by draining them out faster than a swimming pool would be drained if Obelix jumped in it. So much for asinine consipracy theories.

After the debacle that was CAT 2005, I figured that I had to do something to get a fresh start to the new year 2006, and made up my mind to get the music back into my life, and do a proper job of it this time.
To cut a really long story to pieces and examine the most relevant part with an electron microscope and present it to you, I zeroed in on an iPod.
A work of art, a wonderful companion, black, stored 30GB of whatever you wanted it to, played videos and stored photos, and was sleek and thin.
A good friend of mine named Vinayak Kamath came down from the US for his engagement, and at the same time, managed to buy me an iPod that meets the above specs.
It was love at first sight, and it felt like a new relationship altogether, me and my iPod.

Life has now become an endless movie soundtrack, and right from the time I take the long walk to the bus stop till the time I get back home, everything feels so good.
The other day, I had to catch a bus, and had to chase it for quite a distance. PF’s “in the flesh” was playing in the background, and I could actually visualise myself running towards the bus in slow motion, with other hapless motorists swerving to avoid running me over, to make it to the bus stop and lunging towards the door just in time before the driver could get the bus into second gear. The whole mundane exercise of chasing the bus seemed so romantic that now, I really look forward to even being chased by a ferocious canine at the dead of night, with some appropriate song playing on the pod.

I need to add something to my definition of an ideal life, something I guess I had taken for granted for quite some time.
Good food, good sleep, good shit and good music.

This blog posting is dedicated to an amazingly talented guitarist, someone named Prashant Linus Patrick (fondly called Prashant Anus Fat-dick), who was the lead guitarist of the band I used to play for onceuponatime ago, who lost half a finger on his left hand in an unfortunate accident. Hope he gets to play again.