Author: manuscrypts

  • Punjabi By Nature

    We’re not, but since food transcends all cultural and geographical barriers, we decided to drop in at the restaurant by that name, on Hosur Road. (ok Marigowda Road then) When coming from Koramangala, this is just after Manchester United.  (map) Parking is taken care of. In any case, it’s just a short walk from Forum. Builds appetite.

    We reserved in advance, since the web seemed to suggest that. But the process turned out to be quite funny. When you call the number, and tell them you want to reserve a table, they take your number and inform you that they’ll call back. They did, after 5 minutes, and I wondered if they should have some missed call service instead.

    The thing that struck us as soon as we entered was that they had somehow used up the space to transport people far away from the busy road right outside. Superb ambiance, complete with greenery, mood lighting, comfortable seating, soft music, a view of the microbrewery….. and giant TVs. They also seem to have outdoor seating. In all, a very relaxing atmosphere.

    From the liquor menu, we decided to check out the Gol gappa shots – puris (2) filled with Indian spices, and you can add the vodka shot yourself. From the four flavours available, we asked for pepper. Since the hours were happy, we got another couple of shots. It comes with a glass of beer., and we asked for one wheat and one dark lager. The Gol gappas were pretty awesome, and the wheat beer is perfect for less-than-occasional drinkers like us. The dark lager is more standard. The shots were at Rs.395, but considering that a glass of beer costs Rs.150 standalone, it was a reasonable deal. In addition their regular menu, they also had a  few tawa delicacies.

    We asked for the Tawa Magaz Masala and though we were told initially that it wasn’t available and that we could have the regular version (Amritsari Magaz Masala) instead, it miraculously did appear on our table in the end. The Kandhari Murg was our next choice, and the person who took our order very helpfully suggested that we could manage with a half plate. Ditto with the Chicken Keema Naan, when we asked for two and he said one would be enough. Turned out he was right, the damn naan was more like a medium pizza in terms of size. The brain was quite good and spicy. The Kandhari Murg was a yellow gravy dish (not boneless) with the creamy texture of regular white gravies and quite rich. Both worked really well with the keema naan, a bit spicy and quite filling.

    We were too stuffed to check out the desserts. That was a miss, especially those flambe Gulab Jamuns I had read about somewhere. The service is, as mentioned, very helpful. All of the above cost us just less than Rs.1700, including taxes and a 10% service charge. It’s definitely quite costly, but if you do decide to splurge, you wouldn’t be disappointed with the food and ambiance that Punjabi By Nature provides.

    Punjabi By Nature, No:6, Krishna Nagar Industrial Area, Behind Forum Mall, Hosur Road Ph: 49138800

  • Realty Check 1

    They would’ve loved to live here. A relatively hidden area in the heart of Koramangala, such that the EMIs would karmically commit them to several rebirths. But they had a plan. A group deal involving like minded people – to dump garbage there everyday until the rates came down. This post is the first step. 😉

  • Deaf Heaven

    Pinki Virani

    I’m quite a fan of Pinki Virani’s earlier work – Once was Bombay, so there might be a bit of a bias here. 🙂

    ‘Deaf heaven’ is billed as her first work of fiction, but is perhaps as close to non-fiction as it can get. The characters are clearly based on the contemporary personalities – from movie stars to politicians, and the descriptions are such that a little knowledge can easily help you identify them – the ‘caterpillar -eyebrows’ actress to the leader of the saffron army, to the famous film star and his wannabe famous son and the lesbian maker of daily soaps. See? 🙂

    The narrator is the cleft lipped and recently dead Saraswati, librarian by profession and collector of facts. Over a weekend, with an eclipse that serves as a climax for the multiple narratives, she traces the lives of the characters, a mixture of the famous and the ordinary, connected to each other by varying degrees of separation.

    The book is a commentary on modern India and its mixture of contradictions, with representatives from different geographies, strata in life, age, and religion. Though primarily a woman’s perspective, the author manages to tackle the paradoxes of the emerging superpower – from female infanticide (and an ingenious way of communicating the unborn child’s gender – an illegal act), and tribal exploitation, to the mechanics of religion-politics, the effect of chemicals on vultures and the ‘death by railway track’ on Mumbai’s famed local trains, all interconnected, just like the characters.

    Though a preachy tone does dominate the last part of the book, it is definitely a must read, not just for the pertinent and fundamental questions the author makes us think about, but also for her razor sharp wit.

  • Glimpse into the future.. and the present

    Fans of Star Trek : The Next Generation would easily remember Geordi La Forge and his VISOR. For those not familiar, the VISOR is “a device used by the blind to artificially provide them with a sense of sight.” It does so by scanning a scene and transmitting it directly to the brain via optic nerves. Science fiction? Yes.

    But when I read about Google’s Augmented Reality glasses and the potential – from the glasses that could act as a guide for tourists at popular destinations to the more complex “consensual imaging among belief circles” for sharing ideas and to “overlay a trusted source’s view of a given scene on mine”, I wonder how far we really are from what would have been, until recently, tagged science fiction. In response to another related post shared on Google+, I commented, “I have this thought of the glasses capturing information even when the eyes are closed and the brain processing it by the time we’re awake.” I wonder if it is not far off when the ability of our natural sense organs will be negligible compared to the technology we create. No, we’re not getting into the augmented human debate or an eye vs camera one. 🙂

    I tweeted that I had expected Google to give me a view of parallel universes. (my alternate reality) 🙂 That’s probably still science fiction, until we really master time. But I did see something (awesome) on those lines too – The Quantum Parallelograph, a device that allows you to get a glimpse of your life in parallel universes.  Maybe there will indeed be a time, when a human species can make choices with all the data of not just its current reality, but alternate realities too. Would you really want it? Would the whimsical concept of an alternate reality make sense at all then?

    until next time, sight vs vision

  • 1, 2….34

    One of the characters in Preeta Samarasan’s “Evening is the whole day” asks, during a conversation, “Everyone is always so tired nowadays. I wish we could all be young forever, or whatever age we ourselves choose. What age would you be if you could choose..?“

    It made me think of what my answer would be. At first, I wondered if I would like to be older than what I am today – to sit back comfortably with the perspectives I have gained.  As the years pass by, and the memories accumulate, I seem to be viewing most phases of my life so far through a happy prism. Despite remembering a few specific instances that made me unhappy, and (paradoxically) being certain that I was probably frustrated/terrified/bitter on many occasions and would never want them to be repeated, I can now look back and smile at the overall scheme of things. Perhaps I am lucky or perhaps, this is the way it works for most of us.

    And yet, even happy memories, I have noticed, can evoke contrasting sentiments within me. When melancholy strikes, and I remember happy times, it’s a bit like what Alfred Tennyson wrote (in a context I have no idea of)

    “Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
    Tears from the depths of some devine despair 
    Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
    In looking on the happy autumn fields, 
    And thinking of the days that are no more.” 

    until next time, “I’ll spend my future living the past“