Author: manuscrypts

  • A small matter of life and death

    There’s this wonderful scene in ‘The Hurt Locker’ in which James talks to his baby son who is fully engrossed in playing with his toys

    You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don’t ya? Yea. But you know what, buddy? As you get older… some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you’ll realize it’s just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, I think it’s one.

    Its probably a generalisation, but I’m sure many people can identify with that. Figuring out at some point, that all the things and people they cherished, or they themselves, have moved on. In fact, there are many who might be even more unfortunate and realise that have nothing to love, going through the motions of life, as a job to be finished. But it could be even worse.

    Quite a morbid line of thought, but one that I felt compelled to share, because it made me think about so many things we take for granted. Sometime back, I had written about the ‘alone’ people I see in many places. Well, there’s another kind of people I have seen – sometimes during daily commute, at other times, when I travel.

    The kind of people who make me wonder what it is that makes them hold on to their life. The easiest example I could give are the beggars – no, not the ‘professional’ ones who haunt our traffic signals, but the ones that frequent obscure places, where there’s hardly a chance of them getting anything, the ones who don’t even ask. They sometimes look too old or invalid to move out of there. There are other examples too, ones that need not be at such levels of despair, but you probably get the drift.

    So what makes them plod on? A hope that things will become better? A dogged belief in the sanctity of life? A dull notion that life has to be lived on unto its natural conclusion? Or maybe they are in a state where they’re okay with what they’ve to live with or what life will dish out next? Or maybe they’re afraid that the experience after death will be worse.

    I’ll end where I started from – ‘The Hurt Locker’. To quote James again ‘Everyone’s a coward about something.‘ Sometimes it’s life, and sometimes it’s death.

    until next time, alive and clicking 🙂

  • Vembanad

    The review first appeared in Bangalore Mirror. This is a retelling that appears here after much delay. I do have a reason for it – was traveling, but it also matches Vembanad’s generic theme of delaying everything.

    Vembanad, the kaayal, would conjure up a host of beautiful images for those who have been there – Mallus or otherwise. For the former, the streaming images might also have a soundtrack. I’m way under equipped to review it, so I was happy to review a restaurant named after this famous Kerala ‘watermark’. Vembanad is part of The Paul Hotel, a luxury five star hotel on the Intermediate Ring Road, near Mother Earth. Here’s a map. The signboards are pretty helpful. It’s a fine dining restaurant that claims to specialise in southern seafood cuisine, but though the coastal slant is evident in the menu, the focus is clearly on Kerala dishes.

    I usually don’t make a mention of the guests here, but making an exception this time for Bijoy Venugopal, whose humour  helped us tide over the long waiting time, and little Mythili, my other guests’ child, who semmed to have a love for pappadams that I completely identified with. 🙂

    Vembanad’s dĂ©cor is quite classy, and the furniture does lend a Kerala touch in an elegant manner. The walls are adorned with interesting curios. A comfortable setting, but I wonder if I missed anything because of the really dim lighting. A couple at another table was using their mobile flashlights to read the menu and later, the bill.

    If you’re the kind who unabashedly likes coastal food, you would appreciate the menu. The starters section makes this point quite clearly with its complete lack of fowl play. The vegetarians are reasonably well looked after and have no cause to complain. The Koondhal Varattiyathu (squid) had an awesome pepper masala that made it an excellent starter. The Meen Nirachathu – seared fish with a raw mango stuffing was just about okay. The crispy Parippu (dal) Vadas were good too, though you would find the price hard to digest.

    The main course section makes a show of ducking the sea of issues and providing some other relief in the form of beef and chicken.  The Kozhi (chicken) Mappas, a classic Syrian Christian preparation with coriander and a mild coconut flavour, and the Pachakari (vegetable) Kurma, saved the main course. The appams were fantastic, though the delays meant that we were forced to ask Eppam?! (when) Cold appams are never a good deal and thanks to delays, that was exactly what happened.  The Beef coconut fry, which is quite a holy cow in Kerala cuisine, proved really disappointing, and some portions were undercooked. We agreed with Bijoy when he said that it would require quite a meen chef to serve an underwhelming Fish Moilee, but the hardly-there coconut milk ensured just that. The desserts left a lot to be desired. The Ela Ada (coconut jaggery filling inside rice dough and cooked in banana leaves) wasn’t sweet enough and the Parippu Payasam failed to deliver too.

    While coastal cuisine is arguably a good hook, what sinks it is the inordinate amount of time taken to serve the food! “Oh fish” would be an apt expression for our experience. Mythili practically slept off on a hungry stomach. The starters were taking a really long time and when I enquired, I was told that they had forgotten to pass the order on, but If i was okay, they could serve the main course dishes! Bijoy aptly described the service time as ‘meenwhile’, a fishy unit that included the time taken to bring the catch from the Vembanad lake. The waiter was definitely helpful and even suggested dishes, but that hardly solved the other weighty service issues.

    In terms of cost, we Malayalis would pronounce it ‘coastly’, and deservedly so. A seafood starter, two non veg main course dishes with appams/ Kerala Parathas and a dessert would set you back by Rs.1500.

    For some reason, if you happen to have a (mostly) Kerala coastal cuisine craving and want it delivered in a star hotel setting, you might consider the place. Otherwise, the city provides enough options to have equally (if not more) tasty food at a fraction of the price. Hardly anything can be worth the wait we endured!

    Vembanad, The Paul, 139/28, Domlur Layout, Off Intermediate Ring Road, Bangalore – 71. Tel: 40477777

    Menu at Zomato

  • Versus all the world…

    (written a few moons ago)

    Season finales have a way of dispiriting me, by showing me the transience of things. Things that we like, things that we get used to, things that teach us lessons, sometimes not even by design.

    Like this one, which took me to Queens, a borough of New York City, week after week, and also gave me a peek into the world of fashion magazines, however contrived a view it may have been.  More than the sometimes convoluted plots and the character profiling that ensured certain audiences, I was a fan because in its own way, it gave insights into the innate goodness that exists in all humans..characters, especially in the final season of a dramedy 🙂

    But more than anything else, the show was all about the journey of its title character, an unlikely success story. It sold the hope that a person could make her (in this case) own world, despite her unconventional ways, because she believed in herself. And it sold it well, because many a viewer cheered for her, and egged her on.

    Say that I’m changed, say I’m different
    Maybe I’ll finally understand

    It has succeeded to some extent, in teaching me, that its not really the choices I make, but how much of myself I am willing to put in them, that really decides the outcome, and the way I deal with that outcome.

    I’m ready, I’m ready
    I’m ready to believe

    And if I zip through the entire journey of the character, I can also see the transience of these outcomes, despite their seeming finality.

    Say I’ll let go, say it’s obvious
    Oh, I tell myself over, over and over again

    So yes, thank you, for taking me on a very interesting journey, and giving me several LOL moments, thanks to nasty one liners from Marc/Wilhelmina/Amanda. And now, when I am asked, usually with much incredulity, followed by amusement, about why I watch Ugly Betty, I’ll perhaps hum..

    And all the world can watch the choices you make
    All the world can watch each tiny mistake
    Let the world watch….let the world wait for you

    until next time, couchsurfing of a different kind

    Lyrics: All the World (I Tell Myself) by Correatown, played during the season 4 finale

  • But what do I know?

    Unlike in my other blog, Seth Godin is rarely referenced here. But when I read this post (rant, he says) from him titled “Deliberately uninformed, relentlessly so“, I sensed some vague connection with something I’d written a while back.

    Unlike other posts of Godin, whose blog I religiously follow for its ‘food for thought’, I found a smugness to this post – perhaps the rant provides the liberty. But as always, he manages to make a point. However, for a second, I wondered about the irony of this post coming from someone who does not allow comments on his blog. And thus this post.

    It is to be noted that he did not switch off comments just like that, he has valid reasons. Even if one just looks at the scale (1858 people retweeted and 2373 ‘Like’s) and considers  only a certain % commenting, it would tend towards chaotic. But whatever the reasons, he has chosen not to use comments as a channel.

    Ok, lets move on to me now. 🙂 I don’t read business books, however I follow several blogs in my line of work and otherwise. I rely on my Twitter, Reader and (occasionally) Facebook connections to point me to interesting reads. I also use Wikipedia extensively, despite the accusation that crowdsourced content can only be so trustworthy. From all this consumption, I have ‘superficial’ information on a lot of subjects, which make good conversation. This is also because I have way too many interests, and I’m forever in awe of things I don’t easily understand. My interest sometimes wears off after I’m able to bring a subject to my horizons of understanding. Sometimes, a more knowledgeable person corrects me/points me to things he/she thinks might interest me further and whenever I need/want to know more about a subject, I try and use the web’s sources to the fullest.

    But here’s the thing. Once upon a time, I could remember websites in context and add to discussions (offline), but increasingly I rely on delicious, among other things. I’m forced to prioritise my memory thanks to the ton of information out there that I process daily. Ok, that, and age.  🙂 And this is not a problem that will end soon, and its something I keep bringing up here. (Read)

    Time is the new currency, and I increasingly feel that people now react mercilessly to an “I don’t know”. Is that an excuse for people to claim knowledge of things they know nothing about? Maybe not, but perhaps like many other things, it is one of the ways for them to feel accepted and have a sense of belonging. So yes, it might be easy to label it as being deliberately uninformed, but in judging people so, without context and more understanding, we might be falling into the same trap ourselves – about people this time, as opposed to subjects.

    until next time, judge mental capabilities?

  • Animal’s People

    Indra Sinha

    “I used to be human once. So I’m told. I don’t remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being..” That’s how the book begins, and sets the tone and perspective for the book.

    The title of the book could have been built around Khaufpur (based on Bhopal and its 1984 tragedy) as well, after all, the entire story hinges around the one night that changed life in the city forever. But Indra Sinha’s success lies in creating a character whose very existence is a testimony to the horrors of that night. The humanity, or rather the inhumanity of it all is taken to a different level, largely because of the protagonist – Animal. Animal, a 19 year old boy in Khaufpur, whose personal takeaway from That Night is being forced to go on all fours.

    In most other aspects, Animal displays the emotional state of a typical teen with love, lust, jealousy all vying for his attention. It is his pragmatic, mostly raw and guttural perspective and wry humour that gives the book its character. It makes it real enough for the reader to connect with the other characters in the book – Pandit Somraj, the singer who loses his voice thanks to That Night, his daughter Nisha, who is the love of Animal’s life, but who loves Zafar, the activist whose mission in life is to get justice for the victims from the ‘Kampani’, but whose objectivity Animal questions, partly because he is a rival to Nisha’s attentions, Farouq, Zafar’s helper and Animal’s friend and enemy all at once, Ma Franci, a nun who has become senile in her old age and the person Animal loves most, and Elli Barber, the doctor who gives Animal hope, while others treat her with suspicion. Animal’s narrative gives life to these characters.

    Except for a stretched ending, this book is a compelling read, one which makes you look at a faraway incident – in space and time, with a human and humanitarian eye.