Author: manuscrypts

  • Only time will tell…

    My reading list during the Sikkim trip consisted of “The Immortals of Meluha” and “Chasing the Monk’s shadow”, fiction and non fiction respectively. Sometime during the trip, I completed the former, the latter was completed long after the trip.

    The first book is a work of fiction that treats Shiva, the Hindu god, as a real person and tries to look at mythology through a historical perspective. The second is a journal of a person who retraces (almost) the epic journey of Xuanzang (the latest spelling of the person we learned about as Hiuen Tsang in school). One myth, one history. One is a possibility, the other ‘factual’.

    The first, about a Tibetan tribal chieftain who is looked upon by a civilisation as the messiah promised in their legends. The second, a monk with an insatiable thirst for India.  In this age of rapid advances in communication, it was quite an experience to be transported to a time when people got news years or even decades after it happened. A monk who starts a journey based on a certain information, only to realise that while he was traveling towards his destination, things had changed – kings deposed, lifestyles changed, faith forgotten….

    The passage of time gives us a bird’s eye view of what happened then, allowing us to dwell on the possibilities of how/if Gods were created, to interpret snippets of information gleaned from remnants of a life, what it must’ve been like. From our vantage point, we see patterns, lifelines almost crossing each other, tantalisingly close, with the possibility of drastically changing the flow of events that transpired later. All this, after patiently sifting through the layers that have been added over the years.

    I wonder if, thanks to the way we consume and share information, later archaeologists will have a reverse problem, of having to go through mounds of information- multiple perspectives to separate facts from opinions. Or maybe, it has always been like that, and the sands of time have a way of burying it randomly. It is quite humbling to think of the possibility of Iceland’s volcano being a footnote in history, because it so happened that what survived was a casual, unaffected post which treated it as a minor news, as opposed to the anguished post of someone whose plans went awry, all thanks to it.

    Another reminder that history and beyond is just a perspective we get from what survived.

    until next time, time consumes too 🙂

  • Naati Manae

    Last weekend, we happened to go to Anjappar, and the food left us disappointed. From experience, I’ve learned that the only way to purge the memories of such occurrences is to overlay it with better ones. And that’s how we ended up at Naati Manae, which promises to “Tingle your taste buds of our Native cuisine”. The non-vegetarian wins over the grammarian easily. The good news is that we didn’t have to go to Gandhinagar/Rajajinagar or any of the Pet places that house eateries which serve this cuisine, Koramangala scores again!! Naati Manae is off the one way that goes from the Intermediate Ring Road to Jyoti Nivas College. Take the right immediately after Coconut Grove/William Penn, and then take the first left. You’ll see Naati Manae on your right. If you’re familiar with Koramangala, you could approach it from the other one way too – the one that has Oye Amritsar, China Pearl etc. Here’s a map of the area. Parking isn’t too much of a problem.

    CIMG1228We arrived at 7.30 and easily found a table. But from the experience later, perhaps we were early. The decor remains true to the ‘Naati’ theme, lots of paintings and a matching version of the spices glass topped table decor. There’s a general area which is non-AC and a ‘family room’ with AC, that’ll cost you 10% extra! The idea, I think, is to replicate the general feel of the restaurants of this genre and add to it a little bit of refinement so it appeals to the different audience. In that sense, it works. Its clean, has a no-frills ambiance, the seating is comfortable, and there’s a uniqueness that sets it apart.

    CIMG1220The menu is kept pretty simple too (click to enlarge), with specials during the weekend. Vegetarians, as you can note, the rest of the post might be a waste of time for you. Sorry about the ‘flashy’ mutton, still getting used to menu photography 😉 (After pepper fry, there’s fry, liver fry, kheema fry, thale mamsa, chops, saru and masala) We wanted to try the day’s special ‘Mutton Shukka’ but were told it’d take at least 20 minutes. So we asked for a Mutton Pepper Dry and were given the same answer. So finally, we asked for a Thale Mamsa which we’d wanted for the main course. Its Thale, and not ‘pure’ brain, so in addition to the meat, there’s a lot of bone and hair too. A combination of thick-headedness and hunger meant that I missed taking a snap! The dish is definitely unique, with a slightly spicy flavor, and worth a try, but at Rs.75, I’d vote for Imperial/Chandu’s version of brain.

    CIMG1221Next up, we asked for a plate of coin parathas and a Guntur Chicken. Oh yes, a ragi ball too. The ragi was quite good, and exorcised previous demons of chewing gum like consistency!  The gravy that came along helped. Now, we’d read the Bangalore Mirror review and the description definitely didn’t match the dish that came to us. We checked, and it wasn’t! Christobelle Joseph, I owe you one. So we waited, with rapidly cooling parathas while the impersonator was replaced.

    CIMG1224Thankfully, the Guntur Chicken was worth the wait. Very spicy, especially if you also happen to consume the red chillies in the masala, and goes extremely well with the coin parathas. It’d been more than half an hour since we’d asked for the Mutton dishes, and judging by the 20 minute explanation, we thought we could try a Shukka with the Donne Chicken Biriyani.

    CIMG1225But unfortunately, it wasn’t. I really couldn’t understand the logic of having a special for the day, advertising dinner from 7 pm on, and then not having the dish ready by 8pm. Nattitude sucks! 🙁  Anyway we were told the Mutton Pepper Fry was a good option. A few minutes later, the biriyani arrived along with the explanation that the Mutton Pepper Fry was over. I stopped trying to seek explanations. The mutton fry was rumoured to be available. Once again, we waited, this time with a cooling biriyani. Thankfully, it didn’t take long.

    CIMG1226The donne biriyani was easily the best among the dishes, and truly value for money. The leaf bowl really does add to the taste, exactly like I’ve heard. Highly recommended. The mutton fry was quite ordinary, and the meat seemed to exist in a confused state – cooked or uncooked.

    The service was quite pathetic. Whenever we asked for the day’s special, we were told to go for the Mutton Fry! Serving wrong dishes and recommending something not available made me wonder if I had unknowingly made Naati etiquette mistakes. Wearing shorts are not okay? 😐

    What is surprising is that though the total cost came to only Rs.395 and we were quite stuffed, I’d hardly call it value for money if I took each of the dish separately. Maybe it was the profusion of bones or the general irritation brought about by the service. But despite all that, it’s still worth a visit for a unique menu (in these parts) and the biriyani. Oh, for the record Natti Manae, you aren’t by any means the first place that serves the Donne Biriyani in Koramangala. 1st Main Road, 1st Block Koramangala, opposite Rolls United, check it out!

    Naati Manae, #334, 17th C Main, KHB Colony, 5th Block, Koramangala Ph: 40986160/1

    Menu at Zomato

  • Coincide

    A friend of mine, Soubhagya, is an avid photographer, who, despite my best efforts, still shies away from running his own photoblog. So when he asked me to take part in a writing experiment, I thought it would be a relatively painless way of introducing him to blogging, and hopefully, he’ll like it enough to do it on his own. The idea’s pretty simple – he’s given me a couple of pictures he has shot recently, and wants me to write a few words on each. Here goes

    the face of money‘The face of money’ is what Soubhagya calls it.

    What’s my value? To a politician, I’m a vote that will help him in his quest for power. To my employer, I am a worker who gets paid for the job I do. To the places I eat out in, to the shops I buy things from, I am a source of revenue. To the people who care for me as an individual, these are perhaps not the parameters of calculating their value for me. It’s a different currency. So the question is complete only if I ask “What’s my value to …. ?”  Now, what if I were to pose the question to myself? Do I measure myself by my financial status, or the lack of it? Is it the ‘Likes’ on Facebook or the followers on Twitter? Or is it by the number of lives I have touched, in one way or another? Is it a combination? Is it what I deem as my potential? How much is that dependent on externalities? And doesn’t that change with time? Which brings me to..

    Burnt out ‘Burnt Out’

    Purpose. I have always been interested in the purpose of our lives. All life forms in general, and of course, specifically us, humans. Generally, at different stages in life, we get stuck with different routines, sometimes by choice, sometimes not – school, college, work and so on. There is a short term purpose to it all, so we rarely look for something beyond. By my definition, ‘purpose’ gives a meaning to what we do, something beyond the money that it brings in, something that really makes us happy just by doing it, as though we are destined to do it. One could rationalise and say that the money then becomes a tool to ‘buy’ the things that give happiness, but that’s arguable.. We prioritise according to our baggage, some are okay with trading an amazing weekend and regular holidays for mind numbing work, some wouldn’t be able to manage it at all, and there are tons of options in between. The candle reminds me of the passion that we bring into what we do, and I believe that depends on our approach to ‘purpose’. Burn brightly or be a shallow flame? In both cases, there is a finite lifetime in which it has to be done. For me, even the task of finding a purpose is a tough one. Whichever way one sees it, there is always the possibility of a burnout. Such is life. So burn you must, and light up the place as much as you can. 🙂

    until next time, wax eloquent 😉

    PS: Now split ‘coin-cide’ and you might figure out a new possibility

  • 1984

    George Orwell

    Winston Smith thinks it is 1984, but it could be 2050, for all you know, for all you know is controlled by Big Brother. For as the book constantly reminds us “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” An amazing dystopian novel that explores how an oligarchical society can completely control the minds and actions of large masses of humanity over a seemingly endless period of time.

    Winston Smith, the protagonist, is a bureaucrat working in the ‘Ministry of Truth’ in London, chief city of Airstrip One, a province of Oceania. Winston’s bob in the Records Department is to revise historical records to match the Party’s current stance on people, events etc. As he edits the past to match the present, he also maintains a secret diary in which he records his dissent against the party and its policies. This, according to the party is ThoughtCrime, and if he’s caught by the Thought Police, he would be executed. As he himself notes, ‘ThoughtCrime IS death.’. In a world where telescreens watch every movement and children are trained to spy on everyone, including their parents, to detect ThoughtCrime, Winston lives dangerously.

    Winston’s life changes when he falls in love with Julia, they carry on a clandestine love affair (that’s a crime too) in their love nest in a ‘prole’ (proletarian) neighbourhood, where they believe telescreens are not watching them. They then come into contact with an inner party official, who they believe belongs to The Brotherhood, which works against Big Brother.

    The novel is dystopian, and there’s no happy ending. It works on at least two levels levels – the obvious dangers of totalitarian societies, and the working of the human mind and its perception of reality.

    An amazing book, and well deserving of its classic status.

  • Facet

    Facebook’s policy changes a while back meant that suddenly,  the average user (as opposed to the technophile and conspiracy theorist) is raising an eyebrow, or both, depending on knowledge levels, at what it means to his privacy. This is not an indication of whether someone is below or above average, let’s not go there. Meanwhile, K and I have been discussing David Bond (Erasing David), which has to do with online privacy (though not in a Facebook context)  – how one man challenges experts from a security firm to track him down using information they can gain about him from the public domain, while he tries to outrun them.

    K noted that in the olden days, this notion of privacy didn’t exist, as everything was known to everybody. I agreed that in the new age, our connections are more, we include a lot more people in our lives, even indirectly, by just sharing our data online. Our work, lifestyle and advances in technology mean that we communicate more, meet more people, and yes, ‘friend’ them.

    It does good too, no taking away from that. Ironically, K and I know each other from work, from quite a few years back. We never interacted much then, and I was more pally with others in her team. I still remember, a couple of years back, when I met K and another colleague of hers in a shop, I chatted away with him, and rewarded K with a lousy smile. 😀  But these days, we have amazing conversations online, and I’m hardly in touch with her colleagues. Thank you Facebook 🙂

    As perhaps the first generation of Facebook users, we are in an interesting place (and time). I read “Chasing the Monk’s shadow” recently, a book in which the author retraces Xuanzang’s journey (we knew him as Hieun Tsang in our history text books) and it made me appreciate the value of the written word – especially when it resurfaces in a  different era.   It was in this context that I considered what really appears in our profiles on Facebook.

    (Generalising) We friend erm friends, but we also friend parents, siblings, relatives, acquaintances, and even random animals. We display our likes, dislikes, interests, information, and through our conversations, we add layers to this. But its amazing how, sometimes, when I ‘like’ something that someone has posted, and glance at the others who have liked it, I realise that I don’t know them. We’re connected by one common friend.

    The common friend, who I might know from college, and the other person might know from work. How much of mining would it require to unearth the nuances in the relationships between ‘friends’? Would it be possible to mine the fact that while I might make a smart alec comment on a person’s status, I might never have met him/her in real life? Would it be possible to mine the different persons we are, to different people, in different contexts. The worries, the fears, the quirks, whims and yes, likes, that we never express, the things that probably make us human – they exist in our minds. We only share a part of ourselves online. We are still strangers, sometimes even to ourselves.

    So yes, while all sorts of data from browsing history to buying habits are out there, maybe, in this hugely connected world, without the ‘real metadata’, in a way we are still disconnected from most of our ‘friends’… and the information gatherers? Since its slightly difficult to be like Schmidt (Google CEO), who infamously said “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”,  I believe that we should be responsible about what we share (even if that’s in the form of a ‘Like’) online.

    So all I’m saying is, you can press that little ‘Like’ button below, and nothing catastrophic is going to happen… yet 🙂

    until next time, face off