| Not a firang |
[02 Aug 2005|08:38pm] |
Last evening I was walking home from Fountain (Central Business District, South Bombay) when a gruff old man with a walrus moustache stopped and asked me: "What your nationality?"
For a second I was nonplussed. I gave him a quizzical look. A trifle embarrassed, he responded: "Indian?" I said yes and walked.
I have never been asked my nationality in India. I may sound like a firang, but I look as Indian as the next guy. Of course, on second thoughts, it's close to impossible to describe what an Indian looks like (or sounds like). So, well...
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| Brace-ing myself -- the background. |
[27 Apr 2005|12:57pm] |
The story of why I need braces goes back five odd years, but I'll post the prequel later. Last year during my annual dental checkup, my dentist saw a few crooked teeth in my lower left jaw and scheduled an appointment with her in-house orthodontist. Both of them recommended braces. I baulked and had some stop gap treatment to make sure the edges of the crooked molars were straightened to prevent them grazing the inside of my cheek.
A year down the line, the problem got worse (one cavity and prospects for more between the gaps of those infernal inner molars!) and I decided to get my mouth wired. The treatment should last between six to nine months and I have around six more months of wearing retainers (removable braces).
Before we could start, I had my teeth cleaned, the new (and thankfully small) cavity in the last molar filled, and an impression taken. For the impression, my dentist filled a U shaped tray with some clay and jammed it down on my lower jaw. Wait a minute, remove carefully and repeat procedure for upper jaw. A bit uncomfortable, but ok. She then recreated my entire set of teeth from the impression.
We started with a consultation session last week. My orthodontic dentist (I have two, family dentist is not a specialist in braces, so she calls in a friend who's an orthodontist. BTW, both are female) had a look at the impression, saw my teeth, made me open wide, popped a plastic bit in that kept my jaws apart and started taking pictures! She's got a full set of me smiling, scowling showing my not-pearly whites, etc.
Then came the long list of what could be eaten--soft stuff--and what could not--nothing hard or sticky or chewy. No pizzas, no steak, no toffee, no toast! Aaargh. This is before I've got even a single piece of metal in my mouth.
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| Sarcasm as a de-stresser |
[31 Dec 2004|07:11pm] |
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At the end of a stressed out day (it's actually weeks and months), I sometimes enjoy a duel of sarcasm with my girlfriend. She's no doormat and gives back as good as she gets. I love her lip!
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[24 Dec 2004|05:30pm] |
I've never been a big fan of Kipling's "If", but sometimes the words
ring true. This couplet describes two of my interactions in the past
week.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Ouch!
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| Memory Loss |
[15 Dec 2004|05:45pm] |
One of the corollaries to Murphy's law states that however much you'd check before a flight, you are bound to forget one small thing whose absence turns out to be a major irritant. I'm at the airport, checked in for the flight. But my cellphone charger is in office. Damn!
Does any nice Banglorean have a Sony Ericcson T series phone and would lend me the charger? My phone should last 36-48 hours on current charge.
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| Chandan Bathi |
[15 Dec 2004|11:08am] |
A cousin of mine wants me to buy a special kind of sandalwood agarbatti. When I was in Bangalore last I couldn't find it. Can anyone help? I'm gonna be in Bangalore from tonight till sunday evening.
Chandan Bathi
Mysore Sandalwood Special
Stockist: Suryani Fine Arts
519, Dhanvanthri Road, Mysore
Phone: 429443 / 424604
Fax: 421611
(I tried the phone numbers. Seem to have changed)
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| Goa sausage and lemon brownie |
[13 Dec 2004|07:05pm] |
I was in Colaba today at around 12:30pm. The morning meeting left me a bit hungry and I wasn't far off from New Martin's in Colaba market -- that little haven of delicious, cheap, wholesome (and very fatty) Goan food.
Warning: do not go there if you're a vegetarian. There are precisely two vegetarian items on the menu. Dal and "vegetable" -- they just pick a "veg du jour" -- you don't even have a choice as to what the vegetable will be.
The best items are Goa pork sausage and fish curry. As the avenues for eating pork in India are generally limited, I went for the Goa sausage. Oily, spicy and with a distinctive taste (in Gujarati my mother would call it "visru" -- "somewhat fishy"), it is chopped up, fried and served in its own oil. I love it. Eat it with thickly sliced pau, the small loaves of bread that are so Bombay. I was early and my pau was hot from the oven. I sopped it in the oil and tucked away.
As I have a dictatorial gym instructor, that's all I ate at New Martin's. But, as I stepped out onto Colaba Causeway, I saw a new shop at the extreme corner of Cusrow Baug. Theobrama is a "desserts place" with loads of baked stuff. Started by two Parsi women who grew up on their mother's desserts -- when the father was travelling, they used to have only desserts for dinner. I like the concept! They had a good selection and I picked a citrus danish -- it was long not round and had a ribbon of lemon cream on top. Should have had it with coffee. Luckily they had a coffee machine -- not the yucky instant but espresso. By the time the coffee arrived, the danish was over. I stifled the oink and ordered a lemon brownie. Both very good. And priced decently well. Coffee, danish and brownie were all priced at Rs. 20. Rs. 60 for dessert. But hell, lunch had cost me just Rs. 40 (plus a 5 buck tip).
On the way back to office what I remembered was not so much the food but the service at both places. New Martin's had, well, basic waiters who were quiet, in the background, but always came up exactly when you wanted something. And, most important, not pushy.
Theobrama has to get its act together. It has an open display of breads and pastries, giving an illusion of self service, but no, you have to point and someone in plastic gloves will give it to you. The ladies behind the counter kept taking calls from suppliers and I really was not interested in hearing the production prattle. Maybe a back office might help? While leaving I wanted a card so I could call and order. I asked an old gentleman behind the counter. He said he wasn't staff but then what the hell was he doing behind the counter? One of the ladies pottered around and finally found me a card.
Please get professional help. The stuff looks and tastes great. Would be a shame if it was ruined by bad service.
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| Early resolution! |
[13 Dec 2004|06:10pm] |
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I generally do not make New Year Resolutions. But I have pondered about LJ and what I should do on it for a long time. So, for the next year I am going to use it as a scribble pad for my musings on food and entertainment. Nothing structured, just an aimless ramble on my journeys in pleasure.
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| Bangalore again |
[11 Dec 2004|05:19pm] |
I shall be making one more of my fleeting Bangalore visits next week. Making a presentation at IIM and will be there on 16th and 17th. Shall most probably stay on for the weekend. Loads of people to meet.
The best thing is to ping me on yahoo (yazadjal) or mail me -- yazad [at] praja [dot] org
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| AnarCapLib feed |
[15 Oct 2004|02:24pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 grateful |
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I'm such a newbie that my techie friends now help out even without me asking (they just read my mind!)
Premshree has created an LJ feed for my blog AnarCapLib. You'll find it here. Do subscribe as the vast majority of my blog blather is posted on AnarCapLib.
Thanks Prem!
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| Superman and life |
[11 Oct 2004|07:16pm] |
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mood |
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 sad |
] |
Christopher Reeves died today. Apart from being a childhood icon, he was someone I respected immensely for his brave battle against paralysis.
During tea, I mentioned Reeves' death to some friends in the neighbouring office. And was dismayed by the response. "Oh! It's a release for him" -- "I would not want to live like that" - "I'd rather die than live on life support" It reminded me of the film Whose Life Is It Anyway? where an artist (played by Richard Dreyfuss) who is paralysed from neck down wants to die and fights to get the hospital switch off his life support. I liked the film and cheered the principle that you should choose to end your life, if you so wish it.
However, I do not believe that choosing to die when there is little (or no) hope is the only choice. Christopher Reeve did not give up. He fought too -- not to die, but to live. If I were in the same position, I'd make the choice he did.
I want to live. Keep me on life support, keep me alive. Always.
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| Bombay and Everything |
[06 Oct 2004|07:32pm] |
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Two books caught my eye recently. Yesterday at Crossword it was Sukutu Mehta's Maximum City : Bombay Lost and Found and today at Strand Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.
I spent 10-15 minutes browsing through each book and liked what I read. I'm wondering if I should buy them as I already have a longish "to read" list. Need to finish White Mughals and my re-read of Focault's Pendulum first.
Suggestions?
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| Fifteen questions less |
[08 Sep 2004|01:10am] |
This interview meme taken from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sampada. Her original post here.
The Rules!- Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
- I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
- You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
- You'll include this explanation.
- You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
( Sampada's questions and my answers )
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| Mujras, Madhuri and Aishwarya |
[12 Jul 2004|03:52pm] |
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mood |
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 cheerful |
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Saturday evening. In my cousin's car. We're driving from Colaba to Gowalia Tank. She stops at the Nariman Point signal. In a trice comes a small girl with gajras. As usual, the spiel is half marketing and half begging. My cousin is irritated. She points to me and tells the girl: Do you see the long hair on him? Where's he gonna put the gajra? Points to her short short hair and repeats the admonition. Flower girl is dejected, but still manages a smile and a thank you.
Just the smile was enough. I called her back and bought a gajra just for the heck of it. With not much hair, I tied it around my wrist -- very Devdas in a mujra style ;-)
We then thought of crazy ideas to tell my aunt if she asked about the gajra. Here's what my cousin came up with:
"Yazad went to this very high class mujra. It was so high class that all the dancing women looked like Madhuri Dixit but had the body of Aishwarya Rai."
I burst out laughing. She's managed to insult both Madhuri and Aishwarya in one sentence!
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| Bangalore bound |
[01 Jul 2004|10:35am] |
I'm making a quickie visit to Bangalore over the weekend. It is my second favourite city in India after all! Will be there from Saturday morning till Monday evening. Work on those two days, but Sunday looks great for meeting bloggers and friends.
yazad_j [at] yahoo [dot] com is the place to drop me a line.
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| Sextalingual |
[16 Jun 2004|11:22pm] |
Ravikiran shows off how many languages he knows. (BTW, There is some debate whether Tulu is just a dialect or a full fledged language)
Well my turn to show off. English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and French. Can read and write in all. French is very rusty now, but at one time I could tell you about the sexual adventures of Julien Sorrel in française. Well I had to write an exam about it!
Am very fluent in English and I prefer to call it my mother tongue. My "supposed" mother tongue is Gujarati. However even my grandmoms didn't converse in Gujju -- they spoke in English!
My Hindi improved dramatically due to daily tussles with Delhi's class A cheats -- the auto wallahs. Marathi improved in a similar fashion -- thanks to the veritable chaps in the BMC.
I can speak Gujju to save my life, but often the guy on the other side will die -- laughing.
Apart from this, I can swear in various languages including Tamil, Kannada and German.
Need to learn a new language -- am thinking of either Spanish or Bengali. Then I'll know six languages and be sextalingual.
Cross posted at AnarCapLib
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| BPG |
[11 Jun 2004|02:11pm] |
A sign of good friendship is when your friend doesn't ask "What starter will you have?", but just "BPG?" You nod back and hey presto -- divine (and deveined) butter pepper garlic prawns are on the table.
It helps if we're at our favourite Chinese joint.
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