A chance revisit of my Cusine-al roots

Venue :
6 Ballygunge Place , Koramangala, Bangalore..

Attendees : 3
Cost : 1235 /- ( excluding tip)..

Entree :

Topshe Maach Bhaja ( Batter Fried Mango Fish)
Aamer Chutney ( Mango Chutney on the table.. small sliced mango marmalade)
Papad ( Poppadums)



Drinks:

Aam Pora Sharbat ( a roasted green mango sherbet )
A blue berry-ish mocktail.. (named 2/6 Biren Roy Road.. after Sourav Ganguly's residence)


Main Course ::

a) The First Round!!

Steam Rice ........ with
Chital Macher Peti Roast ( Clown Knife Fish with gravy)..
Bhanpa Elish ( Steamed Hilsa in Mustard paste) ..
Tomato Chutney ( Tomato chutney with Dates and raisins)..


b) And the Second..

Loochi .... ( Deep fried flatbreads of maida ( fine wheat flour) ... ) .. with
Kosha Mangsho .. ( Dry (gravied) Bengali Lamb )..


Dessert:
Channar Malpoa ( Small pancakes made using reduced milk and cottage cheese dripped with syrup, crunchy at the ends, served hot and topped with dollops of vanilla icecream)..



Savouries:
Some assortment of mitha paan ( sweet betel leaf preparations) , and flavoured supari ( betelnut) , sweet fennel
Timeless pictures of Amitabh Bachhan going out to bat at the Eden, Sunny Gavaskar , Pele at the Salt Lake Stadium in front of a packed crowd, a young Sourav Ganguly, Victoria Memorial, of Satyajit Ray and Mother Teresa..





Bliss!!!!


Period .

Coorg During the Rains...

Dates - 26th to 28th June, 2008..
Venue : Coorg and Mysore..

These are the photos only from my DigiC.. Ashish bhaiiya's camera contains much more..








Tuskers passing through a tribal village in Nagarhole.. ( we found some chained ones further ahead as well)..










Bisecting the predator and its prey (View this image in its full resolution.. and you'll understand why).. .

A couple of deer just shot across the road we were travelling on and disappeared through the bushes.. When we stopped at the location.. (His Majesty) was crouching just at the clearance ( roughly 20 meters .. waiting for us to leave.. so that he could carry on his pursuit.. Pretty surreal 5 minutes..







A herd of deer some distance away from the Tiger spotting location..

We saw a tribal village with a very old lady ( alteast an octogenarian) walking barely 1/2 a km from the tiger's location.. Its amazing how humans and the wild co-exist in the sanctuary..










Freshly plucked coffee.. ( we captured the whole machine line for coffee production.. ) .. will upload the photo when I find it..











Streams on the way to Irpu falls..

( Ankur , Shipra and Ashish )















Mornings at the Chinmayee Home Stay ( close to Madikeri)














Neha and Archan :: Abbey Falls is the backdrop.














At Abbey Falls : the whole Bachha gang except Aditi..


From left to right: Ashish Bhaiyya, Aanchal Bhabhi, Myself, Shipra, Neha and Ankur











Close-up of a recoiling snail, while on the trek back from Abbey...

















Ankur against the panoramic setting of Coorg valley

















Aditi presents a poignant picture alongside the falling mist at Talacauvery, as others join her after the trip to the temple.














Beside one of the gargoyles at Talacauvery, the water body believed to be the source of the Cauvery river..

Wonder why we had the umbrella up?















Feeding the Rabbits at Nisargadhama















The Hanging Bridge walk at NisargaDhama... with Ankur and Shipra having their share of fun...













The Namdroling Monastery at Bylakuppe..
Huge 50 Feet Golden Statues of 3 Budhhas of various eons.















Shipra and me underneath the photos of the current Lamas and Rinpoches..



















Papa outside home stay.. in front of our journey vehicle..

Raga Bhatiyar - Since morning time..

The Bhatiyar Raga, one of the more beautiful yet simple ragas I've heard is on my mind today since morning..

Knowing zilch on the grammar of Hindustani Classical music doesn't help when it comes to understanding the finer points, but so many of the Raga based songs that I discover are some of my all time favorites amongst the popular songs, and linking them to the raga, definitely helps, well atleast for me..


The details just for the more musically learned/inclined, even though there are dozens of epages on the subject.
Thaat ( Major Classification) : Marwa
Time of the Day : Dawn
Aaroha ( Ascending Scale) : S-r-S,S-m,P-G,M-D-S'
Avaroha (Descending scale) : S'-r'-N-D-P,D-P-m,P-G-r-S
Pakad (Generally accepted phrase) : S-D,m-P-G,P-G-r-S



Here is my R&D on the raaga ( Limiting to only the songs Ive heard before)..


Starting with one which any Doordarshan old timer would know.. The Rashtirya Saksharta ( National Literacy) Mission's "Purab Se Surya Uga" rendering of Kavita Krishnamurthy.. I think the raga fits fantastically to the cause and even to its video theme. It has both shades of the early morning freshness, the lively chirping and excitement for the day/future ahead, as well as undercurrent pining for something or the melancholic acknowledgment of some event that has gone by or is yet impending..

Purab Se Surya Uga

Here is Manna Dey's "Eki Apurba Prem" , one of my top favorites of MD songs.. q

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The last is the correct ( classical) representation of the raga by Kankana Banerjee ( which I found on the net)

Bhatiyar by Kankana Banerjee

A few glimpses of Switzerland

One of the long distance trains at Oerlikon Station..









Chess Boards at the Community Area.. It was fun to be able to see 8-10 games being played together.. Most of the people though were regulars .. but you could occasionally catch a father teaching his 6 year old a move or two..








The less said the better... the Adult theater just opposite my hotel..
And it always had a FULL HOUSE board in the evenings when I walked back from office..










Just Outside the Lucerne Art Festival... I couldnt get the tickets for the last show before my train back to Zurich










One of the performance areas at the Zurich Steet Parade.. Its supposedly the biggest walking parade in the world. Pretty nice experience, though I didn't want to venture out much after sunset...










Looming mountains, the bluest skies, cascading clouds, towering trees, tiled rooftops, lush carpet meadows, gurgling brooks, shiny pebbles.. this has it all












On the way to Mt. Titlis , Switzerland. My
excursion on the only weekend I had..













Still a long way to reach the top... There were three different ropeways to reach the destination and the most suprising thing was that.. they had traveller's instructions written in Hindi !!

Not bad.. not to mention that the Indian National Anthem could be played alongside others at the summit.









Office Desk.... Just after office hours... so dont mind the dim lighting..











The bull outside our Office... - The building's aptly named "Toro"













An inspection done before Mallya clinched the deal... The Spyker'07











Another view of the beautiful landscape..

Some verses from schooltime..

Trying out my first transliterated post , with this Hindi poem "Hum Panchhi Unmukt Gagan Ke" translated literally as "We birds, of the open skies". This is by SumitraNandan Pant , and I guess we had read this somewhere in our 7th-8th class school course books, and is probably one of the only 2-3 I remember still...

( Attempted translation will follow later.. )

हम पंछी उन्मुक्त गगन के ....

हम पंछी उन्मुक्त गगन के,
पिंजर बंध न गा पायेंगे,
कनक तीलियों से टकराकर,
पुलकित पंख टूट जायेंगे ..

हम बहता जल पीने वाले,
मर जायेंगे भूखे प्यासे,
कहीं भली है कटुक निबोरी,
कनक कटोरी की मैदा से ..

स्वर्ण श्रृंखला के बन्धन में,
अपनी गति उड़ान सब भूले,
बस सपनो में देख रहे हैं,
तरु की फुंगी, पर के झूले ..

ऐसे थे अरमान कि उड़ते,
नील गगन की सीमा पाने,
लाल किरण सी चोंच खोल,
चुगते तारक, अनार के दाने ..

होती सीमा हीन शितिज से,
इन पंखो की होडा-होडी,
या तो क्षितिज मिलन बन जाता,
या तंती साँसों की डोरी..

नीड़ न दो, चाहे टहनी का,
आश्रय छिन्न-भिन्न कर डालो,
लेकिन पंख दिए हैं तो,
आकुल उड़ान में विघ्न न डालो

- सुमित्रानन्दन पन्त

The Great Pan India War - In today's Terms

"Shatasahasri Samhita" - or "the collection of a hundred thousand verses", thats what some scholars call the Mahabharata...

I remember reading the unabridged Bengali versions at home, post my 10th class exams. The exercise would have taken me a couple of months, considerably expedited by the fact that I just skimmed though all the Parvas (books/episodes) after the Sauptik one ( The Sleeping Warriors Book) , which was where the war had ended, with the banishment of Ashwathhama.

At that age, who would have wanted to hear about rebuilding, political and social science lectures, Vanaprastha ( retirement to forests and penance as a way of life) and the subsequent journey by Yudhisthira to the path of righteousness.. For me, everyone died, the Pandavas got the empire, lived happily ever after and finito.

Even though the story perhaps still ends there for me, I now distinctly see the relevance of each of those books, and the essence of the elders and the pathbreakers come to the fore, just later, from Veda Vyasa (religious, social and geographical ) , Dhritarashtra (Administration and Duties of a king) , Bheeshma (kartavya nishtha - duty boundedness and societal norms) , Dronacharya (Defence), Vidura ( Political Science) and Sri Krishna ( Hinduism - as a way of life) . Just a small look ( with whatever little the power of understanding without the needed guidance I have of the subjects), makes me feel how relevant the learnings are to the current world, just how timeless they can be, and exactly how devoid of race, culture, religion or place they are. Its truly fantastic.

I dont know how many of our generation or the next ones would believe, read or learn from the Mahabharata. Even as I acknowledge the power of its institution, for the fact that it has withstood the test of time, not just during the non documented era, where Gurus have passed wisdom, knowledge or new thoughts over word of mouth, paintings, or hymns and folk songs, to brittle manuscripts or even through the most brutal and systematic attack on books/teachings/learned persons and libraries that our nation has faced with the advent of nomads, barbarians or powerful religio - militaristic regimes since the 11th century to now.

Friends do say that, there are educational institutions and organizations constantly trying to revive what has been lost, and thats maybe a bit relaxing.
We have lost almost all of our scientific documents on medicine, health, irrigation, life sciences, (even aeronautics and astronomy). Just the news that Tibetans have agreed to research on the thousands of books on their ancient script that were copied from Sanskrit manuscripts from our great Universities, is heartening, and we know about how strictly the Chinese guard their copies of the same, given that they had to withstand similar persecution for half a millennium.
Reading the Mahabharata in its current form anyways doesn't compare with the wealth of knowledge lost that I am talking about, but even a casual browse through of what it has to offer, and its references to what could have been, its in itself so invigorating and enlightening.

If you wish to read the Mahabharata in its literal English translation Read up Kisari Mohan Ganguly's

On a lighter note, also try doing this. Imagine the kingdoms during Mahabharata superimposed over the current geographical demarcations, and stretch your indulgence to superimpose these great mythical figures over the common stereotypes associated with the region. The results you get are sometimes pretty funny.

I did a short trial myself on Wiki and here are my findings:

Person - Current Location he would have Hailed From

Veda Vyas - (Island in Yamuna Inside UP, Currently Kalpi)!
Pandu/Dhritarashtra - From Meerut !
Gandhari / Shakuni ( Peshawar , Pakistan to Taxila, East Afghanistan)
Kunti ( Could be anywhere from Java ( Jambudwipa) in South East Asia , to Central Rajasthan to Gujarat.
Madri / Shalya ( Tamilian settled in Sialkot !! Wow what a Combo !! Imagine Karunanidhi speaking Punjabi) !!
Jayadratha - (Sindhi )
Dronacharya/Ashwatthama ( From Dehradoon, Himachal Pradesh)

Krishna / Satyaki / Kritavarma /Subhadra ( UP guys migrated to Gujarat.. See its been going on since ages.. and you blame Raj Thakeray)
Karna (from Jharkhand or a Bong ! Haha ! (if you see where he ruled).. )
Shishupal ( from Bundelkhand , MP)
Jarasandha ( Rajgir, Bihar)
Bhagadatta ( Assamese)
Chitrangada ( Manipur)
Dhrupad / Dhrishtadyumna/Draupadi ( Kanpur/Benaras, UP)
Kichaka / Virat ( Jaipur, Rajasthan)
Ulupi ( Manipur)
Sudakshina ( Iranian(?)s from Hindukush)
Sampsaptakas ( Jalandhar Punjab !)


Ofcourse , you could extrpolate this a bit further by imagining Sita as being north Bihari or Nepali , claim that Sugreeva and Hanuman were the chaps from Hampi, Karnataka, or maybe that Ravana shared his fav. place Kandy with Muralidharan, but I guess, I'll let it rest here..


Currently on the Jukebox - "Dhadhar thekeo Jotil Tumi ( " Youre more complex than a riddle") - Jhora Shomoy, Mohiner Ghoraguli

My new muse

One of the wedding gifts, that I did manage to carry back to Bangalore..

The Apple iPod Classic ..


This one is the 80 GIG variant...

I have stored my life's savings ( 16 Gigs of sound) in it and melady hasn't even burped yet..


Next on the dumping agenda is some good movies , though I must admit, are not totally great to watch on the screen,..

but...

amazing quality of sound..
really good categorizations..
good browsing technology..
good online support....
pretty robust.. though the shiny steely back cover is hypersensitive to scratches..


The covers I saw in Bangalore are pretty mediocre.. and the Apple Stores here sell outdated stuff... or really over priced ones... I was wishing to buy one of the "Socks" covers.. but that arent available in India as well..


All in all, a really good companion, and I hope I decrease the usage to normal levels quickly... or I would get some hearing ailment for sure..

Cheers!

Currently on the iPod - "Let Me Entertain You" - Robbie Williams

Snapshots of the wedding!!

The Venue - Surajmal Vihar
Date - 11th February 2008











~7:30 pm. We arrive.











Neha under the Canopy of Flowers









After the Garlanding


















Us during the Marriage - Havan


















With Ankur - during meeting everyone after the wedding

The 4 Deg Celcius Photo shoot at 11:30 pm!!