Sur-Sandhya

Well, it has nothing to do with a musical evening .

Lest anyone think this is a highly culture specific musical post , let me hasten to add that this is really a play on the words which are the names of the two bloggers who met for the first time together for a lunch. "Sur " is probably a misnomer short form, for someone who moves more like a Wilambit Alaap (kind of slow moving tired tune), and anyone playing word association is not likely to say my name with alacrity when you mention "Sur".

And the blogger friend who I met for lunch was Sandhya . From Bengaluru. I know Sandhya means "evening".

And we met at noon. But it's OK.

I just thought it was a great blog post title. ( As Shobha De would say, "Khair"....)....

We must have reached within 10 minutes of each other from opposite areas of Mumbai. I still have to figure out whether we radiate halos or our fingers look different from all the typing we do, or we have weird eye shapes from squinting at the screen, but we immediately recognised each other. Her little one accompanied her, and after many many years, I saw someone in two tight pigtails, like we had in our time, in school.

There was this place in the hugely spread out Nirmal Lifestyle Mall, that advertised Aamras Puri, along with assorted types of food with a southern touch, and we all went in. We must have been very early, because we had a choice of seating, and thanks to my limited knowledge of south Indian food beyond Idlies, Dosas, Uthhappams , Sandhya did the honors. Chettinad curry, neer dosas , set dosas, while somebody's eyes twinkled at the sight of a huge bowl of aamras on one side.

There was something to twinkle about. The logic behind this was not clear to me, but the white bowl in which the aamras came had a skewed surface. It was plainly a crooked bowl, where they ran out of clay while on the wheel. (I beg your pardon, maybe it's modern design).....Depending on where you viewed it from, you thought the bowl was really full, or that someone was trying to fool you . Makes it a bit dicey for those who like to view things as half full or half empty.

I also learnt how some folks get the totally erroneous impression that I do art. (!), while I go berserk doing anatomically out-of-proportion figures in Warli art, and show them doing modern things like sitting with laptops, and clicking photos.



Sandhya had brought two wonderful books
for me on Calligraphy and Designing Covers ! Aksharakruti by Achyut Palav and Think Visual by Shantaram Pawar ! A real treasure trove!

Thank you, Sandhya !


Lots of talk, indulging in whims of the little one, who was being pretty creative herself, making holes in tops of purees and dropping aamras through it, like in pani puris; though we never reached the stage of trying to eat a massive one that would collapse under its own weight of aamras.

I heard about some common bloggers from Bengaluru we both know, all beginning with S of course, who Sandhya is friends with. (Some non blogger friends on Facebook, commented with names like Shilpa Shetty, Sheila Dixit, and Sridevi , when they were trying to guess the S name (that I was lunching with); and it's clear that these page 3 entities are not a patch on all my S friends . #Just saying ...)

Like always, there was no dearth of stuff to talk about. I have spent part of my life in the area where her folks live, and , as it happens, it turned out that she went to college with someone I know.

It was time to get out of the fancy AC environs and do some Mumbai stuff . There was a fellow doing Ice Golas with Gloves . And you could get lip smacking flavors to go with it. A cousin had landed up to meet the little one, and their enjoyment of these ice golas, and the thin line of "lipstick" lining their lips after slurping the last of the syrupy stuff reminded me of the time we would eat paan as children and refuse to brush teeth afterwards because the lips looked like you had applied lipstick (and makeup was a big no-no in school then)....

I was having an Ice Gola after ages. It seems Sandhya had been here a few days earlier and this guy had her stamp of approval.

And so we slurped, and sipped, and talked , and like all ladies who cannot resist big signs saying "Today Only", we decided to do a round of the supermarket place behind us, after the kids had left to go elsewhere.

Lots of things like Pairi Mangoes, Collocassia leaves , fruits with competitive prices, freshly baked garlic bread and stuff, was purchased, as the two blogger ladies trundled around with their carts.

It was time to leave. Again in opposite directions.

I am totally impressed with Bengaluru blogger folk. Sandhya insisted on carrying my abnormally large carry bag till we were able to find a cart to put it in. One could use the cart all the way to the road outside, and this would make things easy for me, since for sometime now, I havent been on talking terms with the lumbar vertebrae.....

As it happens , always, (but always), we stood around , leaning on carts, talking away about our interests, and as it happens, always, (but always), we had to bid a goodbye. I needed to reach home before the Mumbai traffic started its madness, and she needed to do a couple of family visits before returning home.

Sandhya was in Mumbai visiting her folks. Married daughters coming home in their kids' summer holidays to visit their maternal homes is a BIG thing , particularly when they live some distance away like this.

The maternal home or maika , is "maher" in Marathi, and married girls, returning so, on such an annual visit are called "mahervasheeNs" in my language.

Being of a kind of ideal age right now (mother of a daughter of marriageable age and so on), I thought this was an excellent opportunity to welcome a blogging mahervasheeN.....

Welcome home, Sandhya !

Kulfi Kronicles or Another Blogger Meet....

This was the first time we decided to meet in a Mall. In the unrelenting humidity of a Mumbai summer, the central airconditioning and multilevel parking was most welcome, and so was the choice of eateries. Of course we always look for a place where we can be ourselves - a motley group, chatting and laughing away, casually eating, occupying long tables. And we also look for a place, where no one kind of breathes down your neck, having promised your table to someone else. This time the ages were spread across a spectrum from 3 to 61.

The Generation Next of the bloggers was present , aged 24, 10,5, and 3. And there was so much for them to learn.


-- Observing that endless traipsing around wasn't pleasurable to some elder blogger types, one of our young chivalrous professional adda types requested them to sit somewhere, and that he and someone else would scout out a good place and then have us come there. Much appreciated. But everyone went together.

-- Some Generation Next's youngest bloggers, kind of sprinted around, and one of them made his displeasure known at being weaned away from the entrance to the game places. Maybe we should have showed him the fish feet- massage place.


-- Generation Next bloggers got presents. The eldest blogger also got a "congratulating" mug from the second eldest. Coincidentally the eldest blogger was sitting amidst the youngest folks, so maybe some folks thought that's why she got it :-) . But the thoughtfulness and wonderful mug was greatly appreciated.


--Some guys who keep running hundreds of kilometres a week for practice, end up crawling when driving in our Mumbai traffic. And arrive last. These folks are given a place at the head of the table, and the honor of ordering the food, and they do an excellent job with the menu. Just a decent vegetarian menu, with variety baskets of rotis, a nice selection of veggies and a pitcher of cold "chhaas", so welcome on a day like this in Mumbai.


-- So many of our group are on to new things.

One is pursuing a doctorate in English at a Technology Institute.

Another combines her legal and sports watching activities, with a penchant for teaching, and manages to have students who have cricket match tickets to spare, allowing her to watch "God" get his first IPL century.

A retired elder blogger, continues in academia, teaching at well known institutes, guiding younger folks in his field.

A younger corporate type, manages to seamlessly interface managing colorful stuff and colorful people, travelling the length and breadth of this land, and running hundreds of kilometres a month in Mumbai in the early hours of dawn. And he still has the energy to tweet and do wonderful photography about just about anything; buildings, animals, payasam....

One younger member, who already teaches, is now spearheading a funded project doing research about blogging and bloggers, and we are her initial data points.

A still younger member excels at running behind a hugely active, expressive, cartoon loving very young son, who is on his second blogger lunch, and shows great promise.

Then there is someone who writes blog posts that make you think about the world and what is happening in our country, and she often comes up with suitable Sanskrit verses. She is limited a bit by her health problem, but she just leaves those behind when she makes it to these lunches, and we like to think these blogger meets are a nice change.

And then there is the adda-ish one, who is so infatuated with his Fiat Punto, he drove it to the bloggers meet. And even convinced his boss to drop by.


But this was a day of amazing coincidences.

What is a blog meet without a dessert of kulfi ? And so we wandered over to the Food Court, where there was a mind boggling variety of Kulfis , and the younger kids got to choose to their heart's content. A point to be noted is that most bloggers in their 30's preferred to lick kulfi sticks, while those double that age, actually had theirs in a frozen earthen pot.

As they say on Twitter, #just saying.

In the meanwhile the youngest member, aged 3, had flown into a huge rage, at being deflected from the game parlours, and being bodily carried away by his mother. He continued to be supremely unmoved by the kulfi.

But, suddenly, the boss of the adda-type arrived. He probably wanted to put faces to the words he probably reads so often and enjoys from time to time, and he was providentially carrying a bag containing some wonderful Ferrero Rocher chocolates for everyone. The little one, quietened down, eyed the booty, and forgot about the game parlours. He was presented the nice bag of chocolates.

I am positive the adda-types will go very far and have a bright future for their company. They already know how to woo the Generation Next bloggers.


The only thing missing was the photographs.

One of the elder bloggers spied , what looked like an American, sitting at a table next to where we had collected. The man seemed to be doing nothing much except waiting for someone, and so he was requested to click us. He graciously agreed, and asked who the group was. The age range, looks, and languages was baffling, and we couldn't possibly be a family.


Here's the coincidence.


When he heard about our blogger lunch, he introduced himself as a blogger too ! From Virginia. And he was also involved in some conflict resolution stuff in the work he was professionally doing here in India. One of our retired elder bloggers, actually teaches this currently , and was amazed to meet this guy. The adda-types too were interested.

You don't run into unknown bloggers in Food Courts with hundreds of kids running around, staff cleaning floors, and waiters trying to avoid coming between folks doing photographs of groups.

Everyone was requested to come together. Those of us smiling for the camera didn't notice that ALL the male bloggers, including the adda-types, were busy discussing something, where this American guy had stood a moment ago. He left them to take our photograph, and a couple of us got introduced to him and his family , who arrived by then , with their food trays.

He did take our photograph. On various cameras .

But the interesting thing is, on my camera , it looks like he left almost ALL the men out of the frame.

Strange ?

All I can say , is Hmm.....

And more Hmm.....

Unplanned encounters

.

Mumbai, India's commercial capital, often referred to as "Amchi Mumbai (our Mumbai)" as a concession to the original language (Marathi) of the inhabitants, currently teems with about 21 million folks. It's as if the whole of India keeps streaming into the city, looking for the promised job in the promised land, except no one knows who has been doing the promising.

One of the "benefits" of being such a melting pot of all things Indian , is that one is able to sample a large variety of cuisines in Mumbai .

And I am not even including Italian, Mexican, Lebanese, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Arabic or even Mcdonalds.

Within India itself, we have Maharashtrian, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malwani, Udipi, Marwari, Kerala, Chettinad, Hyderabadi, Awadhi, Banarsi, Mughlai, Punjabi, Bengali, and several unique cuisines that that one cannot categorize, but are greatly delicious.

The suburb of Vile Parle (east) may have a name that sounds a bit French, but isn't that way at all. Don't know about the "Vile" part but "Parle" comes from the original village of Palda that existed in the old days. This is where my husband's ancestors stayed when the place was sparsely populated and dotted with old bungalows with wells and stuff on the premises. There were a lot of fields , like tomato fields , in the area, and westwards , one had to traverse through barren swampy area to reach the ocean. For some reason, middle class Maharashtrians , specifically in the "Pune mould" gravitated to this suburb of Mumbai over the years, as the island city became pricey. (I often suspect that the Scots are the Pune types of Britain; that should make things clear :-)....or maybe think of how you can always recognize a New England Ivy League type in , say, Texas.).

And so amidst all the cuisines existing cheek by chewing jowl, one also started noticing places serving pucca Maharashtrian cuisine , more so in Vile Parle. One such, that we visited today, was called "Me Marathi".

The food is very traditional, comfort food style, served simply, quickly, and many old favourites of my childhood were there on the menu. I was totally delighted to notice something there , called "Mow Bhat and Metkut" ( soft, semi liquidy cooked plain rice with a spoonful of golden ghee and a mixture of roasted spiced pulses powder), which was something that we simply enjoyed as kids, and often had when we were sick.

We had just ordered , and were wondering whether we were a bit early for a Sunday lunch, when I noticed a lady in a sari walk in with her kids, and just when I was about to look away, I suddenly realized, that someone I knew had walked in. Surprised grins, wide eyes, and both families trying to figure out why two folks were so delighted to meet .

It was Harekrishnaji, one of the founder members of our blogger lunches, and an authority on all the eating places in Mumbai and Pune . 21 million inhabitants, probably 6000 restaurants , 24 hours of the day, 7 days in the week, and we both end up , at the same place in Mumbai, with family, within 5 minutes of each other, on a Sunday before Divali !

I must hasten to add that his family was in Mumbai for the Divali holidays, he has often arrived at our blogger lunches, complete with luggage and bus tickets en route to his home, 200 kilometres away, and once even called us from his residence ,at the lunch when he was unable to come. I think in most families of older bloggers, blogging is tolerated as a kind of harmless evil. Nobody in the family really reads the blogs. And everyone pretends to act indulgent, and gets back to the interesting cricket match on TV.

But this was different ! Everyone was so friendly, and I was naturally thrilled to know that one of his kids was attending my alma mater, and my parent's alma mater in Pune ! His missus has been the subject of his blog many times, whenever it had to do with mouthwatering stuff cooked at home, saree exhibitions, and the family going on a drive somewhere. It was as if I had already met her.

Naturally, I had to have photos of this amazing and sudden meeting. Both of us staying almost 20 kilometres and more from this place, but in opposite directions, with totally different traffic densities, and here we walk in, unplanned , 5 minutes of each other, and occupy adjoining tables.

A few pictures were taken dodging waiters attending the now filling restaurant, though one carrying masala buttermilk did manage to walk across at the wrong moment.

We had to leave a bit early, and so we got up to go. Wished his family, and Harekrishnaji came out , to see us off. I took a photograph of him, just outside the board advertising the specialities of the place.....

I just remembered something.

The last time someone from our blog-lunch group suddenly sighted Harekrishnaji like this, as a complete surprise, the person in question succeeded in completing a half marathon, with renewed vigor, within the next few kilometres.......



While I am not planning on running (don't want to create additional potholes on roads), I don't mind letting on, that my return journey , which actually takes anywhere up to 45 minutes actually got done in 25 minutes today......