Swining in Minneapolis - Gasthof

Gasthof zur gemutlichkeit, which roughly means the inn of coziness or comfort, is a Bavarian restaurant on the University Ave NE in Minneapolis. From our many visits to Bavarian restaurants in Munich last year, I noticed a few similarities & dissimilarities

Bavarian food is earthy, chunky, & goes down like knife through butter, in Munich & in Minneapolis. It makes you give up pretenses of any higher purpose in your life. If only Hitler had unleashed chefs on Europe instead of soldiers, he probably would have had more success.

The restaurants, in Munich as in Minneapolis, have chequered tableclothes.The waitresses typically wear the Bavarian peasant dress for women which more or less amounts to an apron over a white blouse; beer is always sold by half or one liter mugs of bonhomie. The Hefeweizen, in Gasthof was served with two cuts of lemon. I can't remember if this was the case in Bavaria or even at Gordon Biersch in Washington DC. Lemon or no lemon, a yellow cloudy wheat beer is always exactly the right thing to be seen with.

In Gasthof, as in Munich, the menu did not have chicken. Perhaps eating fowl is considered bad form. Of course, there is ample beef, pork, fish (the local Minnesota walleye), bratwurst, & even venison available at the Gasthof. The schintzel is the speciality. Of course! And Gasthof also prides itself on a meter-long bratwurst - & if you eat it, you get a certificate!

Strangely, or may be its my abysmal memory, I was give a delectable salad in Gasthof as part of my order. And a chunk of bread & ample butter. The bread resembled a shot-put - only it was fluffy & bready in colour. This humongous bread was served with about 8 sachets of butter of which I ate two - half the shot-put. The bread took a while coming as it was being baked as I ordered, & I think that while I'm drooling & writing odes on German food, I just cannot emphasize how good this bread generally was & the breads generally were in Munich. Hitler could have gotten the Poland etc on bread alone!

The quantity, I'm sorry to say, was enormous. I was typically able to finish my plate in Munich. With half that shot-put & the all the salad inside of me, I could not eat even a quarter of what looked like a portion of the happiest, fattest swine to have ever said whatever pigs say to each other on bright Sunday Minneapolis mornings. That roasted porcine thing was the anti-thesis of any semblance of civilization & moderation, a throw-back to our lives in the woods & farms when the sight of a pig waddling through the marshes would light up our eyes & set our saliva production to overdrive.

In Gasthof, there were a couple of accordion players who sang ballad like songs in English for anybody who'd care to listen. I recognized "Happy Birthday" & the perennial favorite from "The Sound of Music" - Doe, a deer....

And here is the parody of of Doe a deer that they sang as well... (I've put in my own words for the bits I've forgotten)

Doe - a beer, a mexican beer
Ray - the guy standing by the bar
Me - I drink in the name of God
Far - a good long way to the bar

so - so I think I'll have some more beer
la - la, la, la, la, la
tea - no thanks, I'll have some beer
Do.....

Prost!

Indian food in Minneapolis

Well, this post could also be called "how not to have a life". Yes, it is incredibly cold in Minneapolis & I do not want to know exactly how cold it is for the fear of slipping into depression, & I do not have a whole lot to do - except work - & assorted & repetitive disillusionments on the treadmill.

Minneapolis has a thriving cultural scene including great music, theater & opera. I'll probably go to all of them in time. Right now, the only non-professional reason to get out of my hotel room is the animal desire to eat. Ghastly, right?

And though I like to believe that I belch with equal appreciation be it a Biriyani or a burger with fries, lately I've been stuck to the Taste of India. I've heard from many people here that it is the best Indian restaurant in these parts. That may indeed be so; in fact, the daal is not bad at all, though the mutton & chicken curries are bathed in fats a lot more than I'd like.

You can imagine my lifelessness when I say that I usually pack myself a carry out; however, I like to wait at the restaurant while they prepare my food & never call in advance. What do I have to do with my time anyway (except writing nonsensical posts like this)? In the process, I look at the waiters & the flood of Caucasian & homesick brownies like me at the restaurant. And I read & re-read the menu.

It turns that the menu boasts of 'Kashmiri scallops'. Hullo! Scallops in Kashmir? And Banarasi Biriyani - yes, that may be close to Lukhnow (erstwhile oudh ) but isn't Varanasi more about the Kachauri gali as you listen to the bells in the Vishwanaath temple & the cows burping? What in the world is a Chicken Josh - Rogan Josh made with chicken - as you might have guessed. And Madrasi mutton - if ever there was an oxymoron...While Chennai provides ample delectable & mouth-watering recipes, I have never quite thought that mutton was one of them.

While these sharp & rather parochial differences melt away in spite of the snow in chilly Minneapolis, food-in-general is complete banana oil. No two chutneys are alike, & nobody quite makes khichdi like you do.

S!

Labyrinths & lobsters - Fort Kochi

Tucked away between the Chinese fishing nets, the bustling Ernakulam town, & the now submerged Fort Immanuel lies the sleepy little town of Fort Kochi. Antara & I decided to pack our bags & a little carelessness weekend before last & spend a couple of days in this little town away from the clocks & responsibilities. Even in December first week, Fort Kochi was not the coolest of places, & a 20 minute walk is guaranteed to make you sweat. However, it made up for this slight inconvenience in the way of food, people & timelessness.

We stayed on Princess street at Mr. Walton's home stay. While it did appear a trifle pricey once we found out the tariff from other places, it was a still a great place to stay at. The rooms were neat & very modern in their furnishing. There was even a hint of little landscaping. However, at the center of our great stay at F Kochi was Mr. Walton himself. Mr Walton is a veritable teller of stories & experiences. He was also our de facto guide in F Kochi - charting out in minute detail where we should go, what we should see & where should we eat. He told us stories of the Negro spirits, of the occult explanations of the accidents on beach road, & a 40 minute history of Fort Kochi.

Walking south-east down Princess street, you hit more restaurants & tea shops than you could enjoy in two days time. However, in general, our experience was that the spicing of the curries was really subtle compared to what we had expected, & Mr. Walton later attributed this to the weather, the Anglo-Indian palette, & the European crowd which usually frequents these restaurants. Walking past these, you reach the Vasco house where Vasco De Gama stayed for a while, & then died. And then you hit the St. Francis church - a potuguese church built in the 16th century. Right beside the church, a football match was on with a fair sprinkling of fans glued to it & cricket, in a rare twist, was being played on the sidelines much as a surrogate sport.

You can get back to Chinese nets & walk west on the shore amidst ice-cream & the chana vendors, past the gunnery recovered from the now submerged Fort Immanuel & find a place to sit & watch the sun go down into the Arabian sea. Walking back into the town, make sure you buy some fresh catch of the day & take it along to a restaurant who will cook these for you. The restaurant we went to was Casa Linda & they did something really delicious with the lobster, the prawns & the Karimeens that we bought.

The other part of the town - Mattancherry - is where the Dutch palace, cemetery & the Jewish synagogue is. The cemetery again brings back thoughts of how we do not do a great job of preserving our history. The synagogue is a wonderful sight & continues to attract plentiful people from across the globe. The Dutch palace has some very erotic murals from Hindu mythology. The room though is not well-lit & the ASI while not doing a great job of preserving & restoration, has found wonderful ways to describe the erotica in very palatable terms. The teeming art bazaar in Mattancherry is a good place to look at some fine painting which are priced more or less by the size of the canvas. One of the shop owners said that Indians spend money on gold & land only & nobody buys art.

While in Fort Kochi, you must eat at Dal Roti. And you must walk the labyrinths of this centuries old town teeming with history, blood & folklore. You must buy some fish & have it cooked for you. And you must get rid of your watch.

Strangers in a strange land - II: The bus to Fussen

There are two castles that you cannot afford to miss if you happen to be in Bavaria. The Neuschwanstein (literally, the new rock of the swan) & Hohenschwangau (the lofty swan). So when Antara & I, having experienced these two castles & having managed to get drenched in the freezing rain, awaited the bus to Weiskirche at the foothills of the castles, it seemed to me that the very best of our day was already behind us. In many ways, that as not the case.

The bus ride to Wieskirche was rather event less except perhaps we were the only people on that bus who were going to weiskirche. So we got a little chatty with the driver only to find out how to get back to Fussen & the like. The sky was murky, & the church stood rather non-descriptively beneath it.

Those of you who have not seen the Weiskirche will draw little from my description, devoid as it will be of nuances of rococo. But what we saw was absolutely breath-taking & we lingered on for quite a while.

Waiting for the bus back, I had to quickly go relieve myself in the basement lavatory of the market outside the church. Upon arriving back on earth, I found that absolutes sheets of torrential rain were drenching everything around, & that my wife is nowhere to be seen. I decided to wait over a cigarette, & as I was puffing away, I managed to see the headlights of a bus flickering as if something incredibly urgent depended on it. Looking closer I saw my wife gesticulating wildly at me from inside the bus - she was holding it for me - so, grudgingly as always, I stubbed out the half-smoked stick & ran towards the bus.

It was being driven by the same person who had brought us to the wieskirche. I went up to him to pay. He asked if we had paid once to get to the foothills of the castles & another time to get to weiskirche. To this, I said yes. He then refused to accept a ticket payment from us arguing that our payments had already exceeded the amount for a day-ticket. I generaly do not argue against not having to pay up, but all this niceness around did something to me & I pressed him for a payment. He simply refused each time mustering whatever English lay at his disposal.

Antara & I sat back & started looking out at the resplendent rain-washed roads, & the castles in the distance.

Strangers in a strange land - I: The train to Munich

Certainly, our budget for the Munich Holiday did not account for cloak room charges of 15 Euros per day for 5 days. So Antara, I & our eight pieces of luggage found ourselves with the task of somehow finding our way from the airport via a train ride to the Munich Hauptbahnhof & rolling from there to our hotel. It was not very difficult getting to the airport train station given the trolleys we had, but once we got there, there were no more machines to help us. It was down to strength. And strength had never been my strength. So it took what seemed like an eternity, & we must have gotten some help from the sympathetic people around - for I don't think we got all the bags into the train ourselves - to get everything on the train with me striking a fine balance between trying to stand & lending a helping leg & a helping hand to help two suitcases trying to stand.

So there we were, trying not look anybody in the eye. I finally figured out a way to arrange the suitcases & myself in a less dramatic posture. The group sitting around us consisted of two elderly gentlemen, one young woman, & two college-age boys. One of the elderlies who had been considering our state for sometime decided to break the silence & proceeded to make conversation. Now, my general experience in the US had been that not too many strangers asked very direct specific questions, they ask general questions & you're can fill in whatever details you wanted at your own judgment. This person obviously did not believe in that kind of a thing. He first wanted to know if we were students & proceeded to ask exactly what we did if we did not study, how long had been in the US, how long was our vacation in Munich - you know, stuff which produces simple, direct, truthful answers , not unlike a visa interview. Having established our credentials, he proceeded to share some of his own. He said that they were from MD, USA & are returning from a holiday in Kiev. They had a flight home in the evening & were going to Munich meanwhile.

At this point, he asked me the question I was avoiding to ask myself. He asked how in the world Antara & I proposed to take the luggage from the station to the hotel. I produced maps & directions pointing out that it was about 100 meters from the station & we might take a taxi or one person will do all the moving, say two pieces of luggage at a time, while the other stood at the station. He listened & gave me a the kind of look a headmaster gives a pupil from whom he expected better. He simply said that they'll walk with us with our luggage to our hotel. I tried to protest, but he was not really asking me if we could do what he said, he was telling me exactly what we would do.

The short walk was over soon. I carried the heaviest suitcase, he carried the second heaviest, the young boys carried 3 lighter cases between them & Antara just carried one. They quickly departed as soon as we had checked in, having shaken my hand firmly & not even exchanging names, leaving us to feel warm & grateful on a Sunny Monday Munich morning.

S!



*This is a series on people I've met during my travels. Most of these encounters were short, but left lasting memories.

A Saturday bum

Well, I do not mean bum - the person, I mean bum - the personification. Like the sleeping beauty or the growing lust. Oh wait, that wasn't quite the correct example. Well, what I'm trying to arrive at is that this is as amazing a Saturday as you can hope to see, especially if you're in Ashburn, VA, & you have it all at your whim.

Things started off rather splendidly this morning over an Einstein brother's bagel. Spinach Florentine, for those of you who are sordid sticklers for detail. Wash that down with what seems like a gallon of coffee, & you have just the right amount of fidgety energy to take the longest route back home listening to Car Talk on NPR, as you meander your way through nameless trees turning fancy shades of red & its various hexadecimal variants on what is a spectacularly sunlit day with a light breeze blowing.

NPR, by the way, finished its Fall Campaign yesterday where they aimed at raising a million or so dollars from gullible suckers, though some of them are really rich, like me. Of course, I almost cried at their plea. I definitely sniffed audibly enough & contributed a mammoth sum of 5 dollars - striking a terrible balance between a troubled conscience & an empty pocket. Somehow, I don't think they announced my contribution on air, but I listen to NPR only when I'm in the car, & it is more than likely that I missed the announcement.

Well, it is still a beautiful Saturday. I wish you were here & we could go get some coffee. Or stroll through the rather deserted streets on this idyllic day. I'm feeling inspired today, & may do more in the way of contributing to a conversation than just staring.

Today is Mahanavami - pretty much the pinnacle of the Bengali cultural calendar which they celebrate by visiting more pooja-pandals than the assortment of Gods & Goddesses in Hinduism, in numbers for which we have no definitions. Of course, I'm talking about Calcutta. My wife, her mother, her brother & his wife, & my parents, being in Bangalore, lived it up by visiting about 4 of them & consuming sumptuous portions of "loochi-maangsho" thanking, I'm sure, the Goddess for her immense piety & supplies. Christ, as much as we all may be blessed by him - especially the socially backward castes in India - simply does not inspire the same hearty feeling of a household & hearth that Durga does with her four children & ten hands. My mum often says, without any of my own sacrilegious edge, that she cannot get us all that we want when we want because she is not ten-handed like the Goddess Durga.

Well, now all this blasphemy is in writing because I could not just tell you about it over a coffee or something.

It's all your bloody fault!

Back in the States

Well, I'm back like a counterfeit coin. Hardly two months between leaving the Dulles airport & rebounding back to it.

Coming to the Virginia's high-tech corridor time & again has reduced coming here to an absolute non-event. That's not necessarily a bad thing because that invariably implies how smoothly I can now work with the system here. Of course, the wide roads help & my mammoth Mitsubishi Gallant is a trifle challenging to steer after the Maruti Zen.

It is slightly chilly early in the morning. I did not really break into a sweat after a 30-minute run at 5:30 in the morning. Well, 5:30 not so much because I'm a hard running fanatic (which I'd like to be) but more on the lines of inability to sleep having crashed at 9:30 last night.

Plenty of time on my hands, a great opportunity to read all that I haven't read. And may be, just may be, drink a wheat beer. Or two.

S!

Toronto

Toronto, or may be Canada in general, is spoken about easier by the way it differs from America & not so much if you try to talk about it in isolation. At least, going to Toronto after about 10 months of living in the USA, that was the way I looked at it.

My first impression upon entering Canada was that Google map directions were not so darned easy to follow anymore. And that's not really about a change to the metric system; it is about traffic pattern. Now the very fact that we were not really lost is testimony to the fact that while the patterns aren't exactly the same as in America, these aren't impossible to follow - but just that extra bit difficult in the middle of the night - with no prior knowledge of what to expect in terms of road signs & traffic patterns. I still do not know if a right turn is free as it is in Ashburn, VA - and, likely, most of the US - but I took that liberty anyway.

Secondly, I was happy to find a fine non-chain coffee shop next to the hotel we stayed at. Sure, you'll find the McDonald s & the Starbucks, but why go to Toronto & get something that you get at home. The portions were handsome without being enormous, & the breakfast menu rather delectable.

Now, Ontario is the Canada's English speaking province. So we faced no problems at all in asking directions & such, though we had to to-&-fro a bit trying to get to the metro station next day. Again, that's because traffic patterns were different.

The metro is rather straight forward & runs in a U sort of a loop through downtown Toronto. With the US dollar losing ground, we experienced that our American dollars were treated as Canadian dollars, though American currency was more valuable. If you paid American cash, you'd get Canadian change back as if you'd paid Canadian dollars. The metro station had gone to the extent of putting up a notice to this effect to stop answering any further questioning from incredulous tourists. I maintain that it was at least nice of them to accept American dollars - just as Canadian dollars are accepted (at least in toll-booths in New York coming from Canada) - & the fact is that nobody really stopped us from getting Canadian dollars before entering Canada. Bad planning, price paid.

Toronto probably is to Canada what New York is to America. However, that's really for the sake of analogy & has little practical implications. That's not to say that there is nothing really to see in Toronto. On the contrary, it has a lively theater, music & art cinema culture - which is great in itself, but in the way of architecture, museums, monuments & other such touristy attractions, Toronto is really no match. But what really is admirable, I felt at the time, is the fact that reading Toronto's history one gets a distinct sense of effort & will by the government & the locals to raise the bar on what Toronto really means. The art & culture scene is an example of the intent behind Toronto's development. It wasn't very good always, it is rather nice now - & there is a distinct element of pride involved as Toronto tries to match up with its bigger, glossier North American counterparts. And Toronto exemplifies why Canada is a 'mixing bowl' & the USA is a 'melting pot'.

Well, the rainy Saturday finally came around to lunch hour & it was at Le Papillion that we found our most memorable moments of Toronto. Of course, an entire bottle of good, lush, full-bodied red wine did help mellow even more the whole Mediterranean setting of the restaurant painted in a beautiful pastel shade of yellow & the criss-crosses of light & dark blue of the table cloth. Pâté Michelle was about the best appetizer that I've eaten in a while, & the lamb chops served in a wonderfully fragrant sauce did nothing to take away the feeling of being absolved!

Yes, we also took a boat ride on the Lake Ontario. And my perfectly planned dinner plans were all spoiled when we figured that the only place in town that served Venison, as far as my research was concerned, was a restaurant inside The Hilton & did not feature a single entrée that was less than 40 Canadian dollars. So, we had a rather nondescript Italian dinner & after missing the train once , by the way being extra-polite & giving way to others, we were all on our way back to the Hotel.

Day II was Niagara falls all over. For those of you who've not seen the horse-shoe falls, its difficult to describe the power of all that water hurling itself down in a neat semi-circle with such a force that it creates a towering mist forever, & standing at a distance on the front of the horse-shoe falls, you cannot see it's middle portion thanks to gigantic column of mist. Of course, you just have to take the 'Maid of the mist' ferry & wearing a plastic-gown over your self, sail down to right in the middle of the horse-shoe falls. And whatever notions you have of 'personal space' - especially if you're from the USA - will absolutely evaporate in the jostle for space & a good shot of the awe-inspiring falls.

I liked my time in Canada. There was hardly any interaction with Canadians; however, I seem to believe that it'd be a great place to live in if you can wrestle the long winters. It is a country of peace, & is relatively prosperous. It has incredibly picturesque up north, & has a lively & cultured ways of live in the southern provinces. And it is very easy to go there.

July 13th, 14th & 15th, 2007

Munich

After almost a year of living in a spacious American suburb of Washington DC, Munich, at first, looked incredibly homelike with its sheer density of population & the consequent premium you pay for space. I do not say this in a negative way; indeed, our stay in Munich was one of our most wonderful vacations ever, I say this only to draw underline the difference between what a city has come to mean to me & our rather peaceful & rustic ways of life in Ashburn.

Dates:
August 6th to August 10th, 2007

Our Hotel:
Our room in Hotel Dolomite, the culmination of my search for an affordable hotel in Munich, turned out to be a cubicle with two 2x5&1/2 beds & a Television set & a rather small but modern & well-equipped bathroom. It was mighty difficult to walk in the room without tripping over something. However, it was a very short-walk from the Hauptbahnhoff, or the Central station, & this proved to be a great help to our mobility in Germany. At 55 Euros per day, this wasn't very bad at all for the number of hours we actually spent in the room, mostly asleep.
See this website for booking.

Traveling around:
Depending on your length of stay & the extent of travel, it is advisable to buy rail passes. There are plentiful kinds available depending on how many are traveling & for how long you intend to travel. The best place to book this, if you're in the US, is this. Make sure to check the normal ticket prices before you buy so you can be sure that buying a pass will save you money. The website for all your rail travel related information is this. A rail pass is valid for all transports on Deutsche Bahn, including U-Bahns (underground/metro/subway system within Munich), the S-Bahn (Train system for suburbs of Munich) the trams, the Inter city expresses & anything else that has the DB logo. The DB system is your best bet for traveling in Bavaria.

What to see:
The best thing to do is to pick up a lonely planet & read it. Munich has more stuff to be seen than we could manage in two days, but expect a lot of churches & palaces each one rendered in a particular style of Architecture. Baroque & Rococo appear many times in their classical as well as south German varieties. Munich should draw plentiful Architecture tourists. That apart, you should explore the narrow cobbled streets of the Altstadt & be sure to pay a visit to one of the many Beer gardens in Munich. We went to the Hofbrauhaus & guzzled down beer by the liter. Yes, by the liter. If you're a wimp, you can buy half-liter sizes for certain brews [radler, for example, which is lager beer & lemonade that comes in 0.51 liter size], but not all. Visit the Olympic museum & the BMW museum which are close to each other. Walk the Viktualienmarkt & ogle at the varied selection of cheese & meat. Go to Dachau & see what a concentration camp was like & marvel at the ruthlessness of supremely planned tyrannies, reflect again on what one man can do to another, & how trivial, perhaps, your own problems really are. The list of museums too is endless.

What to eat:
Pigs, simply. They come camouflaged as sausages usually served with sauerkraut [which is really pickled cabbage] & some kind of dressing - say, mustard. But you have no clue as to how many finger-licking different ways this rather simple arrangement is served in until you actually get there. Look up wikipedia for more details, I was too busy eating to notice the rather longish names of these dishes. But make sure you eat the Munich variety - the white sausage. And look like a local by drowning it all with a wheat beer. Roasted Pork knuckles is a Bavarian local pig-thing to eat. Its rather meaty & not quite as bony or cartilegy as it sounds. The restaurant we frequented did not even have chicken on its list, but if you're a Vegetarian, you should find plentiful things to eat at other places - none of which I actually went to. Turkish food is also big in Munich with Doner Kebabs available just about everywhere. We also wanted to try out the Baklava, but the turks had already eaten it all. There are plentiful Chinese places & we also spotted an Indian one which we walked past, rather rapidly. At the Hauptbahnhoff & throughout Germany there are many cafes to snack. I took a liking to the cappuccino & usually devoured a nice little croissant for breakfast. Antara chose apples, strangely.


Expenses:

With our hotel & rail passes already paid for, our daily expenses were not too terrible, especially with my increasing liking of something porcine on a platter. In a full-fledged sit-down restaurant, an entre will cost you at least 9 Euros - & the portions are good for one. A typical breakfast for two typically cost us about 10-12 Euros & a liter of beer about 4 to 6 Euros depending on what you're drinking. Both the Doner Kebabs & Chinese restaurants are cheaper than this & if you're fine with eating out of hot-dog stalls - thats even better. The bulk of the expenses for us, outside gluttony, were museum tickets. On the average, we spent about 70 - 90 Euros a day, not including hotel & the rail pass. We mostly transacted with cash, though we had no difficulty using the American Express.

General:
Like I said, I have so much more unseen in Munich & yet it was one of my best vacations ever. Just about everybody speaks English & the information centers are incredibly helpful. Travel & site-seeing is so organized that it is almost impossible to get lost. The food, as you may have figured, is drool-worthy & the sights are jaw-dropping. There is plenty of history & there are the BMWs. It rained a bit during our stay, & that was probably the only dampener during our stay there. Go to Bavaria, if you get a chance, & bring back remembrances of a lifetime!

S!

The subcontinental

Invariably, it appears that when Americans are thinking of India, they're really thinking of Chicken Tikka Masala. Or, Tandoori chicken. And some of them think, I'm told, that the Tandoori chicken , owing to its crimson complexion, must be very hot. I've been asked if we eat Tandoori Chicken everyday. I did not have the heart to tell the person that my resources back home are too limited to build out a Tandoor at home. So, I said something to the effect of "Oh no, just on Sundays or some such special occasions!"

Then, one time, I had to explain this whole thing about how usually in a family with both a daughter & son, customarily the daughter gets married first. This led to many hypothetical questions about many-children-families & the associated ramifications about age differences & the like.

And then, making sense of arranged marriage was about the hardest thing to do. Admittedly, it works & has worked for a while & there are possibly good cultural reasons for it. My problem was actually more about explaining the set up process in the process of which I, perhaps injudiciously, mentioned the word "pageant"... needless to say; I could not rescue my explanations from that point onwards.

Americans think of Indian food, Indian traditions & Indian IT.

Indians, to the contrary, think of the Punjabi Tandoor, the Tamil Pongal, the Bangalore IT scene, the power corridors of Delhi, the ever-prospering Gujaratis & do not think at all of the North-Eastern states.

The whole, it appears, could not be farther, in our hearts & minds, from the parts.

American discoveries - NPR

NPR is one of the more refreshing surprises in a country where politics, world affairs, religion, trade, foreign policy & such generate little conversation. Or, so has been my limited experience. To start with, my feeling was that, particularly in today's times, Americans will find most of these topics embarrassing, & they're just being guarded in my presence. My slow but increasing familiarity with the American people now make me think that they have no qualms about telling a good story, whether replete with or bereft of embarrassing nuances. In fact, unequivocally, Americans love to talk.

And so there is NPR. Personally, at a broad level, what I find really engaging about NPR is its complete lack of regionalism. Though American, & always covering what is happening in the US, the station does not miss out on anything of any significance on the world stage & generates ample quality discussions about even non-standard news content like science & technology. The quality of the moderators in all NPR discussions is exemplary, & the degree of its audience's engagement is usually intense.

NPR is my cup of morning tea. Sometimes, I wish my 10 minute commute to office was longer.

You can find your local NPR station here.

American discoveries - Microbrews

The world experienced through the World Wide Web is a place of diminishing wonders. Especially in the IT industry, there is no dearth of people who have experienced this country in many ways over varying degrees of time span & directness of experience. I've been to this country thrice before, & yet, it is this time, now that I've spent months living in this country, that I've discovered aspects of it that nobody ever told me about or I previously had no knowledge of.

I reckon we can safely say that Americans love beer. Whether in college, or in a corporate get-together, beer is consumed heartily. Microbrews, however, give a whole new meaning to the rather commonplace understanding that beer is a barley based alcoholic beverage which comes bottled from faraway places.

In the Microbreweries that I've been to, beer is a seasonal drink continuously in flux. There is the ale, & there is the lager. There are the stout beers, & there are the crisp & bright yellow of the weizen beers. Microbreweries are one of the most popular places to socialize, & of the many ways to spend a great evening with friends.

So the next time you're in the US, make sure that you visit your local microbrewery. And if your local brewery brews the Hefeweizen, take my word & place an order. A great place to drink the Hefeweizen in Washington DC is Gordon Biersch. If Nazi Germany had a misplaced sense of superiority, it might have sprung from the quality of their own Bavarian brew.

Footnotes this year

What is so endearing about a gregarious magician pulling fast-ones on a humoring crowd by the chesapeake? And is it not nice to be able to climb 600 odd steps barefoot on a burning afternoon in distant Shravanbelagola? What is the best setting to have a scalding thukpa, if not by a frozen Tsongmo lake? What kind of of people sculpted Hampi, Halebeedu & Belur? And what about the Shenandoah river, or a little Harper's Ferry right in the center of many American histories; what have they seen that the Teesta has not?

Have you had a chance lately to sit by the lake in Yelagiri or walk around it? Do you know that the first mammal, Morganucodon watsoni, looked more like a rodent, & that you need more than a week to fully appreciate all that the Smithsonian museums in Washington DC have to offer? Do you know why turtles come to Maravanthe, & what becalms the sea in Murudeshwar?

What does New York tell you about yourself? Why Pondichery, & why the first rays of sun on the Kanchenjunga?

Hampi

I do not quite remember the source of this discussion, but I seem to remember somebody, probably an Indian film director, characterizing great art as something that manifests itself bodily upon its viewership/audience.

While the merit of such a definition is rather open to debate, the sight of the Vitthala temple by the setting sun produced a veritable lump in my throat - a second time in as many visits.

The paltry town of Hampi is scattered with magnificent sculptures, a young Tungabhadra swaying around rocky hillocks, & lush spreads of foliage on the southern side. You can stay & eat cheap, & if you back your legs, your travel expenses are limited.

The Lakshmi-Narsimha temple, the Virupaksha temple, the lotus Mahal in the Zenana enclosure, the sinuous adolescent river, the crimson sun atop the Matunga - each of these splendours merit a visit on their own.

However, the Vitthala temple gives palpability to our most delectable sense of beauty; the one edifice that at once speaks to us of the most ambitious architecture & the most sublime poetry.

The city dwellers

When I tell you that a Banyan tree is about my idea of wilderness, & a crow is about how much I care about ornithology, you can make out exactly how much of an city person I am. And Venkat, I do not think has made it too much beyond the borders of Chennai, to start with and Bangalore lately, for anything more than a weekend. For him, if a place does not sell Scotch you can safely call it uncivilized, or wild. SA, of course, does not care much one way or the other as long as he is getting his sixteen hours supine & the remaining watching NDTV. SC, well, let's not go there...

Contrast this to Manoj, a one time wannabe vet & now a passionate technology professional, whose home in distant Sagar, then, was destination weekend for this bunch of gentlemen and a lady, reluctantly slipping away from their twenties.

And thankful though we all are to him and his folks for being such endearing hosts, for those cups of fantastic filter coffee, for the simple delicacies of their kitchen and for the warmth and heartiness of their hospitality, I look back with yearning at the rain soaking incessantly the ubiquitous green earth, the lake with a carefree litter of lotus leaves, the roads bending around the water gushing in the perennially inundated canals, the raindrops lingering on the arecanuts, & the mountain in the distance and finally at the summit, past a long, at times treacherous, drenching walk, the wind too strong for umbrellas, the elation too much to contain, the clouds cleared for one brief moment revealing in a dreamlike manner behind the curtains of still heavy rains, the tiny inconsequential bits of life we define ourselves by, so that the only, almost inevitable, thing to do was to stretch your arms and say, "Let there be light!"

The city pulsates, but it is incapable of making magic.

Goa

It was, in many ways, a typical Goan dinner.

Candles & alcohol on a windy seashore. A confusion of lights on pretty faces. Irregular conversation & flashes of skin. And the Orion, perhaps having mixed drinks, a wee bit tilted and amorous on the horizon.

And though this nothingness was beautiful, it was the next day - having walked about over a kilometer with luggage in the hot afternoon sun, hungry & breathless, the shoulders a bit painful, the throat considerably dry - that produced a warmer memory. As self & A settled down to a well earned beer at "Chances", I recalled how I had dined at that very restaurant almost exactly five years ago - having come to Goa with my circle of friends from post graduation days.

Even that night was windy. And starry. Even then, everybody was drunk.

Apposition

Constricted francophile byways. The barren sea, the sodium winds of its womb, a dilapidated jetty holding on to hope. Walking within. Jaundiced bars of bonhomie - some canopied, some celestial. Apparitions, renegades, saints and the adolescent moon. Long shadows and dark skins.

Pondicherry.

Sighting by the Mississippi

You'd probably want to go to Mardi Gras, if you were around in Conway, Arkansas in February. However, the lure of skin & intoxication was not quite as powerful as the dread of driving all the way to New Orleans and so, one fine weekend self and colleagues turned east on the I-40 & set sail for Memphis, Tennessee.

For those of us used to shaking it on Bannerghatta road twice a day, driving on an American freeway is stuff happinesses are made of. However, so are the hours of hibernation you could choose to slip into. So while my good friend Yesh took the wheel, I closed my eyes upon the world & apart from giving Yesh dirty looks, every once in a while, for talking too much to Vineet too loud, the journey was fairly obscure for me.

And somewhere in the fringes of West Memphis, amidst the slightly chilly open spaces cluttered with not so opulent households - the Mississippi still not in sight - & the skyscrapers lining the faraway horizon, there was this billboard with the sketch of an old gentleman clad scantily in his loincloth, his forehead wrinkled with the years gone by, his sight lost to thoughts. M. K. Gandhi stood in that relatively shoddy neighbourhood in distant Memphis with his message of simplicity, peace and non-violence.

It was, suddenly, a warm day.

Shanghai day I

As very few will ever admit, I am a man of many strengths. Writing travelogues is not one of them. So while you may expect that I am going shove in a lot of stuff in the way of introduction, building it up as it were, throw in a bit of history to spice things up & leave you gasping, finally, with precise, insightful observations, you are going to have none of it. Like everybody knows, I am very busy & I need to finish writing this blog before my next smoke which is due in about ten minutes time.

Shanghai is so un- Chinese. I am sure most of us think of China with certain kind of a faraway look in our eyes. Shanghai dazzles. Huge skyscrapers, shopping malls, big wide roads, regulated traffic, big signboards in English, wonderful variety of cuisine, discotheques, karaoke bars (which I am told are very popular) and lissom people walking or cycling around. Its humid & a few of the Chinese here drive the point home by making public appearances in their innerware. Quite a few can be seen with shirts completely unbuttoned.

The roads are flooded with Volkswagens. And ofcourse, the rest of them fancy things on wheels are either fakes of big automobile brands or just bicycles . A lot in Shanghai, & probably in most of China, is state owned & this includes electricity, telephony, transport & the like. However, there is no compromise in the quality of these offerings. I could swear if you were here & I told you you that this was some American city, & you did not know that I was as cursed a liar as you'll ever see, you'd have believed me.

I cannot get hang of Chinese here. So all these roads I traveled through do not stick in my mind. I tried a Chinese beer, Tsingtao (pronounced Ching tao), twice & bought a pack of Chinese smokes for a astronomical 57 RMBs. The smokes are called Chunghwa. They are nice & strongish. They smell sweet, if you decide to smell them.

Thats all for today. Me & friends watched the Hungarian F1 at a place called O'Malley's. Its an Irish pub & serves good caesar salad.