Ponto de Vista

We went to Meerut to report for a story, and got taken for chai and then on the way, we stopped to see the banana godown (there are about 5 in Meerut, we were told.) They come in trucks from Maharashtra, still unripe, to ripen in storage. After 2 days, they are then sent out to the rest of Meerut where they’re ALL consumed! (Do we really eat that many bananas?) The photos from the godown are just uniformly green – stacks and stacks of bananas on ice – but these two characters across the alley seemed oblivious.

It’s a different thing to have “don’t walk on the grass” signs on lawns, but this one – Please do not spit on plants – is posted in the lobby of one of the poshest, best known office buildings in Nariman Point, Mumbai’s financial district. The sheer necessity of having to post such a sign is what’s boggling my mind. How many people actually spat on the plants before the management put this up!??

So there are people out there who claim to be Gujarati and never heard of dabeli – also given the nomenclature of “fun in a bun” by my foodie friend Sheetal. Dabeli is the past participle of ‘press’ – so, in a word: pressed!
Forget vada-pav, that’s done with. Dabeli is a potato thing with raw onions (crunchy), peanuts and pomegranate kernels. And right before serving it, the vendor will sprinkle sev on it… Hot, spicy, sweet, crunchy, chewy — good stuff! At a street corner near you, but only in the evenings. And the best one ever is around the corner from my house! Yay 😀

This is my favorite corner in Mumbai. I marvel at it every time I pass it. This beautiful corner – Sayani Road and … something else Road – boasts not one but eight (count ’em 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8!) barbershops. These three are adjacent to each other. Then there’s the corner and a mattress/cushion stuffing storefront and then, five more – cheek to jowl! And they have differences certainly, including differently colored chairs, but I can’t help wondering – how on earth does the general public choose one over another??

Mumbai’s local trains are awesome. Not just because of their celerity, but also because they’re a microcosm unto themselves. The people, the smells, the sounds, and definitely the literature – I love it all.
Anyway, I quite liked this offering. Unfortunately, the phone number was missing, but 600 Rupees (~$15) for 40 types of chocolate, including “Ferrero Racher” (sic) – now, that’s a steal!

Since I got tagged by aditya, I’m doing a random post that doesn’t quite fit ☺
To be true to my own blog, the photo is of a place I have lived in. This cool dude used to show up and hang out in my balcony last year in Delhi 🙂

4 Jobs I’ve Had (in chronological order): Girl Friday at King College, News producer at boston.com, producer at an Indian radio station, & freelance radio content producer at my company News Radio India Sonologue.
4 Movies I Could Watch Over and Over: Dr. Strangelove (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb), (more…)

We used to know a pair of lhasa apsos called Samosa and Moongphali 😉 Anyway, this is not about them. This is about where your samosas come from 😀 Behind the halwai, in a dingy, cavernous room is where the raw samosas – still tender in their doughy skins – await their flash in the pan. So, I’m romanticizing 😉 Sue me. But the contrast was too stark to not post. Enjoy your next samosa… Oh and the post’s title? I knew a kid who couldn’t say “samosa” 🙂

India, shining, rising and ever colourful. The travel guides gush about the vivid colors everywhere (hmm, actually, so does every book on India ever, no?)
Of course, it’s true. We do colourful very well here. We sometimes leave vivid way, way behind and move into the territory of garish and  outlandish with some dexterity.
Anyway, this is the inside of a teensy tailoring shop that is owned by a lower middle class sharp-talking, tobacco-chewing lady who employs three ‘masterjis’ to do the actual tailoring. At the outer edge of this tumble of color and texture you can see one hunched over an old-timey sewing machine.

I’ve lived in many cities now and one reason Delhi didn’t work for me was that it’s too landlocked. Boston, Bombay, New York…give me water! When I feel restless, here in Mumbai, I can’t jump on a bike and go off for a ride (there are no sidewalks to even walk or run on) so these days I slip off towards the sea. And then I can see the sweep of the bay – punctuated by fairy lights and the vast futility of man wrestling with nature. Or something like that 😉

I hadn’t been to Juhu Chowpatty (or Jubeach as we called it when we were little) in perhaps two decades – until we were super early for a film a few weeks ago. We decided to kill some time and eat some junk food at the beach. On the way in, I could see small things dotting the skyline – and to my horror found they were not kites, but balloon alien monkeys. They remind me of a movie, but I can’t recall which. Flying monkeys … The Wizard of Oz?
(p.s. did you know chowpatty simply means ‘beach’ in Marathi?)