Ponto de Vista

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??

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?)

I’m such a gavaar, I did not know that the Triveni Kala Sangam (~ arts center) in our capital city has a lovely garden cafe. I was quite pleased that someone in community radio suggested meeting here one spring afternoon. Ironically, we were seated right beside this sign and it totally tickled me. Apparently art and work are mutually exclusive. And maybe meetings, they think, kill – just like cigarettes do. It’s a distinct possibility, no? ;D

(In case it’s not clear enough to read, the sign says: “Right of entry reserved. SMOKING or MEETINGS Not Permitted”)

I’ve been ‘home’ for one year. A whole year!
That happened sometime late last night and I was too frazzled to even think about it. Walking with my mother this evening before dinner, discussing my impending move to Bombay later in March, I stopped in my tracks at the realization that I’ve made it through an entire year — relatively unscathed! I can’t even begin to enumerate all the great things that have happened to me and the awesome people I’ve met, the fabulous stuff I’ve learned, done, and become a part of … not to mention the amount of street food I’ve savored… (I’m going to gloss over the crap radio job, the horrid winter, the awful allergies/ migraines/ bureaucracies/ roads …). And to make it all seem most fitting, today, I was given my first fortune cookie since I left America. And it read “You will have new adventures!” No $%*#, Sherlock! HAH!

Aight, when I was a pimply adolescent in Delhi, infatuated with boys on bikes (damn, not much has changed, eh?) my friends and I would walk over to Defence Colony Market to flaunt our stuff and check out the boys. The market was very ‘happening’ by those days’ standards. A veritable teenage meat market where you looked, made comments on, but didn’t touch. 18 years later, not much has changed! The youth ogling are even younger than we were, but they’re indoors, in Barista and other coffeeshops. Def Col even has two ‘clubs’ (RPM and something else I can’t recall), three bakeries, lots of clothing stores and this:
Woohoo baby! Check out the headless, legless mannequin on the curb. Can you imagine a Def Col babe wearing THAT? Wowsers!
Which brings me to wonder out loud – how is the new lingerie store “Straps” doing? I never even see any women in there, let alone <gasp> men! Hmmm. It’s such a brave new world out here in the markets of saadi Dilli

Outside New Market in Kolkata, we were greeted with this menagerie lined up along 6 cars. The dudes in the car had nothing to do with the animals. They were just parking/waiting. The enterprising vender told me he just moves his stuff around when the cars need to leave. Tusha, in full journalist style, went up to talk to the driver on whose car the gorillas, lions, boxers, teddies, and polar bears were hanging out. He tried to hit on her. I dragged her away.

I recently celebrated a birthday — and had myself a party. And got more flowers than I knew what to do with. Every single vase in the house was in use. Finally, I resorted to breaking up the bouquets and chucking the baby’s breath and other fillers to fit the actual flowers into smaller vases. I squeezed the remainders into a pen stand, wine bottles, and even a breezer bottle.
Fresh flowers — I think I’m addicted. Just looking around my digs makes me happy. Six days later, the place still smells great! And the corridor outside looks stunning, if I do say so myself 😀 So I had to document it with my camera phone and share my handiwork! Pause a minute. Take a deep breath. Maybe you’ll be able to smell the roses…
(The rest of the flowers have been photographed on my Olympus and, therefore, don’t belong on the blog.)

Leaving the church across my house on a Sunday afternoon was this foursome. They were just so cute, I asked if I could take a picture. And they agreed. So here they are: four to a bike.

We stopped one night after work to get a snack because I was starving. One of the group remembered there was a ‘geeley channe wala’ close to where we were, so we hunted him down and bought some boiled chickpeas tossed in chopped onions, cilantro, green chillies, salt, and lemon juice. It was tongue-tinglingly, lip-smackingly delicious. And I loved the fact that he had a muslin cloth shielding his wares and the old fashioned oil lamp…

A few weeks ago, we were at the office late and I had an even later dinner to attend. I knew I’d get a raging headache if I waited until I reached my friends’ place so I stopped at the Cafe Coffee Day in the lobby of our building to pick up a sandwich. It being a bit late, they’d run out of options. From the vegetarian sandwich I had very few choices but this one — the Spicy Chinese Veg Sandwich — was the one I couldn’t resist. It turns out to have “Veg manchurian” — that most Indian of Chinese dishes — and, wait for it, chow mein. Yes, a noodle and cabbage sandwich. 😆 And it was pretty damn tasty. This past week, I made Maya try it. She liked it!