Ponto de Vista

Indian Chinese food, as the expats know, is in a class of its own. Nowhere in China would you find any of the random things we consume here, confident that they’re “Chinese”. Or close… The noodles/fried rice van outside our high school sold “Chinesh” food…
(Random factoid: The dish we call “Manchurian” – veggies, chicken, and gobi – really was invented in Bombay.)
But here’s someone in Lower Parel making some pretty lofty claims.
The tagline, btw, reads “Where Chinese cuisine took shape” 😉

“What a nice smile you have. Wow! And you’ve definitely lost weight. You are looking so fabulous! My god, these jeans make you look HOT! And curvy in all the right places. You look perfectly marvelous in this color, too. You simply must wear it all the time. It brings out your eyes so well. We really don’t see you often enough, you know. It’s lovely to have you here, you make the place light up. Really…” 😉

This is Ollie — our vet’s cat in Mumbai. The last time I took Ruff to the vet, Ollie was more interested in grooming herself than Ruff (though she played nice with me.) Ruff, too old to bother about chasing cats was more interested in trying to escape everytime the door opened — so we took him out for a walk, leaving Ollie mistress of her domain again. The doggie in this picture is actually a poster that goes behind the pet weighing-scale, but she’s fearless, anyway. 😉 I’ve seen her reduce macho brutes to simpering fools & quivering, overheated springs. 😉 The vet also has a brown doberman who seems to snooze pretty much all day. Ah, it’s a dog‘s life … or a cat’s, if you’re Ollie.

I can’t wait to move to bombay and get a cat, allergies be damned.

…when you can have five little samples?

Ok, so I’m romanticizing wildly and anthromorphizing, as well. But when it rains and rains and rains in Bombay, everything looks like it’s smiling. Well, to me. Erm, probably because I don’t live there 😉 and don’t have to deal with crazy commutes. This past week in Bombay was super cool. After having lived in cold, cold rain for 12 years, I was happy to go out and stand Titanic-style on the balcony every time it rained because it was so wonderfully warm. I’d nearly forgotten how lovely and refreshing and welcome rain can be.

… you’re on a bus 😉
That would be the poster of Ram Gopal Verma ki Aag on the back of a BEST bus featuring my baby brother who’s all grown up and … arrived. There are other buses tooling along with the poster along the side as well, but this is all I could capture while in motion on the roads of Mumbai.
So, since Monday, we’ve had hoopla (and no time for blog) galore. We saw the preview screening on Monday, and on Thursday we went for the red-carpet premiere. I behaved myself and acted the star-sister rather than the glamor-struck fan or the journalist 😉 And I got out of the way of the paparazzi that was solely interested in the bro … and how 😀 First day first show screening is tonight for all our friends. Critics’ assessments come tomorrow…

Rakhi, this year, was on the 28th. In the last 12 years, I think I have been physically in the same city as a brother, cousin or otherwise, only once — Berlin in the fall of 1998. For the last four years, the Internet has made life very simple. I went to a desi portal, selected a design, typed in a ‘personalized’ note, and hit send (and also punched in my credit card number.) And invariably, the rakhis have reached the brothers in the US, Europe, Australia and Asia on time. For the first time in a long time, I purchased rakhis myself, wrote out notes longhand, bought and affixed stamps, and mailed them all out. Prashant should be so glad I didn’t buy him one of these pictured here. The choices included a real cell-phone sized metal ‘phone’, a dolphin, ninjas, and rotary phones. All to be worn on the wrist, yes.

I was coming home from work in a drizzle when I caught sight of this! Only in India … eh? A man with a cycle rickshaw full of nude, waist-up, face-up mannequins. 😉

Near Kirti’s house in Mumbai is a temple (I didn’t check to which god to Hanuman) that is called Shri Ghanteshwar (or the Lord of Bells’-God). It is festooned with more bells than you can imagine. When you go pray for something, you tie a ghanti, or bell, and it will come true, I presume. I didn’t have my real camera on me, only my cell phone. Forgive the grainy quality. I’ll update it another time with a better shot. But know that each bump and swirl on the pillars and such is a bell (not ivy 😉 ). (March 9, 2007)