MCC (Malnad Cuisine and Culture)

This Oct, my brother-in-law got married in coastal Karnataka, place called Kumta that is close to Gokarna and Murudeshwar. It was a welcome break for both of us to get rid of busy schedules for atleast a week.
The girl’s family had organized a Yakshagaana show the previous evening for all of us. The hall was completely packed with people and I was watching the show for the first time in my life. It was abt “Jambhavati Kalyana”, how Krishna loses Shamantaka mani and goes in search of it and encounters “Jaambhavanta”, teaches him a lesson while recovering the Mani and end up getting married to his daughter, Jambhavati. Three people were stationed on the stage – one for singing and explaining, one for beating drums for female character and one beating the drum for male character. The beat used for female characters is very gentle, slow and mild while the beats used for men are more loud and fast. Eyes are the most important feature for describing various emotions and the artists gave full justice to the characters they portrayed using the right expressions.

It was worth watching each and every move displayed. It was much more entertaining than watching any bollywood movie. I sincerely appreciate the talent of these people and I hope to get more chance to see such kind of programmes.
Another unforgettable thing abt this wedding would be the food prepared at the groom’s place during reception. The entire food was prepared using firewood in a traditional way and I must say that the taste of the food is definitely tastier, than the food prepared using LPG. Being a flavourist, I can vouch for it and can give a detailed explanation to it.
Some of the delicacies from this region includes – an appetizer prepared using buttermilk, with tempering of cumin seeds and ajwain leaves, mango pickle (prepared using small whole green mangoes), kashaaya ( prepared by boiling coriander seeds, cumin powder with water and jaggery and added milk before serving) – truly gives a refreshing experience, green mango rasam and saasve – prepared using grated cucumber, coconut and yoghurt and tempered with mustard seeds and red chilli are just a few examples.
After enjoying all desi cuisines and culture, I had to pack off immediately to go to Shanghai – to experience a totally different culture and cuisine.. I will soon find time to update the blog.

Hello Singapore

Recently I got a chance to visit Singapore for 10 days for a training workshop. I wasn’t really in my usual enthusiastic mode, due to work pressure.. I had to complete some line trials in our factory before departing to S’pore and barely got 2 days to pack off. Three of us were to go to S’pore in the same flight. On Sunday- 27th July, it was a bloomy day and was raining slightly. Fearing that there would be heavy rains, I left home quite early and my spouse was kind enough to drop me at the airport. The whole process got finished so fast that I reached the gate almost 2 hrs before time. I got a chance to roam around the renovated airport and started reading a book. We landed in S’pore by 7.30 pm and reached hotel by about 8.30 pm. We were too tired to go out for dinner. So I ordered food in my room only. I got a first hands experience on the vegetarian food. It smelt a little different than normal- probably the food was cooked in sesame oil..
Next day after a sumptuous breakfast, met up with old colleagues from Australia, Thailand and China – started chatting about the recent happenings in our company. The conversation lasted till the time we reached office in Woodlands, almost an hour’s drive from the hotel.After the training, I planned to extend my stay for a project and met a college friend over the weekend. The thought of meeting her kept me motivated and charged throughout the training. Over the weekend, we covered almost all places in S’pore except Sentosa. Singaporeans have a distinct English accent one cannot miss… Ok la, I go with you.. The taxi drivers are very helpful and it is very easy to go around places..I did manage to do a lot of shopping, that on the day of departure, I wasn’t sure if I had exceeded my luggage limit, but somehow managed to squeeze in everything in one bag. Not that Singapore is the best place for shopping, but I required retail therapy to get rid of my stress and chill out..During my next visit, I hope to discover some more interesting things abt this place..

Driving in Mumbai

Learning to drive in Mumbai is not that difficult and even getting a license is not that difficult if it gets done through a driving school. All it takes is spending half an hour each day for learning the lessons, half day to get LLR and one full day in the RTO office to get DL. This is considering that the driving school persons will help you skip the massive queue lined up to sign in front of the officer before and after taking the driving test. The driving test depends on the mood of the officer taking the test. The officer has a really challenging job to do. The test is conducted for a group by one officer and each group consists of at least 8 – 10 people. The officer is supposed to ask each person ion the group to drive for at least half a km while testing the person on his driving skills. If the officer-in charge is tired or stressed out only 2-3 people in the group gets the test and rest are given license without even a test. Generally it’s the girls who are chosen to get the actual test and I was happy I got to drive for at least 100 metres, else I would have felt the guilt of getting license without driving.

Glimpse of Mumbai Traffic

The real challenge starts after getting the license and when one has to drive on potholed roads, with the never declining traffic amidst autos, trucks, buses and other vehicles. Its even worse, when there is a sudden bottle neck, raining profusely or when one has drive through elevated roads and curves. Imagine the situation when one has to pass through more than 3 or 4 hurdles mentioned above while driving. Some of them don’t even have the patience to wait for the green light at a traffic signal. It’s only after practicing hard for at least a year, one can become comfortable driving in the city… As for me I am still in the learning and practicing stage though I have got my DL almost 6 months back. I hope I can practice more and get adjusted to driving independently here soon.

A small update

Nothing exciting is happening right now to blog... I'm looking fwd to update my blog on the following topics

• Driving experience in Amchi Mumbai (thinking of it makes me tired)
• Singapore trip
• Ratnagiri visit with friends

Watch out for these in a few week's time.

Adieu Bangalore

I have been staying in Garden city for more than a month now and now when i have got used to the culture, weather, traffic culture (bling!!) the time has come to go back to my city.
The first 2-3 weeks was aweful from all angles - work pressure, work place, city traffic and even weather - I hate to get drenched in rain. . At workplace some people treated my like an alien, some didnt want to co-operate because they were not used to doing anything other than routine job. I hated to get cheated by Rickshaw drivers who would simply charge me 50 bucks for a 5 minute ride. Motorists on mg road gave me a weird look, because i was walking on the pedestrian lane.... coz' its supposed to be a motorist lane. To add to my woo- the bus driver didnt pick me up one day and I had to take a vehicle from another office and reached office 2 hrs late.... Phew!!
Most of my time was gone in wondering, how am I going to spend 6 weeks here.

Two colleagues came to assist me in a project after 2 weeks and thats when I started venturing out in the city. Lalbagh was amazingly beautiful, mango exhibition was quite interesting. I would wonder how people simply gobble up gobi manchurian at Udipi restaurants. I too tried this "manchuri" and it tastes superb!! We went around to different malls - none of them crowded like in M'bai. Two days off from my work place gave me time to breathe and admire the city. The city was so much green, so many gardens and pleasant weather. It was nice to wake up to the call of cuckoo early in the morning, observe squirrels and monkeys playing around with a hot cup of tea.
Slowly people in my office started smiling at me like I was a human being. Soon, I had learnt the tactic of handling people if I need to get my work done.
Colleagues would call me up in the morning to make sure I didnt miss the bus, driver in the evening wouldnt mind waiting for 10 - 15 minutes to drop me home.
On the last day of working in office, I was amazed when a person gave me a pack of biscuits and offered a cup of coffee, coz he knew I had skipped lunch to complete a lot of work.
I am not sure if I had changed or people had changed, but both of us had certainly changed the way of looking at each other and this helped me in getting used to the place and culture. I will surely miss working in this place, more than that I am super excited to get back home to my family.
Moving to B'lore will no longer be a challenge for me......
Maybe I should explore moving to another new city after some time (definetely not before one year atleast) to learn new culture, food and behaviour of people

Mumbai to Satara...

View of Satara city from Ajinkyataara Hill
I am blogging after a long time..…. blame my busy work schedule , or my laziness or both, nevertheless here is another trip overview… On Jan 26th our small group of friends decided to spend a weekend in one of our friend’s place in Satara.
A small intro abt Satara – It’s a district abt 4 hrs away from Mumbai and though not as popular as the other cities like Pune, Nagpur, it has got its own charm and we realized it after visiting this place.
Our journey started a day earlier in the evening straight from office. We met at Vashi, parked out vehicle there and started the journey in a TT, after breaking coconut and offering a small prayer. On the way, we picked up a few more friends from Poona, who were kind enough to get us all home-made food for dinner. After polishing away every bit of it – the fun part started.
Mr and Mrs VK had prepared some interesting games and they started off with a game called Telepathy. This involves a unique telepathy between two people A and B. The group decides to tell A a word – can be anything from air, water, space etc and person B recognizes the correct word without any doubts, however complex the word is…. It was interesting to solve the technique…I will not write it here, cos I will need it perhaps somewhere else..
It was past midnight when we reached our friend’s place. His family was very hospitable and they were kind enough to keep the beds ready for all of us and all we had to do was just crash down… Early next morning, my spouse volunteered to warm some water by lighting firewood. One group had the privilege to take bath in this water, while some had to manage with water from geyser. By 9.00 we were all ready and started off in the bus to a place called Ajinkyataara.

The TT stopped at the foot of the hillock and our friend recommended us all to trek all the way up the hillock. What looked like a 30 minute hike took us almost 2 hrs to go up and we enjoyed Misal Pav there on top of the Ajinkyataara hill. The view of city was beautiful from that point and the weather was absolutely perfect. From there we went to a place near a stream, found a suitable place to cook food. The lunch menu comprised of Bhakri ( rotis made from Jowar) Baingan Bharta (Coal roasted Egg plant mashed with added selective spices), rice, kadhi (prepared from buttermilk and chickpea flour) and some yummy fresh jalebis. The guys took care of heating firewood and somebit of cooking, while the girls completed the cutting, cooking and finishing the cooking… While food was being prepared we played some group games – hitting the ball, badminton. The food prepared on charcoal wood tasted great… The flavour of the eggplant after cooked on firewood was something really intesting. The Papad prepared on the hot charcoal simply tasted superb…

From there we started off to another plave to take a look at 100’s of windmills. After taking pictures there, we went to a place called Sajjangad fort to enjoy the sunset. We had to climb abt 300 steps to reach the top of the fort and spent good time there.

In the evening we had a campfire on the terrace and got good chance to interact with the entire family of our friend and also played some interesting games…The next day too we ventured out in a different direction and stopped by a water body to warm the food.. The josh to prepare the entire course of meal on firewood had diminished. We’d rather spend time in playing games… There was a game on ‘ how well do you know ur partner and we managed to win the game marginally beating our nearest competitor… What made us lose points was a Q on my favourite fruit and I said Orange ( it was actually water-melon) My spouse guessed it right, but I messed up.I don’t know how it skipped out of my mind, inspite of this we were able to win the game.
From there we went back to our friend's place packed up and started back to Mumbai. On the way back, we shared good memories of the trip. Overall the trip was excellently managed.
We were almost 10 people, with a small girl. There was no messing up on anything - time of food, planning of places and even games - everything was executed to perfection. I would attribute this successful trip to good planning, good team work, excellent co-ordination between all members... Kudos to us all and hope to have more excursions in this way!!

Glimpse of Europe - Vienna

After visiting Paris and Rome, we had sort of become experts in reading maps, making itineraries and also finding good restaurants. We thought it wouldn’t be a difficult task to explore Vienna (Wien) in 2 days. We didn’t bother much to plan anything. Soon after we reached Vienna, we bought a map and a city guide book. Then we started searching for the train stations. We had to reach this place called Landsstraβe-wien-mitte, from where our hotel was abt 600 m. There are two ways to reach there one is by taking the CAT trains – express trains that runs every 20 minutes from airport to Wien Mitte and the other is to take the local train (either S-bahn or U-bahn) It took us almost 30 minutes to figure out the entrance to the train station and another 15-20 minutes to find out which train we have to take to reach Wien Mitte. There are different zones of train present in U-bahn and S-bahn metro services – S1, S2 till S15. There are also lines that are numbered as S60, S 80. We didn’t dare to find out details of each of them. There was a train ready to leave and suddenly someone told us that the train would go to Floridsdorf and it would go through Wien Mitte. We didn’t have tickets, but the TC told us not to worry and signaled the train to stop till we had boarded. After ensuring that we and our luggage’s was safe inside, he gave the green signal. We got tickets in the train and soon the train stopped at a station. I tried to read the name of the station and tried to locate in the metro map, but it was of no use. My spouse was sitting 4-5 seats ahead and I was a little scared as I couldn’t find any station in the metro map. Looking at my restlessness, a passenger sitting next to me enquired where I wanted to go. When I told him the name, he said it was the right train and also told me that it would take abt half an hr to reach there. He also told me to get off at the station that comes 4th after he gets down. Though he was telling me in german, I could follow what he was trying to say. After abt 15 minutes, I saw a station name that was mentioned in the metro map.. What a relief!! We had to be very attentive to see the board outside as the next station was not announced in the train, nor was there any display of the arriving station. We stood at the door with all our luggage 3 stations before Wien Mitte and finally got down. We started walking towards the exit and the so called Central place was completely deserted. It was abt 11.00 pm. There was nobody around and barely some light. We got sort of scared in the dark and we started looking out for this street called Linke Bahngasse. From the map it was clear it was very nearby, but we could figure out which direction we were standing and which way to proceed.. We started walking in a direction where there were some light and then finally enquired abt this place from a Falafel vendor. He told us to go straight and our street was there… I had a feeling that it might not be wise to go straight, but we just thought of following what he said. After walking for a couple of minutes, we realized it was the wrong way. We decided to take a right turn and keep walking straight. The map suggested that this road would end at Linke Bahngasse and from there we could find out the number and decide to take left or right. The road was dark and we continued walking in the street. It was sort of scary, but we continued walking. Finally when we reached that place, we were able to locate the hotel. Actually this place is nearby the station, but we took the wrong street, hence ended up walking in small dark streets. The hotel was quite good and our room was inbetween 2nd and 3rd Floor. The room was much bigger and better that we had expected. That night we planned our itinerary and went to bed peacefully. By the time we woke up next day, it was almost closing time for breakfast. Somehow, V reached there first and then called me. We were the last ones to have breakfast. The time was just abt 9.30, but Austrians (or Germans, as it’s the national language) prefer to have breakfast by 7.30am. When we started exploring Vienna by train, it was not that bad at all….

One can get thoroughly confused while trying to pronounce the name of the street or plavce in Vienna. Here are some jhalaks – Zwischenbrucken, Klostergrβfelsielung. The best way is to ask someone is by showing the name to the person. The names of streets in Autraia is the same as in Germany, like a name ending with ___Straβe means big streets and names ending with __gasse means smaller streets. In Nederlands, the road names mostly end with __eweg for small streets like Konningineweg, lorentseweg. The bigger streets end with _____straat like langestraat, havenstraat etc.

Schonbrunn Palace view from Neptune fountain.
Vienna was indeed a very beautiful city, with lots of historical monuments here and there. There are tons of places to visit, lots of restaurants around. Our first destination was Schonbrunn Palace. This place is one of the most popular attractions of Vienna and there are lots of interesting places to explore and visit nearby this place. We took a direct train from Wien Mitte and reached the station by abt 30 minutes. It took us abt 15 – 20 minutes to reach the palace gate. The temperature was quite cold there and we saw heaps of snow nearby the gate and also near the palace. We didn’t want to go inside the palace as we wanted to see something different and started walking in the garden. One can visit Palace Chappel, Gloriette, Neptune fountain, Palm house, Sundial house, Maze Park, Schonbrunn Zoo, Tyrolean garden and others.
Just outside the front side of the palace, there was an open market kind of place where there were lots of stalls selling different things – candles, small toys, bread and pastries and even spices. After taking a few pics there, we walked till the Neptune fountain and from there we were sort of disappointed by the fact that the Maze house was closed due to winter.

View of Neptune fountain and Gloriette from Schonbrunn

From there we went to Schonbrunn Zoo- the oldest zoo in the world. This was apparently found in 1752. This was the third zoo, I visited in Europe after Berlin and Amsterdam. Each zoo had its own uniquenss and this one too was quite unique. Its not a very bog zoo compared to the others, but the way the animals have been maintained is really worth appreciating. There was a rain forest section, where the temperature and humidity was maintained like those found in our forests. There were lots of birds and small animals that were left free inside and we could see different varieties of birds, bats and plants in side the place. After looking at a few more animals, we decided to have lunch there inside the Palace restaurant. The restaurant seemed like an expensive one and we didn’t expect to get good food there either. The place had only 4 vegeratian recipes and we decided to have the creamy pumpkin soup and Rissoto. To our pleasant surprise, the restaurant was not very expensive and the food was very good..awesome!! We were quite happy and from there after loitering around here and there, we went to Palm house.

Handsome tigers and playful bears at the oldest Zoo in Vienna.

This is Europe’s largest green house. There are three sections in this house – tropical, temperate and the desert house. The desert house was closed for renovation. This place gives an impression of the fascinating flora and fauna of different habitats. There are numerous botanical rarities to be admired. Lalbagh in Bangalore can surely take some serious lessons from here and implement the same. Sunsets by 5.00pm at that time and from there we took a train to Prater. This place is little far away from the city. One has to cross the river Danube to reach this place. It took us 20min from Schonbrunn palace to reach the Prater and another 15 min walk from there took us to this Giant Ferris Wheel. This is similar to London Eye, but much smaller than London eye. The giant wheel ride lasts 30 minutes to complete one circle and one can see all important places from inside. Since it was already dark, we couldn’t see a lot, but still managed to get a glimpse of the most important places in Vienna like St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Danube Tower and others. There is an amusement park attached to this place. There are different kinds of entertainment present here like roller coasters, ghost trains, amusement parks and shooting galleries. Since it was winter, this place was not completely operational, but I can imagine, how vibrant this place is during summers. Our next destination was St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the most famous place in Vienna. There are lots of opera theatres closeby this place, but we didn’t have enough time to explore and attend any concert. There are lots of people around this place trying to sell tickets for a concert that lasts anywhere between 30 minutes to 3 hrs. There is also horse chariot available here and one can choose to do a small sight seeing in a royal manner, if interested. This place is full of tourists and ideal for shopping anything. After walking down 2-3 streets, we thought of having dinner at an Indian restaurant. It was called “Nirvana” – strange name though, the food was excellent. We saw a couple of Indians in this restaurant. This place seemed to be a popular destination for Indians, craving to have good authentic food at a fairly reasonable amount. Some of the Indian dishes that are popular with Europeans in Indian restaurants in Europe are mango lassi, Naan bread and chicken tikka. These dishes are available in almost all Indian restaurants in Netherlands, France, Spain, Germany and Austria. By 10.00 pm we reached back our hotel and started packing off for the next day’s departure. We were quite nostalgic, as it was the last day of our beautiful trip. We decided that we had to comeback to Vienna again to explore the beautiful city more extensively. We had managed to see just about 10% in one day…
The next day started early for us and we checked out by 7.30 after a good breakfast and reached airport by 8.30. We happened to meet an old colleague at the airport. The feeling of meeting someone you know outside India is totally different. We wouldn’t have had so much enthusiasm while speaking this person had we met in India, but I guess that’s how it was. I have observed this behavior with many more people and I have no words to explain why this is so. Probably an expert can give a satisfactory answer... Our trip finally got over and it was indeed a very memorable one. Till date we discuss about how much fun and relaxing it was, to have this long pending and well deserved holiday…