Religious diversities and Haleem

As i tweeted before.. Am not an atheist, am not agnostic either. Am just trying find out or rather confirm the existence of god. I wish he/she/it existed, so i could simply turn towards him/her/it in my times of trouble, and rest in peace with the belief that my problem would get solved, in finite time. And the biggest challenge on the mission being am not even sure what to look for and where to look for my answers. Nothing divine ever happened to me, but it happened to others. Atleast they said so, and i want to believe them.

Well the main theme of this post is not to rant about the tangibility of anything divine, but the faith on it and the way people celebrate the same. That's called religion. There was this talk on Ted which differentiated being religious and being spiritual. Being religious is just about the faith that his/her god exists, said that, when you start following rules and regulations of the same and make it at par with a profession, strictly, that's when you become spiritual.

I went to this place some weeks back it was 30th Aug (or 29th), the 2nd last day of ramzan. Haleem was on the mind and it didn't matter how many seas we needed to cross for relishing the orgasmic delicacy. I like calling it the non-veg payasam. Shiwajinagar was the place to be and Russel Market was the destination to reach. Yeah you get many such places in Bangalore with names suggesting it to be the poshest places of the world, but they disappoint you big time once you reach the place. So this is quite a shabby place with all kinds of people walking from everywhere to everywhere, mostly financially not so gifted ones like me and also financially so not gifted ones like others. This is that kind of place where the women carry the kids as if they are carrying an old piece of luggage and never ever try to stop them from crying no matter how much they wail. The men don't care either for their women or the kids. You see hawkers spread all over the place in lungis sometimes flaunting rupa inner-wears and sometimes just local ready-made boxers. The thing about these kinds of places are that no matter whatever you buy, you cannot bargain. Not because they are costly and the prices are fixed, but because the prices are cheap, falls so below your expectations, that you don't feel like bargaining. The concept gets more intensified in a city like Bangalore. The city of gardens (malls).

The place is more or less a muslim area but has a church called St. Mary Basilica. Religious places don't really attract me but people do, rather their faith does. As they say you mostly get attracted to things that you don't posses. Something was being celebrated here. There was a group of fathers and popes praying in front of a huge photo of Mother Mary. Atop a perch which was a part of the church (that rhymed). I could see people looking up in utter devotion in their eyes. Somebody was crying. Not crying like that kid i mentioned before, but she had tears in her eyes. Uhh oh wait a minute there are more people who are crying. Hey no.. In fact everybody was crying. Now i am interested. I had this urge to cry too, or atleast take a photo of the mass tragedy but it felt very unholy. Taking a photo exactly when you are crying ! Bad manners no. Well i didnt have the heart to ask anyone the reason but later i did find out that it was a part of a nine day 'Novena' being carried out where you pray and mourn the death of your loved ones and which is followed by a grand feast. Also this is an event where people feel blessed and believes that all their wishes come true (in finite time I guess). People wore mostly orange robes, must be some kind of dress code. Well all that apart what drove me was the huge presence and the connection that one could feel between each other towards a singular cause.

Okay lets move on. Some more distance and you are already in russel market. Aah the smell of destiny.. I mean the smell of chicken, mutton and beef, the fumes, the stalls, the mild commotion. Haleem awaits. So people cant really eat before its the proper time for Iftar, its the first fast breaking meal after sunset. It was pretty amusing to see the timing of iftar being the prime issue of importance among the whole community. Even i got asked a few times is it the time for iftar yet. Ofcourse, you fast for the whole day and make delicious chicken delicacies in the evening, without eating it ?? I would be left just short of a nervous breakdown. No wonder everybody wore on their faces a visible sign of spirit and hope. The hope that the time will come and the spirit that they will have something to eat. Together. Yes you see the whole celebration mood between connected souls in a place full of vivid colors with fun and the joy. Well finally its iftar. Suddenly wherever you see you see people eating. Restaurants don't have people to serve you because they are busy eating too :D some stall owners even distributed pieces of kabab and other munchies for free. Well when you get things for free, you don't miss it.. Here goes. 2 kababs gulps down the system. Well this lasted not very long because it was time for namaz and the vast crowd suddenly vanishes empty. Even that lasted not very long because namaz was over in 15 minutes and the place is suddenly all crowded back in place. Tell you it was pretty awesome and funny to see that.

Well delicious haleem was had and it was quite an eventful experience to walk through two diverse religious communities in such proximity in one day. Diverse religions have many bad side effects, but it has good effects too. It unites people, brings them closer, spreads love. The best thing about having different religion in our country is that every religion has their own celebrations and functions, and since these celebrations don't prevent people from other communities from joining the fun, it automatically adds up to more celebrations and get-togethers throughout the year. So even if you don't have anything to celebrate in your religion, go join somebody else's fun :P sorry i forgot to take a snap of the haleem, being a bong you don't really remember anything else when you are eating delicious stuff.

Bombay And Someplace Else

Life sucks. Really. Which is why sometimes you need a holiday. Alone. Actually lets say partially alone.

Mumbai. The so called 'uptown' for about a little less than 15 million. I always liked the name Bombay. If only not for some tharkey morons.

Well the bus journey was nice. As a review VRL travels from Bangalore to Mumbai is really nice. As i heard from people u generally find the seat beside you unclaimed and you get a majestic ride on your makeshift singhasan. Plus the journey gets better though with a few stops and the lush greenery all the way through NH4. Also thankfully I could always annoy my ever loyal twitter followers.

Finally good morning Mumbai. I was greeted with a fraud autowallah. Given the kind of reputation I knew about mumbai auto service, this guy was all set to make a big hole in his own plate. 250 bucks for a 100 bucks distance. It was me who felt like saying 'kya bhaiya bumbai me pehli bar ?' but thanks to google maps, the dope was averted. This would probably be the first time i had seen full grown mountains all over a metropolitan city. Why dont they declare mumbai a tourist hill station instead of a financial capital.

Month of July. Here comes the rain. Thank you Mr. Indra for making me spend 150 bucks on a goddamn umbrella. 'Bloody bad timing to visit Mumbai' said in context by a friend at IITPowai.

That's how the beginning of my mumbai ki sair sucked.

My guest cum host was late, by approximately 3 hrs 6 mins and some seconds. Generally that length of duration should trigger off riots, but i was as composed as usual. Anyway so where do we go?? since we are already near Juhu, the rain dance starts with a detour to the beach. and the usual mumbaikaari stuff followed.. gola, rains, local trains, rains, band stand, rains, Mannat (special destination), rains, marine drive, typical bollywood shooting (feat. sonu sood), rains, rains and more rains, gateway of India, Taj and finally some more rains. Unfortunately that's all the timing for the day allowed. For the record I missed paw bhaji, vada paw, dhobi ghat, sea link, chor bazaar, etc, etc.

The following day was nicer and pretty eventful. To be vague enough, there was a missed train, an annoying bus journey with an even annoying ego maniac driver (lol), rains, mountains, tunnels, cliffs, fog, waterfalls, some awesome sceneries and yummy chikkies.

Talk about food ? Dinner at Global Fusion. This is what I call jannat. A mine of gold for a bong foodie with a taste for chicken and fish. Awesome ambiance with the right amount of brightness, right number of couples and the right number of kids. Three buffet counters Chinese, Thai and Japanese all waiting to pamper you with the choicest delicacies in chicken, prawn, momo, squid, sushi, lamb, beef, et al. prepared right in front of you. it was heart breaking to know its not a franchise. but then they say disappointments are nothing but good business ideas. point noted.

That was the nice part. Here comes the unexpected fun. It was time to get back to the hostel push off the pressure and enjoy a cuddly nights sleep. The security guard at the IIT gates decided to be trouble and make my journey memorable. no entry. gyarah baje ke baad guest not allowed re. tum abi nai gussakta..

sir please,
bhookh lagi hai sir,
bahaut door se aya hu sir,
sir bolo kya jama karna hai (with a smile)
Damn. Nothing worked.

So here i start walking away in a city of 15 millions (with most of them sleeping already) to find a place to sleep.

Fortunately everybody in Mumbai has a nice piece of advice to part with. You get plenty of them some crap, some useful. hmm thats solves it right. wrong. Somebody calls out: O hullow bhaisaab mere paise de do.

oops autowallahs should be paid, even when you are in trouble, even in mumbai. Anyway i wasnt paying him till i get a place to sleep.

Time to see some different kind of Mumbai night life. off we go enter lanes exit lanes turn right turn left etc etc. all you see is gold lit hiranandani skyscraper buildings. They don't even let stray dogs pass in.

This auto wallah Sohail something in his early 20s it seemed, stays near bandra and was hungry and wanted to end his business for the day right after his last customer got a place to sleep at 2 in the night. Also my source of light entertainment. He was kind enough to run his vehicle up and down about thrice between andheri and powai and ghatkopar, and find me a good lodge. found one. bhaiya yahan nahi rehna ya achha area nahi hai.. (TWHS)

kyun ??

dhandha wala jagah hai bhaiya..

oh..

silence

aap bolo to bandra side chaliye udhar main kuch aur jagah janta hu nahi to aap mere auto me hi so jana main kahin aur so jaunga aaj ke liye

hahah now i was enjoying. Unfortunately i had an expensive camera else i actually wanted to pass the night in an auto. You generally curse yourself for being that crazy :)

Thanks to his fellow bhai bandhus both on the road as well as on phone we could avoid costly places, laugh on their rates and eventually find a decent hotel. No he dint charge me up a hefty bill. I left him to his dinner at 4am with a dhanyawad and a handshake. now that's what you call connecting with locals.

Life is definitely tough in Mumbai. You find people running. Always. Running everywhere to everywhere else. Not that we don't run in Calcutta / Bangalore, but not as if our ass is on fire. (err.. no we don't run in Bangalore. At all :P) what a hurry. The mantra being, if you aren't rich, run. There is thing about the city that it teaches you to adjust and adapt and still evolve. I even saw a worker clean himself up in the middle of the road using the water from a puddle of rain water. Advantage of 24x7 rains you can say, you get real clean roads, almost. Add to that the usual problems of not being a planned city. As a rain hater I was quite indifferent to rains with all its ugliness by the end of 48 hours. Yes of course people do have this chalna hai chalne do attitude spread all around, but then that's a problem with all of India.

For one thing the auto service is very dependable. Not without reason though. Mumbai is a large city, you go anywhere to anywhere and its easily 100+ bucks, that's like a lions earning per trip for any auto wallah with decent business dreams. You cant really compare that with Bangalore where you almost cross the diameter of the whole city in 100 bucks, may be which is why they succumb to asking exorbitant extras. Call it peer pressure if you want.

Well the trains were good, far better than Calcutta. both in terms of frequency and interiors

My visit was right after the mini serial blasts of July 2011. Not that I expected people to be over hyped about it but there was this indifference about it that triggers a confusing feeling about how to conduct yourself about it being all new in the community. even calling it a 'mini' serial blast makes me wanna think over if i should change that line to something appropriate.

And finally time to say bye bye to the land of Khans, Sherukh Khans. Well personally i wouldn't really prefer relocating from a place like Bangalore to Mumbai, but to conclude, take away the rains and you already love this city.

The mini vacation to Karwar

It was the good friday weekend (that was looking vacationically long per se) and there had to be an escape from the city

We started on our trip to karwar. Resorts booked. Hopped on the car and here we start off on our over hyped road trip. About 550 kms from the edge of Bangalore. You take the outer ring road hit the hebbal flyover head towards tumkur road and get all over NH4.

For the record 6 of us. Landing into mess is destiny. An hour long jam in the rain. That's tumkur road for you.

Okay cheer up. Enjoy the open roads of NH4. 2 fucking hrs just to get out of Bangalore.

1st toll: 15 rs (Madanayakahalli)

2nd toll: 26 rs

3rd toll: 40 rs

4th toll: 35 rs

5th toll. aargh forget it. why cant they just take it one time and be done with it. well who listens to me.

So after many tolls, dozes and siestas and many loops of the only CD we had we reach within 30 kms of karwar. You already start smelling the sea including the fish in it.

We reached Tarang Resort. It is around 3 kms from karwar town and a little off main road led by a bridge across the kali river estuary that cuts through a picturesquely looming mountain. The manager was a nice talkative man in his 60s i guess. Informed me about places to see around. Most interestingly it turns out he was in navy during the India Pakistan conflict of 1971. told me parts of stories of his navy days, which sounded quite entertaining. Nice cool resort with pool, 2.5k per room. Two beds, old fashioned furniture. Attached bath. A/C rooms large glass windows and real mushy beds

The food was not too good not too bad. Very much eatable given you are kind of hungry. The only negative point about the food at the resort is they give less quantity (but don't take this review cuz we had only breakfast - egg fry, bread, puri, tea).

We headed to the nearest beach 500 mts from the resort. Devbagh beach. The beach wasnt very social. You can say a starter beach for the whole vacation. Also the sand wasnt very clean. The crabs were real fast still we managed a closeup. Yes you can swim.

Took a nice bath (the amenities were neat n clean) and headed for lunch. On asking around people told us about Hotel Premier the so called coolest restaurant of the place. Its situated at the heart of karwar town and is pretty famous around the area as even a pan walla could help us locate it from more than 2km distance. Trouble is in our forte, came to know that kitchen closes in 15 minutes(3:15 pm) and order better be placed asap.

chicken biriyani (nice. Chicken was good)
prawn curry (coconut oiled, coconut flavoured, but you get used to it)
chicken chilly curry (awesome) and
rice (needed more boiling) and
roti (nice) and
beer.

The ambience and service was fine as per locational standards. Cost: 200 bucks a head

That brings us to 4 hrs of afternoon siesta. some went to see the sunset at the devbagh beach. but that was none of my business hence continuing the sleep was preferred.

come dinner time. Our ex navy officer manager tells us about Amrut Restaurant in around the same area as premier restaurant i.e. in karwar town. And that's how dinner gets planned.

So Amrut is a sea food restaurant. Has a friends lounge at the ground floor and a family lounge at the first floor. Its a dim lit retro looking place where it takes about 2 minutes to restore backup in case of a power failure.

chilly prawn (nice coconut was no more an issue)
chilly crab (awesome. They provide clippers too if asked for)
squid dry fry (whatever)
chicken curry (good)
fish fry (good)
pomfret fry (awesome. Had two)
pomfret curry (awesome)
rice, roti and
mango and butter scotch ice cream (good).

Price: 260 bucks a head. Service was good. the waiter was a dude. expert of his job. Remembered whole orders of more than 5 tables including who wants what. We actually asked him to write it down but he denied with a confidence of dhoni at the world cup final. We ended up planning the next day's lunch at the same place. Highly recommended for karwar

with that day 1 ends in company of beer, mazza and lays.

Day 2:

Had a similar breakfast and headed to Rabindranath Tagore beach. This beach was more social and enjoyable than devbagh beach. The sand was cleaner and didn't stick to the feet. some groups in families took the bath of their life.

Therez a warship museum near the beach converted from a 1971 warship and perched up on a cement base. there are stairs to enter the ship to reach the deck but as an alternative you can also choose to scale the chains of the anchor hanging outside. The ship shows some typical conditions of 1971 navy from the uniforms, badges of rank, weapons, engines etc etc. No they were not very state of the art though.

I leave the rest of the descriptions for you to go n see in case you are planning to.

We again headed to amrut restaurant for lunch. Yeah when you get a good place in a foreign land you dont really leave it easily. More fish and more n more fish. we were bong majority. forgive us. This time it costed us around 220 bucks a head since we ruled out the starters and sticked to main course all along

Note: keep the metrogyls and enos handy

Yeah time to head back home. Obviously that reminds of our respective managers and their cabins to be vivid. We missed visiting the fort and navybase. time crunched. The return journey was fun since it was a daylight journey and people were actually awake to make us look like friends. We started off around 5 in the evening and reached the city gates by 1:30 AM including the road side dinner we had at AA Dhaba about 250 kms off Bangalore.