Sunday, June 22, 2008

Aapki Nazaron ne Samjha has been uploaded after a lot requests. Check it out here.I had been to a wedding yesterday in Trissur and since I hail from the place I love the traditional cuisine. Infact a survey held on the best traditional food in Kerala, the place won it.I think Cochin was included as it shares the same kind of style. The best is the payasam, 3 kinds. And though I am an ex NRI and have not eaten a lot of traditional stuff in the traditional way and been to the big weddings and blah blah blah blah blah... I LOVE having the payasam in the banana leaf aka *ela* which a lot of "non NRIs don't know of". I hate the whole assumption of NRIs don't know this and that and they are just a bunch of show offs who try to rub off their desi culture and bring in a lot of foriegn goods and are fussy about using local stuff. I mean woteva! It's so untrue...and that's not the way we are. Infact the moment I meet some localites ,there are some who speak in a 'put on' engilsh accent and despite my replies in my mother tongue they never seem to get rid off their angrejji. Sometimes I feel people should be their selves first and must accept that we are normal people like them who can eat with hands and can smell with a nose. Anyhow the wedding was a small and a cute one and got to meet up with a lot of 'ol friends. After the Big Fat Malu wedding we went back to Trivandrum and surprisingly there aren't any rains here. I love travelling by the 4:15 bus coz then you get to see Cochin in the lights. It's as though they celebrate everyday. Have never seen so much of lights and enthusiasm in any other place in Kerala except for a special festival like Onam or something. The place is so tempting that everytime I pass the branded stores there is this urge to break the window and jump out to get some real shopping done. Yeps, I am maaad about clothes-shopping. I hate shopping anything else. But clother be it indian or traditional..it's just my thing. Usually by eight or so the bus stops at a hotel where the people always serve the passengers. But this time we went to different one. More like a 'thattukada'. I've always fancied eating there since a child. And I must say, that's one thing we NRIs never got to do :)

Today we had a lunch party at my neighbour's place as an acknowledgement of the fixation of his marriage. I went there only for lunch (food factor always works) and my favourite was the 'ada payasam'. Apparently in traditional Trivandrum food 'semiya payasam' is always served on top of the Boli. My mom had taught me the Hindi name i.e. puran poli (or something like that) since she spent major part of her life in Bombay. I don't like the taste of that dish nor do I like to have it with the payasam. But in Trivandrum weddings if the payasam is served without the Boli then the sadya is termed as a 'bad' one. Once I and dad had flied to Chennai through Kingfishers and they give this menu card for a choice of the snack we want. Now I saw these weird names and asked my dad if he really wanted to have. Now my dad is a terrible foody and sticks to his all time favourtie *mummy ka khana*. But I didn't want to miss it so thought of ordering the chicken one. When the snack was served, actually it's not right to call it a snack ,it was some kind of a 'mid dinner' (as the flight was in the evening). The had noodles and chocolate truffle (desert) and the starters was chat stuff. Batata Vada if I am not wrong. In the menu it was given this long weird name something starting with a T. It took the chef (perhaps) three long words to describe our very own Mumbai ki chat...arre apna ghar ka khana. But it's an art to translate all these names to English though I didn't get a word of it. Anyways, the food was great and so was the truffle. You never know how time goes in a short domestic flight but in the international ones ,one can die of boredom. When I was younger we used to fly to Mumbai first and then to Kerala. So for the former we used to fly by Gulf Airways and I used to love that airlines only coz they had a screen and used to even distribute toys to small kids like me. Maybe it's their job to give those toys off cos I never even had to give them the cute smile. After that in tenth I couldn't take my days off during summer hols cos I am in 10th !!!! Something parents and teachers used to consider as big as the World war where a soldier better fight through or else it's goli maar bheje mein. Thankfully my math tuition sir said I could take two weeks off cos I am progressing well :) Math runs in my family blood. And that is the right reason for the good scoring in my boards only for math. That was the only subject where I scored above 90. A 96 to be precise. And I boast about it even today cos earlier I was compared to my sister as she had topped the board for scoring the highest in maths at that time. So it was an 'obvious' assumption that I had to lead the family tradition as though it's like carrying the olympic torch or something. So with my musical shows and basky and whatnot I was quite adamant about scoring somewhere near sis. For the sake of my prestige. Since then math is my most favourite subject. Honestly, it is. I don't have the brains for an invention or for mugging up raaga names. Am not too spontaneous on answering the name of the raaga for any given song. But math....I am good at it.I guess it's cos it runs in the family and maybe I am the first one to initiate a musical background at the Vattappillys. But I hate physics. From the bottom of my heart I never found even a tinge of connectivity of the subject with math. I mean V= IR or whatever never seemed to do anything with math except for the ODMAS. But if you see that way then everything is math's sibling. Like in geography we have graphs represented by numbers that too decimals! Enough of bragging. I have this tendency of deviating from the topic everytime. Can never keep it succinct unless it demands. I actually wanted to say that that year I didn't fly to Bombay and had to fly through an other airlines and it totally sucked. I mean no screens, no toys (I know I was 15 then, and a big girl..but still) and horrible food. After that flying was so boring that I wish I could be a superwoman or something to just click on some gadget attached to my wrist and say hooolaaa..and whoosh I reach the destination. But this time I flew though Jet Airways...great food, single screens, and the best of all.... ok never mind ,I cannot mention such things in blog :P My best friend calls me a radio FYI. And therefore it's the no. (___) FM station in the blog world {the ___ can be filled with an appropriate number between 1 and 2, no decimals allowed as per rules}....... *Stay tuned* :D

2 comments:

VIKAS PLAKKOT said...

I'll be commenting more on the math-phy part since science and math are my world being an engineer.
Maths runs in blood? I dont think so. Its that u knew u had to perform, U did. Cos of the so called pressure! Esp cos ur sis was good @ math.. In my case, my bro was a math pro..He was a national level olympiad winner, but I always got way better marks than him.. just cos the edu system is all dumb and marks of maths in baords dont reflect how good we are. U practice 10 papers and then bang u get above 90 for sure.

And then Come on, Phy is not connected? Tell me how did you arrive at all those equations? Guess u werent a science+mat student at school in 12th.. If yes, u would know that all formulae u see here is a result of integrating and differentiating which is the basic of maths after 10th. So, u got that bit highly wrng!

n yes, too much of deviations frm the topic. Dunno wher ya ended up frm. And hey, most of the NRI's i have met are just like us, and I never felt that they are different. NRI's have a lil broad mind set..and people here hav a lil narrowed one. I guess therz nothing more.

And abt the flight part, Me never went beyond Indian or JET , all the 10-20 times i hav travelled and they served me chilly chicken as chilly chicken itself :)

And yes, The food over to the North rox. I hate it when it gets down south near TVM, they serve biriyani like some uncooked rice.
Thrissur, Northern EKM, Palakkad, Malappuram and Calicut are the best @ FOOD... Thrissur and palakkad at veg and the rest at non veg...!! :) ..and yes, I love the ada that i have it atleast 5-6 times during a sadya :P

Now, Stick to one topic. U covered atleast 3.. :) and this is No.1 FM station too... H ehe!!

Neha Nair said...

BTW thanks for placing me no. 1 :) I wasn't talking too technical about math and physics , infact I was saying how bad I am at it cos I can't even understand the connections between the two.

I wasn't really arguing about NRI being broad minded and all . I was trying to tell that people never give NRIs a chance to show what they are. Ther are registered as 'head weight' the moment they step on Indian soil. Not fair.

About sticking on one topic. That's what I promise myself each time I begin to blog. But for sure I break it and got this terrible thing of deviating. But as far it's writing it's fun.