Gluttony Inc: Food Tag!

So Hob my food-crazy buddy tagged me recently. So what follows here is Saket at his most gluttonous and haven't we all enjoyed gluttony at some point or another in our lives. I don't even know why they consider it a sin!

Top 25 is too long a list for me, so I am going to make it top 12.5. And I don't eat half as many creatures as Hob, so 12.5 is a good length for me. If you notice most of these things are Pune-specific, so it wouldn't surprise you that I gain 10 pounds when I go home. Then I work out for the rest of the year to get the weight off. If Nachiket is reminded of a few more things to eat thanks to this post, it would make it a more worthwhile post.

If you're not-Indian, this tells you why Indians are always slightly overweight. We just have the best-est food in the world. I tag anyone who reads this post to write a similar list.

12.5)Alphonso Mangoes
Anyone who tells you how nice other mangoes taste just hasn't had the real thing. "I pity the fool!"

12) Carribean Jerk Chicken
I miss the Jamerica shack in Madison close to Library mall. Jerk chicken is so well-done that the chicken just slips right off the bone. And it's just the right kind of spice too!

11) Gulab Jam with Vanilla Ice Cream
Don't you just love them when they're just the right texture and sweetness. My mum makes them the best.

10) Kaju Barphi
From Chitale's. :-) Their Chivada and Bakarwadi are little way down the list.

9) Chakali
Again my mommy is better than your mommy at this deep fried wonder! Also other kinds of deep fried 'bhaji'. Yummmyyy!!

8) Sabudana Wada (Fried sago fritters)
Oh this is my topmost favouritest and my mum knows me inside out.

7) Tiramisu
Oh yeah Italian is in here too!

6) Thai Green/Red Curry with Chicken
Thai... If you notice most of the things below this arent available in America. Thai is my favourite cuisine in America hands down.

5) Crisp Dosa from Vaishali's
Need I say more!

4) Rasmalai
Karachi Sweet Mart in Pune.

3) Bhendichi Bhaji with Waran Bhaat (Fried Lady Fingers with Rice and Daal)
Aaaahhhhh how I miss you my lovely bhendi. 1.5 years and counting!

2) Butter Chicken
I hate the butter chicken here in the US. Always has this sour taste to it, never neutral. My favourite is from Surya and Oasis in Pune.

1) Sweet Corn Chicken Soup
Again something you get so easily in India, but is unheard of in America. What a pity!

Nostalgia Revisited!

This weekend I started thinking about Pune and our old house in Shastrinagar and how life was so much simpler back in the day. I have to thank my parents for giving me such a normal and happy childhood. We used to stay in my parents' palatial quarters at 11 Jail Road in Yeravada. The Jail and Yeravada in the address above refer to the famous mental asylum in Pune, to which my family is no way connected to and which I didn't have the need to visit.:) But getting back to the palatial 11 Jail Road. It was this huge bungalow probably built early in the 20th century for some British civil servants. It was a stone's throw away from the Pune Golf Club, which again explains the British civil servant theory. I don't know if it seemed gargantuan because I was so small or because it truly was big. To give you some idea of the enormity of the place, I used to ride a cycle in the house as a 6 year old. So imagine this big house with humongous rooms and corridors and a wide expanse on the front and back of the mansion.

In the night I used to be scared of going to the toilet, cos it was so spooky and so far away from our bedroom. But sleeping all cuddled-up to both my mum and dad as a kid is this really sweet memory. I used to sleep in the niche created in between the two mattresses with one "ancestor" on either side. My parents were and still are doctors teaching at BJ Medical College and these were pretty fancy quarters for young lecturers.

The one problem was of not having any playmates around. Ratan Bai was this maid who worked at our house and she was almost like a part of the family because she worked at our house for a long time. Her kid Amit was my one constant companion and we played a lot of cricket together. There was a girl too.... I don't recall her name now... Meenal... her dad worked at the Department of Education, but she was always locked up in her house and we used to play through this grilled door. I was the free man riding my bike both indoors and outdoors and she was the jail bird. I remember I had this game where I created an airline and I sold tickets for plane rides to various places through the fence. Meenal used to buy tickets from me.

When it rained it was a lot of fun. I used to cycle through the puddles and watch the jets coming out of the back of my bike. And make paper boats and try to float them over the brown waters, or wade through the pools much to my mother's dismay. Lights used to go out during the storms and my mother, who was still studying for her MD in Anesthesia used to pore over here medical tomes in candlelight. She hated leaving me home alone on days that I didn't have school and I used to run behind my parents' Priya scooter or just grab her tight saying "Nako Jauuu Na!!" (Don't go!! in Marathi)

So basically given the lack of playmates (there were only about 12 houses on Jail Road and all of them with older kids) and the studious parents (my dad was also doing his PhD at the time), I had to invent my own solo-games. It is a skill which holds me in good stead even today and I am pretty happy even when I am all alone. My parents also got me pets... I had 2 messy rabbits and I loved them because they were so very cute! My parents got the honor of cleaning up the mess and I enjoyed the company of the cute cuddly creatures. Ofcourse when the ruling party in the house gets tired of being honored so much, the pets have to go and they were released in the wild spaces of Tingarenagar close to my kaka's (paternal uncle's) house. I was so sad that day!

Doordarshan was the only station that you could watch on that Black and White TV at home and I recall seeing Indira Gandhi giving a speech. I definitely wasn't precocious enough to understand what she was talking about. I remember reading about Operation Blue Star and General Vaidya being murdered in India Today. Wow I surprise myself sometimes!

Few years ago I think I was on my way to Neeraj Sane's house and I saw some of the roads that were the everyday route for us on that Priya scooter. Gunjan Talkies, Aga Khan Palace. The Jail Road Bungalows are now surrounded by high rise apartment complexes and I guess I won't be able to recognize that place as the home of my childhood. So many more memories still persist... throwing tantrums for the cars in the market... the weird sights, sounds, smells of an Indian bazaar and my mother haggling for groceries, new year's parties at our house with lots of guests.... Wonderful!

Stale News of the Week: Holocaust never happened says Iranian President

This just cracks me up totally. I am sure the actors in Schindler's List aren't thrilled about such statements from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I mean you saw it on DVD too Mr President... Would anyone make a story like that up? Why would Albert Einstein leave Germany then? And why would the German government call your statements "shocking and unacceptable." I don't understand the context in which Mr Ahmedinejad is making this statement, probably something to do with Israel, to gain popularity in the Arab countries. It sounds totally ridiculous nevertheless.

I don't trust everthing I read in the papers but I think doubting Holocaust, would be taking it too far. Frankly there is nothing I can do to double-check the veracity of any piece of news. I read it at face value and trust the person who is publishing it. The various reporting agencies act as watchdogs for each other, so I assume Reuters keeps BBC in line. Ofcourse there are exceptions like FOX.

On the creation of Israel. I came across this conversation President Truman had with King Saud of Saudi Arabia about this. President Truman talked about how the Jews have suffered through Holocaust and why Israel should be created as a way to appease a people without a homeland. King Saud said something to the effect, "If the Germans caused Holocaust, give the Jewish people a piece of Germany. Why do we give up a piece of Arab Land?" It sounds fairly reasonable and just to me. Only that the Jewish people don't consider Germany the chosen land or the land of their ancestors.

Added Noam Chomsky to my blogroll, inspired by Ashutosh. Also happened to fall upon Rahul Mahajans excellent posts on the Iraq War and general problems that I have alluded too in the last few posts.
Empire Notes

Freshest Stale News : Inuit sue US over climate policy

I've always wondered if there were lawyers among Eskimos. Somehow you'd guess that all of them are fishermen, igloo builders and snowmen with red carrots for noses. Well turns out they are suing the US government over it's anti-environment policies.
Link to "Inuit sue US over climate policy".

I would be scared too if I were an Eskimo. With climate change occuring at the current rate, we would lose our polar ice caps pretty soon. To give you some idea of the conflicting interests at Montreal Earth Summit, here's a snippet from another news story from BBC.

"Saudi Oil Minister Ali Ibrahim al-Naimi asked for more action to compensate petroleum-exporting countries standing to lose revenue from alternative energies.

Japanese Environment Minister Yuriko Koike called on developing countries like India and China, which are exempt from Kyoto, to join in the fight against global warming.

Indian negotiator Andimuthu Raja said growth and the elimination of poverty must take precedence over mitigating the effects of climate change."

So every country just sticks to it's own selfish interests and refuses to budge. America then uses China and India as examples and decides to not do anything about greenhouse gas emissions. The Saudi take on the issue is just plain stupid, pay us because we are going to lose business from petroleum. How about saving up the money you made from petroleum and investing it to grow in other directions?

Solar energy would be a boon to India. In Pune, where I lived for 20 odd years, 90% of the days are bright and sunny. India should take the lead in solar energy and start exporting cheap solar-power solutions to the rest of the world. So the trade deficit from petroleum will be replaced by a trade surplus from the new exports.

On America... Why does switching to renewable sources imply economic slowdown? The problem is that with Bush's failures in many other areas, he can't afford to change status quo on this issue and risk a loss. He has already given America a huge debt and he can't afford to hurt the economy more than he has already. So anti-global warming pacts just hit America at a bad time politically.

Best stale news award:Ode to George Bush!

So here is a new concept I am starting today, I will be choosing what I thought was the best news story I read yesterday and bring it to the spotlight here! What with 50 people visiting this page everyday and spending 0 seconds on it, that's quite a spotlight! It is stale news because it was in the papers yesterday, but hopefully should be fun! I'll also give you my opinion on it, which as you must have noticed by now is priceless. Okay never mind that last sentence, please come to the blog again!

"Ode to George Bush" wins the debut award hands down. Here is the poem:

The first letter in each line spells out "President George Bush". Now this is what happens with you employ an army general/dictator to design textbooks. Did Musharraf choose the poem himself and then send a copy to President Bush? I'd like to think so.

I wonder which anonymus person could write a poem praising George Bush, at a time when his approval at home is 40% and approval worldwide is 0%? I think he must be a real genius, who took up praising Bush as a literary challenge... I mean singing encomiums about the biggest failure of our times is quite a task. My plaudits to him on the noble effort.

A blunder of this magnitude can never happen in the US. Gullible americans might believe in intelligent design, but they're never going to believe in a man who makes them spend $5.6 billion per month in Iraq. Yes that's how much it costs.

Coming soon to a cellphone near you...

Ever feel terrible about missing your favourite TV show, because you were "leaving on a jetplane"? Or miss that Packers game because your cable company is making repairs? Well worry no more. You don't need Tivo no more. The cellphone in your pocket will soon allow you to tune in to your favourite shows. Ofcourse if you live in Europe or Japan, you could subscribe to a DVB-H service today. Residents of America need to be a little patient. Help is on the way!

The Nokia N92 will have a 2.8 inch screen to let you watch TV. Looks cool doesn't it?! And some well-known wireless companies are tying up with TV channels to provide us with this service, sometime next year. Now you know what I want for my birthday next year. :-)

Further description:
"Finally, we have the Nokia N92, which has support for DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handhelds), along with any streams you might catch with the snazz 3G connection. It’s a dual folder, similar to the Samsung D307, giving you a nice landscape orientation for video viewing on the 2.8-inch, 16 million color, 320 x 240 display. There are once again two cameras available for your snapping pleasure, with 2 megapixels in the high-res one. There is also 802.11g WiFi and the usual Bluetooth and USB 2.0, along with 90MB of storage, expandable through miniSD."

What would you do if I sang out of tune
Would you stand up and walk out on me
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
I will try not to sing out of key

Joe Cocker's deep voice singing this amazing tune is a childhood memory I can scarce forget, the title song for a most memorable show. Those were my Wonder Years and also those of Kevin Arnold, the teenager protagonist of an ABC series called "The Wonder Years". It's amazing how you live your life through the eyes of a TV character and Kevin Arnold as average as he was, just was someone I identified with. I fell in love with Winnie Cooper through him and lived through the ups and downs in his life in much the same way. Not having any siblings myself, "budhead" Wayne and pretty Karen, were a part of my family as well.

I looked up what Winnie (played by Danica McKellar) and Kevin (played by Fred Savage) are doing now. Danica was a mathematics student at UCLA. I am not surprised... She did look the part in the series as well. Fred Savage graduated from Stanford with a degree in English. As usual a wiki link here.

I never got to see the final episode of Wonder Years. Priyu once told me about how the series ended and here is a gist from Wikipedia for the rest of you:

"Reflecting on how everyone eventually grows up and how childhood comes to an end, Kevin and Winnie have one last passionate day together before going their separate ways once and for all. Winnie goes to Europe to study art, while Kevin stays in the States, gets married, and has a son. The two write to each other for eight years. Kevin's father dies of a heart attack, and his brother takes over the family business. The fates of many supporting characters are resolved, and the narrator (adult Kevin) tells us: "Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house like a lot of other houses, a yard like a lot of other yards, on a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back, with wonder.""

Reading this story makes me extremely sad for some strange reason. Somehow the loss seems very personal and deep. (Though I've been through much worse...) How I wish I could be 14 once again! Here's to remembering those pretty girls I was infatuated with, those beautiful dreams of becoming an astrophysicist and reaching for the stars, to playing cricket on the terrace, to eating 'ambe' every summer, to the time long ago when I loved a girl... my Wonder Years.

Adding another classmate and friend from COEP, Milind Toke to my blogroll. Milind is this really nice guy from my class who works at CDAC in Pune on making some supercomputers.

Also do visit this blog by Aparna too, I thought it was really interesting.
http://thevariegatedsky.blogspot.com/
I haven't read a lot of Tagore, but the story from her current post is just wayy too brilliant. I should read some more.