Jalebi, anyone?

Its back! My favorite-eshhht season, is back! My toes, fingertips, and very cold nose approve! Every year, I wait, for November to arrive, and usher in December, handsomely. (November and December are men to me, I remember a cartoon where the months had Mustaches in a calendar. January was a woman, also my birthday month – its all pre-planned) There are so many reasons to love December – Christmas(!!), End of Year, New year approach-eth, numerous birthdays, the friends coming to base location for the holidays, blowing cold air to see thick smoke, less harsh sunlight, christmassy movies,… lots to look forward to, I say!

The object of this Monthly musing, was to bring us back to a wet Sunday. Jal, the cyclone, is busy lurking near India’s east coast, its also off-shooting constant rains to Karnataka. Here in Bangalore, it rained, and rained some more. What is one to do on such a day, where you can’t step out? Here are some ideas, which might have been tried and tested by all of you

* Watch TV, don’t budge. You could even wind up with watching Aishwarya Rai with her fake guffaws, cheesy movies, romantic movies, topped by a constant supply of unhealthy crunchies.

* Read, you good soul. This bit is for people who would rather spend a day at peace with themselves. Nothing like curling up with a good book, racing to finish it.

* Bo(a)red games. The family. The friends. Whoever you can set your eyes on. A game of cards might help too.

* Food-for-soul. Music. Must listen to favorite music. Lifts heart straightaway.

* Play with kids/pets. If you have them around. For the less sensitive option, play farmville, fishville, petville, dogville, catville, splitsville (oops!)

* Adult stuff – Censored on this blog. :P

* Cook/Eat. Do whatever you’re best at. I’m an eater. The process of making food is taboo for me, only because it gets added as a credential to “getting hitched”. I no wannn no wedding now! Eating, is the next best thing.

Anything else, which you can think of? Leave them in your comments.

Talking about cooking and eating, this Sunday the family decided to make pakoras. I fried them! Yes I did! :) Also managed to get them out of the bubbly, in a lovely golden brown color. Topped this off with filter coffee, (I mixed the decoction and milk to a tasty blend, now that needs some talent too).  Eating always makes me feel hungrier. I could kill for Jalebi’s right then! Now, how does one venture out in the rain to bring Jalebis to follow the pakoras. So I tried watching this -> .

Epic Awesome Ad! :D Now, I’m happy. Hope you’re hungry too. Jalebi, anyone?

You evil black film.

Yep, more Bangalore talk on the block. An ardent book lover would tell you to walk straight up to Blossom book house and pick a book. New, old, second hand, as good as new, as old as wine, everything you can think of. (Free marketing for Blossom) So, you pick this book and take it home with you, and start reading. It gets intense towards the middle, you’re mind is racing. You make a small little world of your own. You build mountains of gold, or rivers in pink. You eat chocolate frogs, or walk through the desert barefoot. You believe the guy you always dreamed of could never get better than the hero of the book (men ignore), or that the woman you created in your head was just everything that you ever needed (so the menfolk don’t feel left out).

Woah! You think, as you read the last page. I have this little quirk of my own. If I’ve really loved a book, I somehow end up hugging the book and let the feeling soak in. You live the book through those few seconds of quiet, and own the book! Another quirk is to smell books. I love the smell of paper and ink, and the mix of both alike. It makes me think about days when I used to read a book at lunch time, and my darling (the bestest) grand-dad made sure he stuffed food into my mouth, while I read. (Yes, spoiled brat).

Now, the wait begins. The movie honchos have been so  enthralled by the book that they decide to make it into a movie.You just can’t wait enough. You are dying to see what they’ve made of your favorite book. So, you decide to buy tickets and go watch the movie, whose lines you knew without any error. The movie starts, and what you see on the screen is so unlike how you imagined it to be. The talking trees are actually only a  skewed version. The alien had green blood, not the bright cobalt blue that you love! For me, undoubtedly, a reading of the book surpasses the experience of watching it on the big screen. A replication of a book tells you how one particular person had imagined it.

Another terrible thing I see is that, once you watch the adaptation, you will never ever read the book again and think about what you imagined initially. The characters now have a defined face, and will be henceforth, for generations to follow. For instance, Harry Potter will never be the boy I thought of when I first read the book. Harry is now Daniel Radcliffe. Robert Langdon is always going to be Tom Hanks. This breaks my heart, Edward Cullen will never be the vampire of my dreams. He will be a pale, dull eyed Robert Pattinson. Gollum will never be the same lovable creature I thought he was.

I refrain from watching adaptations, but sometimes you have no choice, when they bind you to the chair and start playing the movie, with nothing else but a long flight to keep you company. The movie kills my imagination. I wish fervently that they’d leave those books alone! We, Bollywood-ers also have the irresistable urge to make a copy of the adaptation. Very very smart Bollywood. Take a very successful Hollywood movie(already an adaptation), rip it off, make another movie which will be a scene-by-scene copy. Voila! There you have it, a bigger flop, but the producer need not worry now, does he? This black film is evil, evil I tell you! :)

Calling for instances where the movie surpassed the book. I don’t seem to have an example right now. Need some help!

A first of sorts

You’ve got to just love those rainy days in this city. Bangalore, my charming little (atleast, used to be one) city where you expect a tormenting cloud to hover about for hours and then not shower down upon you. The point I’m making is, clouds seem to think here. Uncanny as it may sound, the same cloud can give you a burst of rain and silently float away. Come and go without a bang, and the next minute, bright sunshine!

Ask any true Bangalorean (Bengaluru-ean/Benagloorite sounds rather depressing), they’d give you the most heart rendering reaction about Bangalore (again, I’m going to stick to the charming name it had). “Bangalore’s got charm”, which pretty much seeps into the people living here as well. Charming, quaint, practical and all those adjectives you’d choose to describe a really charming place.

Being away from here, home, was probably the hardest phase for me. They say, once a Bangalorean, always a Bangalorean. No other city can be called home after being here. After being dropped (like hot cake, at that) into a city (owning to my cribbing nature, I’d rather not name this city, just going to call it city), I felt alienated. Entering City was like entering an oven which your mother chose to pre-heat to bake some cake. City was not so kind to me either, since it had a brain of its own (generously lent to it by the residents). It chose to give me the worst summer, worst monsoon I’d ever faced.

Sooner than I expected, i got used to City, with its ways that connected to the roots of the Indian Culture. I saw it all around me, amidst all the hustle and bustle, the big waves, the loud gyrating music and dance, City never failed to impart little lessons. Lessons for me to look back at life, undo somethings, redo some others. The most important lesson, never (and i mean never) discard your old history text books. You’ll find the most amazing man-made structures in City and surrounding areas. Artistic temples, big sculptures and references in your old history books that you never thought you’d encounter.

City is certainly going to have many references in this thread and then the story of how Bangalore pulled me back in one line- Bangalore is home (and I came back humming Mama, I’m coming hooooomme) and will always be.