When things turn French.....

And it has been eons since I logged into blogger and certainly a lot of things have changed since then. Firstly I was welcomed by an unknown blogger.com interface when I suddenly realised that the default language of my blogger account had suddenly changed into French by some voodoo magic all of a sudden. While till the last time I posted in this blog it welcomed me with a happy "New Post" link, it now decided to welcome me with a "Nouveau Message" link. And this was one of the last things that could have changed because suddenly everything beside me has happily decided to change itself into French. And apart from the popup which says "Now Blogger saves your drafts automatically!" and the things that I have scribbled over here everything near me is horribly French, even the Diet Coke bottle that I am using as a water bottle these days has every information written in French. The worst is the keyboard which I am using presently, its one of those French keyboards wherein the @ button is where the " button should be and vice versa and suddenly learning French seems to be the priority of the minute because I have somehow landed up in France.

Its been long since I applied for the French work permit thanks to a project that I was working on for a French client. And finally I got a stamped visa, the very first one on the passport that took me some 5 months to get thanks to the capriciousness of the passport issuing authorities. So here I am in the land of fashion, the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, the Roland Garros and Fashion TV trying to adjust to 17 hours of sunligt and a sun that does not want to set till 10:30 at night. So after a irritating wait for more than 5 months to procure the work permit that seemed to take the Fench authorities as much time to process as an Atal Behari speech I landed up here after seeing most of India ( considering my visa interview was in Mumbai and my work place is Bangalore and my home is at Kolkata and my flight was from Delhi) I landed here last Sunday in an Air France that seemed to be so huge as to fit in an entire playground of people with temperatures that were 10-11 degrees centigrade.

I got my reservations done at the Indian hostel in the Cite Universitaire area of Paris and straight out of the airport I had to wait for some 2 hours before I finally could find someone to open the door for me for the hostel. Finally an old lady, a doctor by profession who had some very strong views about corruption in India and who was very usure if opening up the gate for me could land her up in serious trouble decided to chit chat with me finally giving me an entry to the hostel. The best part was the chance of being driven in a Mercedes at 120 kmps/hr from the airport to the hostel and loving every bit of the journey which cost a whooping 53 euros (close to INR 3500). And since then life has been about discovering the Paris way of life. It is about reading maps and getting used to the zone system of the local trains called RER. It is about sharing kitchens with a bunch of Indians and cooking together (includeds 3 more bengalis). It is about discovering different Indian things in the shops of a place called Gare du Nord. It is about paying 2.5 euros for a cup of tea and fretting about it. It is about being mesmerized by the serendipitous feeling of discovering a park with a big lake in it just next to the hostel. It is about getting complimentary newspapers in French and trying to solve the Sudoku on the way to office trying to avoid being crushed in the RER crowd. And it is also about being mesmerized working in La Defense area of Paris among high rises and the Grande Arche. And finally before I push off here are some pics of the place that I am working at....more to come...

Poyla Boishakh after 6 years......

I do not deny the fact that I am a foodie of sorts and you can surely find a few extra pounds hanging here and there even after trying to slog for hours at the gym at my workplace. Nonetheless food attracts me with an attraction that can be compared to the fascination that Captain Haddock has for alcoholic things or Obelix has for wild roasted boars. And this weekend was all about falling in love with Bengali food over and over again and coming into touch with the Bengali roots of mine that has become a bit hazy since the last 5 years that I have stayed outside Bengal missing every possible festival and fanfare.

The ocassion was the Bengali New Year also known as Poila Boishakh which during my childhood I was content with calling Koyla Boishakh. The Bengali souls whom I have lunch with at my workplace, wanted me to treat them for an imminent onsite assignment that has stayed imminent for a very long time at 6, Ballygunge Place, a very upmarket Bengali food restaurant. So on the 14th of April which was supposed to be the last day of the year 1413 accroding to the Bengali calendar we landed up at the restaurant in the Indranagar area of Bangalore. I was literally starving thanks to an all night power cut on Friday which did not allow me to microwave my Maggi for dinner and finally I had also skipped my breakfast. Though we did not have any reservations we still could manage to get seats without much fanfare. Incidentally the only thing on the menu for the day was the buffet priced at a whooping Rs465+ taxes. Surely the rates were a bit too much if you were not that hungry on any given day. But since the three of us had been hungry enough on that day we decided to gulp down as much as we could to make the best out of the 465 that we were about to spend. It is a seperate story that if people were as like minded as us three, 6 Ballygunge place would have seen its P&L account for those two days in deep shades of red.

To make the lesser mortals jealous here is the list of things that we had in our unlimited buffet:

1. Aam Panna Shorbot

2. Bhat

3. Cholar Daal

4. Alur Dom

5. Alu Potol

6. Luchi

7. Begun Bhaja

8. Fish Fry

9. Chingri Macher Malai Curry

10. Bhapa Ilish

11. Doi Chicken

12. Mutton Kosha

13. Chatni

14. Papad

15. Lengcha

16. Shondesh

17. Roshogolla

18. Mishti Doi

19. Pan

and as in any Bengali menu card the 20th item was surely Abar Ashben (which translated into Bengali meant Please come again...), which after gulping down multiple quantities the abar ashben part was quite an improbable thing to do. And obviously after this kind of a gastronomic adventure my condition was similar to that of a Bengali film actor in a movie of yesteryears who in a film had eaten so much that he had to be carried home in a charpai. Realising that no charpai was coming my way, I was contended with the thought of going back to my home in an auto and drop off into a deep afternoon siesta in a typical Bengali ishtyle.

Sunday saw us continue with the insane idea that started off as a small conversation on the bulletin board of our organisation on Friday afternoon and make it a huge success. Friday afternoon events on the bulletin board saw some desperate soul suggesting the idea of a Poila Boishakh celebration in typical Bengali style. And then it started with people adding up names to the list of people interested in any kind of Poila Boishakh celebration. Soon the list was filled with names who were very much interested in the idea. Friday evening saw some 7-8 people assemble in the Cafe Coffee Day of the workplace and after a heartful round of adda of more than 2 hours, we finally came up with a plan to celebrate Poila Boishakh in a typical Bengali way. So it was Ranajoy's bari in BTM that became host to a celebration of the Bengali spirit.

A group of 20 people, had finally made it for the adda, which by any estimate was a good number. Barely knowing each other, the spirit of adda spread wide and fast and finally every one was affected by the adda virus. The topics ranged from outrageous teachers in classes, to Saurav Ganguly, going forward to Arsenal and Satyajit Ray's films and finally moving on to more mundane topics like work and coding. Discussed over sips of beer from the big Kingfisher cans bought for the occassion it was one heck of an adda session. Lunch consisted of Biriyani (finally the North Indian style) and chicken allong with mishti doi and sweets. Post lunch the mood turned creative with Kishore da songs being sung followed by the more contemporary Baranday Roddur of Bhoomi. A guy amongst us called Avra mesmerized us with his sarod playing skills and followed it up with a performance on the mouth organ. After 6 years of being out of touch with the spirit of Poila Boishakh, it was a beautiful feeling going back to the roots and bathing myself in the spirit of Bangalinaya. And before I sign off its a Shubho Noboborsho to one and all. Tomra shokole boro ebong choto ra amar shubho noboborsher priti o shubhechha niyo. Beche thakuk Bangaliyana spirit.

Weakness-e-pedia

It took 277 tries to successfully clone clone the much famous sheep Dolly as one of my teachers had said in one of the famous Bio classes way back in school. And it took almost the same kind of effort to procure tickets for the newly released Mira Nair film called Namesake based on the book by the same name written by Jhumpa Lahiri. The sheer lack of quality theatres in Bangalore had ensured that Namesake was released in only one movie hall making the possibilty of getting tickets as remote as listening to Rabri Devi speak fluent english. So there I was enquiring about the tickets at Rex for the next day's show when the guy on the other side obviously bored with the mundane job of scratching off seats on the seating sheets and counting money and tearing away tickets from the colourful ticket books gave me a nasty look and suggested that I better read the fine prints that adorned the many sides of the window and hence I found that I was 45 minutes late and advance booking was again scheduled to start at 10A.M the next day. As an afterthought the guy who had just given me the nasty look told me to come back the next morning for the tickets. So there I was the next morning all decked up for Mission Ticket when a notice at the movie hall caught my eyes and making me feel as stupid and angry as possible. Apparently the 5-15 show of Namesake did not have any advance bookings and booking was to start at sharp 3-30 for the show. I landed up at a friend's place and promised her that I would cook only to fall asleep and considering the kind of lazy bum that I am we both landed up eating junk at Mc. Donalds rather than taking the pains to cook. At the much auspicious hour of 3-30, the shubh lagan, the shubh muhrat when Namesake bookings were to start I found myself standing in a line that had kind of snaked its way to look as big as a python. In flat 8 minutes the entire balcony tickets were sold out and when the shutters were downed as I stood awaiting my turn, third in the line feeling as sheepish and angry as possible. Finally it had become a matter of pride to get the tickets after being turned down three times on one pretext or the other. The Rear Stalls did have seats to spare for our group of 6 and the movie was much enjoyable though the seats were uncomfortable, the popcorn was sad and the security were all angry and shouting at the same time.

And finally I became aware of the Frankinstein in me when one of the select few people who read my blog (a number that is less than the number of Amur Leopards alive in the world) suggested that I should list down my weaknesses in one of the posts here. At first glance it looked like a typically MBA entrance or two years down the line from that an MBA placement kind of a question but on closer examination it seemed like she wanted to know what makes me feel vulnerable. Considering the fact that I have bugged her a lot, I am sure about this fact that if she meets me (ever that is) she would bring with her an entire army of well built, Akhada going, Hanuman worshipping pehalwans to beat me up. So here is a list of all the things that make me the Frankinstein that I am and by the time u reach to the end of this list you would be sure that I am the one whom your mom told you to stay away from!

1. I am scared, morbidly scared, scared to the levels of a phobia of getting bored. I dislile people, jobs, situations that make me strive to follow a routine. After all if life were so predictable what would have been the fun of living it? I am the one who would love to stay awake all night and sing his heart out or gaze at the stars rather than fall asleep just because it is the night. So if there is something that draws on to becoming mundane, I am not the one who would be dragging along a relationship like a committed boyfriend. And that makes me one who is always a misfit for relationships, a guy whom girls can never trust. But on the flipside I am the one who would love to drink and graduate to the Nile from the Ganges. The voice is shouting something while reading this.....err it sounds like "You are too self centred an asshole."
2. Am a non confrontationist of obscene standards, I am the one who would prefer just to walk away from an autowalla who is charging extra and asking someone else rather than indulge in a fist fight or verbal abuse with the first autowalla. That makes people beleive that I am coward who does not have the guts to fight. Maybe they are right but it is more of a feeling of being in peace with my ownself that kind of draws me back from falling for a fist fight or verbal abuse. I am not the modern genration Gandhiji who would give his other face for a slap when he has been slapped at the first instance. I would be the first person to move out of the situation and land up in greener pastures if you rub me in the wrong ways. Err what did you say Mr. Voice??"Banda c****** hai, fight nahi kar sakta!"
3. I am one of the laziest creatures to have walked the face of the planet. Much lazier than the overweight ball of fur called Garfield and would have surely had a pole position if I were to compete for being lazy. But alas why compete, because that would make me active in certain ways. This fact can be well proved from the pile of clothes that lie around in my house at any point of time awaiting to be washed. Awaaz aa rahi hai Mr. Voice ka "Chullu bhar pani mein doob mar, kalmuhe lazy bone"
4. I put on my MBA cap everywhere and in every aspect of life. That makes me go in for all kinds of practical approaches to face life and find out solutions for every problem. That makes me shun my ego, get my clothes dirty in the mud of unethical practices and finally accept the fact that not all can be acheived given the limited resources and situations and hence look for short cuts. I am way too non emotional at times making me seem like an apparent monster. The voice says "Unemotional ass, you should be hanged and stripped and flogged for being like this!"

For the rest of the worser qualities and much more of the weakness part of it get in touch. And yah before I finish off someone forwarded this and I found it cute enough a demonstration of lateral thinking. Check it out:

DJ comes back!

Much more disastrous than India getting ousted from the Cricket World Cup 2007 without even getting to see a glimpse of the Super 8 was the fact that DJ returned to Bangalore from London after two whole months. For the lesser informed in life DJ is the psuedo name of one of my flatmates who was a batchmate at IMT during my MBA days. Alas during the whole of two years of the MBA drill I only remember talkin to him in numbers that could be happily counted in one finger. And mind it these talks were not heart to heart talks but more of talks that lasted as long as Robin Uthappa innings in the World Cup. DJ as he had been named for his innane ability of DJing and making us listen to songs that seemed to be played by Satan himself in college parties. By a sudden twist of fate, it so happened that we landed up jobs in the same city in companies that consolidated their balance sheet into one. And hence it was presumed that he was a brethren. After all we all were called infoscions collectively making him my brethren of sorts. Once I was transferred to Bangalore, the really frustrating job of finding an accomodation haunted me. At the same point of time DJ was also in a house hunting exercise and by another sudden turn of fate we became flatmates along with a third unsuspecting guy called Yadav. And thus started the eighth wonder of the world...me and DJ sharing flats. It was quite a news for our batchmates at IMT and last June my number saw quite a many inquisitve calls asking me if I had turned insane after I joined my job to share a flat with DJ. I guess he also got similar number of phone calls asking him about his insanity status considering that I was his flatmate. And thus the misadventures continued.

Living with DJ has its own unpredictabilities associated with it. So one has to be prepared to be woken up at the obscene hour of 3 o clock at night with his Creative speakers blaring out unfathomable music, or for that matter watching him sleep for 18 hours in a row once he gets high. Getting high is something that has kind of mutated his genes to such a drastic extent that if you convinced him that drinking saline water can numb his senses and get him high, he would be off to the nearest sea shore to drink down gallons of it. And thus anything that can make his sense numb for a while are on the top of his all time favourite list. Once high, it is best to feign that you are on the verge of dying so that he does not get motivated enough to start off long drawn conversations with you. If incidentally you show some interest at the onset you are in for some real doomsday. The deep rooted philosophy keeps flowing on and on with every second line being some kind of a narcissist comment about his own good self. At the 20th minute of such kind of a conversation you would feel bored, at the 40th minute you would feel depressed and by the 60th minute you would be happy contemplating committing suicide or better a homicide to get away from the torture.

So Mr. DJ (I always thought it meant Disastrous Jerk rather than Disk Jockey) after giving me immense bliss by deciding to shift bases to London came back to India this weekend. And immediately the decibel meter of the house could be seen overflowing and reaching disastrous levels. I drifted off to sleep sad over the fact that the 2 months of honeymoon period had drastically come to an end. I woke up on Sunday morning to find the great flatmate of mine had drifted off to sleep with the speakers blasting off to the music of a band called "Infected Mushrooms"and he had kept every possible light on in his room which included a tube, a bulb, a night lamp and even the bulb of the attached bathroom. No doubt we get electricity bills that run into thousands of rupees just because of this kind of insanities. This was nothing considering the fact that he has left the gyser and the microwave running in a number of ocassions often for hours thankfully not burning down the house. The next day it was the taps of his bathroom that he left open for the water to leak and god knows how many gallons of water he choked the drains with considering that parts of Bangalore have serious water problems. I have no idea how his ears dont seem to respond at the sound of flowing water. So life is moving fine with me having to hear to Infected Mushrooms and praying to god that the house does not blow up thanks to one of his insanities.

The 2Ws of this weekend: Washing & Water

I dread weekends for a phobia that has still now not been documented by the etymologists of the modern day world but I guess the phobia that I am talking about is as wide spread across the world as Sardarjis in a jokes book. The phobia can be termed as Washophobia that can be defined as an irritational persistent fear of doing the laundry every weekend. I would be happy enough to do the mopping and cleaning and the utensil washing but washing clothes is the last torture that I can ever subject myself to. The laundry problem has haunted me since I left the confines of the sweet little heavan called home and landed up in a hostel of a B-school some 1500kms away from home. At IMT the dhobi became my best friend to get me out of the torture of washing clothes, a person who had almost single handedly taken up the entire responsibility of washing away the dirty linen of an enitre ecosystem of B-school hostel dwellers. No doubt his face features well in any kind of documentary the Alumni committee of IMT makes for the Alumni Meets to make us feel nostalgic about those two years at Ghaziabad. But even the dhobi of IMT had his own reservations when it came to washing up more UP, CLOSE to the body & PERSONAL stuffs (read undies and ganjees) and I had to really motivate myself to clean these items of daily usage often running into crisis with improper demand estimation for these stuffs. Though my cleaning phobia failed to vanish it was much of a solace for me to see that people shared the same phobia as me and paid a heavy price for it. To cite an example Mr. Manish Bindra previously menitioned 2 blog entries down was one such person who had almost forgotten the fact, I guess intentionally that he had once upon a time soaked his three shirts and two pants in soap water to wash them in the near future. Alas the near future came almost 14 days later when he finally realised that they had rotten away in their own glory emitting as stinky and disgusting a smell as a goat's pen.

The washing woes were accentuated when I landed up in Bangalore as I studied the economics of the washing scene in and around the place I stay. Unbeilivably the price for washing any piece of attire was almost double the amount our dear old dhobi at IMT charged. The first few experience of laundry proved to be disastrous. The shirts as well as trousers though well washed and well ironed seemed to be losing one button every time it went to the washerman's torturous hands. The buttons always seemed to be smittered into pieces and what remained were small pieces suspended from the strings used to fasten it to the piece of clothing. Considering the fact that the torture was becoming a bit too much for every piece of decent clothing I ever owned I decided to pass on the noble responsibility of washing my clothes to the bai who did not understand even a single word that I spoke. Thanks to her I became good in using all kinds of sign languages to make my thoughts be known. A person whose attendance record was much worser than the attendance record of MPs from Chhapra at the Parliament of India, she takes pleasure in bunking work almost half the month. But at least she did turn up on the weekends and she never did complain when I would put the heap of clothes which almost looked like a mini K2. But alas this weekend she decided to land me in a whole bucket of filthy tomato soup by again bunking on Saturday and Sunday. Monday being a holiday for a lesser known festival called Ugadi in Karnataka (imagine not giving even one single day off in Durga Puja even when so many Bengalis work in our office) I started praying that she shows up to wish me a Happy Ugadi and wash my clothes. I knew that if she ditched me that day I would surely have to endure the nightmare of washing a bucket full of clothes. And finally she did show up and I was as thrilled as Mr Ganguly and with great difficulty restrained myself from doing the jersey dance.

Weekend was also about catching up with Akshara and seeing her splurging money on girly stuffs. Books, clothes, electronics as well as pieces of make up which just looked the same color as a Cafe Coffee Day's Cool blue granita, she was buying it all. And finally it was also about getting a last minute ticket for the Oscar nominated Indian entry called Water which considering that it was Ugadi is as improbable a feat as seeing a capless Himesh or imagining Hitler without his toothbrush bristle moostache. So there was Akshara and me making a dash to get the last few seats left and by a stroke of luck we were able to get relatively decent seats and we did not have to twist and turn and fracture our necks by sitting in the front few rows. Water was about the evils society had created in the name of spirituality. And yah society has come a long way since the 1939 portrayed there with women competing in every field and often surpassing them to acheive rare distinctions. It was also about John Abraham looking cute in dhotis and kurtas and acheiving some much needed points on the acting index. It finally did not look that superficial. And finally it was about the Laddu, synonymous with fulfilling every dream and desire of heart before u die because kise pata Kal ho na Ho....

Me, myself, Kolkata & Irene

And before I am publicly hanged for not acknowledging contributions to my blog from the selected few people who visit and read my blog and digest the insanities I write without even having second thoughts about suffering from literary indigestion (last heard this group consisted of as few people as hair on Anupam Kher's ever shining head), here is a sincere thank you to Akshara for providing me with the photo of Manish and me in the post Livin la Vida Loca. Considering the fact that me and Manish were sworn enemies at IMT and were in a habit of showing our immense love for each other by painting each other's doors with obscenities and locking each other up, the civilized photo is very hard to beleive.

Coming back to more mundane things happening in life, I have sworn not to take such long breaks from work and go back home because the work load that welcomes you back to office looks like a mini Mount Everst that has to be climbed in a record time without the necessary supply of oxygen. So for the last two days I have been tackling issue after issue at my workplace till late at night to get things back on track. Sadly, the Kolkata chromosomes have again been buried under the more dominant Bangalore chromosomes for the moment, but 10 days in the "City of Joy" was worth every bit of it. The crusade started with the cab driver honking his horn 20 minutes earlier than the scheduled time he had been asked to come at to drop me off at the airport somewhere in between the hours of 0430 and 0500 on the 1st of march. For a change Air Deccan's flight took off at the right time for Kolkata though it is a seperate story that their reservation systems software had failed and they were being forced to issue hand written boarding passes, and secondly they never seemed to have any cabin baggage tags of their own and were distributing Jet's and Kingfisher's baggage tags for the CISF to stamp its approval of not carrying a bomb on. I slept through the journey fretting about the fact that I had again been unlucky enough not to have a beauty queen sitting on the seat beside me, though it also gave me the opportunity to stretch myself onto the seat beside me which had remained empty and not crib about leg space. Kolkata was in its full glory welcoming me with the ever so predictable depression caused by some low pressure over Bay of Bengal which saw me and Kolkata both getting dranged but spirits still lighted up. But later on even the weather decided to become cheerful and leave me nothing to complaint about.

So there I was on an overdrive meeting up long lost and new friends over cups of coffee and granita at either of Barista and CCD shelling out money that I am sure is going to show up in the revenue-expense statements of these companies as an abberation for the first 15 days of March. It also saw me watching 4 movies in a matter of 10 days. The Bangalore way of living has somehow made me accustomed to the fact that any movie of any length on any day at any hall would make your pocket lighter by a minimum of Rs.150. It felt really odd shelling out only Rs.40 in the decent non-multiplex kind of cinema halls of Kolkata. And there was mom who was in every mood to triple my calorie intake on the pretext that I would not get good Bengali food once I land up in Paris in April. Taking cue from her other relatives also got into the overdrive thinking it to be their moral responsiblity to stuff my stomach with Ilish Mach, Kosha Mangsho, Polao and Roshogolla. Needless to say that my stomach was in every mood to revolt against the onslaught of food items the same way as the BSF reacts when it sees Bangladeshi's crossing the border. A lot of Pudin Haras and Diegenes saw me not falling prey to the hands of the stomach devil and survive.

And finally Kolkata was also about meeting Irene, a pretty woman who seemed to be in every mood to file a chargesheet against me in the Dum Dum police station when I forgot to wish her "Happy Women's Day". In reports coming straight from the horse's mouth meeting me was one of the craziest things she had done in a long long time because of the fact that we had been acquainted through the orkut platform. So I guess I must also be thankful to Larry Page and Sergey Brin and all the Silicon Valley VCs who invested in orkut and had faith about its potential of reaching out to people. And she wore earrings that looked much like the Olympic rings and were big enough for a mouse to leap through them but jokes apart it was a fun time that we had that evening discussing how the Eco Times gets its form (a magazine the sight of which at one point of time irritated me before the MBA days), about books and the significance of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation in her life and coffee in general.

I guess my Kolkata chromosomes had mutated way too much and that is what had my mom and sister talking about bundling me back to Bangalore again considering the insanities I was showing. But I finally was able to get the computer fixed after repeated reminders from mom which finally had turned into threats. It was tough considering that the guy who was supposed to give a rebirth to the dead as a dodo PC seemed more busy than the PM of the country. And finally the 10 days of ecstacy drifted to an end with me feeling a bit low about getting back to Bangalore and start off the drill again, but guess what?? I got lucky this time through. Finally lady luck smiled on me as for the first time in my life I had a cute thing sitting down right beside me on the Air Deccan flight back to Bangalore. And as usual the Bangalore autowalas gave a warm welcome by ripping me off a lot of money for the journey back to the rented place which I call home.

Kolkata Chromosomes calling!!

No, I am not an Akshay Khanna fighting the Pakistani regiments in the border town of Jaisalmer leaving behind a sweetheart in a field of yellow sarso and a visually impaired mom in some unknown village of Punjab, and hence my mom and sweetheart are never heard singing emotional songs of the Ghar kab Aaoge kind. The song is really touchy and it is hard to beleive that copycat Malik could have actually composed this song but hey miracles do happen once in a while, jaise kabhi kabhi Kaif bhi century bana leta hai. So even if I am not an Akshay Khanna whose mother in the form of Rakhi sheds tears that could fill up reservoirs and permanently solve the water crisis that India faces every summer, still once in a while I do get these jitters that drive me towards home. So after 5 months of being in Namma Bengaluru and fighting with a lot of autowallas, spending a night in a lockup, going on innumerable shopping excursions with lot many girls, washing clothes, cooking maggi in a microwave and haggling with the disastrous DJ I am off to Amar Kolkata. Back to the city of trams, humid weather, Maidan, Book Fair, Jhal Muri, Sandesh, Victoria Memorial, Park Street, my darling and home. And I am excited to indulge myself into such utter delicacies like Mach Bhaja, Alu Sheddo Bhat, Dal Bara, Posto Bata etc. that are so easy to prepare anywhere in the world but has a seperate taste associated with itself when Mom makes it for you. So even if it is a Deccan Airways that is flying me to Kolkata at the unearthly hour of 5:30 in the morning when I am usually in my REM sleep mode I do not mind. So here is wishing Namma Bengaluru and my readers the pleasure of not seeing my obnoxious posts for the next 11 days. So in a typical John Denver style "I am leaving on a jet plane, and I do know when I will be back again (everyone at office has raised quite a few eyebrows on hearing the number of days leave I am taking)".