I finished reading Harry Potter 7 and it meets my expectations, which was very high. At least one of the hopes (snape) came out true out of the two (snape & dumbledore) I blogged earlier.

Roshan is reaching Cochin tomorrow after 2 years in US and a 24 hour delayed journey. I am excited to hear what he has to say about the place, people etc after this gap.

Welcome back to India, Roshan

I got back from chennai yesterday after a great time & some adventure with shopping in the busy streets of T-nagar.

Going from Cochin, Chennai was a pleasant change. The roads are much wider and traffic controlled. Also there are some signs of night life, like the number of autos and people after 9.00 pm. Shopping was great fun, loads of variety, choices, big crowds and unbelievable amount of bargaining. Oh how I easily fit into my old shoes and enjoyed bargaining! Its quite a skill and my sisters think I am good.

I did not like Chennai because of my not-so-good ~2 months experience with the place after my undergraduation, as is indicated my my previous post. I think its a little unfair, it was the first time away from home and having to do things I had never done before all on my own with limited resources was a little overwhelming. But, now I like chennai enough to say that I would consider it over Bangalore to stay in if I were to choose between the two. The weather & water is a problem, some stretches of drives bear such fragrance that one would feel completely knocked out but the congestion in Bangalore is a bigger problem IMO.

Now I am very happy to be back home, Harry Potter & the deathly hallows is on my table and I have decided to read it slowly (i.e. as slowly as possible). It is sad that there will not be any more waiting for future Harry Potters :-(

I grew up in Kerala but never went to a local toddy bar, never had sea food in a restaurant and never had any ayurveda treatments done. Once I stepped out of Kerala, the curiosity arose and I wanted to try everything Kerala is known for. I had never tasted toddy and more importantly never seen a kallu shaap ... it was this unspoken men-only place I occasionally saw in malayalam movie clips. During my last trip to India, I asked some friends for good seafood restaurants. The recommended upscale places turned out to cater too much to non-keralites especially to the foreigners. And so the taste was far removed from authentic Kerala style seafood. The other strong recommendation was toddy bars which came with a warning "ofcourse you can't go"
 
My brother in law discovered this place called mulla (jasmine) panthal (roof) in cochin, which apparently has a website & even an orkut community dedicated to it. Before going we called up and were briefed about the place by a friendly manager who said it was fine for "families" (meaning women folk) to visit and they were given separate rooms but that it essentially was a bar. And so my sister, brother in law and I set off for lunch at this place. It was a much longer drive than we expected and stopped at several places to ask for directions and everybody just pointed ahead asking us to drive ahead further. Reminded me of the "abhi dilli (delhi) door hai" episode. Finally far from the main roads, in an alley lay our destination. Yeah it was a Harold & Kumar's white castle moment.
 
The usher helped us park the car and showed us the way in. We were seated in a room and briefed about how their toddy was made. We were then served with an earthen pot full of toddy (2 litres as we discovered later) and glasses. Toddy smells repulsive and tastes even worse, to the untrained palate such as mine. Once we settled in we ordered a whole range of dishes including karimeen (pearl spot) fry, prawns, kappa (tapioca), kokku (crane or stork from description) & duck (my first time). The food was delicious, a banquet I must say. Tears flowed profusely, sweat trickeled down our bodies but there was no stopping us from munching the super spicy prawns. Once I was done with food, I was curious to see what the rest of the bar looked like. So I asked the man in the group to accompany me, my sister was too stuffed to walk. The place looked busy & big. I suspect not all local bars are this big or spacious. The food was inexpenisve compared to any other place I have been to but some local folks say that for a kallu shaap its expensive. I am positive I will go back there atleast once more during this trip.
 
That is one more thing knocked off the to-do-before-I-die list.

I am reading gone with the wind at the moment. It is a book I have picked and never gotten very far a couple of times in the past due to various reasons, lack of interest never being one. As a teenager I would have been completely taken on by a character like Howard Roark in fountainhead or Rhett Butler in this book. And to some extent even Ashley Wilkes. My gut feeling is that it takes a woman to write, imagine, describe & build a strong male character like these. [Let us not argue over whether a man can write it or not. He possibly can, trying hard to think like a woman but he may not choose to ... dwell on all the fine details that women tend to. Possibly different ones. Or wait, let us argue.]

Now I suspect it is an impossible character, quite removed from reality & existing in works of fiction only. They sure make an interesting read.

My plan to visit Rajasthan had to be called off due to flooding in Gujarat & Rajasthan. Trains are being delayed & re-routed, so my folks thought it best to travel at a later date. Unfortunately that means for me, the trip wont happen this year for sure. And who knows when, if at all. I was looking forward to a scenic train trip via konkan and meeting up with people in Rajasthan. Too bad :(
 
This also means that I need to think up of some alternate journey so I make good use of my short time during this trip in India. Then again, with rains pouring as hard as they are, there are hardly any choices. I am definitely upset about this trip getting cancelled as there were so many things I had planned on doing - seeing camels, desert, peacocks, mehandi, clothes, doing shopping, trying rajasthani food, meeting lots and lots of people (family largely), taking pictures & just the different air & sand that is so unique to the state. And to think that a few weeks ago I was dreading the heat ... oh well!

Two weeks ago when I came to Cochin, I was pleasantly surprised to see that folks at home separated out plastic & trash as plastic was picked only once a week and trash on a daily basis. Last week, it was announced that plastic, metal, glass, egg shells (why?), paper & coconut fibre would be collected only on Tuesdays & remaining trash everyday. While folks are initially finding it difficult to make it a habit to separate out trash and there is ambiguity as to certain wrappers being plastic or not, I am happy about this big change. Hopefully it is a step towards a better Cochin.

Last week I travelled a bit & found Calicut railway station cleaner than any railway stations I have been to in the past [which is not a small number ] . Apparently there was a 2 week cleanliness drive with banners all over the station requesting passengers to use dust bins, not to spit tobacco etc. And for once it looked like it was working. I am not sure if in the recent years there has been this kind of drive in other parts of the country. Cochin & Shornur railway stations looked the same as they always have except for some computer kiosks installed for railway information access.

Next month I am travelling to Jaipur & I hope the railway stations on the way are cleaner than they have been years ago. My memories of travel in north India date back to at least 5 years ago & are full of extremely unclean areas in and around railway stations, for that matter most public transport locations. I also realize why as a kid I never liked travelling in India. Lack of clean toilets. Now it seems like the pay & use toilets in ladies waiting rooms in stations are kept clean. Phew. Travel aches. Disgusting topic. So moving on, I have a nice, adventurous journey planned out for july that takes me through Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur and our family place. Nice because some of these places are beautiful & I saw a few as a teenager. I am sure I will see them different now & I have a digital camera now. Yay! Adventurous because it is going to be in the scorching heat around a desert.

No, the k-series haven’t stopped. And the 3-times-repeat-scene-for-emphasis has increased (yeah, as if there was scope. Nahi nahi nahi, Kya kya kya, Maa maa maa). And the bollywood song sequences which fill a good 1/3^rd of the serial time has also increased. One of the popular k-series started in my 2nd year of engineering, I remember kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi in ~2000, guess what - it’s still running. Yeah! And the hero & heroine at different points refused to continue. As if that would hinder the continuance, the hero got replaced by some random man & the heroine ... well since she was a little more important in the show, she had to either run into an accident, get a plastic surgery to look like a totally new person or die & come back. How smart & original. All the tv serials seem to be doing exactly this. That way characters are dispensable. And story *dynamic*.

I haven’t watched a whole single episode of any serial yet, but I have watched enough clips to boldly claim a few things. The serials have several generations, earlier the only way you could tell the mother from the daughter was this streak of white hair somewhere in the mass of just-groomed hair. Now, the white hair has left the scene, so when I guess the daughter & mother & check with my mom if its correct – I am wrong. Yes. For the clothes, these are women at home – always dressed like it’s a festival or party, decked with jewellery & bright colors & layers of make-up. Yeah, most of them look good alright, but far removed from the character they play (Then, again are they?). It’s very easy to spot the bad from the good, they tend to indulge in long soliloquies making weird faces at the camera which is the director’s ingenious way of showing evil intentions. In Malayalam serials, it is even simpler to make out bad girls from good, bad ones wear jeans. Ahem. No comments on that.

The scary part is not any of this, it is the fact that many many housewives (& possibly others) watch this stuff, enjoy this stuff. Creeepy! Women I spoke to, including my mother, refused to enjoy watching it & say they watch it to kill time. Right, prefer this to anything else … is exactly my point.

As to why I am watching this stuff, I enjoy mom’s food too much and spend considerable time in front of the tv in the evenings & don’t have much jurisdiction over what plays. Moreover, its fun to see folks watch & react. Even crib & continue watching. I did that some time back but strongly believe the serials were actually well thought out & good – still remember some names buniyaad, chutki, byomkesh bakshi, malgudi days, farmaan, honi unhoni …