I am reading some books by Kushwant Singh and came across a sher that I found very funny. The situation is that when Kushwant Singh visited his birth place Lahore he met the minister on a formal dinner and “offered him an appropriate sher (verse) for his next confrontation with orthodoxy”:

Mulla, gar asar hai dua mein

To masjid hila ke dikha!

Gar naheen to do ghoont pee

Aur masjid ko hilta dekh.

There is an english translation that I didn’t find so funny but will quote here

Mulla, if your prayer has power

Let me see you shake the mosque!

If not, take a couple of pegs of liquor

And see how the mosque shakes on its own

He then goes on to talk about the difference between Indian & Pakistani college girls saying that in India one looked at a group of girls and tried to see if there were pretty faces whereas in Pakistan it was the other way round, one tried to see if there was anybody not pretty.

While my vacation in Cochin has got prolonged I am making sure I read, eat & sleep as much as I can. In short, I am having a good time.

I recently got an invite to join Shelfari through email and I decided to join. It suggested that I sign into my gmail address book so I could look up who's already on shelfari. It showed me a (rather small) list of people already on the network and I intended to send them add requests. Instead what seems to have happened is that every person/unit I have had any correspondence with through my gmail id was sent an invite. Uggh. I do not like the idea of gmail being smart enough to store every email address I communicate with. Stop watching so carefully and ask me if I want to save any of these.

So, if you got such an email from me, apologies. It was unintentional.

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!