Good Genes and Good Jeans

Thank you for all your wishes, first of all. Can't believe, solid 30's is here!. 
The fun part about my birthday is that according to Hindu tradition of starting of the day, I was born on Poila baishakh, Bengali new year but in english its 15-April. Confused, well I was born at 3.55am, according to hinduism, a new day starts at 5 am, but its already the next day according to general rule of thumb. Hence I get wished both days, usually family wishes me on Bengali new year, the 14 Apr.So the bottomline is that a birthday a year is fun, I have two and its double the fun. 
But I am told I don't look I am in my thirties. Is that good or bad, I don't know,perhaps good better than bad....... If you ask me what the secret is, its just " Good Genes" and a really Good pair of skinny, bottom hugging Jeans!

Strange little Sri Lanka!

Hilarious Moments

Beer drinking monkey : At first he takes a sip!

Then he wants a little more than a sip..........

When he wants the entire glass %$$&&%#&!!!

.........Results in a very drunken monkey alas!

The squirrel with fondness for French toasts...."Je veux plus!!!"

Not my Dream Man...But a very titillated one.

The elephant who loves a bath!

After the shower, a nice lunch...Nice life!

Land of Buddhas........just in case you didn't know..here you go!

What went up, how the hell came down???????

Somewhere in Ulsoor, Bangalore!

Aadhar card- The longest queue by Far!

What is Aadhar Card?

According to http://uidnumber.org/aadhaar/

"Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification (UID) number which the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is issuing for all Indian residents. The UID number is stored in a centralised database and linked to the basic demographics and biometric information – photograph, ten fingerprints and iris – of each individual"

Sounds nice eh!

Not so nice when you see the queue!!! Though the objective of the UID card is very good, the process itself is laborious and time consuming. According to the website, one needs a minimum of the passport, Voter's ID card, PAN card, Bank passbook and/or bank statements for verification. Online registrations are not so guaranteed as is with all governmental registrations.

I got a letter from my bank as the proof of address. Now the challenge was to get the young guys and girls( who were hired for verification at these centres) to get them to understand that any letter from the Bank in the bank letter head with the signature and seal of the bank employee is valid, as valid as any account statement/ passbook. But finally managed to do so after much deliberation.

So when my turn came for actual registration, it was another ball game altogether.

The personnel (A young boy with basic computer knowledge) started typing & after 25 or odd corrections (which one has to check, lest Debarati Nandee comes out as "Deberathi Nanadee" in the final ID and you have to make another 3 rounds to their office to get it corrected), it was finally done.

While getting the Iris scanned, you have to open your eyes as big as possible (The final product looks like a close up shot from a zombie movie), your fingerprint scanned (four fingers of the left hand first, then four fingers of the right and finally the two thumbs). Finally the horror of the photograph taken from their prehistoric web camera. It pains my heart to look at it. But finally I got the registration done after 2.5 hours of waiting. Now comes the real waiting, to get the actual card which some say 3 months but am sure will be longer.

Now do you really have to get that card, I would say, YES. Its a bit of a that extra bureaucratic work that you have to do but hopefully you'll have an unique identity that would surely be helpful in the future. So watch out for that space in your local newspaper!

The Cheese Factory.

The previous night we had dinner at Mango Hill. And had a chance encounter with Francois & Oliver, Proprietors & caretakers of Mango Hill. Thank god I wore my "I love Paris" T-shirt which made the two Frenchmen, one of them a Parisian, a little amused and hopefully a little happy. We were startled to learn that they make homemade cheeses right in Auroville, in their hotel. We were immediately curious to know about the art of cheese making. I gingerly approached Francois for a tour of of their cheese factory. After a bit of deliberation, we settled for a time the next day for the tour. Yeah, Success!

I remember going to Cadbury's factory in Mumbai to learn about chocolate making. As curious as I am about everything in life, I also always wanted to know how cheese is made. The only simple reason I have to give is that I do like good cheese but never thought could find a cheese maker here in India. Well I was lucky!

We reached an hour late for the tour. However, Mango Hill was very kind. After all they live in India and hope they know about IST-Indian stretched time!

Mango hill has an experienced & chirpy cheese master, Shiva. He keeps track & carries out all the necessary processes for making the delicious cheeses.So let me share what we learnt about cheese making that day:

Everyday fresh milk is obtained from the local farmers and they are boiled to a certain temperature and left to cool. The milk is cooled , the enzymes are added. After the milk curdles, it gets strained and put in molds.These molds are then kept under pressure to strain out the excess water. They are then labelled and kept in the maturing room. Depending on the cheese type, the enzymes & the maturing time differs.

Francois & Oliver proudly showed us their cellar where the cheeses are aged. And what a nice array of cheese! Considering the climate, the difficulties and the relatively new interest of cheese in India, I think Mango hill cheeses have a good future. Prepare yourselves for seeing them in shelves across departmental stores soon .I can vouch for the taste (although am a new connoisseur) as me & my friend went on a spree of buying and tasting the different cheeses they had to offer...Gouda, Cumin gouda, Borsalino, Mozzarella, Farmer's cheese, Blu (V's favorite, not mine).

Over a nice cup of coffee and some cheese, we shared stories & views through topics that links & interlinks. Perhaps that is the best part of meeting new people ....as you always learn about new things, new views and about ambitions never heard before. Perhaps it was the best part of the afternoon!

When you are in Auroville, do visit the charming Mango Hill (on old Auroville road) not only for the cheeses but for their wonderful hospitality. Who says French are snobby, atleast not the ones we met that day.Thank you Oliver and thanks especially Francois for sharing your "Top-secrets".

World Cuisine at Auroville

I am not a foodie neither am I a connoisseur of food. But as far as I can remember I liked watching cooking shows, trying out new dishes happily being a mini Nigella in the kitchen(minus the B****). So when I landed in Auroville, I was quite happy to eat out at the different multi cuisine restaurants run by expats settled there.

The first morning unfortunately was a little disappointing. There were no continental breakfast place open on the ERC road. So found a small little place called “CHANDRU’S RESTAURANT” serving Dosa , Idli and regular South Indian food. The Pongal I ordered (which by the way is one of my favourite dish) was non- descriptive, whitish, more rice than dal (thanks to inflation). Oh well, at least our hungry stomachs were full! As we made our way back to the guest house, we promised ourselves to eat better for the rest of the trip.

And we did…at “GIORGIO’S”. We had Mozzarella fritters, frankly you can avoid that. But the pièce de résistance was the Gnocchi con Frutti di mare….Gnocchi, which is a kind of pasta (available in markets in Bangalore) cooked with sea fish. It was light, fresh, slightly thickened with cream and parmesan. A dash of lemon juice after which it promptly disappeared into our waiting stomachs. Strangely Giorgio himself was absent. So we were done with Italian or so we thought.

For dinner, it was time to turn French! We were at “MANGO HILL”, a beautiful hotel with a charming restaurant lovingly run by a French family. The swimming pool of the hotel was especially inviting. We ordered Roasted ham with lightly grilled vegetables for moi & Fish a la Setoise with french fries & garden salad for mon amie. Sadly though, no drinks on the menu ….so had to make do with half a bottle of wine back at the guest house.

The next day afternoon we made runs & reruns to & fro Matri mandir in the quest of finding our next cuisine, Greek! But when we reached there after crossing endless silent forests and lonely roads, the café was closed…for 15^th August!!!!! Now what can possibly be the connection between a baklava or a moussaka & our Independence Day??? Ah well sometime can turn out to be a blessing in disguise…for then we settled for a restaurant called “TANTO’S”. Now we were not looking for Italian again but the fresh wood oven baked pizza at Tanto’s were delicious…So was the grilled grouper with fresh salad…Che Buono! The Mango sorbet was to die for!

The last evening at “LE CLUB”, Pondicherry was the time for Creole food washed with good beers. Who would have thought of Creole food in India…I guess India can surprise Indians too at times!!

Food for thought: Some people say that while on a holiday, food should be the last thing on the mind. But amidst the thrill of seeing new places, meeting new people, starting a journey or arriving at a new destination… isn’t trying out different food & cuisines also a part of the experience, another chapter of the exploration? I think so….

Quick thrills @ AuroVille.

We landed in Pondicherry on the morning of the 14th August. After a 20mins auto drive and 200Rs poorer we landed in Samarpan Beach house on ERC road at Auroville, right beside Repos beach. The guest house is not your regular Taj fare. Since the Italian owners were not in town, the caretakers were lazy, immovable and I thought sometimes a bit unusually unresponsive. But the guest house itself was very nicely located just beside the sea and the lounge of the guest house had a divine view with the gentle breeze of the sea fanning us continuously in an otherwise hot weather. The studio we stayed in was decorated with inexpensive but tasteful adornments and it did carry a lot of charm.

After a quick shower and 3 hours of waiting (courtesy lazy staffs again) we came to Repos / Auro beach only to be hugely disappointed by the beach. Unclean, unkept, lack of space to sit, no shady spot compounded by the gawking Indian tourist and the even more gawking local fishermen. We soon realised that a nice relaxing swim was not possible. So we counted our loses and went back to the guest house. Keeping in mind the objective of relaxation we had decided for this trip, we stayed & enjoyed the indoors thereafter.

The evening was spent in discovering pottery shops and french restaurant around Auroville. The next day we hired a bike (very lucky to found one though) and roamed around Auroville, starting from Matri mandir to the interiors .The houses in Auroville looked like the handiwork of some quirky & imaginative architects. They were very strange yet so appealing. The last evening which was also the Independence day was spent 3 hours at a pub in Pondicherry & watching fireworks in R.K Beach as a part of the celebrations.

It was a short & delightful trip.

One disgustingly crazy observation: We saw a boy casually pull down his pants and do his shitty business right at the edge of the sea. Done with his business, he simply waited for the waves to come and clean him naturally. No tissues nor "louta" required. Isn't that the heights of laziness?

View from Samarpan guest house