Today I happened to be waiting for my classmates for lunch. Was meeting these guys after two years. I had a good 15-20 minutes to while away. So I wandered to the beach in Sivaji park at Dadar West and stood on the view point.
There were a group of crows and a solitary pidgeon who were flying in to the wave front and picking things up to eat.
Captured the waves and crowd in time lapse..
and the crows in slow motion.
also took a few Panorama shots with the iPhone
Then my buddies showed up... and time lapse, slow motion, freeze frames were all put into a different context!
When you are with friends, time doesn't mean anything!
Another blast from the past post from the good old Banarasi Babu days. We used to go to a dhaba on the edge of Lanka road, outside the college gate called Sebak and eat the "usual" dal tadka and tawa rotis, followed by some rice with yogurt.
Then we used to stroll across the street (which was all of 10 feet wide) to get some hot milk or rabdi (this is north Indian liquid'y Therattupaal for those South Indians reading this blog) before getting back on our bicycles and riding back all the way to the hostel. By the way, the only two cycle shops in Lanka gate which compete with each other are still there but we see a lot more bikes and scooties inside BHU than cycles!
We stopped at Sebak and my wife and FIL gave me a look. San's eyes said "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" while my FIL looked at this thing with amusement. He said "I am not sure if Sangeetha or the kids will come and eat at this dhaba but if you want to go ahead, eat".. so off I went and ordered the usual and finished it off in record time.
The street outside sebak is only wide enough for two autos or pat-pats. A Toyota Innova completely blocks the road and that meant I had to eat before a cop came and pushed us out. We took the Dahi and rabdi "to go" and Pahelwanji said thank you in his usual style..
He asked me "Aap kitne saal baad vaapas aaarahe hi?" (after how many years are you coming back?). Must have been an obvious guess from the way yours truly was drooling at the rabdi on that giant plate!
Later at night the little one who loves sweets gave her verdict
"This is really good Appa!"
It is a crying shame that we don't have the likes of Sebak and Pahelwan here..
My visit to Varanasi aka Banaras for a few days made me realize why Salmon get so much hype when they swim upstream to visit their birthplace!
Twenty two years since I first set foot in Banaras as a kid who had not yet sprouted a moustache, it was a wonderful experience to just go stand in the place where I spent most of my happy times..
No, not the Department of Metallurgical engineering (which gets a 2nd place) or my hostels but the chai shop that made me want to wake up on many winter mornings and may have been the single motivating factor for going anywhere outside the hostel on hot summer days!
The highlight of this India trip was two days in Varanasi and one day in Allahabad. The rest of the trip was a little on the dark and gloomy side what with us coming to grips with "Chennai becoming a large scale old age home", not my words but my mothers!
Back to lighter subjects... Chai!
Jr. was the only one brave enough in the family to volunteer to take the EOS 5D and shoot this picture. Gave her a crash course in holding a heavy camera so we could get this moment saved for the blog.
There were changes. The son runs the shop now after 20+ years. We used to see him as a small boy running around the shop. Missed the old mans smiling face, but the young Bihari is a replica of the father. He even spoke through gritted teeth with his paan filled mouth and said "photo keechna hai to keechiye saab!". He must be used to it with all the alumni coming to relive their chai drinking days!
His dad used to make special "tulsi" chai for me when I would come wheezing into his shop on some winter days and give me advice on how to deal with breathing problems.
Today, the gutter that runs between the shop and the place where we eat still flows like a mini ganges. Prices are in line with inflation. Probably the only thing that was inline in the trip. A chai used to be 75 paise and a samosa 1 rupee. Today the Chai was 3 rupees (4x) and the samosa 5 rupees (5x). Prices double every 10 years at 5% inflation and in quadruple every 4 years. We might as well graph inflation with the Bihari Chai price index!
While the price and the generation have changed, the taste of the Chai and the samosa have not changed a bit.
Absolutely divine!
More on my eating and drinking nostalgia binge tomorrow..
ps. Never missed a certain Durgaprasad Rajaram more than those few minutes at that tea shop. .
Tuesday, July 4, 2017 at 8:30AM ;)
;)
