Saturday Night Food

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..

One can always wish!

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Sundar Salmon Narayanan...

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.
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Tahquitz Canyon - Videoblog

Was struggling to edit these HD movies from the 5D. Now that we have a new laptop (courtesy daddy's workplace) with Windows 7 and a new free Windows Movie Maker, editing videos and adding captions is simple again.

Photoblog is here..

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Sharing

Came home yesterday to find the kids watching videos in different rooms. A closer look revealed that they were watching the "same" program. Arthur which plays on PBS was being watched through Youtube on a laptop in the living room and an ipad in the family room.

Why this madness I asked the kids.

"She doesn't want to share!" came the reply in unison from two different rooms.

"But you are watching the same episode! Couldn't you put the ipad on the table and watch?" said an exasperated daddy and the response was

"she smells" from one kid and "she keeps tilting the ipad towards her" said the other one..

whatever be the reasons, have successfully raised two kids who will not be carpooling when they reach driving age.

Not happy with this.

Have to do something to teach them to share, not waste electricity and more importantly teach them to tolerate each other.

The iPad will have to disappear for a few days!

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How Apple beat Lenovo and Samsung- at least in our house

The kids watch Berenstain Bears regularly. We let them watch it because it teaches them the importance of cleaning up, listening to their parents, behaving etc.

Now the fact that they don't listen to us when we say "stop watching" or "go cleanup and stop watching" or simply say things like "I am going to punch you in the head if you pause it" (that from a five year old girl to her daddy) suggest that the benefits of watching these episodes may be overrated. Nevertheless, there is silence in the house when we need it and so they are allowed to watch!

They used to record it on the DVR when we were with Direct TV and watch it on the big wall mounted TV..

Then we switched to Dish and that channel is no longer available to us on our NEW plan. So the kids started watching "youtube" indefinite reruns on the laptop.

Now they have switched over to the iPad having figured out that youtube is available on the iPad!

We just got an iPad and lost it to the kids. All other options in front of them in bigger and better sizes are moot. I never get to use the iPad now when they are awake.

In other news blogging has taken a serious nose dive because of work, work, and more work. It feels like all the planets, sun and moon have aligned themselves into one straight line which points directly to my rear end.

Add to that, our old TV channels are all gone. Vijay TV apparently had a fall out with Direct TV and decided to pull out and that meant, we had to scram for an alternate Satellite provider with Tamil channels and ended up going through a roller coaster cable switch from Direct to ATT to Dish in a span of two weeks!

On the bright side, we have Netflix online now, thanks to the iPad and watch free movies in bed. We seem to be watching the first 15-20 minutes of many free movies and switch to another movie. What they need is a like a 30 minute fast edited version of most movies with only the highlights. Something like a "Thirai Malar" featuring Jackie Chan, Tom Cruise Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood. That, would truly make my day!

The kids are keeping us busy and though there isn't much time to go out anywhere and enjoy the sun, there is the odd photo session every time the kids take a shower or wear anything pretty..

The hope is that February will give us more personal time. This level of intensity with two people working 16-18 hour days and taking all weekend to just catch some sleep so we can go do this all over again for another five days is not going to work for the kids.

San wants to start buying lottery tickets soon and I am this close to seconding that thought. Have not been a lottery ticket kind of guy, but why not?

Next weekend no matter how good or bad the weather is, we have decided to go on a short drive to someplace, take some photos and just get back to having some fun.

If we don't the little one might just "punch me in the head"!

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