Food for thought.....

We need everything 'Permanent' in a 'Temporary' life

Hinglish Vinglish on Zee Cinema

If you are one of those - I surely am - who are yet to watch this movie, here's your chance. It is going to be aired tomorrow (29th December) at 8pm on Zee Cinema. But if my friends are to be believed, there are going to be advertizements galore. So I better be ready with a stack of to-do things to be completed during the inevitable ad breaks :-)

2 links worth taking a look at:

Notes for the new year

Boring party survival 101

अर्ज किया है .....

तुम्हारे बाद बाकी तो सब ठीक है लेकिन
जहा दिल था कभी पहले वह अब दर्द रहता है

(Forwarded)

A friend sent following SMS today morning:

Time decides who you meet in your life.
Your heard decides who you want in your life.
And your behavior decides who will stay in your life.

Most of it is true I guess. But I think that Time also decides who gets to stay in your life - irrespective of what your heart or your behavior says. People leave just because their time is up!

I miss you.....

I put the Christmas leave to a good use by cleaning out many of my mailsboxes. It was while cleaning out one such account that I came across a mail that a friend had fowarded 3-4 months back. There were a couple of images of things that were part and parcel of our childhood but have become excinct (or almost so!) these days. :-( Here are some of them.....

Thanks Ashwini for bringing back memories of childhood :-)

Ordinary People Extra-ordinary Acts

Hard to believe that in this day and age there can be someone who is barely 27-years old and is yet looking after 42 orphan children, isn't it? Yet, it is true. Read on for the full story.

A true Mumbaikar will swear that there is no such thing as Winter in the city but last year the weather around this time of the year was fit to be called 'Winter'. As far as I can tell, this time the temperature is not so low but there is a definite chill in the air early in the morning and when the sun goes down.

So here are a few lines by Edith Sitwell:

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.

Happy Winter Dear Mumbai!

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Apocalypse Now?

Phew! 21st December came and went without the solar flares baking us all to crispy crunchy human bacons, without a hitherto-unknown planet called Nibiru (sounds straight out of Star Wars, doesn't it?) crashing into Mother Earth, without the ground opening up under our very feet (I wonder if people in India would have noticed that - when our roads are already filled with giant potholes!) or tall tsunamis sweeping blowing everything in their path to smithreens. I guess the Mayans were a bit weak in their Math, what say?

I am glad though that, at least in India, there were no people standing at the traffic junctions with huge boards that said 'Repent, for the end is near'. That there was no stampede at the supermarkets for bread, vegetables and packets of Maggie noodles! That team members turned up at work and made plans for work to be completed next week.

I hope the Mayans won't be offended. This in no way casts any aspersion on them. It's just that we have been through too many 'end-of-the-world' like scenarios to take such predictions seriously. Or maybe it's a simple case of accepting whatever it is that you simply cannot control.

Oh well, I just hope that we won't have a white Christmas - in Mumbai. :-)

Currently, while reading Agatha Christie's 'Taken At The Flood', I came across some unfamiliar terms.

While describing a leading character's eyes, she uses a phrase - put in with a smutty finger. I had no idea what she meant by that so I searched the net. Here's what I found - http://syds-thoughts.blogspot.in/2008/07/turns-of-phrase-that-dont-mean-what.html

In another scene, while offering a drink to someone one character says 'say when' to which the other replies 'when'. I was so confused by this that, for a moment, I thought there was some typo here.The internet came to the rescue, as usual. Here is the explanation.

The third reference has been to something called a 'pierrot doll'. The first link shown by the search engine had such creepy images that I didn't have the heart to search further.

I am almost halfway through the novel and curious to know what other new phrases and idioms I will come across.

Mah Jong, Khar (W)

This eating place at Khar (W) has been a favorite for lazy weekend lunches. But we hadn't been there for quite some time. Lately, I have been rather bored with the run-of-the-mill Chinese fare like Chow Mein, Schezwan Fried Rice, Manchurian and Spring Rolls. So when we landed at Mah Jong today morning, we decided to try some new dishes.

The first dish was, of course, Crispy Prawns in butter garlic sauce. Now, I am not fond of sea food (except for good old pomfret) because most of the times it smells 'fishy'. And the sight of King Prawns, for some inexplicable reason, turns me off completely. But this dish was so scrumptious that I didn't even realize when I polished my portion off my plate. You bet I am going to order it every time I visit this place.

I remembered that last time we were here, we had ordered some chicken dish which had crispy shredded chicken. We looked through the menu and ordered 'Shredded chicken in home style sauce'. When the waiter turned up with the dish, we realized that we had ordered something else. Luckily for us though, the dish was tasty as well - though very lightly seasoned.

We racked our collective brains over the dish that we had missed out on. Combing through our menu, I came across Crispy Chicken with Honey Chili. Aha! This must be it. We placed the order and Bingo! We were bang on the spot! Shreds of crispy chicken, pleasurably chewy - perfectly seasoned in a tangy-sweet-spicy sauce. Heaven on earth!

The clay pot chicken rice was a bit of a disappointment though. Though it had chicken, mushrooms and the creamy sauce, it lacked the capsicum strips that are part of the same dish served at Chandragupta (Shivaji Park). And it should have been a bit more spiced.

I am already looking forward to my next visit to Mah Jong :-)