stumble, fall, get up

it's one of those things that leaves you, grinning, stupidly, while you walk down to road to work on a overtly sunny day. And yet you grin, foolishly, unaware of the glaring men, and the laughing boys. yet you don't see the dust flying around as the rackety goan buses pass by, or the heat stinging you neck r event eh constant messages from your boss, asking why you haven't come to work yet. It all flies above you, like those mosquitoes that hover around the crown of your head, as you cross a field, trying to get a shorter way to granny's house.

Today is such a day. I'm not travelling to meet gran ma — I'm grinning foolishly about the recent past. Of paper plate lunches at five thirty in the evening, and furtive glances that go unseen, or unmentioned.

This is what the beginning is all about. The squigglies, that squilch around in your tummy. The odd sense of breathlessness that forms every time the two of you get to near. Beginnings are for this.

and as till wanders, there are two possibilities — all those squigglies turn into beautiful butterflies. things get better, closer, dearer.

Then there is also the chance of them getting infuriatingly annoying. cheap, rude and uncaring.

And things blossom, or like most often my case, dry up and wither, and those squigglies, turn into flesh eating maggots,t hat only time and port wine will kill.

Tomorrow you wake and somehow the sun rises again. Things get fine, and you see a butterfly flutter by. You follow it to the remainder of life.

book attack

writing writing — everywhere

writing has filled up the air.

Mr Lawrence, Mr Mistry

everything from sci-fi to histry

words are floating in my head

i plan to read until I'm dead.

until then each page i turn
reading till the writings burn.
till the book it self does close
or i go into a comatose

charlie and the cheese cake

Food! for those who have known me for more than twenty mins, they are bound to take notice of my fascination for food. Well cooked, well decorated and well served — all's well with me.

This love for food night very well explain my shift to Goa, — a gastronome's delight.

six months into the goan living, and i still drool over a plate of tongue, well made xacuti or a hot plate of garlic butter fried prawns. just writing about it has be drooling so one can easily understand that to me food mean forever.

while the meats have their patriots, i have a rather large (decaying) sweet tooth. Not simply eating them, but even making food delights me. Baking is my niche. Cakes, souffles, pies....baking dishes are my treasure trove, complete only with my collection of cook books.

But lets leave the apron to some one else this time.

What i actually want to talk about is the heavenly, angelical — cheese cake.

Soft creamy, slightly tangy, slightly sweet, all ending in a well formed base of crust.

Goa has not yet offered me a decent enough cheese cake, so i still adhere to eating Creameaux's Tiramisu. The closest thing i can get to a good dessert.

but it still doesn't compare to the cheese cake.

For those savage imbeciles who still think Cheese cake is made of cheddar — i beg to differ.

i travelled to mumbai this time around with two aims,

one: to spend all my time with family. Done

two: to eat as much cheese cake as possible. I have realised that will never be possible. There will never be enough of cheese cake to satisfy me.

Seven places, i tried the dessert. Too creamy, too fake, too dry, too superlatively perfectious.

seven hundred "MMMMMMmmmmms" later i had to leave the city, back to Goa and its lack of cheese cake.

Two more months to go before i get a hand on another piece of mumbai made CK.

I'm delirious...hoping some where a Goan has decided to make dark cherry cheese cake.

Till then i have learned one lesson. Be like the bears.

Moral: Eat for the winter

To pao or not to Pao

Away from Mumbai for the past six months, i miss the street vada pavs and the cutting chai that so well accompanies it. But it's not like Goa falls short in the street food dept. Say hello to the choris pao and the cutlet pao. for most people who made their way to Goa, sometime or the other, the choris pao is no stranger. Available in most local restaurants, they all take a bit. The cutlet pao however is an altogether a very goan street snack.


On those hot, hungry nights, when pages have gone two hours late and the people at the printers are hollering through the phone, we take a break and head to Miramar beach. still unsure of the place it is very conveniently called the Cutlet Pao place. Aside from cutlets of beef fried in raw and dashed with salad, then stuffed into a pao, they also serve a variety of choris pao, chilly fry, sorpotel, and a bunch of other dishes that have found their way from either a chicken, pig or cow.
Not one for red meats, i somehow can never escape an offer to eat there.
I once decided to go there along with Llyod and Jerome for a bite after work. For all the hardwork we put in this seemed like a befitting pay-off.
the place opens at around five, and when we ask for whats ready, they have only two things. Pork chops that i don't eat, and cutlet pao. So i order the cutlet pao. ? I eat here often enough to know what a good cutlet pao tastes like, and when i bite into my order, i know that this is not it.
My pao is dry and the cutlet is somewhat stale, with a rather odd mushy taste. I cone to a theory that they sell off last days portions first and then start off with he new stock. This being done in most restaurants and fast food places. So the next day, in order to test my theory, i got here at eight o'clock and buy another cutlet pao. It's crisp, tasty and the bread is soft. Perfect...well as close to perfect as the Miramar cutlet paos can get. The ones in Calangute are by far better, even on the worst of days.
So now I've come to the conclusion that one should wait until at least the first twenty percent of the orders have gone out to make your own. Then your assured to get a good plate of food. Obviously if you wait too long chances are all the good food might get over and you'll be stuck eating the worst part of the stock they could find to fry.

moral of the story: Old is not gold...Old is stale.