Water water everywhere….

“10 per cent water cut from today”

Page 4 of Hindustan Times screamed.

I sat up with a bolt

No longer was I the languid Mumbai morning person browsing the papers in bed. My mind had travelled back in time to when I was a kid in Chennai, filling buckets and drums with waters during those terrible years of terrible water shortages. Terrible, terrible.

I read through the entire article.

“The delay in Bombay’s monsoon was causing this shortage”

No surprise there

“Mumbai receives its daily supply of water from six lakes – Modak Sagar, Tansa, Vihar, Tulsi, Upper Vaitarna and Bhatsa”

Hmmm. More lakes than Chennai. That does not sound bad.

“While the water level of Vihar has reached its lowest – 152.52 m, Tansa has water that can be used to supply the city only for the next few days”

Gulp

“Alarmed by the dipping water levels, the civic officials…”

Ah. I knew the public authorities would swoop right in and come up with some engineering miracles

“….. have performed pujas at the Tansa and Vaitarna lakes”

Huh.

Really?

Time to get out those buckets and drums.

How to prepare Mediterranean Grilled Fish

Save recipe sent by sis in the recess of computer.

Four months later, in a burst of enthusiasm order 500 gms of fish and invite friend over to help cook.

Read recipe and notice it calls for Mediterranean seasoning like parsley, basil and olives. Quickly consider switching to Kerala Meen curry. Quickly switch back upon evaluating level of skill required for Kerala Meen curry

Call up local grocery store and find out they stock everything (!)

Chop up 4 table spoons of basil, 1 table spoon of parsley, 1 table spoon of garlic and mix in bowl with 2 tablespoons of juice of lemon.

Use brush bought a few weeks ago to rub each piece of fish with olive oil. Feel super professional.

Arrange fish on grilling rack, douse with herb mixture and toss some freshly ground pepper on top.

Stuff into microwave cum grill.

Cook for 5 – 6 minutes, take out and begin process of turning fish over to the other side.

Notice grill is hot, drop the rack and watch the fish plop on the floor.

Sit by as friend picks up pieces and puts them back on the grilling rack and explains that the microwaves should kill any germs caught from the kitchen floor.

Repeat process of coating fish with herbs and cooking in grill.

Take out, garnish with lemon slices and green olives and eat.

Feel the fish get your intelligence levels up and realize that you don’t particularly care for fish, grilled or otherwise.

Delete recipe.

Evolution of a facebook user

Sit out the Facebook revolution for several years.

Listen to friends indicate that you are a dinosaur and may be left off the ship earthlings will use to emigrate to the outer worlds when apocalypse hits.

One fine evening, sign up

Cautiously accept pending invites (and wonder how one can get invites even before one even has a Facebook account. This is so Big Brother)

Start responding to messages.

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Realise on one slow day that office gives you access to Facebook.

Start commenting on everyone’s pages.

Invite a few friends

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Notice number of friends all your friends have and realize you look like the class loser with a pathetically low score.

Get competitive

Start inviting half of your batch from college and B School

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Realise you are getting updates on Dinesh Daswani’s life frequently

Realise you have not exchanged more than two words with Dinesh in your entire 2 years at B-School

Realise you are not interested in Dinesh’s life at all.

Spend time contemplating between de-friending Dinesh, abandoning Facebook and turning to Yoga to remove competitive streak in self.

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Figure out tools for seeing updates only of ‘close friends’ and feel like an international diplomat bringing smooth solutions to conflict-torn areas.

Realise this is the kind of meaningless work you were worried Facebook would thrust on you.

Kick yourself for succumbing to peer pressure to get a Facebook account and make a mental note that you don’t want to be on the emigration ship. Esp if it has Dinesh Daswani.

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It is always a pleasure to take in a good movie and a halfway decent play in one weekend.

Edge of heaven

Screened as a part of NDTV Lumiere’s Cannes Festival selection at PVR, the hall contained a handful of people. Luckily the quorum was sufficient for the movie to be screened (unlike the last time I went to Sterling with a friend and was told that Turtles Can Fly wont be screened since we were the only two people who had booked tickets)

The movie itself is a nicely wrapped slice of the lives of its six lead characters. The story switches between Turkey and Germany and traces the blip of passion, love, lust and beliefs that registers in each of these characters before the world settles back into rhythm.

The story telling tight, the crossing of paths of the characters, unknownest to themselves is nicely done and the symbolic beginnings and ends don’t feel too clichéd. The movie also encompasses in the periphery a larger vision of lives of Turks in both Turkey and Germany.

An interesting view of a different world.


Don’t Look Now

It is difficult to pull off spooky movies. It is even more so with spooky plays. But ‘Don’t Look Now’ manages fairly successfully with a well-written script, believable cast and wonderful settings. Aparna and Sanjay are a typical upper middle class urban couple who lose their daughter Nitya at the beginning of the play. Trying to find peace, they visit Shanti Niketan – a conscious effort to dwell on better times as the couple had met there. The duo bump into two sisters dressed in black and looking quite witch-like. One of the sisters is psychic and warns them to leave Shanti Niketan. Aparna is wont to believe them but Sanjay finds the whole set up ridiculously fraudulent and superstitious. Things begin to get weirder and weirder for Sanjay who battles between his veneer of logic and his instinct and gradually realizes that some forces are beyond normal reasoning.

The play handles the mystical elements well. The central point is the big banyan tree, imaginatively designed to give a great atmosphere. The lighting works beautifully, especially when Sanjay has nightmares. Add to that the excellent mannerisms of each individual character (except perhaps for the witch sisters who appear a bit one-dimensional) and the villagers entering and exiting the scene adding a naturalness seldom found in the sparsely populated plays one sees at NCPA. On the whole, the play is definitely worth a watch.

Mount Abu – Fact sheet

Time to visit – Summer destination. Winters get very cold. Rains are not so heavy, so doable then as well.

Getting there – By rail – Aravalli Express leaves Mumbai at 9 p.m. and reaches Abu Road station at a convenient 10 a.m. Cabs to Mount Abu are available outside the station on hire. Costs 300 rupees for the half hour winding drive. We used Ummed Singh (98289 22692) who turned out to be quite helpful for the rest of the trip. By air – Closest airport is Udaipur. The other option is to travel via Ahmedabad, which takes about 6 hours by road. I am told the roads are excellent, (which also probably explains why roughly 70% of the tourists are Gujarathis)

Stay – We stayed at Hotel Udaigarh. This is located atop a steep driveway and hence does not attract too many huffing and puffing middle aged people with children. (It is another thing that we were also huffing and puffing after multiple climbs). Backpackers usually stay at Hotel Ganesh, where rooms cost Rs. 150 – 180. Mt Abu was choc-a-bloc with hotels, so there is no dearth of choice. Unless you are here during the peak tourist season (all school holidays) in which case it is better to book ahead. The cabbie told us conspirationally that tourists have been found forced to stay in the footpath.

To do –

The usual tourist round comprises Dilwara Temples, Nakki Lake, Achalgarh temple, Adhar Devi temple, Guru Shikar, sunset point and other places of increasingly lesser significance and attraction. A full day tour of these places by car would cost 800 rupees and a half day tour would cost 400 rupees (Ummed Singh is available for these). We chose to focus on a few

- Dilwara Temples – Definitely must see. Two of the five temples are so stunning that no amount of gaping at the intricately carved work on the marble is going to satiate your appetite for more. There is a free guided tour in Hindi frequently. You just hang around till you spot a large group being herded by a loud person and then join them. English speaking guides are apparently available outside the temple. The Hindi guided tour was useful in pointing out the statues which we were especially supposed to gape at. Otherwise they did not have anything further to add to what you would find on the net.

- Achalgarh Temple and fort – The temple has interesting myths around it but is not spectacular otherwise. The climb to the dilapidated fort is nice. There is a steep winding road, after which there are about 270 steps which takes half an hour to climb. You can get a great view of Mt Abu from here. Though I am told you can do even better in terms of view at the area’s highest point, Guru Shikar. Achalgarh’s peak has the merit of being practically deserted and free of tourists

- Trek – there are lots of tiny treks to choose from. Mr Champak (9414219013) from Hotel Ganesh took us on a 3.5 hour end to end trip based on our fitness levels and time availability. The top point of the trek had really stunning views of the entire countryside.

- Nakki Lake – This can equally morph into Kodaikanal Lake or Nainital Lake or ‘Lake in whichever commercialized hill station you can think of’. It had boating facilities, a lovely 3.5 km walking area around the perimeter and lots of crowds. It is pretty large and clean since drinking water supply to the town is from the lake.

- Sunset point – The point was jam packed when we got there almost an hour in advance of the sunset. It mostly had young men, dressed to the hilt in jeans and dark glasses and posing for ‘I am a cool dude’ snaps. The sun had almost set by the time we could peel our eyes of the antics of this crowd. Definitely not meant for a communing-with-nature experience but total paisa vasool if you want to have a good laugh at the vanity of youth.

To eat - Lots of places that serve yummy dal-batti and churma, the speciality of Rajasthan. I liked Jodhpur hotel near the Eiffel tower structure. Veena and Arbuda restaurants recommended by Lonely Planet were average.

To shop - Lots of Rajasthani print bed linen and joothis.

Others - This place is the global head quarters of the Brahma Kumari society. Expect to see a lot of people dressed in white wandering around. They run the Global Hospital which is spotlessly clean and very inexpensive.