wO wO wO

nottuB nimajneB hctaw ot em koot ti sruoh flah a dna owt eht ni sraey derdnuh a dega evah I

Rice Rice Baby!

Ok! If there are any readers left, could someone please help me with this? I cannot find ideal all-purpose rice in Bangalore. By all purpose, I just mean stuff I can use for making boiled rice as well as the occasional pulao. I don't want basmati, because we eat rice frequently and basmati seems to be really unhealthy, and I don't want red/parboiled rice etc. either, because they don't work for us on a daily basis. (Palak dal with white rice: your average living-on-the-edge-with-a-safety-jacket diet).

For a long time, I just picked the Rs29.50/kg rice from the local Foodworld shelf (dumb ole me did not even check the name! I am the reason Gainda phenyl and Ship matches have amazing brand value! 29.50 rice indeed!) Now the inflation ruined everything and I cannot find the same rice. It might also be because Foodworld is on a mission to ruin my happiness on every possible level, but that's another story.

So I'm trying out various kinds of rice, and I invariably end up picking up Sona Masuri under different names and prices. And boy, when that rice boils, it smells….well, not very vegetarian (neither set of parents is gonna visit soon, my sixth sense tells me). Also, the pulaos and khichdis turn out quite flat.

So that's that. Any help is welcome. Preferably with some idea on where I can get the rice, and of course, no expensive solutions please!

Push Push Push

Women of my generation have the dark circles under their eyes. Most of us do, anyway. We look like those one or two photos of our mothers that were taken right after they gave birth to us/our siblings. Why do we look like we've just been through labour? Perhaps because we've been giving birth to and rearing a new world ever since we were kids.

We're the little girls who ran away from amla/coconut oil hair massages because the light and scented oils had appeared on the shelves. (Now we take hair colour tips from Penelope Cruz because hey! we're worth it). We're the young 'uns on whom Nestle has successfully conducted a mass experiment on the long-term effects of sustained Maggi intake. We're the first ones who took bread to school in out cute little tiffin boxes. Pepsi (more importantly Eff Pee) made sure we not only had cola, but high-brow and low-brow versions. The first McDonalds staff smiled into our impressionable faces, and from then on, there was no chatpata moong sprout consumed after school.

Cable TV debuted in front of our eyes, and thanks to the existence of the Middle East (Khushamadeed, if you're reading from there), we stayed up late nights watching incredible reruns of the incredible songs of whichever incredible Khan happened to catch our pre-teen fancies. We changed the new world's nappies over the night shift.

We chose from over 10 options for graduation, and then promptly took up jobs at the first MNCs...where night was day and day was, well, never quiet enough to be night. We tried, tested and certified the call centres as cool when they were all about pizza dinners and airconditioned-pick-up-and-drops. The new world was born while our parents slept, or gave themselves ulcers about wherer we were and what we were up to.

We made lactose intolerance, dieting, and migraines mainstream. That's no mean task, I assure you. And now we're thriving in a world where marriage is optional but a career is not, where you're present for the late night office party AND the morning meeting, hungover or not. Hey, we've even made cardiology a thriving business among a whole new target audience!

No kudos to us or anything. It's just how things have turned out for us in India. It's given us the biggest generation gap ever, a world of new experiences, lots of thrills, some heartburn, and yes, dark under-eye circles that only the best of bridal makeup magicians can conceal for a day.

Song: मंगल गृहणी

Needs to be sung with a slight Harvanyi touch.

चाहें baby हो या granny, औरत तू है मंगल गृहणी
घर में मरनी कुछ णा कैणी, औरत तू है मंगल गृहणी

खाना बरतन झाडू पोछा... इनसे आगे कभी न सोचा
हंस के यह ज़ंजीरें पैणी, औरत तू है मंगल गृहणी

सास का झाडू, पति के पेटी, माँ की गाली खाती बेटी
किसी से अपनी पीड न कैणी, औरत तू है मंगल गृहणी

Dirty Definitions

Soiled pants = Nature's missed call

Fart = Nature's SMS

It's 12:33am, and I should be in bed, reading Cloud Atlas till I doze off.

Overheard Last Night

At Gangaram's, MG Road, Bengaluru. 10 minutes before closing time.

Man with chit of paper in his hand: Do you have this book….expecting fathers…

World's least interested saleswoman: What?

Man: Expecting fathers….

Saleswoman: Fiction or non-fiction

Man: Non fiction

Me: cough cough splutter splutter

Getting My Goat…

The road to office is lined with bakras and bakris who're having a street party. They must be quite surprised at the sudden change in their fortune. Green goodies are being flung at them regularly and they're chomping away, merrily one assumes, since their expressions don't give much away. Perhaps their parents/cousins went to the city last year for the party. They were never heard from again.

If there were a way to keep a goat in a 1-bedroom apartment and prevent it from eating up your worldly belongings while you were at work, I'd have bought one today.