BBQ Nation pics

And here's what we were doing there.....

Please check out Ozz's mohawk.

Barbecue Nation

A glorious new restaurant that has come up in what I believe is the best area in Bangalore to eat out at: Indiranagar. I mean fine-dining-wise more than your regular Church Street anything-goes kind of place.
Barbecue Nation is located at the very beginning of 100 Feet Road, Indiranagar, when you slide off the flyover from Koramangala. What used to stand there before this has of course disappeared into Oblivion [*wiggling eyebrows* If you know what I mean...].
So anyway. When we got there around tennish, the place was packed. Fortunately, we had made reservations earlier and were immediately taken indoors to the main dining area. There is outdoor seating as well as terrace dining, so you can take your pick.
This is how it works: There is a fixed price of Rs. 400/- per head. The fare includes five veg plus five non-veg starters. And a huge buffet after that.
Here is the best part. A lighted gril, coals and all, is placed/inserted into the centre of your table. The starters are brought to you at your table on skewers, and you have to barbecue them yourselves to your liking. Provided alongside the barbecue is a tray of suaces and basting brushes. You can go wild and have a lot of fun while cooking your own meal. In addition to the starters, included in this fixed price deal is a fantastic buffet spread of salads, soup, main course and dessert.
The service is splendid with sweet, friendly waiters bustling about and waiting to help.
Drinks come extra and ther's a nice selction to choose from.
I enjoyed the starters so much, I had no appetite left for main course AND dessert, so I opted for dessert, of course. For the rest who had a little of the main course, freshly baked, hot steaming naans and rotis were brought to our table as ordered.

It was lovely, lovely, lovely.
The interiors were done up very well with comfortable wooden seating, cushions and warm lighting.
I think I have found my favorite eating out place in Bangalore. Yay!!!

I'm baaaack

Of course, after all this while, I know this becomes a sort of Notes to Myself business. But anyway, I am. So there.

Yasin the Software Geek

My Febi's bundle of joy. [And mine, and mine!] Yasin all of 14 months, very busy with his father's laptop..and very focussed too.

Quick-Fix!!!!

Quick acknowledgement in the face of scary accusations of plagiarism:

The credit for title of previous post "Post party-um Depression", must be duly shared with one Giggly Items whose beautilful blog is linked on the right.
It has taken offence that I have passed it off as mine without so much as a blink. Well, well, well. I am blinking like anything. Like Bertie, in fact. I have no qualms in admitting that great minds think alike and that, in our case, dearest Giggles, even at the exact same time. Mooahahaha.

Guess we'll have to mud-wrestle to decide this one.
On that optimistic note, have a supaar weekends. Ta!

Post party-um depression

My dearest Tits and Jakkur Jazz,
It was wonderful and am gladdest for you rascals. Yay! Joy! My cups runneth over! Let the madness nevvver, evvver cease. For shuvvvvar.

Aw, Mithai-di, we miss you like anything. It was insanely nice meeting you and the rest of the loonies. Except that now, and for a month on at least or till my next PMS, whichever kicks in first, I'll be in a blue funk. [And when i say blue, I DO NOT MEAN PORNOGRAPHIC. Lillah!]
A beedi will never be looked at in the same off-hand, perfunctory way again. No other nape will ever be looked at, period. Sniffle.

Boomsa went back to Monarch's last night and stole your bedsheets, just so you know.

Come off, fast fastly. In the meanwhile, I'll make a preparatory trip to Blush.... Rrrrrrrr.

So long, maestro.

You have given us great joy.
Tashkor, Hrishida.

So, I really love these guys.

Can someone get them to come over? Please? For a small little private concert here in Bangalore?

Thanks very much.
Regards,
Black Veil, Long

How Green Is My Valley. Larks!

Ma and Abba are having a grand time up in the mountains. Them and their frund-couples from the last generation, having relievedly [and finally] dispensed with such afflictions as: [1] Us kids, [2] Us kids' weddings/educations/miseries, [3] Each family's private scandals and heartaches, have all come to that beautiful phase of life where, hopefully, it's all done with.
They're having a mad picnic in a place untouched by silly things as electricity, noise, and yes, even the wrong kind of people. There is a grounded goodness in our villages that one can only hope never dies. Ma's giggling over the phone yesterday telling me about it warmed me to the cockles of my heat, whatever that means. She was telling me about all those things I remember from my holidays there: misty days, cold breeze, hurts-your-eyes-green hills, sweet water springs, wooden cottages, bonfires, buffaloes, sheep and.... the inevitable- shish kebabs and barbecues! [Mooahaha. Sorry, Giggly.]
We are lucky to have that beautiful village on top of that remote mountain. Where Abba spends a lot of the year being a Son of the Soil. He revels in it. It has taken years off his considerable years. By the time I'm as old as him, I'll probably need an voice-driven wheelchair and 12 helpers. (I shall make sure they are good-looking and well-toned just for the heck of it.) But there be's my pater, swinging a scythe with the best of them. Turning over leaves in the apple orchards looking for tell-tale signs of things only he knows. Watching the movement of bees to predict whether we'll have honey this year. Sitting outside the village mosque after the evening prayers with friends, telling tales. [Some tall tales, granted, but...] He's happy and I'm happier for him.
As for Ma, if anyone ever deserved a break from life, she did. She's taken our family through it all. She is the mother from The Grapes of Wrath. I think a million times to myself, "How much more can she take?" And then I promptly go and add my own little two-bit to her world of troubles. There's a beautiful, she is. What I mean to say is, I hope we're done tormenting her for the anon. That laugh of hers yesterday- it was gorgeous.

Here's to you, my Parentals. Enjaii like anything.

Just.

It is so tiring to have to be pleasant and chirpy allll the bleddy time. It is.
Sometimes I don't want to, okay?

So, yesterday was an old, old Friend's birthday. From way back when I was a gawky, unsure teenager. I mean, she used to be a friend though I won't say we were ever tight. It's just that growing up with someone, no matter how weak the link be, feels like a whole new feel when you look back years later. So anyway, it was her hap-birthday. And it was an annual ritual of mine to write her a few wishful words on her big day. No matter that the greetings weren't ever returned or that we really had nothing else to say otherwise. Whatever. I liked to wish my friends, and I would. It was my thing.
Except all of that changed last year. What with leaving an unspeakably ugly phase of my life behind, severing ties with an Unwholesome Lot of People [ULP] I am glad to be rid of- [definitely very Killable - have formed vivid, graphic, and eerily doable plans of how to dismember, hang, quater etc. etc. one particular Festering Individual among them all, and say victoriously at the end of the Operation: "Said Fester Has Been Neutralised."]- it just so happens that leaving the Ugly also made me leave a large portion of the Nice behind. Persons from the Past I actually really liked, old acquaintances, a whole photo-montage of faces that I have grown up with. A whole childhood worth of memories. Have tied them up in pretty purple string and locked them in a cabinet. But the cabinet is at eye-level. And it has a glass door, so I cannot entirely forget.

'Tis a shame, what else? Tsk tsk.

So, on that note, Happy Birthday, Old Frund.
(And to hell with the rest of you!)

"A loss of something ever felt I—
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was—of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect

Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is—
I find myself still softly searching
For my Delinguent Palaces—"
-Emily Dickinson

It's a bleddy shame!

Getting your period very young

Makes you wise beyond your years
Makes you cries a lot of tears
Makes you lies to your peers
Makes you wish you was not heres
Makes you aches everywheres

If only I had got a comma instead.

I learnt the same stuff as everyone else in school
Then Life taught me other things
And Boomsa still udders

Mooooahahaha.
Dear Mad Cow
It is nice living with you.

Cheers and good luck!

A not so nice month

Actually, a very bad one. I speak of the first week of July through to the first week of August.
In no particular order, recent events that have really disturbed one :
-The Mumbai blasts. Inhumans, sullying the name of religion, and what's more, the whole world lapping it up so that now Islam=Terrorism=Jehad and some such claptrap. My friends and I talk about this often and it is relieving to know that they DO understand that that's not the equation, but really, how many people do? Or care? This is the pits. Especially since I for one, am proud as dammit of Islam.
-Israel: Has 2 soldiers kidnapped and unleash an unbelievably cruel assault on Lebanon as the world watches and the US [but of course!] pats its back. Hello? Civilians being killed. Women and kids in Qana. I suppose state-backed terrorism is okay because really, what else can one call this? Growl.
-Yet another tsunami hits Indonesia. This time round, it doesn't even make it to the front page of any newspaper.
-Alonso doesn't win any and Schumi takes many. Damn it!
-Sania hasn;t been winning ANYTHING either. What's up with that? I'm a big fan ever since I've seen her play up close and personal. Very infuriating to see her throw it all away. Over and over.
-More locally: Deeply respected guru-entity Long Legs left work. Mins like, all louww for her. Deeply saddened [to a surprisingly extreme degree] by her departure etc. and was in blue funk for days. Shortly followed by departure of another old hand, Long Locks, which sort of takes care of the Age of Experience at the Orifice. Feel especially bad for the Reams who pines and weeps silently in her deserted aisle.
-Felt a little at sea after the Mater left for back home. Little at sea means sadness.
-There were other things I'm sure, that made it distasteful, but I forget. Waste.

On a high note, after the dreaded past month, the 2nd week of August on is looking pretty spiffy. My dorling Boomsa has moved in with me. That makes it three mad cats in our cosy flat: Skinny, Boomsa and I. We are parting with all borrowed furniture of yore, and Boomsa and I have been frantically running around procuring essentials. Skinny is on work in the US of [barf] A. She'll be surprised when she gets back. As a helpful note to personalities looking for cheap treasures to strew around the house, I suggest you head to Shivajinagar and discover the whole new world you'll see there. It is a lovely!

And now, enough.

Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

But I still want babies. Maybe more than ever now.

Outlook, the perv

Tells me strange things like "You have unopened items."
[High five, Giggly!]

Mah dear Giggly. You are now linked.

Yay!!!!!

Welcome, Hanan The Barbarian

This site be's top secret for Orifice entities. Unless specially invited by moi.

Dear Tits...

It HAS been very long. I have been out of commission for a while, meaning I haven't had the split second required to update my blog.
Post arrival and grand news of fraternal foray into the higher reaches of Academia, the next bright spot in my last month has been esteemed arrival of my Parentals. They have brought with hem bonhomie, warmth and many many cheesy jokes which only us in our nuclear family enjoy and appreciate like nobody's business. We try it out on others as well, but.... No, no, let us not go there.

So anyway, the Mater has firmly entrenched herself in the kitchenette. So far, no one is complaining. Burping, yes. But complaining? No.
The Pater slowly imbibes the morning newsies from 0600 hours till well past 0900. With the tripe that our fascinating dailies have in them, I can only feel pained at what he has to sift through to make sense of the nonsense. With the grand exception of Jug Suraiya's JUGULAR VEIN for which I pine each week till its appearance in the Sunday Times.

Hope the Parentals don't get bored. We flock run out of the house to college and work in the mornings and return home disgruntled in the eves. What do they do in the meanwhiles? They relax, they have funs, and most importantly, they play cards against each oher! Moooahahahah. I love it.
We have taught them the way out of the back-of-beyond where my sister's digs are, so in case of dire boredom, they CAN always escape into a more meaningful part of civilization.

Yesterday we took them to a nice little resort out on Hosur Road. This place is not your run-of-the-mill weekend retreat for pampering and luxury. It is primarily an activity-related joint, and let me be more clear and say that these activites are sports. Hah.
So, we played badminton for a couple of hours, where Abba [being the Pater] whipped our collective arses and made us introspect sheepishly on our idea of our own fitness and skill. Then we took in a below par lunch buffet. Post lunch we all trudged to the tennis courts where we played an initial lacklustre few games, but towards the end we really had a nice go at it.
The Fraternal figure, being Usman, whupped our collective arses on this front.

The boys [being an Usman and a cousin Suhail] then frolicked and splashed about outrageously in the swimming pool while we sophisticated elders stylishly unwound on the sun loungers by its side.
Then the Rain gods had a party and poured like there was no tomorrow. In a bit we collected stray items of foowear, underwear, rainwear and other suchlikes and made our way back to Home Sweet Home. [When I say we collected stray pieces of miscellaneous, I of course mean to say that it was our stuff that had strayed and not any random pieces of underwear etc. that we found about the resort! Hmmph. As if.]

So today.... it is the morning after, and strange and interesting body parts are aching. I feel I have discovered several new muscles in my bum and back-shoulder region. Sorely, this shall soon be over!

I shall now get back to the first priority in my current life. Mins like, works is worships.
Byeeeeeee.

PS: Tits, have many funs in the Chennai, but don't you dare comment on pre-marital sex or safety measures to be used whilst so indulging! Take lessons from recent history.