Are You Gonna Go My Way?

I have always been obsessed. Not with work like most people I know are. I work when I need to and try to keep a good work-life balance.

No, I used to say I have OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) but I would be doing a disservice to people who actually have OCD. Sure, I am obsessed about certain things, maybe borderline compulsive. But I know I don’t have to go through the hell people clinically diagnosed with OCD have to, many of them on a daily basis.

Just a Reddit post showing what serious OCD really is. And read the comments after. *Trigger warning – Blood and torn nails*

I have OCD, and one of my compulsions is to tear off my toenails… from r/MakeMeSuffer

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But hey, let’s talk about my pet peeves/obsessions. Here’s a list of them in random order. (But between you and I, the top ones are some I struggle with on a daily basis)

• English and grammar – Yes, my top peeve is what anyone would call an obsession of the privileged. A little part of me dies every time I see easy words misspelled. Run-on sentences. Go figure.
• Punctuality – Coming back to India has been a struggle. No one is ever on time except my Dad and I. People take IST (Indian Stretchable Time) quite literally.
• Littering – India, and Mumbai specifically, seems to be obsessed with littering. It’s upsetting to see how many people litter but the streets are swept almost every morning so the situation isn’t as bad as it used to be.
• How Noisy India is – Honking, people playing every goddamn WhatsApp video to the public, honking, just the general noise generated by the insane density of people in Mumbai, have I mentioned honking? This is a pet peeve because I have sensitive hearing from all the medication I took for XDR-TB.
• I HAVE to wash my feet every time I enter a bathroom and any part of my feet get wet. It’s an obsession/pet peeve. I don’t know why. This was what motivated me to write this post, strangely enough.
• I HAVE to save contacts in my phonebook with their first name and last name. Pro Tip: If you are obsessed about this like I am, save some details about the contacts in the Notes section of the contact. Definitely helps.

I will keep updating this list when I remember more peeves/obsessions. Tell me if you remember anything annoying you can remember about me?

Oh, What A Night!

This was my first review on Zomato, and I hope this isn’t my last.

So, my first words here are for a good time I had at a place called He Said, She Said. First, locating the place was quite easy with GPS, so that wasn’t a problem at all. The valet was prompt too. We had reserved a place at 9 pm on a Saturday night, and even though we reached a quarter of an hour early, the staff quickly seated us at a table comfortable for the 7 of us.

So, the division was that all four of the girls were keen to drink, and none of the 3 boys were. So, we started off with the Classic Chicken Chilly, the Murgh Malai Tikka, the Margherita Pizza, the Assorted Bruschetta Platter. The girls started off with a Breezer (they were kind enough to ask my friend if the bottle she’d ordered was acceptable), a Mojito and a Long Island Iced Tea. The quantity of all four dishes were good, and the Murgh Malai Tikka is highly recommended. It was stunning! Melted in our mouth and the chicken was succulent. The Margherita Pizza, according to my only vegetarian friend with me then, tasted like cheese naan, and it did. The other two dishes were okay. The Tikkas were so good, that we re-ordered them along with the Chilly Chicken. Oh, did I mention that the guys ordered Cokes and Lemon Iced Teas. Yes, we don’t have the balls. Oh, one of my friends was driving, so not a possibility.

The second round, apart from those two dishes, consisted of 3 French Fries with Cheese and I will tell you, by this time, we were stuffed. Atleast, I was, but my genius friend decided to order some more. The girls had another Long Island Iced Tea, a Breezer and a Margarita. And boy, were those drinks strong. Two of my friends were drunk, giggling, rolling around by the time they were a quarter of the way through the second Iced Tea.

The third order, we denied the two of them from ordering any shots, that HSSS is famous for, but the two other girls had A Nimbu Pani and The Flying Kiwi, which they mentioned were potent, too. So, for a 150 a pop, the shots were quite cheap. The Veg Burger, and a Potato something (I think it was a stir-fry) were wasted, because we were so full!

We didn’t explore too much of the restaurant, but it seemed quite spacious and the music wasn’t painful, like a lot of other places. One suggestion would be to try and accommodate some bigger washrooms, because the ones you have now are quite small. Also, the staff is helpful and the service is prompt. Might be that they’re swarmed when the crowd actually starts pouring in, around 11. Unfortunately, that was when we left. Oh, and the total bill for 24 items, including drinks, was Rs 5430. That is cheap!

The only terrible thing about HSSS is the overhead on the Breezers! The price for one bottle was atrocious, people. Do NOT buy Breezers here. HSSS has a markup of 140+ rupees on Breezers. It seems horrible to pay that much when you’d rather have them at home for much cheaper. But the management was kind enough to give us a bottle of mineral water instead of giving us glasses of water every time. They didn’t even charge us for it!

Overall, the whole experience was rather pleasant. Apologies for the rather long review. Hope it helps! All due credit to the management of He Said, She Said. An excellent place to visit for youngsters who like to have a good time 🙂 and not a great deal of money.

 

Rating: 4/5

Points taken off for the Breezer being too pricey.

Up Above The World So High, Like A Diamond(?) In The SKY!

It all began with a harmless, 9-am-in-the-morning-when-all-fucking-trains-are-full MD class.

And ended with?

Let me fill you in with all the gravy. Like white? You wouldn’t if you were in our place.

Rewind back to 2nd September.

Beep on my cell phone. Bow-bow’s message. “V’l hve lunch 2morow at vile after vaity wat say rply”. The least he could’ve done was spell correctly. Anyway, I wat-said-replied in the affirmative. I knew it was to be a messy day. No, I’m not talking about My hair day. 😛

Let me tell you, class on a holiday morning is like lighting up a terribly boring cracker under someone’s ass just to inform them that it’s Diwali. You’d yawn to death. So there we were, sitting quietly in Vaity’s class, making interracial porno songs for Mandala’s future porn career. (Miracle of the day no. 1 – Left home at 8.45, reached Irla at 9.05) Finally, after 3 hours of drawing highly un-understandably mechanical drawings, we trooped out of the class and into fresh air (or air smelling of urine, that being the toilet).

Ultra-macho guys wanted to do a round of hookah to prove how macho they were. Non-macho guys, me included, just wanted a good meal and some nice “Pani free”. Girls just wanted a place to crack girlie-jokes™ which no one else understood and never really laughed at. Try explaining this to them. No one exactly decided upon a particular place, and we just rushed to grab the best(?) places in the cars. Car No. 1 was hell-bent on going to Happy Singh’s to a nice Punjaban meal, but Car No. 2 was full of the hookah-people. Another piece of information. Hookah-people are those guys(or sometimes girls) who want to smoke some weirdly flavoured (and addictive) gas and boast that they smoked something. Nothing in it really. Just a way to show their testosterone. That is why the wanted to go to the Sky Lounge. On the recommendation of a certain someone who definitely does not wish to be named here, for fear of being publicly slagged.

The map below explains the foolishness of the direction-giver in getting to our final destination.

So, we assumed that as everyone was mentioning Fun Republic in correlation to Sky Lounge, Fun Republic was where we were supposed to go. All gung-ho about getting some good old food into our stomachs, we parked and looked around for Sky Lounge, but in vain. When we left the parking lot, it was onto a side-road. The road being parallel to the one on which SL was, we drove on and on to some God-forsaken place with mice running around in our intestines (translation: Pet mein chuhe daudna, if Mavi is reading this). No one seemed to know where Fun Republic was, let alone SL. Finally, when we found the damn board that announced the place, the 6 of us in the car shouted for joy.

3 floors, and we were begging them to serve  only to see that prices were actually SKY-high. Whoever heard of Rs 300 for a bowl of chicken? Anyway, we decided to order 3 dishes in order to satisfy the 9 of us. 2 of them were the same, and the 3rd one was supposed to be different.

After the order had been given and the stomachs quietened for a bit with some vinegar-ed onions, we waited for the food. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.

And guess what we did after that? No, we didn’t stick our forks into the waiter or the manager who kept hovering around. We waited even more. All this while the vegetarian guys were happily enjoying their starters. We cursed and swore in equal measure. But yet the food wouldn’t arrive. And just when our stomachs had given up home and were packing their hibernation bags and going off to a month long sleep for lack of food, the food arrived. And guess what colour it was.

Just try and guess. That colour which is meant to indicate peace. No, not red as in piece. White.

Every Goddamn thing there was white. The Murgh Masallam and the other dish, the rotis, all white. White. Argh, fucking white. And the dishes were so similar that they were the same. Confusing statement huh?

They Were the same. They tasted the same, they looked the same. It was like the chef, sorry cook (it would be an insult calling him a chef) had made the same dish, added more salt in one of them, and decided the other one needed some pepper, and served both of them as different things. After all the wait. this? It was like eating boiled eggs mashed with cornflour with some salt and chicken pieces. It was really that terrible. No kidding.

After we’d swallowed the terrible fare, we tried to analyze which dish we found to be the best. And it “boiled” down to the rotis. Believe me, rotis! And we thought the meal couldn’t get worse.

After the bill had been paid by the party-givers (thanks to Saumil and Gaurav for being so sporting), we trooped out of the place, taking a blood-oath(kidding :P) to never come to the place again. And we warn you too. Bad food, worse service, terrible pricing. Want to risk it? Be my guest. Not literally.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Food, invariably, is a 25 pound weight for me. Not literally, mind you. The side the weight is on, is the side which is more valuable for me. It swings the balance in my favour. Good food, not just food, is the ultimate Eden for me. Well, Eve in all her glory might just be the complete package. Is that expecting too much? Oh, well.

So, as I was saying, parties with great food is what makes the party great for me. The music might be bullshit, the ambience might be terrible, the company might be worse than expected, but the food is what you take home in the end. And it also decides what your plans for the next day are. You get the drift of the joke? No? Ah, forget it. The way to a man’s heart is his stomach. But the way to his stomach is through the mouth, and the taste buds certainly need to be satisfied.

You might wonder what fried green tomatoes has to do with all this. Well, it’s the name of a famous movie as well as a famous dish in the USA. It’s just food, hence the name.

So, we get back to food. I love food, but I’m very particular about it. I tend to fuss a lot, and have my own likes and dislikes. Call me kinky if you want, but I stick to my guns. I totally dislike curd and buttermilk. This tends to surprise people and go all Ooh and Aah. That is because people love all that stuff and cannot imagine people not liking it. Well, for me, it’s disgusting food, and I tend to shudder even at the sight of the semi-solid “thing”.

I love chicken done in any way, and appreciate people who serve a good meal of fried chicken. Fried chicken earns people brownie points from me. I tend not to eat mutton and other animals, but I’m not squeamish about trying anything. I like fish occassionally, prawns and crabs even.

So, I will refrain from writing further, because my thought-processes have collapsed from the strain of over-exertion. Seem to have a case of acute Writer’s Block, and cannot keep hold of my ideas. Apologize for the lack of posts.

Till then, some good blogs for you:

http://a-product-of-procrastination.blogspot.com/

http://twodogsandablog.wordpress.com/

Reservoir Pigs

The fever is upon the world. I doubt you’d even think I’m talking about the IPL, what with empty stands selling like hot cakes in SA, nor would Lok Sabha polls be on your minds. I’m talking fever in the literal sense, viral fever contracted from pigs. You heard me right, pigs. Don’t believe me? Look up your newspapers. Swine flu sounds la-di-da, but it is what you would call getting sick after frolicking with pigs.

What with South Park airing in India, with the necessary *beep*s every 1/1000th of a second, the first thing that comes to mind is Cartman with his “I’m a piggy and I have a snout”. Shows you just how popular pigs are in our culture. Every 3rd person is called a pig, and a pig immediately brings to mind a pink, plump creature with nice ears and a very wet snout. Americans connect pig only with a nice fat piece of meat on the table. Yet, our complacency towards these creatures of the mud has resulted in a nice soup for all of us. And I do not mean pork soup. I Do Not talk literally all the time.

Swine flu is in the air, pun intended. A guy who was probably looking for a nice fat pork chop for his enchilada touched a sick pig. Man caught the ‘flu. Other people came in contact with man’s saliva, breath or skin, got pig fever. Slowly started spreading to other Mexicans. Mexican government probably thought it was another conspiracy by the drug mafia at taking over their quesadillas and Salma Hayek (who is probably an American by now). So they were complacent and did not raid India’s “stockpile” of Tamiflu. India, surprisingly, has been stocking up on Tamiflu in case Swine Flu travels the Atlantic and the Indian or the Pacific to infect us perennially ill Indians. Also, it comes as a surprise because pigs are socially unacceptable in our circles, and it is considered to be downright rude for a pig to share a table with the family.

My dad was joking about how we’d never contract Swine Flu, or even Bird Flu, for that matter, because we’re resistant to all kinds of diseases. Well, I doubt the Chinese would contract the illness either, what with suffering no side effects from eating monkey brains. The least I’d thought would happen to them was they’d jump around in just their underwears and probably try to eat each other’s lice. Surprisingly, they have shown their vulnerability to the pink, plump viruses of the pig variety, and our case for being benign about a world pandemic has been duly chucked out of the window.

However, actors and actresses of Bollywood, along with the Elitist SoBo crowd, does not have any qualms about travelling to North America for their annual dose of Botox and nude Hawaiian chicks. Some of this points towards that swine flu seems to be considered a lower-class disease. Whenever viruses see the royal blood that seems to flow in the veins and arteries of the rich, they suffer from cold feet. It is evident from the fact that a certain Arsenal striker, Carlos Vela, seemed to escape his home nation without so much as a rhinovirus to his credit. Other celebrities, basking in the warm sun of Mexico City, seemed to miraculously avoid the disease.

Moving on,but sticking to the world of football, WAGs from the EPL club of Middlesborough decided they had to spread their infectious natures around the club. With Middlesborough already deep in relegation trouble, it was no surprise that the players weren’t in the mood to have sex, or even come near them. Probably saved them from pig fever, that the girls were suspected to be carrying, instead of their usual designer bags.

And finally, coming to the repercussions it’ll be having for India. For once, the vegetarians will be in with a reason to stop people from eating meat, and with the killing of those nice pink plump pigs. PETA will probably bring in more topless celebrities to oppose eating pork in the world. Kate Moss will probably pose with whatever is left of her body, and Oprah Winfrey might just about give everyone a peek. Back home, Maneka Gandhi will probably whine in all papers about how pigs are fed hay and how they should probably be fed Beluga caviar with some nice truffles. But that’s Maneka for you.

And to encourage strokes of brilliance in names, this is what a certain team of quizzers named themselves:

Pigs Fly, Swine Flu.

Hair Raisers…

I know I haven’t written for a long, long time and I might be a bit rusty with my use of phrases and punctuations. Submissions have taken their toll on me, and my regular habit of procrastination has put me in knee-deep trouble. Knees would be too low, neck-deep trouble would be appropriate. Tempers have frayed, people always look frazzled and even the brightest minds have been dulled by MU submissions. Submissions cause you to scream out loud and say “I submit!” However, the longest standing traditions of Mumbai University is not what is going to be today’s point of discussion. Although it would make an interesting topic, people have criticized me for criticizing many things, which is very hypocritical. My dad refuses to believe I can write just because my ideas are too cynical. So for once, I will not analyze anything or anyone but myself.

The point of analysis is my hair. The only thing I hear about myself whenever I meet someone is how different I look with my current hairstyle. Which isn’t saying much because it isn’t a hairstyle at all. It’s more like an all-action growth by my hair in the 3 months’ time I have given it to grow in any direction it wants. However, it has chosen to remain Indian and grow upwards than downwards. Which is the reason why I can never sport John-Travolta-in-Pulp-Fiction style of hair. It just doesn’t grow the way I want it to. It curls at the ends!

It’s like a marvellous black bush, earning me comparisons with a certain Maraoune Fellaini of Everton fame. Marvellous would actually be a misnomer, tangled and vine-like would be spot-on. Now, many people have dared to ask me if I ever comb my hair. To this, I would like to scream and run about like a headless chicken. But in a saner and controlled voice, I would say I have tried. I have tried combing it with even wire brushes, but to no avail. As a common joke doing the rounds of my class goes, “If anyone wants a comb, try finding them in Shridhar’s hair. You’re sure to find one.” Which is quite true. Hence the need for me to wash my hair everyday. Not that I didn’t earlier, but nowadays, I need to get 5 minutes out of my regular routine to actually transform me from a chump with flattened hair to some kind of reasonable nerd.

Now, you might ask me, if Ididnt want to go to all this trouble, why did I need to grow my hair?

Fair enough, though my reasons for it aren’t. The story is a typical show of how stubborn I can be. I have had horrible hair like this for a pretty long time. To avoid maintaining it, I used to be eager to cut it off and get rid of it asap. People ribbed me a lot about me cutting it too soon. So as a sadistic punishment, I had decided to grow my hair. And the result is as you see nowadays. For the benefit of the people who have not seen me in this avatar, here is a photo. Enjoy!

Forget the expression, look at the jewellery!