Ponto de Vista

At least someone else other than me seemed more preoccupied with the rain than the firecrackers that took a short rest in the Ganpati immersion processions dancing by. It makes me sad – with the passing of Ganpati, the rains will also stop. The monsoon is really one of my favorite things about being back. After living through 13 years of cold, shivery rain – it’s a joy to be where the rain is warm. The rest of the murder was hunched up on the big banyan tree behind my new friend, waiting to dry off …

I came out of lunch at the Phoenix mills mall area a little while ago, and this dude was outside the gate accosting people with his wares. And his smile was blinding enough that people might have been depleting his reserves to protect themselves from it 😉
Two takes later, his smile had sort of faded on me, but the bravado hadn’t. I just adored his attitude. He was totally cool with my taking tourist-style photos of his, erm, 13, pairs of sunglasses.

The monsoon is nearly over and at least one soul in Mumbai is very sad about it. (hint: me!) Today we had a brief burst of rain and it made me happy. The last few days have been disgustingly bright. Here’s a photo from the terrace after the rain, of our wrought-iron garden furniture against the ixora. I love how the drops of water look blue as they swell to unsustainable girth, then plop and shatter, regaining their transparency. I could watch these for hours. Preferably while it’s still raining 🙂 (And I’m singing “Brishti Pore tapur tupur” in my head) (nope, can’t find an mp3 or a video from the movie I’m thinking of.)

It’s Janmashtmi today. And if you don’t know what that is, look it up. I had to 😀 I mean, I know it’s Krishna’s birthday but having been away from Mumbai for the last 16 Janmashtmis, I had lost sight of both scale, and, urm, commercialization. So, I was educated today (and I confess I called the cops on some enthusiastic dhol beaters at 1am.) By 8 a.m., the loud disco bhajans and cheering crowd told me something was up. Across the house and also behind it, we had what are called Dahi Matkas. To mimic Krishna’s penchant for stealing ghee, they hang this clay pot pretty high and then acrobatic men make a human pyramid to claim it. Then I saw in the papers that the Andheri matka was worth the most money (Rs. 25,000!) I reached Worli and passed several youth in trucks, wearing team shirts, going from locality to locality to win the pot of ‘ghee’ ($$?) The cab driver told me the matkas near my house are “small and not worthwhile.” And then when I got near Banyan Tree, I spotted a team in action.
I later heard that the “small” matka near my house was eventually lowered a bit because all the teams that tried failed to reach it. I don’t know who won but they’re still making a racket!

I spent Independence Day weekend in Pune, away from the madding crowd. Friends and I drove up to Sinhgadh on one day and the next was spent mostly wandering around Old Pune resisting all the tempting street food (damn, no matter how hard I try, food always comes up. And I was making a special effort to focus on our motherland’s natural beauty for this post-Independence Day post!)
I took the train back to Mumbai the next day (avec drama, of course), and though I had work to do, I resisted pulling out my laptop until the last tunnel was crossed and the crepuscular light made phone photos impossible. I’m amazed my little Nokia got such a clear shot of the waterfalls, less grand, admittedly in 2 megapixels, but still – not bad through the grimy glass of the Koena Koyna Express!

Uh, so this post’s title ran away from me …but never mind. What you see in close up is a Japani Samosa. We read about this in the paper – this store run by a Sikh has been selling Japanese samosas for the last 60 years, so 4 days before I packed up my life in Delhi, we went scouring the streets of Chandni Chowk and Chawdi Bazaar for all the old-world treats. (we also bought jewelry on Dariba Kalan, the silversmith street, but the food really was the biggest draw). Here, across Moti Cinema, is Manohar’s Japani Samosa stall. The samosa is shaped like an accordion fan (think deep fried, stuffed, fanned phyllo.) The chhole, though, were to die for. (And after two helpings each, we were close.)

Sigh. I don’t even feel like writing anything. There’s nothing to say. The mango season is ending. These shops are gone! Now, instead of heaps of orange, even red beauties twinkling in store fronts, you’re lucky to see a single basket heaped with green langdas at the fruit vendor’s.
The store fronts are super smart though: they’re let to the vendors seasonally. This one is a paper mart for the rest of the year, I guess.
This was the second year that South Asian alphonsos were available in the U.S. I anticipated hearing more vocal rejoicing, given how gross that fibrous tasteless mess that passes for a mango in the US is. 😉  Lucky me to be home in desh!

We went to Meerut to report for a story, and got taken for chai and then on the way, we stopped to see the banana godown (there are about 5 in Meerut, we were told.) They come in trucks from Maharashtra, still unripe, to ripen in storage. After 2 days, they are then sent out to the rest of Meerut where they’re ALL consumed! (Do we really eat that many bananas?) The photos from the godown are just uniformly green – stacks and stacks of bananas on ice – but these two characters across the alley seemed oblivious.

It’s a different thing to have “don’t walk on the grass” signs on lawns, but this one – Please do not spit on plants – is posted in the lobby of one of the poshest, best known office buildings in Nariman Point, Mumbai’s financial district. The sheer necessity of having to post such a sign is what’s boggling my mind. How many people actually spat on the plants before the management put this up!??

So there are people out there who claim to be Gujarati and never heard of dabeli – also given the nomenclature of “fun in a bun” by my foodie friend Sheetal. Dabeli is the past participle of ‘press’ – so, in a word: pressed!
Forget vada-pav, that’s done with. Dabeli is a potato thing with raw onions (crunchy), peanuts and pomegranate kernels. And right before serving it, the vendor will sprinkle sev on it… Hot, spicy, sweet, crunchy, chewy — good stuff! At a street corner near you, but only in the evenings. And the best one ever is around the corner from my house! Yay 😀