Corn on the Cob

We had corn on the cob today, even though it was not raining! For some strange reason, corn on the cob and rains seem to belong together.

When we were growing up, homemade corn was always boiled, either in a pressure cooker or in a closed vessel, and seasoned with salt. This was seasonal, and was available only once or twice a year. When it was the corn season, it was always quite a family affair – cleaning the corn and preparing it to be boiled, waiting around the dining table for it to be done, getting it out and cutting it up into manageable pieces before finally polishing it off.

The only place you would get corn on the cob roasted on live coals was when you visited hill stations, where it was sold initially on the lakeshores and eventually everywhere. The seller would fire up the coals using a rotating bellows and roast the corn on the glowing coals. Once it was done, they would season it by rubbing it with a piece of lemon dipped in a mixture of salt and chilli powder. This gave it a flavour all its own.

The cold of the hill station, the fine mist of hill rain, ducking under the plastic sheets that covered the corn stall and waiting while your corn was being roasted – eating corn on the cob was definitely an unforgettable experience.

And then, suddenly, the seasonality died. Corn was available everywhere, all the time. You got American corn, which was sweeter and more succulent. You could get boiled or roasted corn everywhere – even on the beaches of Madras – any time of the year. And suddenly, corn on the cob lost its magic.

Coming to Hyderabad, we are somehow once again in the grip of seasons. Outside the department stores, the seasonality plays out as usual. The mango season, the watermelon season, the corn season – each of this is heralded by vendors on pushcarts selling them for a fraction of the prices you’d pay for them at a supermarket.

Today’s corn on the cob was from a chap with a pushcart. He did not have fancy bellows to fan his coals – he used an old-fashioned hand-fan woven from palm leaves. In the middle of his card was an iron dish supported by stones. On this was heaped a pile of live coals. After stripping away the outer cvering of the corn, he placed it on the coals and fanned them furiously, causing the coals to glow and the corns to sputter. He took his time with the corns, making sure they were thoroughly roasted before doing the seasoning with the lemon, salt and chilli powder.

Unfortunately we had to bring it home before we could eat it – so a bit of the heat was lost. But the taste definitely brought back memories – of childhood, of tastes and smells and feelings from long ago, and of a past as precious as it is lost.

Inception

Never before has a movie engaged my mind so much, for so long, and so deliciously.

Christopher Nolan thoroughly deserves all the praise that has been heaped on him. My personal wonderment is at his achievement of making such a complex story so accessible and entertaining.

There is a reason science fiction, from classic to modern, is a niche genre, and it is the rare book or movie that makes it into mainstream consciousness. And that happens because of the appeal to other, more universal values that are handled by them. The reason good, hard core science fiction remains in the niche is that it is usually inaccessible to mass audiences, relying instead on using very specific science fiction tropes* to keep them going. The tropes, obviously, break down in general audiences as they exist only within the sci-fi community.

Making a movie like Inception, like inception in the movie itself, is not impossible. It’s just bloody hard, to quote Eames (played with flair by Tom Hardy). And that is exactly what Christopher Nolan has achieved. The plot itself is quite complex, and has many levels (no pun intended). While this may be somewhat familiar to hard core science fiction fans, it is hardly the stuff popular cinema is used to. Taking on a task so onerous is brave – some might even say foolhardy. Succeeding as spectacularly as Christopher Nolan has in such a task is nothing short of genius.

To attempt a review of the technical aspects of the movie would be rather pointless. Suffice it to say that the production values are so high that there seems to be no gap between the director’s vision and the final product presented to the audience.

Stellar performances by all the cast – one cannot see the actors for the characters. We are caught up in the adventures of Cobb, Arthur, Eames, Ariadne and Saito, and never see or hear the actors playing them. Perhaps the most well-etched character was the aptly-named Mal, played to perfection by Marion Cotillard.

What stood out for me at every point in the movie was how clearly even the most complex bits were presented without going into documentary mode. You get to know what an architect, a forger or a chemist does without someone telling you, and you know what a totem or a kick is without a lesson.

Another aspect of the movie that seemed to make it work for Vidya and me was the way you get sucked into it without your emotions being involved. Contrast this with the Butterfly Effect, the only other movie I can think of right now to compete in terms of making you actively use your mind to keep up with what’s happening. It left you emotionally drained at the end. By taking that part of it away, Inception leaves your mind crystal clear to appreciate the true beauty of a logically constructed work of art.

To repeat an old bromide, if there is just one movie you watch, make sure it is Inception.

*Tropes are storytelling devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations.

Nexus One

A few weeks ago, I was stocking up on victuals at our local green grocer’s, which goes by the grandiose name of Veerabhadra Vegetables. Veerabhadra Vegetables is by no means a mean place – on the main road from Kothaguda to Miyapur, its location opposite Shilpa Park gives it a strategic advantage that the grocer has turned into an excuse for the most alarming (to outsiders) Nawabi attitude. It is also this that endears him to all his customers, me included. Wasn’t this the guy who looked at the awesome-looking Force India t-shirt (to buy which I spent a small fortune) I was wearing and complimented me on how it looked, and in the same breath said how lucky I must be to work for a company that made such nice shirts? Apparently all the logos on the t-shirt made made it look like it was a company shirt and not something anyone would pay for.

But I digress.

It was a couple of weeks ago and my re-victualling was taking some time as for some reason there was a bit of a crowd – a couple of noisy local housewives, a gaggle of grandmothers and a loud Haryanvi youth screaming into his cellphone were before me, and I had to wait. I could not help but wonder what would happen if I reached over, took the phone from the aforementioned youth and switched it off. His relative in Haryana would have no trouble hearing him even without the phone – he was talking so loudly – but he would have been annoyed, and as he was evidently more familiar with the gym than me, I desisted. After standing around waiting idly for a grand total of about two minutes, I took out my beloved Nexus One and was about to create a listing for Veerabhadra Vegetables on Foursquare when I felt someone looking over my shoulder.

I turned around to find myself gazing into the nut-brown eyes of a swarthy local lad, stout of frame and youthful of countenance, who was trying to steal a glance at the screen of my Nexus One. I could not help but notice the puny device he held in his hand – probably a MicroMax, Lava or even an unfortunately-named Lemon. Feeling rather smug and superior, I turned a bit so that he could see tha amazing 3.7 inch display of my Nexus One, and was flicking through pictures in my Gallery looking for a really dazzling one when I heard the aforementioned swarthy local youth make some comment to me about how big it was. The following conversation, brief though it was, was in Hindi – my broken, Doordarshan-inspired, Hafeezpet-honed Hindi to the swarthy local youth’s Hyderabadi Hindi that would make anyone from outside the former Nizam’s dominions cry. Since my Hindi is broken at best, and my recall of it is patchy, I’ll present the conversation to you in English. For convenience’s sake, we’ll call the swarthy local youth SLY.

SLY: That’s a really big screen…
Me: Yeah it is. It’s a very good phone.
SLY: I’m sure it is. How much is it for?
Me: I don’t know – maybe 30,000 or 35,000 rupees?
SLY: You don’t know?
Me: No – my company gave it to me free of cost.
SLY: Oh.
Me: [Grinning - still trying to figure out what awesome feature of the Nexus One to bedazzle the SLY with]
SLY: [Looking pointedly at his small phone] Does it have FM radio?
Me: [A bit taken aback] No.
SLY: [Looking more cheerful and confident] Dual SIM?
Me: [Starting to feel a bit numb] No
SLY: [On top of the world now] Oh. It’s also too big. No wonder they gave it free to you.

With that he turned around and walked off to his cart, from which he had been unloading vegetables into the shop.

What happened after that, I have no recollection of – just the mind-numbing certainty that my Nexus One, simply the most awesome piece of technology I have ever owned, had been bested in a brief conversation by the MicroMax/Lava/Lemon of the vegetable boy who supplied beerakkai to Veerabhadra Vegetables.

And no, I still haven’t created a listing for Veerabhadra Vegetables on Foursquare. But if you ever do, be sure that I will snatch Mayorship from you in a matter of days!

Last week, Vidya and I discovered a coffee shop in Secunderabad. What’s so great about that, you might ask. Prepare for a longish tale. Get a cup of coffee if you want!

We both love a cup of filter coffee to start off the day. When we first set up house in Chennai, we went through a phase of experimentation with different types of coffee until we settled on our own blend – Peaberry and Plantation A, half and half, without any chicory. This is a pure coffee, as opposed to traditional filter coffee, which has a significant amount of chicory added to it. Chicory gives a bitter edge to the taste, which we don’t like. Our blend has a full-bodied taste and a heady aroma, though it is quite lacking in colour.

Getting freshly-ground coffee powder to our specifications was fairly easy in Chennai – shops that sold custom-ground coffee blends were fairly easy to come by. After a couple of years, we settled on a T-Nagar coffee grinder who used to deliver to our home, and we stuck with him.

After we moved to Hyderabad, we had to find a coffee grinder, and it took us a quite a bit of time to find Iyer Coffee Works on Dharam Karam Road in Ameerpet. This is run by a Tamil family who live in an apartment on top of an old tumbledown shop that sells coffee and an assortment of savouries from Tamilnadu. They also serve steaming hot cups of filter coffee. The only problem with this shop is that their working hours are pretty unpredictable – we have gone there many times only to find the shop locked. Add to that the fact that Ameerpet is not on our regular routes, and takes a dedicated trip.

For the past few months, Dhruv has been getting us coffee – there’s a coffee grinder right under his home and I used to meet him at work everyday. Now that he has moved away, we had to find a new coffee shop.

And that is what we did last week. We’d just bought some photography stuff from Chimalgi and were leaving the shp when Vidya’s keen nose picked up the scent of freshly-ground coffee. We looked around and sure enough, two shops away was Krishna Coffee Works. This was a typical coffee grinder’s shop. It had large glass bins out front with coffee beans in them, with a grinding machine in the back. A man sat in front, writing accounts in a notebook. On the wall was a picture of the cowherd-god Krishna playing his flute. A garlanded photograph of somebody completed the wall decor.

The best part of Krishna Coffee Works is that they deliver, though not all the way where we live. I am hoping they will be able to deliver to someone from work who lives within their delivery area so that our supply of coffee powder will remain uninterrupted!

Every Sunday, volunteers from the local Roots and Shoots chapter visit the Nehru Zoological Park and station themselves near the cages. They talk to visitors, keeping them from feeding or troubling the animals. Since the park receives (roughly) ten times the number of visitors on Sundays as all the rest of the days put together, this action is very impactful.

Today, as part of an initiative at work, a few colleagues and I joined the R&S volunteers for a day at the zoo.

But before we kick off, a word on the zoo itself. Known locally as the Joo Park, Hyderabad’s zoo is to it what the Marina beach is to Chennai – the one place where every local family and their non-local extensions heads for some R&R. Hyderabad empties itself into the Joo Park on Sundays (similar to how Cyberabad empties itself into Shilparamam on Saturdays and Sundays). The Zoo is by no means small – it is indeed one of India’s largest – but on Sundays, it quickly starts resembling the Black Hole of Calcutta. Given that there are thousands of children and only two medium sized slides, the lines for each is roughly about 2600 long and full of angry parents yelling, “My son was here before your son” at each other. Of course, someone has to back down, and all of them storm away into the zoo to take out their frustrations on the poor animals. Which is where we come in – we try and stop them from behaving inappropriately with the inmates.

Crowds at the Tiger Enclosure

The day began at a leisurely pace – even though we met up at 7 in the morning, we didn’t get into action till almost 10 A.M., when the zoo officially opens. We distributed ourselves amongst the cages – I got the emu cage. Apparently the emus come right up to the fences, where they are yelled at, poked or fed random stuff by visitors. As I took position, I realized the emus were not coming out – they were locked up in a part of the cage far away from the visitors as there was some construction work going on in their enclosure.
I decided to walk around and help out where it was needed, and headed to the bear enclosure.

Vijay

I had been warned about the bear earlier. He was an ex-circus bear and loved people. He would stand up and dance on certain cues, like clapping hands or reaching out to him with both hands. After doing that, he would hold out his hand for a reward, upon which people would throw all sorts of stuff at him. I wandered to the enclosure, determined to keep Vijay from dancing. The crowd was not too much, and I just told a man not to yell at the bear and he sidled away looking sheepish. After that, two little boys came by, and one of the started yelling “Vijay! Vijay!” and clapping his hands. Vijay, already a bit dazed from the blistering heat, looked confusedly around him. I walked up to the yelling boy and told him not to disturb the bear. He turned to me excitedly and said, “If you clap your hands, the bear will dance.” I really had nothing to tell the boy, except that he really had no business getting the bear to dance in this heat. That seemed to resonate with him and he collected his friend and went off to find some other way to amuse himself. After that, there were no other interesting incidents with Vijay, and I went off to help out with the tiger enclosures – where everyone was congregating.

There is something about people entering the zoo that makes the first word out of their mouth to be “Tiger!” Everyone makes a beeline for the tiger enclosures, and are only slightly distracted by the magnificent Galapagos tortoises and primates on the way. This means that both tiger enclosures (there are two – one with two albinos and another with a regular-coloured Bengal tiger) are surrounded by a regular mob of people and children all the time.

The Royal Bengal Tiger

There was lots of work – everyone who came to see the tiger wanted to roar, and was told firmly by one of us to behave. One of the first people I shushed was an oldish guy with a small boy. He had lifted the boy to his shoulder, and was telling him to roar. I cut the boy off mid-roar, and immediately the hypocrite under him started scolding him, asking him to behave. The boy looked used to it, and was looking bored as he was taken away.

The prize for non sequitur of the day goes to big fellow who ambled up to the tiger cage. He was a foot taller and a couple of feet wider than me. With a closely cropped pate and a matching beard, he looked like a wrestler, and definitely not someone to mess with. Unfortunately, he walked right up to the tiger enclosure and started yelling at the tiger in a language I did not understand. So it was left to me to take him to task, and for this, my weapon of choice was a deep voice. Doing my best imitation of Russell Peters’ rendition of !xobile’s “Please do not yell in the casino,” I tapped the man on his shoulder and said, “Please do not yell at the tiger!”

He turned around and said, “But I am not from here. I am from Dubai.”

This had me stumped for a moment, but thinking quickly, I came back with, “The tiger can still hear you.” This was where I lost him, and I also realized that a man who had come up with “I am from Dubai” as a response to “Don’t yell at the tiger” could not actually get the joke I was trying to make. But he was sporting about it and agreed with my suggestion that his shouting might actually not be pleasant for the tiger, and moved along.

After a while, a couple of old men – when I say old, I mean in their 60s – walked up, and one of them started roaring at the tiger. I told the man, very politely, not to disturb the tiger. At this point, his friend intervened, and told me that the tiger obviously could not hear us as it was not reacting. Not stopping to point out the obvious weakness of his argument, I assured him that the tiger had very good hearing and was very disturbed by his friend’s irresponsible roaring. At that, he lost interest in the tiger and asked me who I was to stop them. I told him that we were working with the Forest Department’s permission to stop people from annoying the animals, to which he replied, with a roguish twinkle in his eye, “Oh! Since you have no other work you’ve been posted to do this!” With that parting shot, he walked away with his friend, obviously enjoying his own quick wit and repartee. I’m sure his grandchildren are hearing about it right now.

After a while, I’d grown quite cocky, and was actually telling people off for making their children stand on the fence of the albino tiger enclosure. Michael Jackson was a model parent compared to some of these whackjobs. I think my unshaven look and the rather wild hair helped in frightening them into submission.

One of the last people I told off was another chap who was bigger than me, and who could easily have picked me up and chucked me into the bear enclosure if he’d wanted. Vikram, who had told him not to throw things at the Himalayan bear, turned away for a moment and quick as a flash, he’d chucked a stick at the bear. I was quite annoyed and asked him in my best Hindi what he was doing, and had he not heard what Vikram had said. He started talking in Telugu to a little boy with him and tried to ignore me. Even more riled, I asked him if he did not know Hindi, to which he said he knew Hindi. Then I asked him if he did not hear Vikram telling him not to throw anything into the enclosure. At this point, he looked everywhere but at my face and walked quickly away. If he had a tail, it would have been tucked firmly between his legs.

What was cool about this whole experience was the difference one person telling people not to harass the animals can make. Every time I told someone to stop doing something, I could see at least a couple of other visitors telling their children or companions not to do the same thing. Perhaps it had more to do with being embarrassed that they too might be called out, but our actions seemed to have a ripple effect.

In all, the day was spent satisfactorily, and we returned home to a well-deserved and restful dinner!

Last week, a census taker visited us, and for the first time, included us in the National Census of India.

The only previous memory of being included in the census was in the 1981 census, when I was staying with my grandparents in Bangalore for the summer holidays. My grandmother was sitting on the stone step outside the front door, removing adulterants from rice, when the census taker visited. My grandmother being a teacher herself, she got into a conversation with the census taker, who was also a teacher. I was playing nearby, and remember being part of the conversation, though I doubt whether I made any insightful contributions, being all of six years old then.

I have no memories of the 1991 and 2001 censuses, and I cannot for the life of me recall why.

The census taker who visited us was very professional with the right human touch – she was familiar without being intrusive. She was also super efficient – she had her census routine down pat and went through it without pausing even for a moment. And it was a bit of a complex routine at that. She had these giant printed forms she was filling up. In one, she recorded our names. For a detailed account of our lives, she used a separate printed form. Both these were rather huge and unwieldy – more than A3 sized.

She wrote down our responses in Telugu, and I was quite amazed by how she repeated whatever I said so that she could get the words right in Telugu. She breezed through the questions, and handled even the caste question quite well. She made out I couldn’t speak Telugu and kept to Hindi. Again, I’m not quite the best Hindi speaker in the world, but I could make myself understood. When she came to know that I was Tamil, she said I spoke decent Hindi for a Tamil – I thought she was pulling my leg, but one look at her face showed me she really meant it!

In less than 20 minutes, the interview was over. She made me sign two forms, took my thumbprint on one of them (another first for me!), gave me a receipt, put a sticker on our door, and was gone.

It is a momentous feeling to be part of what is definitely one of the largest census exercises in the world. I am aware I did not do anything special, and participated in something that a billion other people also will. Nevertheless, it moved me enough to write about it.

Had dinner at 17 Degrees North, a relative new-comer promising global cuisine. We’d just finished picking up groceries at Ratnadeep and were hungry, and 17 Degrees North beckoned from above. Located in the same building as Ratnadeep in Hitech city, 17 Degrees is ideally sited if you live, like us, on this side of town.

The night was hot, and we felt at home as we entered the pleasantly air-conditioned, dimly-lit space. It was cozy, not too full, not too empty, and the decor was interestingly kitschy without being plasticky. We were promptly attended to and seated at a place we chose. As we sipped the chilled drinking water, the heat and dust of the day receded to make way for a calm dinner.

The menu was extensive – Indian, Continental and Chinese fare at prices that were not too threatening – starters and main courses all between Rs. 140 and Rs. 250. I was feeling Chinesey and ordered a Chilli Garlic Chicken Noodles, while Vidya was feeling adventurous and ordered Chowka Pudina Mutter with steamed rice. We chatted away while we waited for the food to arrive – several more glasses of chilled water rehydrated us in the meantime.

The food arrived in about ten minutes. The Chilli Garlic Chicken Noodles was very well made – the flavours were well blended and the strong tastes of chilli and garlic complemented each other very well. The chicken was tender and completed the dish. The Chowka Pudina Mutter was a minty surprise – the combination of mint and green peas was very good, though very unusual. The spicing too was very unorthodox, but the overall effect was very satisfactory, if a bit on the spicier side. It combined very well with the steamed rice. We set to with gusto and before we knew it, were getting seconds.

Vidya had spotted fried ice cream on the menu, and we had decided to get it for dessert, forgoing even the so in-season Mango cheesecake. When it arrived, it was a bit of a disappointment – we’d expected small bite-sized pieces of fried ice cream. Instead, we got a single large, golf-ball-sized fried ice cream. While it was tasty, it did lack the explosive effect of its smaller cousins.

Throughout the meal, the staff was very attentive and responsive. They knew their jobs and did them well and unobtrusively.

Overall, we had a nice meal that left us relaxed and sated at the end of a long hot working day. Both the food and the service were good. We are definitely going back!

Vital Stats:
17 Degrees North,
Opposite NIFT, Above Ratnadeep,
Hitech City.
Tel.: 40150011 / 40150022 / 8008888110

Open from 11 A.M. to 11 P.M.

There’s a drumstick tree just outside my second floor (third floor if you’re American) balcony. This tree is perpetually flowering, and attracts a whole bunch of birds. The top of the tree is just below my balcony – so get a bird’s eye view of the life of birds, so to speak!

This morning, I was fooling around with Pranav’s 55-200 lens and I finally could get some decent pictures of some of the birds.

As usual, the noisy sunbirds were in attendance, and an ashy prinia wwas hanging around, but the real star of the day was the one-legged sparrow that Vidya has been telling me about.

I remember reading in a few places that sparrows are vanishing from places where they were once abundant. The fact was brought home to me when Smitha told me a couple of weeks ago that we should do something about it. Since then I have been keeping an eye out for sparrows. I know that there a few around my house – I recognize their chirruping everyday, but I had never seen them. Vidya and I were talking about this, and she told me one day that she had seen a couple of them, one of them with only one leg.

Early one morning, I was on my way out when I spotted the one-legged sparrow. But I was in a hurry and did not have the time to stop and make his acquaintance. Today, he was in my drumstick tree, showing off, chirruping, and more importantly, posing for me. I got some good pictures of him. Hopefully, one of these days, I will have the privilege of making the acquaintance of his kinsmen as well.

Sparrows have always been part of our childhoods – they would nest in the tiled roofs of our houses, their noisy chirruping competed with the cawing of the crows to fill the soundscape of our mornings, they would have to be shooed off from the grains put out to dry on sunny days… They were always there, and they were always there in abundance.

I remember hand-rearing sparrows in my boyhood. They kept falling out of their nests from our roof, and we couldn’t put them back. some survived, some died – but they were always there, and were always there in abundance.

Such a common creature, the sparrow also populated our stories and was also part of common idiom – forced trips to the barber shop were preceded by several days of your mom comparing your hair to a sparrow’s nest. They were always there, and were always there in abundance.

We, my peers and I, are sufficiently far away from boyhood to talk fondly about it. Unfortunately, along with our boyhood, the sparrows too seem to have disappeared.

A website devoted to saving the sparrows, and a few other bloggers on saving the sparrow: Prerna Bindra, Amit R Verma, Mearl Colaco

Went birding in Anantagiri Hills this morning. It is 88 kilometers from my place in Hafeezpet, and Ajith and I drove down. We made an early start, leaving at 5 in the morning. The roads were nearly empty and the drive was comfortable.

Anantagiri Hills is just past Viqarabad, reached from Hyderabad through Moinabad and Chevella. The roads were good, though the ever-changing geography of the way to the airport made it a bit tricky.

As we were driving on the perimeter wall of the Gandipet lake, a sleepy Brahminy kite was startled out of its stupour as it lazily glided in front of us. Further down the road, a peahen flew across the road in front of us. Just outside Viqarabad, we saw a black-winged hawk alight on a treetop in front of us. However, he would not stop for us, and went on his way when we tried to take a picture of him. Just before we reached Anantagiri, a grey hornbill did the same thing to us.

We reached Anantagiri at about 6:30. The Ananta Padmanabha Swamy temple there is thronged by droves of devotees, but not early in the morning. Right in front of the temple is the path leading down into the scrub jungle. This is really good brding territory, and the air was thick with birdsong. A roller greeted us at the entrance to the path, and a hornbill kept taunting us, flying about, but keeping out of even Ajith’s photographic range.

We had a pleasant walk surrounded by birds. Parakeets screamed overhead as they zipped from treetop to distant treetop. Babblers kept up their constant chatter as they moved in a cloud from tree to ground and back to tree again. The disproportionately loud song of numerous sunbirds were all around us. Tree pies and pipits and nuthatches were everywhere. As we ventured deeper into the scrub, we could hear the distant calls of peafowl, but never got to see them. At one point, we scrambled up a little hillock, but found nothing on top. Coming down however, we got a good look at a couple of yellow-toed green pigeons.

When we got back from our walk, we got breakfast at a small restaurant called Saniya at Anantagiri – puri and bhaji served on a piece of newspaper!

On the drive back, we stopped at a largish pond by the roadside, where we spotted a black ibis and a few red-wattled lapwings.

A quick drive back brought us home for lunch.

An early morning walk around the Lotus Pond – Ajith and I have been planning this for a while, and managed to make it happen today.

We set out early (by my standards that is!) and reached the Lotus Pond around seven. There were a few cars parked outside, and there seemed to be quite a few people walking around. However, the birds were pretty much minding their own business, and didn’t seemed to mind us stopping and staring at them, and clicking away with our cameras.

The atmosphere in the pond and the surrounding park was serene, and the morning sunshine was golden. On the water we saw a grey heron standing on a rock, Zen-master-like. All around it, coots and moorhens squabbled over who got to walk on which part of the water. A purple moorhen suddenly took umbrage and ran, screaming, across the lotus leaves that covered the water around the edges. All this action happened within the first couple of minutes of us entering the park.

We took a leisurely walk around the pond. A couple of spotbills kept us entertained for the most part – swimming around, taking off and landing again and again and squabbling with the coots. Apart from the water birds, we also saw quite a few land birds in the trees bordering the pond. Two brightly-coloured coppersmiths were the highlight among the land birds. The usual gang of sunbirds, warblers, bulbuls and drongos were all around the pond.

Ajith was well-equipped for the birds – he had his Canon EOS 7D with a Sigma 170 – 500. I was just fooling around with my D3000 and the 18-55 kit lens.

Here’s a list of the birds we saw today:

Large Cormorant
Grey heron
Spotbill
Indian Moorhen
Purple Moorhen
Coot
Bronzewinged Jacana
Redwattled Lapwing
Small Blue Kingfisher
Coppersmith
Redvented Bulbul
Ashy wren-warbler
Sunbirds
Common Kite

And this is where the Lotus Pond is:

View Larger Map

Last night, I took a series of share autos to reach home from Panjagutta, and this seems to be an opportune moment to take a look at this alternate public transport system that so effectively supplements and complements Hyderabad’s official public transit systems.

My ride was simple enough – I got into a share auto in front of the Y2K restaurant at Panjagutta. Once I got in, it took about three or four minutes for the auto to fill up. The driver kept calling out the destination of the auto – Jubilee Hills Checkpost – and one by one my fellow passengers took their seats. The ‘seats’ have to be described, for apart from the usual and expected three passengers in the back, there are additional, rather unexpected (to the uninitiated) seats on either side of the driver. Since I was first in, I got the choicest of seats – the middle seat in the back. Two guys squeezed in on either side of me, and two guys squeezed in on either side of the driver as well. The driver not being a greedy sort, we took off right away, and made good time to the Checkpost. Two guys got off just before we reached and I hopped off when we stopped at the red light – it was easier for me to cross to the next share auto ‘stand’ that way. The ride (4.1 kilometers, according to Google Maps) cost me 8 rupees.

I was not as lucky at the next stop – the auto I got into already had a fully packed back seat, and I had to make do with sitting by the driver. Now, a word about sitting on the driver’s side. As anyone who has seen an auto will no doubt know, the seat of an auto driver is made for a single person. The intrepid share auto drivers install a narrow wooden ledge that extends on either side of the driver’s seat. This allows one more person to perch on either side, albeit hanging on by one hand from the auto’s frame. Some auto drivers, especially on the outskirts (on the Hitech City side, this would mean beyond Kothaguda – the share autos that go to Miyapur or Gachhibowli, for example) install a more complex variation of the extension. Immediately next to the driver’s seat is a small square ledge, beyond which a narrower ledge extends. Such sets are found in share autos driven by really skinny fellows who sit on the edge of their seat so that TWO MORE passengers can be added to the front row. The resulting arrangement is like this: the driver sits on the edge of the seat, with his knees pointing sideways so that he can accommodate his legs. Two guys (it’s always male passengers – ladies always get to sit in the back) then sit as close to the driver as possible – partly on the driver’s seat and partly on the smaller square. Next to them squeeze two more passengers, sitting on the narrow ledge with their knees sticking out of the auto on either side. These are the truly precariously perched, for if they lose their grip, they will fall out of the auto.

Anyway, to get back to my story, I had to take my place by the driver’s side. Thankfully, this too was not a greedy man, and I did not have an additional passenger attached to my left side. We made decent time till we reached Peddamma Temple, where we were stuck for about twenty minutes. It looked like the whole of Hyderabad, their uncles, and all their relatives from Nalgonda and other districts had decided to pay a visit to Peddamma on their two wheelers. This resulted in a crush of human and vehicular traffic that had to be experienced to be believed. After we made our way through the crowd (the driver actually reached out beyond me an pushed guy out of the way at one point!), the going was smooth, and we were dropped off at Kothaguda junction. This ride (7 kilometers, according to Google Maps) too cost me 8 rupees.

The last leg of my journey was a much shorter ride – from Kothaguda to Hafeezpet. Again, I got the VIP seat – middle of the back seat. But this time I was able to witness auto sharing in all its glory – three in the back seat, and a full complement of four passengers and the driver in front! The ride was the shortest for me (3.4 kilometers, according to Google Maps), and cost me the princely sum of 5 rupees.

I travelled 14.5 kilometers in relative comfort, and the only delay was because of the traffic jam. At each place, I was able to get a share auto without waiting for more than three minutes. The total cost for me was 21 rupees. The alternatives available to me were:

a.) A bus – This would have been more economical, but only if I had waited for a long time at one of the bus stops, and caught a regular bus (as opposed to the air conditioned hitech buses). Travel-time-wise, it would have taken me longer – just getting past Peddamma temple would have taken ages.

b.) The MMTS – This would have been really economical and time-saving – a ticket would cost 4 rupees, and there is no traffic hassle. However, I’d have had to wait for the hourly service, and then contend with the crowds on the train.

c.) A hired auto – This would have been the most expensive and most comfortable way back. The meter would have come to around 120 rupees (I could be way off here – I’m guessing wildly!), and the time taken would have been pretty much the same.

I am a big fan of share auto travel, and use it whenever I get an opportunity. It is a naturally evolved version of the auto transport paradigm, and it suits the needs of both auto drivers as well as passengers.

The drivers have the flexibility of travelling to whichever destination they want to – the first guy turned back at Jubilee Hills Check Post to go back to Panjagutta, while the second one started on a fresh run to Gachibowli from Kothaguda junction. This also gives them incentive to operate on a share basis – even if they don’t end up making as much money in a single trip as they would from a metered run, they spend way less time standing idle waiting for that one big fare.

For passengers, it has almost all the convenience of a hired auto at about a tenth of the cost. True, you will have to share your auto with six others, and endure close proximity to them. But that is true of all forms of public transport – crowded buses and trains are no exception to the close proximity rule, and they come with added annoyances like pickpockets and gropers.

Share autos play an important part in filling a huge gap in the public transit system. It would be great if they can be legalized and made more organized and comfortable.

How have your experiences been with share autos? Share your experiences with us in the comments!

A friend, someone I care about, posted this on their Facebook wall recently:

Greatest Adrenalin rush in years!! – 23:00 hrs – Bullet Electra 350 vs CBR 600 – Race from Hitec city cross roads to Sindhi Colony (med traffic levels) – Reached with a 7 sec difference (Both bikes had flames from the exhausts during the race!!) – Covered it in 8.5 mins, distance – 14kms……..avg speed – 100kms/hr…Top Speeds Hit – Bullet Electra 350 – 115kms/hr, CBR 600 155kms/hr… Buzzed!!

The next day, I read in the newspaper about two kids who had been killed racing each other on the streets of Hyderabad.

For a minute, I was quite horrified as my mind juxtaposed the two pieces of information – the second was what could have happened to my friend had something gone awry. I have more than my share of close friends whose lives have been turned upside down by biking accidents. I myself have taken a couple of tosses – thankfully none at high speed, and never helmetless.

Biking, especially in Indian traffic conditions, is inherently hazardous. To attempt it without a helmet is tempting fate. To take unnecessary chances with speed is nothing but gambling with your life – the house always wins.

In the last few weeks, one of my colleagues took a toss, thankfully without any major injuries. It was encouraging to see the number of people who chided him for not wearing a helmet, and even more so when it actually worked, and he resumed wearing his helmet every time he took his bike out.

Coming back to my friend’s Facebook status, I was heartened to see that it elicited more than a couple of cautionary responses, with people stepping in to say that while speed was cool and all that, safety was much cooler.

Marketers everywhere have made dangerous biking cool – anything from tyres and cool drinks to the bikes themselves are promoted by adverts that depict rash and unsafe riding. In tiny, unreadable text, they caution you not to try this at home. In such an atmosphere, the burden of riding safely and responsibly lies squarely on our own shoulders.

Every time we get on the bike and kick back that side-stand, let’s remember to strap on our helmets. Any day, it’s cooler to be alive than dead.

Pirate Latitudes

Michael Crichton’s latest novel, Pirate Latitudes, took up one marathon reading session this weekend. It was, to be cliched, unputdownable.

The blurb reads:

An irresistible adventure of swashbuckling pirates in the New World from one of the best-loved and bestselling authors of all time.

Jamaica, in 1655 a lone outpost of British power amid Spanish waters in the sun-baked Caribbean. Its capital, Port Roayl, a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses – the last place imaginable fron which to launch an attack on a nearby Spanish stronghold. Yet that is exactly what renowned privateer Captain Charles Hunter plans to do, with the connivance of Charles II’s ruling governor, Sir James Almont.

The target is Matanceros, guarded by the bloodthirsty Cazalla, and considered impregnable with its gun emplacements and sheer cliffs. Hunter’s crew of buccaneers must battle not only the Spanish fleet but other deadly perils – raging hurricanes, canibal tribes, even sea monsters. But if his ragtag crew succeeds, they will make not only history … but a fortune in gold.

The story is one worthy of Allan Quatermain – the protagonist and his faithful crew face one danger after another. They face sea battles with the enemy, a perilous climb up a sheer sea-facing cliff, an encounter with a deadly snake, a gun-battle, a swordfight, more sea battles, deadly storms, a kraken attack, internal intrigue and death sentences before finally escaping the noose and wreaking vengeance on their enemies.

The narrative is fast-paced, the research meticulous and the descriptions staggering in their power – you can smell the fetid streets of Port Royal, feel the oppressive heat of the tropics, hear the din of battle and smell the gunpowder. The book keeps you turning the pages, and you are able to rest only once the last page has been finished. In the true tradition of boys adventure stories, Pirate Latitudes keeps the flag flying really high.

To place it in a literary context, this novel follows the Rider Haggard tradition of super heroes who walk on water and fly through fire. Captain Charles Hunter survives everything – from a duel with his brother’s murderer to a hand to hand combat with a kraken, and still manages to sail home and save the day.

Perhaps, in all the hustle and din of adventure and revenge, the one person I missed the most was Michael Crichton himself. Maybe I am deluding myself, but I’d like to think that if he were around, he would have made Pirate Latitudes much more than a mere tale of adventure. He would have placed it in a historical context, and established its authenticity by including an explanation of how he found Captain Hunter’s notebook. Rather in the way he did with The Eaters of the Dead.

Pirate Latitudes is a rip-roaring read, and an adventure tale to enjoy, but a bit of a let-down for Crichton fans.

Think I'm a Geek? Vote for Me!

I just entered the Geek Enuf contest run by Tata Docomo. The aim of the contest is to get your friends to vote for you if they think you are a geek. So, if you think I’m a geek, go ahead and vote for me!

Up for grabs is an Android-powered Samsung Galaxy I7500. It’s the slimmest Android phone yet, has an AMOLED screen, and a five megapixel camera. Now, who wouldn’t want to posses this beauty!

How to vote you ask? Well, for that you need to be on Orkut, Facebook or Twitter – it’s better if you’re on all three, as you can vote for me on all three networks.

On Orkut, add the ‘A Geek Thing‘ application. Once it’s added, click on the Vote tab to find me and vote for me.

On Facebook, visit  and add the A Geek Thing application to your account. Once you’ve added the app, visit the Vote page where you can vote for me. Of course, the more you vote for me, the more chance I have of winning.

On Twitter, all you need to do is tweet @tatadocomo @navin #isageek once a day.

Happy Voting!

For all you lazy webcomic people out there, here is a blessing. All you need is an idea (or even half of one), and you’re all set. StripGenerator offers you a platform to create your own webcomic easily. The workspace is easy to figure out, and offers a whole bunch of humans, creatures and objects you can use to make your own comic. StripGenerator works best if you want to create a one-off comic, or are satisfied with a basic set of figures. There is also the option of creating and saving your own character. StripGenerator is a quick, easy and fun way to make your own webcomic. Once you’ve made your own comic, you can also have your own strip blog (here’s mine), which allows you to include a write-up with the strip.

Here’s something I did with StripGenerator:

One Day in the Elevator

Travel

The true traveller can heal anywhere. The moment you have to go home to heal, you cease being a traveller, and become homesick. Once home, you heal and are ready to go out into the world again, but in your heart of hearts you know you have to come back home. You have ceased to be a traveller.

Travel brings with it pains and hurts you never know you could experience. You recuperate, heal, become whole, when you see that sunset, that peak in the distance, or below you, that little pool of sunlight on the shady leafy forest floor, that fog of spray heralding a nearby waterfall, the temple towers in the distance, the shepherd leading home his flock in the open country, the open road in front of you, the inviting waters of a forest stream, the ancient ruins that beckon… The moment these things lose their ability to heal, you have ceased to be a traveller.

The true traveller never has a home, inasmuch as you define home as the place you go to heal, to recuperate, to get back your stregth, to find your mind, to rest. Rather, if you are a true traveller, you can do this wherever you are. A good night’s sleep or two, a fellow traveler’s tales, a wizened old man’s question or a child’s advice, a sparrowhawk diving in a rush, a wallowing buffalo, a hot cup of tea – each one of us has our own panacea, our own magic bullet. The moment you lose this, you cease to be a traveller.

For a true traveller, as Quick Gun Murugun says with his unique brand of humble pride, “Yeh poora duniya mere watan!” (“The whole world is my nation”)

Sunday evening was spent rather delightfully, listening to Jeffrey Archer speak. He was at Landmark to promote his new book, a re-write of his top seller, Kane and Abel.

The man is a genius when it came to handling the crowd – he had them eating out of his hand within the first few minutes – he spoke about what a great place India is, and Sachin’s brilliant century in the previous day’s game. It was easy to see how he would have swayed his constituents who sent him to the House of commons.

Here are bits of what he spoke about, as I remember them. Any omissions / distortions are mine, and I absolutely refuse to stand by anything here under oath!

He began by reading out a really short short story that he said was perhaps the best example of short story writing.

Then he spoke about the new Kane and Abel and how it came about. Having sat down to read the original work 30 years after it was first published, he found himself making corrections here and there. These became bigger and bigger, and he found himself rewriting whole sections. Finally, at the end of about 500 hours of work over a 9-month period, the new version was ready. He’s written over 50,000 new words, and the new work is about 7,000 words shorter – which seems to suggest that about 57,000 words from the old version have been jettisoned.

He recounted this experience with Kane and Abel when it was first published in 1979. He’d been given a rather large advance – $3.2 million – and his publishers had him fly to New York to kick off a promotion tour across the continental United States. He had to make TV appearances and generally promote the book, aiming to break into the top fifteen of the New York Times bestsellers list. He narrated his adventures as an unknown writer on the sets of different talk shows, managing to push the book up to number 17 on the list. Finally, a prominent mention in the Johnny Carson show shot Kane and Abel to number one on the list.

He spoke about how he enjoyed visiting India as he found it a place where books and authors were valued and respected – the rapt attention of the crowd at Landmark was testament to it, though the crowd was a bit trigger-happy when it came to applause. They clapped whenever he paused, and at one point he had to tell us to stop applauding!

He also took the opportunity to talk about his upcoming books – a collection of short stories called And Thereby Hangs a Tale (a title he said was from the Taming of the Shrew, but I see it’s really from As You like It – nit, but worth picking!) to be out in mid 2010 followed by the Clifton Chronicle, a five-part saga about a man who was born in 1920 and lives till 2020, each book covering 20 years of his life.

There were a few interesting questions from the audience, to which he gave really detailed and well thought out answers. When a little boy asked him why he did not write thrillers for kids, he said he wrote what he was comfortable with – sagas and stories covering long periods of time.

He also said that his favourite books were Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo and Erich Maria Remarque’s  All Quiet on the Western Front. From his own works, he identified Cheap at Half the Price and Never Stop on the Motorway, both short stories from Twelve Red Herrings, as his favourites.

At the end of it, he took his place on a throne-like chair in the center of the stage and about three hundred of us lined up to get our copies of Kane and Abel autographed by him. I was curious to see what the new Kane and Abel was like, so I’d picked up a copy earlier. I was also carrying Vidya’s really old copy of the original Kane and Abel. Archer got all excited when he saw it, wondering out aloud if it was a first edition. He opened it and groaned at the small size of the print, and compared it to the new edition, pointing out how much better the typesetting was now. Of course, he signed both copies, and I came away happily!

45 Jubilee Hills

We went to 45 Jubilee Hills for dinner a couple of weeks ago. Let me rephrase that – my entire team from work – about 30 people – went for dinner to 45 Jubilee hills about a couple of weeks ago. The experience was quite enjoyable, but only because the presence of so many of us together helped us while away the time playing Chinese Whispers while waiting for the food, while waiting for the water, while waiting for the dessert, while waiting for the bill… you get the idea!

We arrived at the restaurant around 8 pm, having informed them a day in advance of our plans, and were seated in a private area – al fresco, on a half-finished balcony separated from the rest of the restaurant (and air conditioning) by a glass door. The fit was a bit tight, but was not uncomfortable, and we all placed our orders – they’d told us there was no buffet for dinner. And then the games started while we waited for the food. Quite a few had ended by the time we got our first orders.

The food, when it finally arrived, was quite tasty. I had a lamb shanks sizzler – which cost a mere Rs. 275 – and it was quite decent. It came on a bed of rice with generous portions of mashed potato and assorted baked veggies. The menu was quite extensive, with a lot of options for vegetarians and non vegetarians. True to the restaurant’s multi-cuisine claim, the food included Indian, Chinese and Continental. The menu was a thick A4 sized book, which reminded me of the fancy fold-out fairy tales books we used to read as children. And the prices were all spelt out – no numbers to shock here!

For dessert, I had what was listed as an Irish fruit trifle, though I really couldn’t see what was Irish about it – not a bit of wine or whiskey in it! It was fresh and light, and made a perfect ending for the meal.

Irish Fruit Trifle

And then we waited again, for a really long time, to get the bill. It arrived a full 45 minutes after we asked for it.

Now, I am very aware that we were a large group, and were placing many orders simultaneously, but the delay in service was simply too much. We had two dedicated Captains in blazers in the place all the time, and they were coordinating the whole thing. Yet, simple orders like even a glass of water were inordinately delayed. Poor Moaiz, who arrived about 30 minutes after us did not even get to eat his food – by the time it arrived, everyone had finished and we were halfway through our wait for the bill. He had to ask them to pack it and take it home with him!

The prices were really reasonable for the quality of food we were served, and the portions were quite ample. I would go back there, but only if I’m not ravenously hungry and could stand the long wait for the food!

Today’s lunch was a buffet at IndiJoe. We have been fans of Indijoe’s ever since Suresh introduced us to the fondue there a couple of years ago. We found ourselves outside IndiJoe at lunchtime and spying the buffet, went for it.

The food at IndiJoe has always been pretty good. Today’s lunch was a lesson in how a restaurant’s buffet food does not always stand up to the standard of its a la carte offerings. The buffet was adequate, though a bit on the leaner side for vegetarians. But the menu was rather unimaginative, and the food itself merely passable – not what we have come to expect from IndiJoe.

The live omelette counter was the highlight of the lunch, with the chocolate pudding coming in a close second. Beyond these two, everything else was rather disappointing. The biriyani could have been more moist and tender and less bony, the tandoori chicken kebab was too bland and not tender enough, the liver was overdone – the litany of woes continues.

Add to this, the restaurant was really crowded – the lunch buffet seems to be really popular with families – and the buffet was set in a very cramped manner. So every time I had to serve myself I had to jostle and was jostled from all around. Kids running round did not really help matters.

All said and done, we did manage to have a leisurely lunch, and the buffet at Rs. 333 nett is about as low as you can expect to pay for a meal at IndiJoe. The lunch buffet during weekdays may be priced lower but I’m not sure.

After dining at Trance Lounge last night, we decided to try out a new place for dessert, and ended up going to Ice ‘n’ Jelly. This place is right opposite Pedamma temple, on Jubilee Hills Road No: 21. Don’t worry, if you can’t find it, the man in the teddy bear costume standing on the road will wave you in towards the place.

The place was not crowded – there was just one other patron as we entered, and two more sauntered in while we were there. The seating was on a lawn (complete with fountain) next to a building that looked like one of the pavilions you see in period movies set in 18th century England.

The menu was extensive and imaginative, and politically incorrect at least once – I loved it! After a lot of discussion, Vidya had a fruit salad with jelly and cake, while I settled for my usual chocolate overload with an Uptown Vanilla Brownie. The waiter who served us was attentive and careful, and the ice cream was above average. Nothing to write home about, but nothing to complain about either.

If you’re still wondering about the political incorrectness on the menu, I urge you to go try out the place, and come back and leave a comment!