A day at the Circus

'The Royal Circus is in your town till Dec 3rd only, so please tell all your friends and relatives to come and visit'. This was an attempt at Viral marketing by the Royal circus marketing department. Since I am not sure how the traditional virus is working so I am using this blog shamelessly as a marketing tool for Royal Circus.

Yesterday I took my kids and some friends of theirs with the mothers to see this circus. It was happening in East Delhi which to all South Delhi people is back of beyond and then some distance. The idea was that kids see the circus and attempt to understand what outdoor live entertainment was for their parents.

The first thing that my son was kicked about was the Elephants munching their food in their enclosures and the camels and horses tied nearby.

The show had trapeze, cycling, Dog and elephant tricks and some russian women doing gymnastics with props. I am sure some of them would have been ex Olympic gymnasts the way their bodies contorted and did impossible tricks.

It was a 3 hour show which I thought was long by 1.5 hrs. I think Circus as an art/entertainment form is slowly dying and in this fast paced and multi entertainment world of ours they face a losing battle to appeal to the minds and senses of the children.

If I ask my kids where would they like to go for a movie or circus they might still say circus but the attached parapheranalia of popcorns, burgers and other stuff was not available in the dusty circus tent. Smarter marketing would also need more color and more show, whether the quality of the audio or the fact that the seating ensured that everyone was not able to view the show , all these need to be checked and acted on.

But my children enjoyed for 2 hrs plus and I would seriously encourage every person to take their kds and show these artistes wh do all these deth defying stunts which we will not be able to do on flat earth.

So folks reading it, the show is on till Dec 3rd only and so go and show your kids what it was to live in the seventies and eighties, OSO be damned.

Festivities never end

If you are an Indian in India you would have noticed how every month has some holiday or other due to our being a secular state. So in addition to the Diwalis, Ids and Christmas we have our Valmiki Diwas also. The only major religion whose festivals are not holidays is Judaism. Why I have no clue! If I was a jew it might make a good case of calling up some TV News channels, gather some goons and proceed to burn some buses. For good measure call this an exercise in Secularism and presto you will give us another holiday on Hanukkah perhaps.
But Come September the Holiday mood grips this vast country of ours as from all corners of India there is something or the other. I am counting Onam also in Sept as the lovely Mallus keep shifting the dates from Sept to August. Then the gujjus do Navratris when the best place in the world to be is in Ahmedabad ( this is true for condom makers and pvt investigators too ). Navratri is followed by Durga Pujo where all Bengalis, the resident and non resident, all go out to buy their annual quota of new clothes and come out wearing the same without ironing them. Ironing means the creases go and then how will people know that the clothes are new. Ak-dom un intelligent - I tell you.
Diwali follows soon after and that signifies the binging on sweets and getting upset stomach to breathing foul polluted air with more NO2 then O2 and becoming unwell.
In Delhi, the city I live, Diwali also means card parties. Till a decade or two back these were friendly events where a group of friends got together and played a bit of card to usher in the goddess of wealth. Now these are bonafide events which have budget of several thousand dollars and where the winner can take home some serious money. There are urban legends where people bet their cars and houses. Draupadi is just waiting in the wing to happen.
I unfortunately dont play card and also dont hknow enough whos who to get invited to such parties but the scale and size baffles me and also brings introspection.

Rains and food

I am a foodie, it is an honest confession. Unfortunately, for me, I am not Kunal Vijaykar that I travel the length and breadth of India and have food all over but I am still a foodie. It also helps that I am blessed with a constitution that doesnt allow me to get seriously fat. I mean I have a paunch but thats it.
I have memories of best food ever from different phases of my life. for breakfast nothing could beat my grandmothers 'Bhaat bhaja' which is bong for Fried rice. the only difference was that this fried rice had the most minute size aloo, parwal, gobhi and shrimps and with dollops of cows milk ghee it was Yum. I am salivating right now.
The most delicious meal I ever had was in an Army mess in Pune. This was when I was going to attend the NDA passing out parade of my brother. It was simple meal of rice, chicken curry and yellow daal but after surviving on biscuits and tea for two days this was nothing less than manna from heaven. Why starving for two days is for another blog!
Mom made the best food possible but her signature dish was the dessert. And the payesh she made was something that she was justly famous for. It was just the right sweetness so that everyone could enjoy it. And the funny part was that unlike most recipes that daughters learn from their mothers this one she learnt from her mother in law. Says something about our Saas Bahu tradition.
The reason I am writing today is the sharp rains that lashed our city today. Rain for a bengali is a happy occasion. My childhood vacation memory is of 'Kal Baisakhis' thunderstorms which used to turn the day into night and wind speeds which could hurl me all across the football ground. and when these came the meal was always 'Khichudi'.
The bengali Khichudi comes in different shapes, when one is unwell then it is dal and rice boiled together till they are like the same complexion. The other is the dish cooked in all the zillions of Pujas that happen in a Bengali household. I think this khiichudi gets a special flavor due to the community nature of the cooking and it is something that is unique to the bengalis.
The last and foremost is when it rains nay pours and you cook Khichudi and have it. this is a different form of art where you need just the right proportion of Dal and rice, big chunks of vegetables like Aloo, Gobhi, peas etc. The onion should be fried to just the right color and then all of the stuff is cooked before adding the water. And this meal, though complete in itself, needs the accompaniment of ideally 'mach bhaja' i.e. fried fish or for the vegetarians baigun bhaja ' Fried Brinjals' for variety you can add omlette etc also. there should be lots of achar/chutney and the meal is complete and you have paid your obeisance to the rain gods.
Now if I could just have some Khichudi tonight.

Gwalior Travels Pvt Ltd.

I was one of those who strongly believed that friends are what you make till you turn 20 and post that you have close acquaintances. Well, now I think that once you have kids then you are forced to make new friends for your kids sake.

We have been very lucky to have formed a small group of parents who have had their kids going to the same playschool. They were a group of four kids who were in the same class in the play school and because they were friends, the parents also became friends. This is the LT (learning tree ) group.

Even though two new additions have happened in the form of a brother and sister joining the group and the original four going to four diffrent schools the group has stuck together.

One of the high points of the group is the monthly dinner and the half yearly short vacation that we all take. This month we all went to Gwalior. Before anyone says Why Gwalior I will say why not. It has a good palace hotel which has a spa and a pool and there is absolutely nothing to do in that place. All in all an ideal weekend destination to relieve stress.

We stayed at the Usha Kiran palace which is a Scindia property leased out to the Taj group. The rooms were luxurious and the place was just right for our group.
The kids were busy in the pool and the adults took turns to give themselves up to the ministrations of the Spa team to get the aches and pains sorted out. In some cases it was also to feel gentle hands ( other than wives ) on our tired limbs. My big moment was when I was able to get Savir in the pool and let him paddle around for an hour.

Gwalior fort is an imposing structure and the sound and light show was very interesting aided of course by Amitabhs voice. My history ( never very strong ) got a much deserved boost and I think the kids also learnt a little bit about the heritage of the place.

We also went to a Gurdwara, I am always amazed at how the Sikhs are able to keep their religious places spick and span whereas we end up making it dirty. Is it a combination of flowers leaves and water that makes an avg Hindu temple unclean? Question that I need to ask my RSS friends.

In a group like a team, it is important to understand what everyones strength and weakness is and adjust accordingly. I think we have been lucky to have found that balance but I think it is also important that we constantly work on finetuning so that no one couple feels that they are being used.

Look forward to this group remaining the way it is and many more vacations Pvt ltd.

Blueline Menace and the road sense of Delhi

If you stay in Delhi then you knew all about Bluelines and the menace they were much before the spate of accidents last week when suddenly the entire country came to know of them. Infamy has great speed. And with the Govt standing up and as usual trying to fix things ham handedly the commuting for the avg Joe has become tougher. But it is best not to trust the Govt as last time there was a similar crisis the Govt had the brain wave, they painted all the buses Blue from the existing Red and called them Blueline instead of Redline. And the tack was ' See now we have banned Redlines'. Reminded me of Yes Minister.


Nowadays every day the newspapers are full of news of how Bluelines drive rashly and how they dont obey the traffic rules etc and it seems as if just by removing these buses heaven will descend on the Delhi roads. I have some strong views on the same.
Blaming the Blueline buses and their drivers is fine if we can hold a hand on our heart and say that we all obey traffic rules.

Since the Blueline and truck drivers are damned anyway lets come down by weight category.

Large Cars and SUV weight class : Callcentre drivers over speed, young turks on the wheel zoom with blaring music to impress their non existing girlfriends. Any body who has been to West Delhi would have heard the 'dhinchak dhinchak' music from tinted glass windows roaming around the market place and parking slam bang in the middle to have 'Chickan lags' from holes in the middle of the shopping blocks called chicken corners. Do they stop at red lights? No sir, they are for lesser mortals.
Heaven forbid if you stop and allow a pedastrian to pass, they will ensure that their horn makes a hole in your ear drum.

Two Wheeler Class : They never overtake from the right side, they are all related to Valentino Rossi and nowadays the latest I see is that the guys carry their helmets, but they are generally on the shoulder instead of the head. Talk of not knowing where the imp part of their body is. Thank god they dont put it way below thinking 'that head' needs to be protected more.

Cyclists and Pedestrians: Stats say that maximum deaths are of this class. But what do you do when you see cyclists coming down busy roads on the wrong side believing that they are made of gods armour and nothing can happen to them. Pedestrians cross busy roads in traffic just believing in destiny that their time has not come yet. I was once waiting for someone in connought place and I saw this person weaving in and out of fast flowing traffic as if he was a combination of Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat. A car would come towrds him and he would sway back to allow it to go from an inch in front. A bus would come and he would take this tiny step to be within handshaking distance of the driver. Anywhere else but India this would have been in AXN most dangerous Videos but here it is part of life and growing up.

I would like to end with all those who believe Seat belts ruin their look and clothes and so dispense with them. May their tribe diminish so that if god forbid something happened

Tell me honestly how many of us fall in these above categories. Point i am trying to make is simple, till the time we all dont drive responsibly nothing is going to change. The Blueline or the call centre cab guys are uneducated etc but when will all of us, the so called 'educated' guys learn road sense.

Radio ads

When Times FM was launched some 11 years back it was the rebirth of the radio as a happening medium. Till then Radio to people of my age was all about vividh bharati in the mornings with its corny ads and cornier sponsored programs. Phatte kamania ads and Modi continental programs were the order of the day not to forget Simco hair fixer for the hirsute. The trendier guys like us listened to Yuvavani and the late night English music programs like Forces request and Date with you. Those were the time when being gay was being happy.
Times FM changed all that and I was lucky to be part of that revolution. Trendy stereophonic music and peppy RJ's made the station rock. We were a group of people who were selling radio spots and were very conscious of ensuring that the quality of the ads were good. We had people like Roshan Abbas, Shamshir Luthra, Sameep Nanda and Gaurav Kapoor as the voices to ensure that the ads were 'cool'.
In between all these guys and their modulated deep voices we used to do some quick and dirty ones too. Mainly these were for the retail clients ( 'Bongerie') and the inhouse ads. I remember one time distinctly where Mr Akash Verma and your truly were asked to create a quick and dirty radio spot about some new supplement which targeted the Saadi Dilli types. And we created one spot which was true to the tradition of Phatte kamania of Vividh bharati. It was so bad that we all loved it. In that we created this punju character called Teetu. And for some weird reason Mr Ajay Arora ( a true blue son of saadi dilli and punju to the core ) got christened as Teetu. Till date ole Times FM hands will call him 'Teetu' or 'kinky'. Now you know of Teetu someday I will tell the Kinky story too.
With Radio Mirchi and One and fever and HITZ there are channels galore now but the ads are still the same. In between of course there are some real gems but mostly they are crap. I mean having a deep/sweet voice saying 'Haridwar mein Baba Ramdev ashram ke paas.. is not exactly great creative. But I guess it has recall value.
The ones I really like nowadays are the current Cadbury ads ( shero shairi ) and the Maruti Swift ad ( take off on Saadi Dilli teh ode punjus). More on Dilli and its Punjus later.

Going back to the roots

Last week I went to Malda, this is a small town in North Bengal, famous for mangoes and ABA Ghani Khan Choudhury. The former still as sweet and fresh as my childhood and the latter dead and gone.
It was my grandmothers death anniversery and all relatives were gathering to remember one of the liveliest woman that any one of us had known. Sharp tongued and witty she was known as 'pishima' to all in that small town. Till some years back you could get off at the station and just tell the ricksaw puller ' pishimas bari' and be sure to be taken to her house.
I went after 14 years to the place where for the first 12 years of my life I had spent 2 months every year. As usual there were bitter sweet memories and people who you had played with in childhood were these different adults with their own problems and challenges.
Call me a hopeless romantic but there is something different about the air and smell of Bengal, specially in the monsoon. And the lilting language adds to the charm. In the 2 days that I was there I tried to rewalk all the memory lanes starting with getting up early ( 5.30 am is early for me !), going to the local haat with my uncle, see him haggle with the fishmongers over Rs 2 - Rs 5 and go in the evening to the river side to be bitten by mosquitoes the size of sparrows.
The first thing that struck me was that everything seemed smaller, the roads, the shops, the house and the rooms. The ground on which I had played so much of football seemed liliputian.
The second thing was the number of medicine shops. I am sure there are more medicine shops per sq Km in Malda than anywhere else in the rest of the world.
The 2 days there also showed me how simplicity and large heartedness is still there in these small towns and how the simple things of life can give so much of pleasure. I also saw how big city living can add cunning to the smallest of kids who can then play to the gallery.
All in all an interesting trip.