Someday, today will be nostalgia

A few weeks back, I was in Chennai to visit my sister. When I opened the newspaper, Uber Eats had taken out a full page ad with Alia Bhat and the headline read ‘For your tinda moments’.  I first thought tinda was a South Indian dish that I wasn’t aware of, the same way I didn’t know that brinjal was also called aubergine and spent half an hour looking for a brinjal recipe in a fancy cookbook. I turned to my wife, who is from Mumbai, and asked her what tinda was.  She tried her best to explain it and words like ‘kind of a gourd’ were used. Still, I didn’t really get a clear picture of what the heck tinda was. Not being a fan of gourds, I assumed it was a vegetable that people weren’t too fond of hence the need to reach out for a food-delivery service to order something that satiates their taste-buds. My next question was – how many South Indians know what tinda is? Languages have always been a bane for me. And doing batt...

The 'hum fit toh India fit’ movement is a great initiative and if you look around, it seems as if every other person you run into is gearing up to run a marathon or on some fancy ass diet. But a lot of the mushrooming fitness industry seems to be becoming more niche and out of reach of the common man. I run and practice yoga. So by most standards, I am fitness conscious. There is a thin line between that and being a fitness freak. It began a couple of years ago when I trained and completed my first half-marathon. When my already bad back started acting up and caved in after I overdid the running, thinking that it was the solution to all my problems, I took refuge at the feet of yoga as paying 400 bucks per physiotherapy session was too much of a beast of burden to bear.  When it comes to being open to new experiences, I am as flexible as a bhakt who is questioned about his blind love for all things Hindutva. Not that I had any grand illusions of doing 108 suryanamaskars ...

Nothing changes after elections. Yet they are fascinating. Maybe it's because as humans, we are designed to perennially live in hope.  Karnataka is going to vote on Saturday. Politicians who claim to cement every pothole and bring the metro to each and every nook and corner of the city, have already hijacked all the cab drivers and finding a ride home means endless waits. And if you run into an election rally, your wait can extend into eternity. We may display apathy towards elections and our politicians, but like a bad movie that you have paid to watch, we just have to know the ending. Before the elections, newspapers publish the net worth of our netas. They run into hundreds of crores. Close your eyes and imagine a crore. Then add a few more zeroes to it. Makes you dizzy, doesn't it? Why do we vote, when we expect little or no change? It's like going to work without expecting a salary. Just before elections, roads that are already tarred get magically re-tarred...

I am an unapologetic foodie. Though I can no longer wolf down a 7 course meal and follow it up with 7 Mysore Paks and then ask what’s for dinner, there are days where I can still resuscitate my teenage self and come close. Of course I have preferences. I have a weakness for South Indian food and I'm subconsciously always afraid that all Italian food will be bland and tasteless, even though I have been proved wrong time and again. At the end of every extravagant buffet, I dutifully round it up with a serving of curd rice. For the most part, I ate food. I sat back and waited for it to arrive. Be it at home or elsewhere. The arms and legs of my culinary skills extended to making a really delectable plate of omelette (with onion and green chilli) and Top Ramen Smoodles (with capsicum and carrot), and a drinkable cup of filter coffee (there was never any instant coffee powder in the house to fall back upon). Bred on my grandmother's impeccable and irreplaceable culinary mag...

Bob Dylan sang ‘the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.’ But when it comes to suicide, it only leaves behind a bunch of unanswered questions. Once upon a time, cable TV was our only source of entertainment and the only sources of new music were Channel V and MTV. At the turn of the decade, there used to be a show called the Billboard top 100 which was hosted by a very pretty VJ called Asha. It aired every Saturday at 8 pm and for the longest time, it was the only peek we got into the latest in pop, rock and hip-hop. The year was 2001. One day, a song broke its way into the top 100. It featured 5 guys who looked like they were high on many things and angry with everything, venting all their anguish out in a video where there were in some sort of a tunnel. It was dark and angry, but it was different. The song was One Step Closer and that was my introduction to Linkin park.  The same album spawned a few other hits like Crawling, Papercut and In the end . Th...

Pearl Jam's haunting ballad Gone is about someone seeking to escape the rigors and limits of small town life and chart a new course. While performing the song on VH1 Storytellers, Eddie Vedder quotes another song inspired by small towns, the late Lou Reed's Small Town in which he sings ' the only good thing about a small town is you know you want to get out.'  Outside the cocoon of 24x7 wi-fi and artificially cooled air, is a world. It may lack many of the things that cities spoil us for choice with and numb our senses to, but it is definitely more real than the Truman Show lives of sameness that we lead. There are two ways to explore a small town. One is to hire an AC cab, zip through landscapes and people, finish whatever you went for and return. The other is to ditch the comforts and travel in their buses, walk on their roads, drink chai in their chai kadas and listen to their stories, hopes and dreams. We traveled to a place called Gandikotta in Andhra Prad...

The music app on my phone had a notification. It read 'Remembering Chris Cornell'. After devouring a 4 course Andhra lunch, I was a bit groggy and it took more than a few seconds for me to  it. Isn't remembering used only when you are talking about someone who is no longer there? I was listening to Soundgarden just a few days back. In an My hands, working quicker than my mind, leapt to the keyboard and typed his name. Sure enough, the flood of bad news was all over the internet and the good feelings from my 4 course lunch quickly evaporated. Soundgarden was a great band but I never obsessed over them like I did over other bands. There was a time when I listened to Black Hole Sun and later to Like a Stone on loop, two songs that harnessed Cornell's breadth of voice but the story of how his voice, among many, came into my life is what I will always remember. I like to think of it as the summer of rock. Or the summer I lost my rock virginity. There is a room in ...