Elements of a near perfect weekend...

This was supposed to be what I actually wanted to write in my previous post, but that morphed into something else, so finally here's what I actually did at ecogrid.

The destination

• a quiet getaway, bamboo structure camp at the base of a cliff and at the edge of a crystal clear lake
  
• no electricity, place lit by old fashioned lanterns, makeshift tiki torches & a few solar lamps
  

What we did

• lounged about on a swinging machan with a clear view of the lake
• pitched tents, drank away on the top deck with a brilliantly lit night sky and ate endless amounts of food
  
• highlight of the evening - meteor shower! spotted at least 5 shooting stars, saw saturn & its rings in all its glory, great view of the lunar landscape & brushed up on constellation knowledge. Am pretty sure can spot Leo now
• sat at the edge of the late with feet dipped in - instant cooling!
  

The food

• wood-fire oven baked, thin crust mini pizzas on arrival
• potato wedges and eggplant roast, cheese canapes and baked okra, paneer stuffed tomatoes
• steaming hot rasam, garlick and cheese buns, stone grilled chicken, leg of lamb, fish cutlets, fish fry, apple crumble & custard
• fresh fruit, baked potato & salami omelet, freshly baked pav, methi paranthas

Special mention

• adding some colour to the camp - a crotchety old rooster whose body clock was completely out of whack. Began crowing at 3:30 am and didn't stop till sunset

The ecogrid

I got to know about Ecogrid through one of those chance incidences and after my second visit there this year I'm very glad I did.
A summary of what Ecogrid is all about might not do it justice because Andy (who runs the place & conceptualized it) is so full of ideas & constant energy & passion for his work that you're left amazed at all that he's done with the place & even more so all that he plans to do. Nevertheless I intend to try!
The core idea is to develop a sustainable green commune in rural surroundings and build a platform for green enthusiasts & activists to practice their knowledge and ideas, lend a hand and most importantly - have a ball doing it!

Developed on a part of land tucked away near the backwaters of Mulshi, the place is about as close to nature as you can get & the idea is to let it remain so. Andy being something of an expert in building rural, low-cost & ecofriendly structures has built a beautiful cottage, a deck, a machan & a kitchen all in that fashion. For visitors there's space aplenty to pitch tents, and I would advise everyone to pitch their own tents - it's great fun! Of course the best part about all of this is that along with being a lot of things Andy also happens to be a master chef!!

I'd said it would be tough telling what Ecogrid was all about - so instead I'll just give an idea of what all are the ways you can involve yourself in Ecogrid

1. Spend a day there doing some or all of the activities the location affords - a hike, a trek, rappelling down a cliff, jump into the lake for a quick swim, get spoiled by eating freshly made food straight out of the wood burn oven or involve yourself in a bbq

2. stay overnight, star gaze like never before - a clear night sky is one of the perks of Ecogrid, pitch your own tent, eat an open dinner over a bonfire, learn about sustainable development by observing it first hand, hang out at the swinging machin with a beautiful view of the lake

3. contribute your knowledge of green development in rural areas or create a custom program to learn more about rain water harvesting, bamboo building kits, eco-tourism

These are just some of things to enjoy at Ecogrid. The best way is to visit once, see the place for yourself & observe it firsthand. There are always schemes and plans afoot - like currently one of them is building a special rainwater harvesting mechanism, another is workshops conducted at Ecogrid for stress relief & relaxation, yet another a night trek & bbq up in the jungle nearby.
I have to mention how the people involved in the daily running are locals who, more than anyone, realize the importance of sustainable development . Ecogrid aims to support the locals, involve them and use their knowledge and ultimately make them self sufficient.

This is just a small part of the vision of Ecogrid. I intended to write on how my weekend was spent there but I think that's another post by itself.

Check out Ecogrid at facebook

comfort food

It's a coincidence that this post is also about food, but I was getting chai from this place and it's menu was a great way to capture all the memories associated with the kind of food that was on it. Here's a photo....

This is survival food, stuff that would save you when you had skipped all your meals because you slept through them or because the food you could get your hands on tasted like cardboard. Some of these are obviously local specialties, but evergreen stuff like bhurji, maggi, omelet, fried rice, sandwich (with chutney obviously), jeera rice, noodles are of course there.
So here's to quick, cheap, probably unhealthy, mostly unhygienic and the best comfort food of college life!

Food I don't understand

I used to be a very picky eater growing up, but in the nearly ten years since leaving the comforts of home, reality has of course shaped some new habits. From having the luxury of every whim & unreasonabl demand being fulfilled it has come down to mom's concern over food being reduced to anxious questions over the phone, leaving me to fend for myself; so much so that now if I don't get what I want, the most likely thing to happen is for someone to mutter "in any case would do her good to not eat for a few days" under their breath.

Neverthless there are still some foods, or food habits I fail to understand - either due to taste or any number of illogical reasons.
1. Liquorice or twizzlers: it's chewy, takes serious jaw muscle to eat and tastes like nothing nice. WHY would anyone eat this stuff?

2. french toast - the traditional way: ok so I'm gauche and I grew up eating my french toast like most Indians- salty, with ketchup even. I mean it makes sense doesn't it - it's egg and it's bread. Eggs & bread are eaten salty and with ketchup. So pray, why is bread dipped in egg & cooked, eaten with syrup? I don't get it. It grosses me out.

3. pineapple on pizza: yes I know it's Hawaiian pizza and Hawaii has lots of pineapples, but that doesn't mean they should put it on their pizza. Or whoever did it. That's like putting curry on cake and calling it Indian cake.

4. cereal with hot milk: An Indian habit again but this time I don't get it. I used to eat this as a kid, mostly because it was shoved down my throat at about 6 am, a time when I was too sleepy to protest. Hot milk makes the cereal soggy & as the milk is cooling down it forms an icky layer. Horrible.

5. cadbury's chocolate eclairs: it gets stuck all over your teeth, you spend more time picking it off than you did in eating it so it's not even worth all that effort by the end.

... I have more strange dislikes but 5 seems a good round number for now.

With friends like these.....

It was one of those particularly jinxed Friday nights - I was out partying with some of my friends (whose characters will be revealed through the post) and the series of events that ensued still gets talked about to this day; so much so that a picture from that night, posted on Facebook, inspired lots of comments that essentially replayed whatever happened & was amusing enough to post here.
**Names have been discretely changed. I should add that it was a picture of me in the pub we had gone to that night on which this commentary was happening. SK, Marvin & Jig are the friends who were with me. Tam-Tam (TT) is another friend, not present that night but an active FB-er**

SK: TT you should ask her about the other "interesting" events of that night.

key words: faint, manger, julia, auto, rock, kill, bare hands, cops, neighbour and of course alcohol

008 (Me): i was an innocent observer...

SK: and i was your protector

Marvin: SK u yellow chicken... u were busy counting currency notes and shitting in ur pants while HIDING behind 008 !!!

SK: shut up Mr. bare hand man killer

TT: wht in god's name happened??

Jig:
2. 008 finds drunk (skirtless) girl in toilet at pub (Julia is the manger here)
4. Marvin, 008 drop girl home (only after she has puked on my new rainbow shirt)
6. take rick to go home
7. Marvin, 008, I get into fight with the driver
8. driver attacks with rock, Marvin tries to kill with bare hand, I try to mediate, 008 innocent observer, SK hiding behind 008 counting money in his wallet to pay off the driver and go home...
9. Marvin, 008, SK, I start walking home, rick driver returns with cops. I explains situation to cops in marathi.cops go.
10. reach home, abuse each other outside house. bald, sex deprived, midget neighbour come to fight, abuse neighbour
Pts. 1, 3, 5, 11, 12, 13...drink!!

Marvin: u excelled in precis writing in school...didnt u ?? :D

TT: hahahahahahaha...oh faaaaak...wht an exciting time tht must have been...and the precis writing..well, commendable!!

TT: and why was she skirtless?!lol...

SK: **This comment doesn't pass the censor ratings**

008: btw TT this is in u'r fav place! Jig - correction. i did not abuse neighbour. i abused SK, neighbour thought i was abusing him. I might have abused neighbour AFTER that.

Marvin: we dont know why she was skirtless... but we do know next day she called up SK and abused him for stealing her wallet or something !

Jig: looks like sly SK was planning to bribe the rickshaw driver with her money!

SK: are u crazy ... she called to thank us ... and she only had my no cuz i had missed called her phone when we couldn't find it. get the facts right guys!

TT: no i know why, cuz SK stole her skirt. **yet more censored stuff**

oo8: SK stole her skirt AND her friend's abandoned drink. anything for free booze eh SK?

Marvin: Tsk tsk tsk ... Jig steals apples, SK is a kleptomaniac.... what is the world coming to ?

After this point the comments turned into a general volley match of random abuses and accusations which while entertaining enough are out of context to this post.

Stats have the final word on this - there were 47 comments in total! Anyone ever got into the Guinness Book for having the highest number of comments on a facebook picture?

A well-beaten path

This small incident refuses to take leave of my brain. In fact, it outrages me every time I think about it.
A few months ago my mom and I were waiting at Amsterdam for our connecting flight back home. Naturally there were a large number of Indians on the flight and we ended up sitting next to a genial looking lady who was keeping watch on a couple of children who were whizzing around in general. Striking up a conversation with her seemed the most natural thing to do for my mom and off she started and discovered that genial lady, let's call her Mrs. D, was returning from a fantastic vacation in Paris.
Obviously this was a cue for exchange of vacation notes. "My daughter just had a baby, so I went to visit her", declares mom.
"Elder daughter?"
"Yes, this is my younger one", jabs a finger in my direction. I'm being anti-social and have my nose stuffed into a book or a bacon sandwich, I forget which.
What followed after this has had me fuming in rage since then, enough at least to make me write this.
Once I have been pointed out to her, Mrs D asks "You have two daughters?". Mom - "Yes". When my mom stops at yes, Mrs. D picks up the thread again and asks "Ok, so two daughters... and one son?", venturing the second part as a natural understanding that after two daughters my mom MUST have son which she didn't need to declare but since it was unthinkable that she wouldn't have a son it was to be understood. !!!!!! How I wanted to throw the book, or bacon sandwich, at her!
Mrs. D, feeling unnecessary sympathy for mom, hurriedly proceeded to describe her Paris vacation, with me sneakily listening in.
After listening to the highlights of her vacation I think I got an insight as to why she would ask what she did. It was a vacation to Paris all right, but the highlights of the vacation were not the supposed beauty of the city, or French culture, or the Louvre or even the Eiffel Tower. Mrs. D was proudly describing how they rented an apartment in Paris & because of her foresight in packing atta, spices, daal, rice they could eat paranthas & daal & chawal and give the children Maggi when they wanted and how it was 'just like home'! Not a single mention of what they saw in Paris, how it was different from India, how the people were etc. If she hadn't mentioned she was in Paris, she could have been describing her daily routine in Delhi.
I felt a combination of anger, disbelief & a little regret. Anger & disbelief at the wasted vacation; to her it was enough that she could say 'Paris' and enjoy all the glamour of a foreign vacation associated with it. Regret at that she would probably never realize that it was a wasted vacation.
For me the second conversation served as a good explanation for her initial questions. In her comfortable, well settled life I don't think she ever had questions. Her path was charted out for her - education (literacy?), marriage to a 'good, wealthy catch', children (at least one boy) and then living out the rest of your life bringing up the children, of course interspersed with the mandatory foreign vacations, luxurious shopping, kitty parties maybe?, and of course questioning the people who didn't fall into this category - ".. and one boy?"!

You know you work in an IT company when...

...you're trying to type www.orkut.com and end up typing www.oracle.com

Selective Memory

While looking through old pictures I realized that not only did I ruthlessly delete pictures which were hazy, poor quality or totally random, but also that I could just as easily delete pictures of me in which I was doing something silly or was looking horrible.

Just makes me wonder if that's how memory works - where we selectively retain the good ones while erasing or blocking unpleasant ones? Maybe in that case nostalgia is over-rated. Or maybe I'm just extremely narcissistic.

Zero-risk faith

This time while being driven home, after being picked up by the trustworthy family driver, I got a chance to witness something which was thought provoking enough to make me write this post.

Now this fellow is an energetic and colorful character with an immense liking for breaking out into impromptu karaoke to his favourite songs which the radio helpfully supplies him in plenty. Apart from being musical, the other most important thing in life seemed to be faith or God or religion or a combination of some sort. I reached this conclusion because I'd observed on earlier trips that no matter how heavy the traffic, no matter how engrossed he would be in singing, no matter if a herd of cows suddenly dropped onto the road in front of him but if he were to spot a temple on the road he would pay his due respects appropriately. A short prayer muttered, a quick little ritual touching of the forehead and whatever else struck his fancy.

He would do this for every temple he would spot - small, big, in the middle of a road, off in the distance. No shrine was too small to escape his purview and I thought that was very commendable and always used to admire his faith if not identify with it.

But that's not the reason I'm writing this. It's the realization that dawned on me about halfway during the trip that's making me write. I don't know why I had missed it before but I soon realized that not only was he paying his respect at every passing temple but also, with the kind of enlightenment the best of us don't have, he was doing the same for every mosque that we passed too. I was totally in awe of him after that! I mean if you've got to have faith then this is the best kind. Clearly he was a religious fellow, so he figured instead of wasting time, like the rest of most of us half-brianed idiots, about which God was better/right/stronger/existing-at-all, he'd show them! While they were doing themselves no earthly good by pitching one faith against the other, he'd just quietly notch up a whole bunch of brownie points with the whole pantheon, while laughing internally at their silliness.

I have to say I can find no possible logic against his.

Contraband

If there's a way of making sure everyone knows you've bought stuff that you don't want to go around displaying in public - putting the thing into a black plastic bag is it
Theoretically it works wonderfully. The bag is opaque and black, no one would ever know what's in it. The catch is - everyone invariably does because that trick is about the oldest in the book.

Put something into a black plastic bag and suddenly you're as conspicuous as if you were walking around in yellow pants and a purple shirt with a board on your head that said "Look at me" in bold red letters.

I'm sure it started out as a sensible enough practice - but it's now become such a cliche that it has the exact opposite effect; instead of general public never getting to know there's almost a 100% change that they will, in fact, know exactly what's in the bag.

So the next time I go to buy a harmless bottle of wine as a housewarming present, I am going to carry my own bag. A transparent one at that.

Tech-savvy

I realized today that I should never underestimate my mom's abilities to cause endless and unintentional amusement especially when it concerns technology.
I got a frantic call from her today and the conversation that followed went something like this:
Mom: Listen!
Me: uh.. yeah?
Mom: What's a blueberry?
Me: a blueberry? what? a BLUEBERRY?
Mom: yes
Me: Well, it's.... you know.....a fruit.
Mom: No NO, not a fruit.
Me: Sure it's a fruit.
Mom: It can't be a fruit because I'm buying you one for your birthday
Me: you're sending me FRUIT for my birthday?
Mom: Listen, your cousin just gave a blueberry to her father and I want to give you one as well.
*Realization dawns!!!*
Me (choking with laughter): you mean a blackberry?!!!!
Mom: Yes that, fine I'm sending you a blueberry for your birthday then?
Me: it's a BLACKBERRY

Anyway, ultimately I convinced her that it was a blackberry and I didn't need one. I'm fairly sure though that if I call her tomorrow and ask her the name it will still be blueberry.

Intergalactic comparisons

For the fans of sci-fi TV shows I think the following comparison between Starship Enterprise & Battlestar Galactica (note - the ships, not the shows!) is great! My vote goes to The Enterprise, admittedly probably unfairly, since I've not seen the Battlestar Galactica series at all. Read on... and live long and prosper. Sorry, couldn't resist that.

http://screenrant.com/star-trek-enterprise-vs-battlestar-galactica-brusimm-5140/

and it continues...

I'd written about the tussle amongst two of our canteen suppliers to capture the cold coffee market. Well summer's long gone and after a little cooling off the competition has been upped with the addition of an Amul counter!
My story starts with the team realizing one day that it's the boss's birthday and we don't have a cake. Our only option is to order it at least 4 hours in advance from the Coffee Day counter in the other building and we were about 2 hours too late for that. So we dragged ourselves to the nearest bakery to pick up a cake and whined about it all the way. And what do we see when we go upto the canteen to store it safely in the fridge - Amul has a humungous board proclaiming - ORDER CAKES HERE! which appeared just that day.
Now the juice counter guy got beaten in the cold coffee wars but you have to admire his spirit because next day an A4 (almost as if he's scared the Amul guy will see it!) size poster is stuck on his counter proclaiming 'Birthday cakes available'. Of course in all probability the same supplier supplies to both counters!
I'm now trying to decipher what is the next trend they'll clash on... black coffee?

ecoliving..

I've been thinking what to do about the upcoming long weekend and while sitting at my favourite sandwich place in Pune - Skips - heard the owner speak about this http://theecogrid.blogspot.com/
might give it a try if I convince enough people to join!