Rasgulle with Rahul

Yummy. I live to eat sweets. Well back to writing after a long time.
Thank you Megha and Sameer for those comments. I dedicate this one to you fellows. :-)
Before we move on to the topic of discussion I would like to mention what happened meanwhile……

I read a lot of blogs and found that all of them had copied my themes/ story lines i.e. the ones I was about to write. So I waited for an original thought to strike me and found that I was not really as creative as many think (In fact I found I had overrated myself.) This was followed by a phase of self exploration. I found out that by exploring an area that had nothing in it will yield nothing. The basic principle of physics that matter can neither be created nor destroyed applies and therefore trying to extract something out of the void seems to be a futile task. Then my instincts of a diligent student in a coaching centre arose like a phoenix. I looked up for phrases and simply landed on this topic while singing inky pinky ponky… So let the madness begin.

Surfing the T. V. is an art by it self. You need expertise and domain knowledge to eliminate channels, find the right ones and ignore/appreciate advertisements. Some of the surfs yield snippets of conversation that are gems of entertainment.

Well I was watching “Coffee with Karan” recently. I know that some of my friend would raise an eye brow already, but relax and stop wandering in to those dirty thoughts of yours.
Rakhee Sawant was on the show and the conversation…...

Karan: Have U got plastic surgery done.
Rakhee: Ya, did U see my lips. They are filled.
Karan: (By nature not aroused by such a provocative statement) Where else did you fill in.
Rakhee: What do you mean by that? (Ends the statement with a weird smile which I suppose was intended to be indicating indecent stuff.)
Karan: Produces the best fake laugh I have seen. Seems to me that he has learnt a bit of acting in the process of directing.

The point to be noted is that if this was Meka or Mika what ever that poor souls name is, the “bharatiya nari” would have come out of her. But I feel Rakhee knew that in the case of Karan it would not work owing to his well known gender preferences.

The switch happens to a news channel….thanks to my cable operator who believes in shuffling the channels regularly to make my surfing more random and interesting. What do I see....It is Sidhu and Ajay Jadeja with a new host on NDTV. The host…errr….hostess knew that she was dealing with the most uncontrolled monster and yet displayed the courage of a Greek warrior facing certain death. The topic was about cricket and thus I am not interested in the content.

Hostess: .(Throws a question) Blah blah blah
Ajay: I feel that…. (Thunder. Ajay stops abruptly)
Sidhu: Thunder, rain, thunder, rain, thunder, rain … ‘n’ iterations.
Ajay: Drenched and shivering in rage, yet speechless.
Hostess: Safely camouflaged in the audience peeps out and gives a grin.

What a show. I still do not understand the need for Ajay. They knew Sidhu was there. Well I know that the hostess was also dispensable but in the name of a standard show, you need somebody to pass around the microphone. I wonder how it would be to put Rakhee instead of Ajay. Ah I know there are friends who are raising eye brows again. Come on fellows…..what did Mandira know when she hosted the world cup.


Mean while on another channel we have “Jeena isheka naam hai”. Rakee once again and Mahesh Bhatt speaking. “Rakhee I know that you are a person with the cleanest heart. And from such a clean heart comes courage to speak against the system. Keep that innocence and vulnerability that you have for they are your assets. I like you a lot. Bye.” Well I know that every one is entitled to a clean heart what ever they do but still……what tickled me was that Mahesh was trying to say he has done such unbelievable things with his actresses that what Rakhee went through was nothing. He was also tying to say that she had a lot of courage to pull the media for a kiss …well…initiated by her.


Suddenly I see a foreigner kissing an Indian woman in a news channel. Yes, you know every bit about this one. Apparently I underestimated the length and the number of kisses. It looked like a competition of some sort. And you must have seen the happy face of Shilpa post the event. Rakhee, learn to fix the right kind of fellows. You would have got compensation in dollars if it was Gere. And that’s where Mahesh’s analysis of Rakhee’s clean heart finds substantiation.

Moving to more international stuff…sorry, Gere and Shipla are already international… I was watching a telecast of the Oscars on some channel…now do not ask me which one I seriously do not remember. The actresses were walking in on the red carpet one after the other and you must have seen the misery of the poor things. They were finding it difficult not to step on each others train and I could see the suffering on their faces. To add to that there is the Manish Malhotra kind of guy trying to analyse every damn dress. All of the dresses looked the same and most were of the same colour. Stupidity at its heights.

Well “The Simpsons” always throws in a surprise. I liked a piece of conversation and it goes like this….
Simpson: Hey, was that guy with my wife handsome and rugged.
Bartender: He was rugged but not handsome.
Simpson: The difference.
Bartender: Handsome fellows keep looking at themselves in the mirror and there it ends. Women keep looking at the rugged fellows and generally it never ends there.

Well dear reader I hope you had some relaxation from constantly entertaining yourself through other mediums. I understand that most of us are tired managing our entertainment schedules. See you, until the next one.

Rahul.

The Russian Salad

An apt name to start my very first blog. Before I start of, I thank Sameera for introducing me to the world of blogs and Palavi who gave me the final push. (Generally Pal is delighted pulling my leg)

It was a sunny afternoon, almost the English one where you are not sure whether your skin is burning or not. The holy idea was to have lunch and we decided to have it at the nearest place to our office, Pizza Hut. You see I diet a lot and thus avoid salads at all cost. But not this day. Friends are friends, and they have this uncanny ability to make you do what you would swear by gods never to do.

A good friend of mine (who would not be so good if I do not refer to her as “good”) introduced me to the salad at Pizza Hut. To my amazement another friend of mine liked it and encouraged me to try it out. He was the one who called it “Russian Salad” which in fact was some chicken salad whose name I prefer never to know.

By the way these two friends I refer to, have quiet different tastes. Thus I assumed it would be safe to eat and took the wrong step against my gut feeling. We walked in. They ordered. I started eating. Oh what a taste it was!

The ingredients were thus:
Vegetables of all sorts that I have never seen before, expect on some Pizza in cooked or charred format. (You should not consider my use of the word “format” as inappropriate. It is a part of the software lingo and I can’t get rid of it)

An unfamiliar sauce that joined the disjoint ingredients into one undistinguishable white mass. But then, I have to give credit to the Olives and another vegetable of unknown origin to break the monotony of taste.

Boiled and frozen chicken, thawed to the appropriate level so that it remains undistinguishable from the remaining content.

And as I ate, the stuff melted in my mouth……Oh how disgusting it was. I would have abused everybody if I were not in sophisticated and dangerous company. Of course I am a gentleman and did not behave inappropriately at that moment, but I did give a piece of my mind to my dear friends post this memorable lunch session. I behaved as stable as Jennifer (of “Great Escapes: Discovery” fame, who would eat the most disgusting food and yet manage not to cry.)

Conclusion: I won the Russian Roulette Gourmet style. Yes I survived it and it feels great. I celebrated (read “washed it off my tongue”) with an Ebony and Ivory.

By the way this occasion was graced by other conspirators too, that included by blog mentor Sam. I bet all of them had a nice laugh looking at me and my “never go back on what you have committed to eat” stance. But professionals that they were, all of then behaved as if they were deeply involved in understanding the concept behind the flavour of the pizza in their hands.

Dear readers and all the friends involved in the above piece of history. I have no grudges against anybody (And if I do, I will not let you know until the day revenge happens). It was an experiment that went bad and I understand that everybody need not have the capacity to distinguish between edible and tasty food.

Thanks for reading so far. Hope you enjoyed.

And before I sign off I shall ask what my mentor took years to ask…..Please leave your comments. :-)

Bye.