Experience the Aeroplane!

In a stretch of Ghatkopar dotted with slums, very near to the controversial Mithi river, lies a strip which can tantalize any human mind with the sights it has to offer. The area is called Jari Mari. A very non-descript location. A place where one would not think of stopping when one is on his way. This crowded place is the nearest one can get to the runway of Mumbai Airport if one is in Mumbai. A frequent air traveller, I often am on the tarmac and boarding planes every month. But I was completely bowled over by what I saw here.

When you are at the airport to catch a flight, you are on the tarmac for a while and then in the aircraft, and when you land, you are either asleep or trying to fight the congestion in your ear. In such a situation, you do not realise the magnitude of the machine which you board or which is taking you from one destination to the other.

This place offers you the chance of witnessing take offs and landings of many a aircraft. Standing there peeping through the small crevices in the door which separated the road from the runway, I saw how absolutely magnificient and majestic a machine can be. I saw why pilots treat their aircrafts like their girlfriends and cannot stop praising her beauty.

Standing on the footpath, while a Boeing 737 soared over my head at a distance where I felt if I jumped and if I were bit more taller, I could have touched it. I trembled as the beauty glided away above me to land sending a cloud of dust behind it. The entire experience of witnessing this phenomenon which I am a part of very often otherwise was enthralling.

We witnessed many take offs and landings and each time I wanted to experience the aircraft flying overhead. We kept telling ourselves - just one more landing, just one more take off. We desparately waited for a jumbo to land. Unfortunately could not witness that one.

If at all anyone is coming to Mumbai, I recommend this place to be visited. Its an unusual place to visit but one should not miss it for the sheer excitement it provides.


Technorati Tags: JariMari, Ghatkopar, Mithi

Reincarnation of the Soul

Ever heard something which makes you feel as if your soul has been cleansed? Something which makes you feel at peace with yourself and the world? Well, that is the effect this piece had on me when I first listened to it.

Click on Calcutta City

Calcutta City

This is what drew me to the beautiful instrument called Sarod. I associate the sound of the Sarod to the gurgling of a stream in the Himalayas. Amazingly calm, soothing like no other sound. I do not know if it’s the instrument or the artist who had this effect on me. The artist is well, synonymous with the Sarod - Ustad Amjad Ali Khan.

I had this opportunity to attend a concert of his sons – Amaan & Ayaan Ali recently. The concert was a part of their promotional tour for their first album called Reincarnation. It was a musical treat. The pair played exceptionally well. There were times when we could not see their hands as they seemed blurred since they were playing so fast and we were scared that one of the strings in the instrument would break. An extraordinary performance by the entire team. The concert had a piece each which was dedicated to the dholak, the tabla and the drums. Beautifully orchestrated with compositions having names like Blessing, Lonely Spirit, and of course Reincarnation.

Dressed in jeans & kurtas, the team performed like rockstars towards the climax of each composition, smiling away, almost kinda headbanging. They certainly left the audience breathless with each and every composition. And whats more, they even shared some trivia about the Sarod, saying that unlike other string instruments, Sarod is played with the finger nails and hence they needed to file their nails often in order to play well.

Their album is a fusion of Indian Classical and trance in a way. Both men are quite good looking as well (as can be seen from the pic) and with talent like this I am sure they have a long way to go.

Technorati Tags: Reincarnation, Sarod, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Amaan & Ayaan Ali

I SCREAM for ICECREAM!!!!

Its quite evident from my previous post that I like eating. So its no surprise that my next post is also on a food item – Icecream!!!.

Its summers and what summers, I haven’t experienced this kind of heat in Mumbai ever in the past 4.5 years of my existence in this city. So, when it comes to food, anything cool is more than welcome. I am not an icecream freak so to say but offlate my intake of icecream has increased manifold. This got me thinking that by eating so much icecream how much extra fat am I asking my poor body to burn. I am among those millions of people who is desperately trying to loose weight and anything leading to a miniscule increase becomes a matter of concern. If not for very long but atleast for a few minutes.

I did my bit of research in order to figure out how guilty I should feel everytime I have a bowl of fresh mangoes with vanilla icecream or a huge scoop of chocolate icecream.

According to wikipedia, icecreams available today can have 0-16% fat.

Most fat in an icecream is from milk fat. A cup of whole milk is supposed to contain approximately 5g of saturated fat – aka Bad Fat. This 5 g constitutes 3.3% of the milk composition.

A gram of fat contains 9 calories while a gram of carbohydrate & protein contain 4 calories each. This goes on to prove that 1 cup milk contains 45 calories from fat. Fair enough.

Now if 118 ml of vanilla icecream i.e. half cup contains approximately 12gms of fat (as per an article on the net) – we are talking about 108 calories only from fat and then it also contains proteins and carbohydrates which contribute to the calorie count. According to an article on the internet, a half cup of vanilla icecream contains 178 calories in all.

And I don’t eat half cup so its definitely going to be much more than 178 for me.

Realisation dawns!!!! Guess this information should help me avoid this delicacy more often!!!

Technorati Tags: Icecream, %Fat , Calories

The way to my heart is……

Through a delectable meal in an amazing restaurant!!!. Let me define what is amazing for me. Amazing is a warm ambience, good music, sufficient choices for a vegetarian and value for money. Basically, an experience in itself. I have been a foodie since childhood and love experimenting with food. This friend of mine – Kedar and me have quite similar choices when it comes to a food experience and also Mumbai as a city has quite a few options to offer to a food enthusiast.

I am typically very fond of continental cuisines and the ambience of the place is very important for me to enjoy the delicacies a place offers. Most times one may find that the food is really good but the experience is marred by the ambience. It could be garish or crowded or noisy and it can ruin my meal.

Of the many places where I have dined the first one that comes to my mind is Don Giovanni. This restaurant is at Juhu opposite Ramada Inn. According to the menu, it serves Italian preparations from the villages of Italy. The menu claims that these preparations may not be found in the most famous restaurants in the cities of Italy. I have never been to Italy but given a chance, I will run to these villages, if what they serve is what you get in the villages of Italy. Its amazing Italian food with an ambience to go along with it. From the road you can see the blazing red Ferrari flag. The entrance claims that children are allowed only if they do not disturb patrons. I really liked that one. Inside, it’s a dimly lit place which offers you maximum privacy even if the restaurant is completely full. Its better to reserve a table and go since the place is full even on weekdays. Its slightly heavy on the pocket but worth every penny spent because the food that is served is not available in any other restaurant claiming to serve Italian food.

As I said before, my weakness is continental food so the other place I would recommend is Vie Lounge. This is further away from Don Giovanni on the same road in Juhu. Now this one is an elite, up-market lounge cum restaurant and can prove quite expensive. They serve Mediterranean cuisine and according to Kedar, the best steak he has ever eaten, and he has eaten quite a few, so I believe him!!!. A very different food experience for sure and the ambience is breathtaking. It overlooks the Juhu beach but is quite far away from the populated beach section. Ask for a table outside and enjoy the cool breeze with the dinner. The best of all is the complimentary bread basket with some amazing butters. These are garlic butter and mushroom butter. I do not know where to get them from, or if they make them themselves but I would not mind going there to eat only that. Its the best thing I have ever eaten. They have some really unusual combinations for cocktails and an extensive range of liquers to choose from as well.

Another good place is Out of the Blue. This is in Bandra between Pali Naka and Carter road. This place has never let me down on its pastas. And the best part, it has a very long list of vegetarian dishes on offer. Most of these exotic places have very limited vegetarian choices and that is where I get into a fix. But Out of the Blue is a safe bet for any vegetarian. Try the pasta in garlic with extra virgin olive oil and it’s a refreshing delight from the regular cheesy versions of pastas available now a days. They also have a very good selection of wines. Though I am not much of an expert on that.

Last but not the least is Café Churchill in Colaba. I am sure most Mumbaiities will be aware of this place. It is a very small café but serves such amazing food that it’s a must go whenever I am in that part of the town. You can expect a waiting even at 7:30 in the evening since the place is very small. The same people have opened up Café Mocambo. I however, like Café Churchill better. Its this small little café tucked away in the colaba flea market. One might miss it if one does not know about it. Try the irish bailey pastry. Its worth sinning with that one!!!

So long and Happy Eating!!!!

Technorati Tags: Mumbai, mushroom butter , Juhu

2 Hours in Matheran

Last weekend was a long weekend in Maharashtra. With three days of holidays and nothing to do I like every other person living in Mumbai decide to go to Matheran. Not that I haven’t been to the place before. But there is something magnetic about Matheran which lures one towards it whenever one thinks of a cool (as in cold) weekend getaway from Mumbai.

So me and a friend of mine decide to do the unthinkable. Now we have always stayed in this hotel called Hotel Rugby and never made a booking prior to our visit. The hotel has been kind enough to give us a room everytime we land up there. For those of you who do not know, the hotel is quite something in itself. If you are not the exploring or walking kinds, you may just chill in this hotel and can pass the weekend gloriously. But then, Hotel Rugby is shut since 2 months now.

We decide to take up this adventure KNOWING the fact that all hotels are packed in Matheran for the long weekend. But the optimistics that we are, we venture on this journey where as my friend rightly put, the journey was more important than the destination.

Matheran is this virgin hill station devoid of anything commercial apart from the hotels. Hence the only mode of transport is your two feet or the horses four feet if you please. If you are going from Mumbai by the good old local train, you can get off at Neral station and then NORMALLY take a ramshackled taxi to Dasturi Naka from where you are on your own or on the horse.

So we land up at Neral station at some 3:00 in the afternoon. NORMALLY, you will find yourself surrounded by people asking if you needed a taxi to go to Matheran. But this was not a NORMAL day at all. To our surprise the station is completely deserted. No taxi fellas escorting you to the taxi stands. We considered this as a bad omen. On further investigation we find out that there is a strike going on of taxi drivers since the government has decided to start a minibus from Neral to Matheran. So one must walk some random kilometers in order to take the bus or the hotel association taxis. We walk & we walk & we walk in the hot sun. We finally reach the so called taxi stand and manage to get to Matheran. Mind you, these taxis were way better than the regular taxis that you get.

The people of Matheran are very hospitable. In the sense that the moment you are out of the taxi, there will be someone to take your luggage and hound you for a hotel till you select one of them and tell them where you want to go. We found our guide in a similar way and then started our hotel hunt. We practically scoured the entire of Matheran for hotels and found some really exorbitant deals. On offer was a dingy room in the attic of a hotel with hardly any space to move for Rs. 9000 for 2 nights. You freaking can get a room in the Taj Lands End in Mumbai for some Rs. 5000 per night if you want. Well, but then that’s the effect of a long weekend in Matheran.

Also we were spoilt by Rugby. The place is heaven. It has these cottage type rooms all of which open into beautiful lawns. The place looks like if it were straight out of a picture book or something. And the food. Oh the food. It is purely vegetarian but excellent. Also they do not have silly prices for long weekends. Atleast we haven’t experienced so far.

Moral of story, we could not find anything satisfactory. After spending 2 hours of hiking and horse riding (as my friend put it) we decide to go back. I must say, I enjoyed every single minute of those 2 hours even if it was really taxing on my body once I was back.

The first day of the long weekend was quite an adventure I must say. But then, what the hell, I am sure there are very few people who might have done this!!!

Technorati Tags: Matheran, Hotel Rugby

TECHNOLOGY ????

It’s amazing how much technology has crept into our lives. It’s almost like a necessary evil. We cannot think about a life without a mobile phone or working without a computer these days. If we do not have the latest processor in our computer we feel as if we are living in the Stone Age. It amazes me more so because in a country like India, a mobile phone or a computer was very much a luxury less than a decade ago.

What got me thinking was this television show I watched on Europe’s richest people. They showcased this Indian gentleman called Ratan Chaddha who created the empire of Mexx clothing. In the show they were discussing how this man splurges his millions, and one of his splurges like all very rich people was art. Now art per say does not really interest me since I don’t understand most of it and do not quite understand the arty lot. But in this show, they showcased an art form, which I was completely unaware of. It was called interactive art. Whenever I think of art and art mainly in the form of painting, I can conjure up images of an old man with a dirty palate smeared all over with all possible colours, with clothes painted in all those colours as if he himself were a piece of art than the canvas on which he was trying to bring to life something that he had in his head. I could never ever in my wildest of imagination think of an image of a computer geek sitting in front of a computer screen and using his brains to come up with programs in order to make an image do certain things when touched.

I am not an IT geek like many of my friends but I do use substantial amount of technology in my daily life. I am also not scared of technology like many people I know at work but I always thought that no matter what, there would always be some streams of life wherein one will rely on the creativity of his hands to create something. Art being one of them.

Some smarty might come up with you do use your mind and hands when on a computer. I agree that on a computer you are using your hands on the keyboard but there are a fix set of keys that one uses. One cannot move ones fingers in whichever directions one wants because one will end up with a lot of gibberish then. But then I see things like interactive art and I am compelled to think: whatever happened to good old humans and their creativity? Today we call editing an image on adobe photoshop creativity. We call mixing music on high-end softwares creativity.

Whatever happened to the sounds of beautiful instruments played by hundreds of musicians? I wonder what happened to the joy of getting together the best instrumentalist in his own instrument and putting them all together to form one beautiful piece. I sincerely hope that we do not reach a point wherein such instances become extinct.

Technorati Tags: technology, nirali surati , mexx