Tag: General Nonsense

Vishal vs Apartment

Vishal K. Bharadwaj, circa 1986, in the balcony of his family's apartment in Ghusais, Dubai. Photo by either Keshav or Sneha Bharadwaj.
My mother let me draw on walls. It was 1986, I was three, and we were living in a one bedroom apartment in Ghusais, back when there was nothing there except for a block of already decrepit government flats, Al Mulla Plaza (closed because of a border dispute), and a procession of electrical towers between there and Sharjah.

She got a lot of flack for it, of course. Neighbours would come round and wonder why on earth I was still alive after such a heinous crime, and then look worryingly at their own children as the young ones gaped at the sheer audacity of the red and green scrawls, their eyes luminous with the shock of seeing freedom, tolerance and understanding — and of course, whimsy — for perhaps the first time in their fragile lives. Several adults vowed never to bring their children into contact with my parents, not the first and certainly not the last time that was said to them.

The rationale my mother offered — since the simple truth of “Why not?” was far too much for others to bear — was that since it was a rental, once we moved out the landlord would paint it for the next tenant anyway as per the local norm; if the landlord objected, she was gladly willing to pay for the painting herself. They never objected, but I would have liked to see the look on whoever came to that apartment after we had gone. The building itself was torn down sometime in the 90s to make way for a compound of houses.

It was the only place I ever drew on the walls, and even I am not sure why exactly. The rationale to my three-year-old self probably had something to do with not wanting to waste paper, and the fact that if I drew straight on the walls it would forego entirely the costly and time-consuming framing and hanging processes.

Mostly I just wanted to draw, and my parents wanted great art on the walls, for which I gladly obliged.

Vishal K. Bharadwaj, circa 1986, at the door of his family's apartment im Ghusais, Dubai. Photo by either Keshav or Sneha Bharadwaj.

back to crazy

It takes some time to get used to Dubai. It's been ten days since my return from India, and those days have passed by in a flash. I literally feel like I stepped off the plane yesterday.

Not that this sudden acceleration has in any way been caused by an overabundance of things to do — quite the opposite, in fact. I was in India for less than a month and I can tell you pretty much what I got up to on a day to day basis. Hell, I can probably give you a fairly accurate description of my daily itinerary from last year's trip to India.

I couldn't for the life of me tell you what I ate for dinner the day before yesterday, however. That's the thing about Dubai: for all the fast paced, jet-set lifestyle you see on the surface, the day to day of it is frustratingly uneventful. It's like sitting on a couch watching TV: what's happening on screen may be the most exciting thing in the world, but what you're doing is just sitting there, half asleep.

Time just slips away. The very fact that I've had ten whole days of uninterrupted broadband access and haven't even checked my email is horrible — worse, because I haven't even noticed.

Much of 2006 was like this, of course (I think I may have written around three emails, total) and I've been wrestling with myself to get off my ass and not do a repeat of that whole fiasco.

I felt more alive in India. The trip was hectic and much more 'event-oriented' than I would like. It always felt like I was either coming from, going to, or recoving between some kind of social engagement, but the few moments of just plain doing what I like were bliss.

Eating burning-hot vada pav by the side of the road and not caring that I had flecks of sticky chutney all over my trouser leg (which is far less erotic than it sounds). Slurping the inch-high foam off a cup of filter coffee in a restaurant the size of a small American car. Walking into Landmark bookstore in Andheri for the first time and coming face to face with five solid shelves of graphic novels and manga — the most actual, physical comic books I've seen in any bookstore. Turning a corner and encountering a wedding reception the size of half a football field. Staring a whole Mughlai Paratha with a side of potatoes in the face and actually consuming it, then realising that doing so more than once a year will kill me.

Walking and wading in the endless, innumerable and empty beaches around Shrivardhan. Discovering that the outstanding memory of me in a person I haven't met in ten years is of me cutting loose on a dance floor at some party I vaguely half-remember.

Fending off hordes of red-ribbon-pigtail schoolgirls to climb the bus. Dadar Station road — At any time. First Class Train Compartments, which are like regular train compartments, only without the full body massage and one inch cubed of personal space.

Realising that perfectly ordinary people with perfectly ordinary jobs in a city with perfectly adequate (but crowded) public transport and completely inadequate parking are now buying cars, and therefore going from Bandra to Santacruz by the four-lane highway (which in India, of course, is a seven-and-a-half lane highway) doesn't take ten minutes like it did a year ago, but one and a half hours.

Seeing more prime time TV ads for mutual funds and insurance/investment schemes than shampoos and colas combined, and realising that India is both a lot different and also absolutely the same as when I was a kid. Freaking out the branch manager of a prominet bank by just standing around and not looking like the world was going to end.

During the entire vacation either Samir or I could be heard saying, "When do go on vacation?" It was pretty annoying now and then, but despite it all we did manage a few moments of total fun. It's hard to explain to people that you go on vacation not to either:

a) Meet everyone you're remotely half-related to and stay for rice and curry.
b) Hole up in your place of choice, enter a semi-comatose state and eat rice and curry.
c) Eat rice and curry.

I have nothing against rice and curry. I do have a lot of ill will towards chilli-water disguised as curry that most people seem to think is some kind of measure of your Indian heritage. You aren't a pukka desi is you don't like at least six chillis in your dal*.

* And believe me, dal is by far the mildest of Indian dishes. I think I've elaborated on my general dislike of the term 'curry' and what it has come to represent before, so the short version below will suffice for now.

Try telling these people that chillies were only introduced into India five hundred years ago, that Rama, Krishna, Buddha, the entire Maurya dynasty and most of the Mughals never, ever ate one and would probably look at you funny if you told them it was synonymous with India, and they'll give you the same expression of being genuinely affronted that most Indians get when any of their sacred cows are even slightly questioned.

It's a look I've come to know well.

Also telling people that this whole concept of eating a heavy breakfast of cooked food first thing in the morning is very unhealthy and that you'd prefer a glass of hot water and later some fruits provokes a similar reaction and cries of "That's not our culture!"**

** Actually, it is.

I go to India to be alive. It's easy, because you're thrust into life headfirst and see all of it, even moreso in Mumbai. I guess I'm trying to find life in Dubai, certainly of a verisimilitude that can be found over there. If not I guess I'll have to invent it.

Which brings me back to this site, and you. I've tried the whole designer thing for a while, and it's been nice — I worked on a couple of things last year that were fun and fruitful and I should post about them soon — but I've generally been frustrated and depressed and comatose. Not a great start for someone who wants to rule the known universe and outlying territories.

A couple of years ago I said I'd be better off a couple of years later, and since that hasn't happened — twice — I seriously need something that takes up a large amount of my time that the jet set lifestyle and bevy of beautiful, vapid girlfriends isn't taking up at the moment.

Forget 'back in the saddle' — I need to find me a horse!

Getting the domain was one step (it's allVishal.com for those who didn't read the previous post) and new content should be coming to the site. It's mostly silly stuff, but I hope that it's entertaining and you come back for more. I haven't drawn in ages, but there are fresh sheets of paper waiting right next to me so I should get back to that.

There may be a redesign at some point, but when is anyone's guess. If the content outgrows this current one, then yes (and I hope it does reasonably soon).

Until then, thank you for being here. Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Everything Else.

I'll talk to you soon.

V

five fabulous flavours of interwubbing

It seems that Mumbai, as usual, just keeps on ticking. Trains services are back. Schools and Offices are open. People who don’t want to use the train are apparently being offered lifts by just about anyone on the street with a car or bike. The city was last on a list of ‘Politest Cities’ just a couple of weeks ago.*

* – This was based on three tests, apparently. Seeing if someone kept a door open for you, if someone picked up a paper you dropped and returned it to you, and if a store clerk thanked you for your patronage.

…Sigh…

Look, it’s a culture thing. In Mumbai — especially Mumbai — we consider that if you are able enough, you can and should be allowed to take care of yourself and your stuff, whether it’s a door or a piece of paper. Personally, I have seen both the first two events occur so many times in the city that I don’t even notice any more. It’s not special if someone leaves it up to you to open you own door, it’s not special if someone does it for you.

As far as the last test goes, that is something I find quite annoying, because over here in the ‘civilised world’ I get it at every single PoS, and it is always fake, Fake, FAKE. It was in the training manual for the poor minimum wage guy. It was drilled into his/her head. If anything, I feel sad that people are reduced to a set of rote instructions and actions that are supposed to denote politeness.

Give me the quick eye contact, the half nods, the silent, non-codified,non-standard, unique-to-every-transaction and person and place methods we use in Mumbai. Because that, for us, is genuine. No nakhra. We’re from Mumbai, we despise nakhra.

I think yesterday’s incidents prove beyond a doubt that when the shit hits the fan — really hits the fan — the people there would do things for each other that probably everybody should, but sadly nobody would. Forget that, even during very day life without the backdrop of tragedy, people you have never even said two words to will just do stuff for you that takes your breath away.

So, to conclude, Life Goes On. And so should we. Links:

Up Periscope! Is there a hybrid version with flexible solar-panel skin and regenerative braking systems?

The self-stirring mug. Does it come in an anti-clockwise version for the southern hemisphere? My main problem with this one (other than the obvious point that spoons give you so much more flexibility), is that it takes 2 AAs to power, and still only stirs. Fo that energy cost, why can’t it keep the beverage warm too? How about a frother attachment? My 5 dhiram drink shaker from Daiso has more features, and it doesn’t even require a battery!

When the travel tripod met common sense. Granted, a good solid tripod is an essential, but methinks kit like this will become essential for photographers who like to click stuff off the beaten path, or are just in a hurry (as most photographers usually are).

M$ nixes Win98 support. I still use it. It works okay. The trick is to use it as your OS and then only use Open Source software on it to avoid viruses and stuff. Loaded Xp on my work comp a month ago and it’s a really problematic system at the best of times, but some new software just only works with it right now. When I actually don’t have any projects pending that necessitates having productivity software on hand at all time, I’m going to have to comprehensively switch to Linux. Already use a liveCD of Mepis when I take my netcomp’s disk over to the other one to transfer files and clean it up, since XP won’t let me load new hardware easily.

This is cool in the dangerous-enough-that-no-helmet-can-save-you kind of way. Forget the snow, I want a road version!

Like the Irishman said, “I thought you were after the 100 pounds in my shoe!”

This billboard is quite nice. Of course, in this part of the world McDonalds isn’t considered a place to eat before lunch time (and their menu reflects that), so I still find the concept of breakfast there — especially the “breakfast burger” — disturbing.

And finally…
The Most Memorable moment from the Biggest Event in the Entire World.

…Now in playable form!

re: train bombs

I’m Okay (well, as okay as can be watching the news from 2000km away),
all the family I have in Mumbai is okay. Phone lines are jammed or
down, so things are a bit of a mess and can’t get in touch with people
except through the net of all things, but haven’t heard any bad news
yet.

At least, y’know, other than the obvious.

interwubbing 001

I figure I end up mindlessly reading newsfeeds anyway, so I might as well inflict some of the pain on my delightful reader(s).

Self Heating Dinners
Years from now, depressed and lonely bachelors everywhere will snuggle up to their warm, inviting curry-flavoured pillows.

This looks nice. I read a review, and it is refreshingly neither some kind of awkward Magic-a-la-Hollywood movie (it’s called The Illusionist, nor Edward Norton Does Shrek). Plus it has Jessica Biel in it, so I’m sold.

Edward Norton does Shrek. eeeew.

Wow. Zhang Yimou and Chow Yun Fat. Unfortunately, judging by how both Hero and House of Flying Daggers were handled, I’ll probably get to see this on DVD long before the theatrical release in these parts around 2012 (which will be an English dub anyway, so what’s the use?)

I get all hot under the collar about Ron Howard making a Straczynski-penned movie called The Changeling (a Garfield Logan movie! Woohoo! Sign up Adrian Grenier!), and then it turns out to be some kind of cheap little grey-toned thriller that will no doubt waste Nicole Kidman/Charlize Theron/Diane Lane (or other 35 actresses who have won/been nominated for an award) in a sleepy, underdeveloped character with the latest iteration of the Haley Joel Osment meme playing the creepy Son/NotSon. No doubt, with JMS writing, it will turn out that NotSon is the emissary of an ancient alien race who goes around seeding planets with their cosmic bingo-bongo.

I ask you, Ron Howard, isn’t it so much easier to round up a bunch of animals and turn them green in post? You’re the guy who made Splash, for Mary Mags’s sake!

Somewhere, deep down, JK Rowling just loves to watch fanpersons convulse.

Price of car and pedigree of brand are directly proportional to ugliness of resulting vehicle (and make no mistake, while this is a mockup, the eventual one will be a total eyesore. Hell, I remember seeing Cayenne mockups that looked
nice once). In other news, BMW X3, still no, no, no.

But, just to prove that there is an exception to every rule…
BTW, saw one of these, brand new, red and black, on the back of a shipping truck making its way from the airport. I hope and pray that the owner doesn’t wreck it before I get to see it drive by (3 out of 4 of the local Porsche Carrera GTs, including the black one I saw once, are now sadly in the scrap heap).

I love it. Does it have cupholders?

Love it more. Does it have a DAP dock?

Who’s yer daddy?

The Nigerian Carving Industry is more developed than I thought.

James Bond tech, when processed for production in the real world, always ends up looking like something from the Boys 6-12 aisle of the Toy Store.

A Bruce Lee Musical. Can’t be worse than Dragon.

And finally.

…I can’t wait for the pr0n version.

back to basics

Uh huh.

So, to recap. Spent the last four months generally depressed and unwilling to do anything about it. I haven’t taken a single photo or written a scrap of anything in that time, save for some mind-numbing work (which, oddly enough, seems to happen okay).

I owe many of you a very many things, not least of which are apologies. Let’s see if we can get this started up again.

media-shedia

There’s a nice interview with Aamir Khan on Tehelka where the actor chews the fat about the state of the news media in India today (here’s a hint: it sUXX0Rz). It’s nice to see somebody who’s not afraid to finally call the whole thing stupid, and Khan does it with trademark meticulousness while still retaining an easygoing manner.

Granted, Tehelka itself is not what I would call above petty sensationalist journalism — this is, after all, the same organisation that kicked off the whole Defense Department bribery sting operation stuff, then started moaning when they were called up on bribery charges themselves (look, there’s a tape of you giving someone a bribe — you can’t expect not to be arrested just because you’re a journalist) — but thankfully the reporter is forced to take a back seat to AK. It isn’t really eye-opening for anyone with a brain who has switched on any news channel in the past few years, but it makes for good reading, and hopefully a few who had got caught up in the frenzy of tabloid gossip that passes for news *coughcough*dad*coughcough* might finally switch the channel to some good, honest belly dancing and save me the annoyance of the day’s ‘hot stories’.

piri-piri

It’s raining outside, and has been since around 8 am. The first shower was a good long one — not heavy by Mumbai standards — but certainly the heaviest rain I’ve seen here in a while.

Now it’s down to being ‘scattered’ as the weathermen say. I’m Indian, so we love the rain, and we look forward to it no matter what. If an Indian says, “It’s a gorgeous day!” they probably mean that it’s overcast and raining, vis à vis the traditional warm and sunny definition of the term.

It’s a gorgeous day.

The tennis open is going on across town. Yesterday the papers were plastered with pictures of Maria Sharapova playing tennis in a makeshift court inside Ski Dubai, which is this town’s latest hot thing. When the Burj Al Arab was the hot thing they had Tiger Woods teeing-off from the centre of the suspended helipad a few dozen storeys up. Now all that is passé, apparently, as the Mall of the Emirates (*huge exclamation point*–third biggest in the world–*huge exclamation point*) with its attached ski-slope and snow park has taken centre stage. From the top level parking the ski slope looms above you, a pulsating plasma display of lights along a strip in the side. It
looks like the giant nacell of the Starship Enterprise, and from that angle it’s very impressive, and immediately brings up earnest desires of building and owning starships — instead of ski slopes.

Haven’t been inside the snow area — somehow the fact that I’ve never seen actual natural snow makes me reluctant to try the manufactured version. Up against the large glass viewing windows some of it gets thrown by kids, our faces the target. I put my nose up to the glass and take a look at it, smeared there. Looks like ice chips. Doesn’t look like the crystalline fractal flake patterns I would expect from real snow.

All this for a romp in a large freezer?

I’ll wait for the real thing.

Sharapova’s quote on playing tennis inside an artificial ski resort in the middle of a desert kingdom is, understandably, “Surreal.” I wonder what she’s saying now, standing on the edge of a drenched tennis court in an otherwise parched desert kingdom. There have been more sirens heard in the streets in the past hour than in the past three months. Obviously all those top-of-the-line cars with their ABS and intelligently designed tyres are in severely lacking in top-of-the-line squishy flesh things operating them.

Unlike the rest of the world, Indians just love rain, so you can imagine how Indians react in this country where this is probably the only full day (if it lasts that long) of rain we’ll get all year. Anjali called me up in the morning, and she’s been calling everyone, rallying them with stories of masala chai and bhajias. The chai I can
do, but there’s no chick-pea flour in the house (or any potatoes or onions) so no bhajias.

My mind wanders to chill breezy monsoon evenings that seem both like yesterday and lifetimes ago, of slicing potatoes and whatever else we had on hand to experiment with (mushrooms, broccoli) while my mother mixed up the batter. I’ve eaten a lot of bhajias, and so have a lot of people I know, but all of us agree that my mother made the best ones. Crisp and crunchy with the merest, milimetre-thin layer of soft batter between the outer shell and the steaming, floury slice of potato. Salty and spicy with the slight unfathomable (umami?) taste of the chick-pea, the rounding, mineral taste of cumin and the metal tang of ajwain. We never had the need for chutney with those, even when it was around.

It’s funny, but you never really think of asking you mother to teach you her recipe for bhajia batter because she might be dead in a few years.

Meanwhile it’s sad, pudgy, spongy things from the local cafe. The closest I’ve ever had was this vada-pav guy opposite Fountain, tucked away under the arches of one of the buildings. It was great, but not quite the same. Too much salt, no ajwain. Also, 2,000 kilometres away. On my last trip to Ghadeshwar (pictures of the place are in the work page) I managed to snag the last batch of bhajias from the one stall propped up on the slope. Little yellow chips, gone soft in the damp atmosphere, but still bhajias in the rain. The classic combination.

I vaguely remember learning the recipe from her, and it was more of an hour-long experiment with different consistencies and spice-levels and the thinness of the slices. I get the feeling that each time she madeit she taught herself again, and it was willingly forgotten in the subsequent eating, the gulping down of too-hot, gingery chai and too-strong South-Indian coffee. Part of the fun of cooking I learned from her was the forgetting of things. To re-learn the process every time is a vital part of me. I get the same feeling when I’m drawing or writing or taking a photograph. The sense of discovery is as important
as the sense of successful operation.

The number of times we’ve been in the kitchen — especially in the later years when Samir or I were doing the hands on work and she was instructing — and and some point halfway through the traditional recipe we’d just decide to chuck something in or change something is far too many for me to recall.

When I look through her handwritten recipe books I am always struck by the fact that there are no ingredient lists — the recipes directly begin with instructions. Heat Oil. Add this. Add that. Cook it. A dash of this, etc, etc. There are some rudimentary measurements on the way, but that’s all. Again, it’s the very visceral nature of just starting up the fire and putting things into action; cooking as a private performance, as meditative self-discovery. She never started cutting things up before she lit the fire (I do. The onions are more evenly cut, but the food is a little dead, if you know what I mean). She never cut tomatoes on a chopping board, prefering instead to slice uneven chunks right over the pot.

No one can teach you how to cook. You have to teach yourself.

Hmm, the mosque-guy has started a speech. He never does that on Thursdays. Must be the rain. If you think we love rain, imagine an entire culture that is only used to seeing it once a year.

The rain, like good bhajias, is a very elusive thing.

Nevertheless, it’s a gorgeous day.

V

reesetto!

Oh look, a new year.

Hard to believe we’re already in the second half of the 2000s. Just yesterday we were all getting hot and bothered about the millennium bug, and those silly sunglasses with “2000” won them were making their appearance on drunk faces in Times Square (one wonders how the manufacturer plans to tackle the 2011 edition?).

I’m back in Dubai, where, if you’ve been keeping up with the news, we’re having what can only be described as not the best start to the new year. The ruler of this emirate died yesterday, and the funeral is going on as I type this. The much-touted annual Shopping festival was all set to start and has been put on hold. I suppose they’ll start it up by Eid next week, but until then the roads are relatively empty, malls are apparently full of closed shops except in the food court and a million dollars worth of fireworks that was set to kick off the festival is now sitting idle.

As I’m not a fan of fireworks, that last bit comes as some twisted variety of good news.

Other than that the new year seems to be going as well as the last. I have somewhat recovered from wedding-itis though the sore throat and dry cough still persist, not helped by the fact that while Mumbai was unusually cold — 12ºC at night — Dubai is much colder and drier. I’m suddenly much more thankful for the yellow Minnesota Vikings hoodie my cousin bought me from the states. I don’t know much about the Vikings, except that they play that completely unfathomable variety of sport called ‘football’ (I can, however, shout “First Down!” at random intervals). Also I live in a country where the temperature is well above 30ºC for most of the year — a thick hoodie is the last thing I thought I’d need. But, lookie, now I can do the morning walk without freezing to death.

(Look, I realise that for most of my American friends 12ºC is considered a nice spring day, but this is the tropics, and that too in a metropolis that suffers from acute Heat Island effect. If you want to eat an ice-cream stick you start at the bottom where the drip is and hope that the top of it doesn’t fall off before you get to it!)

Yes, I just spent the majority of this post talking about the weather. Well, the year so far has been that interesting, and other than taking a general survey of what needs to change in my life if I need to fulfill my dreams (lose weight/eat well, clean house/learn to cook better, develop skills/make money) I haven’t been up to much.

I owe all of you emails of various lengths, and so off I go to type them up.

Happy New Year.

V

where, when, and what

If you came in and wondered what the test post was all about (and why I’m not deleting it), then here’s the explanation. The site, and then the blog have been acting up recently. First, the site itself was deleted for a while (in what I can only assume was a Brazil-style clerical error, since even Oliver the helpul customer support person didn’t know why it was flagged as in violation of TOS). Then it came back up, I finally managed to drag myself off my increasingly heavy ass long enough to put up an “I’m Alive!” post and…

…the blog failed to load. 404 errors everywhere on everywhich browser, despite the file showing up in the FTP view. I managed to get into Pivot and the blog came back up when I deleted the “I’m Alive!” post, and no matter how many times I tried, or in how many different ways, that block of Voodoo text just continued to render the blog unreachable (I’ve saved that piece of plain ascii in the hopes that one day I may upload it to the customer service forums of an invading alien race, thereby crashing their entire fleet in spectacular Independence Day/not-so-spectacular 3001: Final Odyssey style).

Which led to the plain vanilla test post preceeding this, which didn’t crash the blog, but now it was only reachable if you typed in the entire address from http to .html — so, basically all links to the blog were screwed. Disgusted, I just decided to leave it alone for a while and concentrate on some offline work (not like there are many photos to show anyway).

Today the address link problem seems to have fixed itself and all is working, but I don’t want to take the chance of deleting the test post and having the entire thing shut me out again.

(…um, unless this post does the same… arg.)

More news forthcoming, including a hopefully more active posting schedule, some photos, some reviews, some general nonsense.

And a site redesign. Hope to get that done before November, when, as some of you know, I will be otherwise occupied.

More on why I’ll be occupied in the next post.

Hope this works, thank you all for your continued visits to the site and the blog, and see you tomorrow.

V

swagatam, baby

Welcome to allVishal.

I'm Vishal, and this site should contain all of me that is fit to print
(which is quite a bit, really). You will notice that comments are a lot
easier to put in, have a lot of funky emoticons like monkies and cows,
and also you can use textile to format stuff better (best of all, no
registration, although that is an option — you can post anonymously
too).

So… there may not be many photos for a while (digicam is back in
Dubai being put to some professional use by my brother, while I'm in
Mumbai watching movies and getting drunk on gingery sugarcane juice).

If I can get this old laptop to work for more than ten minutes, you
might see an illustration, or some writing. Unlike the dear departed
iLevel, the content here will be more varied (I can have categories
now! whee!)

So do leave a comment and tell me how you are, what you're wearing
currently, and how many partly-bald men it takes to change a hairdryer
fan.

Vishal

manwich

To complete a triptych of food-related photos, the other day I popped down to the local Malayalee sandwich juice guy and ordered, among other things, a chicken fillet sandwich. Upon getting home, I was happy to see that they had labelled the boxes so I didn’t have to open them up and test them.

Of course, what he had written on the box did strike me as a little disconcerting at first:

There’s no accounting for taste.

Speaking of Malayalees and food, yesterday I was at the airport seeing someone off, when who should walk by but that uber-star of Malayalee cinema (not counting Shakeela, of course!), the media magnate of the meeshe and mundu, Mohanlal.

I had half a mind to shout, “Hey, your restaurant sucks!” but seeing as I was surrounded by literally hundreds of my more southern Malabar-coast cousins, all of whom swarmed towards the star the nanosecond they caught sight of him, I decided against it. I wouldn’t have lasted more than three seconds anyway. This was not the time to be going toe-to-toe with the (rather hefty) Mohanlal on the matter of how the prawn curry was inconsistent (not to mention the fact that his restaurant is called “Mohanlal’s Taste Buds” — I mean, what da fug?).

The Bangalorean parts of my genes told me that the proper thing to do was to write to the Deccan Herald, in a prolix letter that must begin, “Sir, Esteemed Yourself is being hailed by Humble Myself to bring to kind attention of All-Selves the matter of…etc, etc.”

The Mangalorean parts of me wanted to forget such trivial matters, and to discuss the price of gold in a lengthy inner monologue.

The Mumbaikar part of me told both of them to shut up.

This reminds me of the time I saw Nikhil Advani in Oxford Bookstore, Mumbai. I didn’t recognise him at the time (“Hmm, that guy looks familiar.” “Of course he does, he looks like Droopy!” “No, I mean, besides that…”), but I’m pretty sure I would have wanted to say, “Couldn’t you have just killed Shah Rukh quick and saved us all from a bitch of a migraine?”

Today in the supermarket I passed the condiments aisle, and legions of little Mohanlals grin at me from their branded pickle bottles, the contents of which could probably eat through steel in less time than it takes to toss an appam.

He may have millions of fans, and a restaurant, and his own brand of pickles, but I have Chicken Fellate Sandwich.

And on a final note, I drove by Simran’s Appa Kadai, and tell me, why on earth would I want to go to a restaurant that serves some Punjabi girl’s father kadai-style?