Mumbai Food Guide III

I have not reviewed restaurants for a long time but it does not mean I have stopped paying visits to them. However, what has changed now is that I feel a bit grown up and just good food can’t get my attention.

Let me start from down south. A place I visit rarely these days. But the other day I was at this beautiful restaurant called Suzette. Italian crepes and brilliant coffee – That’s what makes it a nice place to hang out while you wait for the play to start at NCPA. The best part, they really care to ask how you would like your coffee, juice or food and they show that they care about your food. It’s a cosy little place and just so perfect for an evening of crepes and conversations.

Le Pain Quotidien is the other new Restaurant near Gateway and though I can never get myself to pronounce its name, it makes up for it by serving some amazing breakfast. However, it needs to have more veg options. I think it has a nice location for the shutterbugs. It’s a good idea to have time in your hands, your camera in your bags and wait for the sun to rise up above Mumbai. Somehow, South Mumbai is one of the only places in Mumbai where time seems to stop for a moment. And you can sip on your coffee and read a book. In South Mumbai and in my secret coffee day in Bandra.

Wich Latte, though a chain, actually serves really nice sandwiches if you care to walk down Colaba Causeway and look for a cute little shop. The service is a bit lazy but the sandwiches and the choice of breads make up for it. The coffee is average so you might want to see what other beverage is on the menu.

If you travel down north, you might want to stop for a nice lunch at Gallops, the restaurant at Mahalakshmi Race Course. The cuisine is mostly Indian and authentically so. The ambience is old world, the clientele are the regulars and you just might feel a little out of the place because clearly in your jeans and T shirt, you just don’t seem to belong there. But if any restaurant outside the gymkhanas, Jimmy Boy and Café Britannia can remind me of an old Bombay which was not yet Mumbai, this might just do the trick.

Coming back to my love of Mumbai, Bandra, the choices keep getting interesting. However, the two biggest disappointments also come from here. The first was Pali Village Café. This is a place where the ambience is one of my favourites and if you walk in on a lazy Saturday afternoon post the rush, you will be delighted with their service. However, you walk in on a weekend night and the waiter will be standing over your shoulder ready to swoop down before you can put down your soup spoon. Also somehow the place that has a fatter wine menu than a food one makes me a bit uncomfortable. If you have such an impressive wine menu, you need to have people who understand wine.

The second one that really really upset me was Eat Around the Corner. That’s the reincarnation of one of my old favourites - Just Around the Corner. But this is one reincarnation we could have done without. The pizzeria and Costa Coffee is gone, the entire concept of making your own salad is a thing of the past, the food is still good but they decided to put up a sign whose gist was “hey guys, if you come in here, spend at least 250 bucks and don’t treat this like a coffee place.” I walked out the first time I saw it. The next time I went back, thankfully someone had the sense to remove the message and I had to agree that the minestrone soup was really nice.

Khan e Khas on the other hand wowed me with their service. It is the poor cousin down the road to the well known Mini Punjab. But the food is excellent and one night V and I decided to order in a few stuff. Now we ourselves were embarrassed with the quantity we were ordering but the guy said, “Even if you order only 2 roomalis, we will deliver that.”  Now that’s service I would pay for.

Yellow Tree is my favourite Bandra joint in recent times – not because of its heavenly curly fries, but because it’s perhaps the only place in Bandra which can boast of some space and allows the luxury of a slow and nice dinner over conversations. The food choices are a little strange and I am never sure of what is the cuisine they excel in. But even then, the curly fries, OH!!! The Curly Fries.

The last in this list had to be Nanak Sai. It’s not a restaurant you would find in the regular food guides. But for us it has been the source of numerous breakfasts, late evening snacks and light dinners – you get the gist. It was one of the most affordable places until recently and even now the value for money remains extremely high when ordering in. I loved the way it’s located. There have been days when I have picked up a book from Danai, the lovely quaint bookstore beside it, ordered a cup of tea or a juice and read the book under the spreading shade of the tree outside the shop. But then someone decided to open a Costa Coffee and the cacophony drove me off :)

Happy Hogging :)

Peace

I feel at peace with myself – at long last. I know I can now look forward with hope, given to me by my past. While I know this might not be making any sense to you, I just wanted to write about it.

“And the world is busting at its seams

And you're just a prisoner of your dreams

Holding on for your life 'cause you work all day

To blow 'em away in the night” Bruce Springsteen

I just realized sometime over the last few months that who you were once decides not only who you are now but also who you can be. We all carry baggage, of varying sizes. And sometimes they just don’t let us be free. We keep on evaluating things as they might have been in the past and miss the present. And the dreams – that’s when they get blown away - for they are as strong as we let them be in the present. A dream kept safe for the future when you’ll be forty and have enough money for yourself and your family and your cockiness is just no longer a real one. For at forty, you never know what will come and hit you.

“Meeting Across the River

Hey, Eddie, can you lend me a few bucks

And tonight can you get us a ride

Gotta make it through the tunnel

Got a meeting with a man on the other side” - Bruce Springsteen

It leads us to question, to doubt, to judge and sometimes in the most extreme of cases to hate – not just ourselves or a best friend but at times life itself. You grapple at that point of time and that’s when a strong arm of a friend who refuses to leave your side however selfish you might have been pulls you out of that gloom and you realize that you have to meet the man on the other side – you have to face the other you.

There was this movie called Aks. And if I remember rightly the tagline was – there’s someone in your mirror and it’s not you. Even without taking the help of the supernatural, it’s scary when you realize you don’t actually know the person who looks back at you everyday in the mirror.

She once believed...in every story he had to tell...

One day she stiffened...took the other side...

Empty stares...from each corner of a shaped prison cell...

One just escapes...one's left inside the well...

And he who forgets...will be destined to remember...oh...oh...oh... - Pearl Jam

It’s difficult to forget. Even without knowing we all have been playing The Game. And when you can’t, you end up remembering with a vile taste in your mouth; the pungent, putrid taste that leaves behind only bitterness. But today I know I can look forward with the strength from my past. The ghosts are buried, I hope, for the one last time.

“Time it goes so fast

When you're having fun” - The Bangles

(Every time I come back and play my audio cassettes, I get few jewels out. On the last night of my supposed annual leave which mostly was work from home, Bruce Springsteen came to my rescue. 2 of the quoted texts are his songs)

The Face Off

My family has been the traditional Bengali Middle Class family, unassuming, modest, loving their Rabindranath, giving their children the best they can, sacrificing their own comforts but insisting that they know their poetry. Didi and I have been brought up in a fashion that makes both of us extremely connected to our roots. But also it made us rebellious. That I guess is in the Bong gene. We always debate the status quo (and some say we just debate). 

Didi revolted and she was the first who embraced Sukanta Bhattacharya as an alternative to Rabindranath. But she was the stud. She straddled both the worlds beautifully. Somewhere though, my path went completely tangential. Amongst my entire extended family, I would be placed in the bottom tertile when it comes to knowing Rabindranath. Sometime in my second semester at Pilani I faced the Big Bang of my musical sojourn. Different sounds, beats, rhythms, lyrics, cultures, folk, rock, pop everything erupted in my mind and somewhere around then a gentleman called Anjan Dutta made some of his most memorable music influenced highly by the jazz masters and Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.

When he had come into the Bengali music scenario, the choice of the elite was still Suman Chattopadhyay with “Tomake Chai” and “Gaanwala”. The masses (and us in school) were being wooed by Nachiketa. Everyone had fallen in love with Nilanaja. Bengali “Jeebonmukhi” songs were at its crescendo in the mid nineties to early 2000s. Anjan Dutta had a very niche following and his first album was one of his lesser memorable ones.

Anjan Dutta’s music slowly became a part of who I was, led by his album “Asamay”. His songs reminded me of my home in North Calcutta, his words always brought back the city I had left behind within the four walls of my tiny hostel room. And then I would play the song “Janla” and look out of my window losing myself. And I somehow kept myself away from Rabindranath.

I belonged to an age which represented an exodus of Bongs from Cal – for studies, for work, for a life in a city which slowly had brought itself to a state of flickering hope and for me Rabindranath became very distant. I read him like I read a Charles Dickens. I loved Dickens but I always believed he was talking of a time beyond mine.

This time in Calcutta, it was time for a face off. There was Noukadubi, which you might have seen in Hindi as Kashmakash and ‘Ranjana ami aar asbona’. Rabindranath and Rituporno against Anjan Dutta. A new Calcutta, vibrant, arrogant and finally a lot more experimental.

Noukadubi was classic Rabindranath. If you had the misfortune of not reading it earlier, you would be on the edge of your seats trying to figure out what happens next. And the story – such a bold story on human emotions can perhaps be written only by someone like him at such an age – in a flippant note he’s the only one who can take on Rajnikanth. There is not a single season in a year, not a single moment in a day and not a single human emotion in a lifetime which Rabindranath has not touched with his prose, his poetry and his music. And Raima Sen finally proved that she is worthy of the legendary inheritance that she carries with her.

Ranjana on the other hand was what I had expected it to be. Well I did not expect to see a topless Anjan Dutta for around 70% of the movie, but that aside, it was autobiographical and an honest effort in being so.

But it also posed to me many important questions – what is our relationship with our protégé? Do we have any right to control their lives? Do we rejoice in their success but want them to be forever indebted to us? Do we want to get into their deepest, darkest secrets but insulate our own from them? Do we stifle them? Do we cry when they leave? Do we want to live forever through them? Can we ever be friends again?

Ranjana is not a masterpiece. It is a sketch by an extremely talented man who at times brings himself down to play to the galleries. The naming of the film is perhaps the best example. Noukadubi on the other hand is a gem. But Ranjana is more important to me as it makes me sit face to face with myself in all its rawness which the complex intricacies of human interactions in Noukadubi can not. And Porno Mitra has the capabilities of being a fantastic actress. If only she keeps her head over her shoulders.

Anyway, the verdict rests with the people who will go to watch the movies. But to me, it was the same kind of face off I once used to encounter in the corner room in Budh Front Wing. And after listening to Shesher Kobita, I would feel an emptiness and put Priyobondhu on.

The Best Spy Movie Ever

Cars has been one of my favourite animation movies of all times. It was not the best animation movie made by Disney but it was classic Disney from start to the finish. It had honour, honesty, the hero dithering and finally the triumph of good intentions over evil and the confirmation of the belief that good guys do not necessarily finish last. The one scene that keeps playing before my eyes even today is the one where Lightning McQueen forfeits his race so that the retiring legend completes his last. This was what respect and integrity was all about, as taught in early childhood and to a guy grasping for answers in a foreign land, it left an indelible impression.

Cars II was a completely different story – an out and out spy thriller with unbelievable car chases, an evil conglomerate, friendship, trust and home coming. In fact in terms of storyline, I would keep it even higher than a Casino Royale. And I know here the purists will shriek in fright and cross their hearts but that’s what it is. The scriptwriters have been both smart and cheeky, marrying images of our very own neighbourhood cars to that of the spy stories of the cold war era.

The other important thing about the movie was that it was about Mater all the way. He is the real hero and has the larger screen presence. Imagine if in a Munnabhai movie, Circuit gets the meatier role. Perhaps that’s what animation lets you do. The bumbling tow truck comes of his own in the movie and uses his honest innocence and at times idiocy to save the world, the Queen of England and of course McQueen.

What I love best about this sequel is that after a long long time comes an animation movie where the storyline is not a slave of its past success. The characters are the same but that’s just about it. There’s finally an alternate world of cars out there who are living out lives of their own and the movies being made out of their lives are all unique and distinct.

The favourite scene? Well the foodie in me can’t forget Mater and his confusion with wasabi. Well, many great men, women and cars in the past have confused it with pistachio ice-creams.

Only in the wonderland of Disney can Maters become Heroes. And that’s why whatever happens with the world of Animation the world over (even happenings like Mars Needs Moms) I still return to Disney to convince myself that you do not ever need to choose between morality and integrity.

Keep Moving Forward. That’s what Disney magic is all about. (Ok that was from Meet the Robinsons)

What Happened?

Somehow I needed to post something and the unfinished food blog was just not the thing I wanted to write about - I wanted the wolves to be by my side in the lonely airport aisle, but they were all away - in Delhi, in Bangalore, on a train to Orissa; across the world; scattered and far from my life.

And it was a friend's birthday. I went to his blog and found this. And I felt I could now go to sleep on the flight.

Tell me a story
Of tomorrow
Of purple dreams
And orange hope

And a rainbow walk
Where I never tire

The Stories Men Tell

It has been long since I have written about the movies I have watched. Honestly speaking there has been not a single one that I have watched and gone “Wow!!! I must recommend them to my friends.” But then I have never judged movies. Every one has a story to tell.

Take for example, Limitless. A man becomes super intelligent by having a pill which can destroy him in the long run like all drugs. While the change he was undergoing was brilliantly documented, the plot went haywire; people were killing each other and suddenly we knew that the protagonist will one day become the President of the US of A.

X Men First Class with all its promise, failed to deliver, at least for a X Men loyalist like me. Everywhere people are going gaga over Erik and Charles and the subtlety of their relationship and how one becomes Magneto and the other Professor X. But I found both the actors wanting. Perhaps it was also because of the script which had gems like, “you need to find the point between rage and serenity.” We were guffawing at the theatre. All super hero movies must speak about the journey towards understanding their inner powers. X Men First Class lacked it. The storyline is a standard one. The evil Sebastian Shaw had killed Magneto’s mother when he was young at a concentration camp and he was searching for revenge. Charles wanted to get the mutants together and work for the greater good and the Cuban Missile crisis was caused by Sebastian Shaw. As V put it, the only saving grace was Hugh Jackman’s guest appearance.

Shaitan was a movie which as S put it, tried to be “edgy for the sake of being edgy.” It could have been a great psychological thriller but it failed to be. The worst part was that you could not connect to the movie as something that’s happening around you. Of course, the stories came straight out of a Mumbai Mirror front page but then you never feel connected to them. The reason why the movie failed to excite me was that it was brilliant in parts and the parts were disjointed. The brilliance however was in the picturisation of the song “Khoya Khoya Chand”. Worth a watch just for the song.

The Pirate returned with Penelope Cruz and the franchisee-ing of everything under the sun is just getting plain irritating. It’s just like refusing to launch any new Brand because that will cost a lot. A certain creative bankruptcy is evident everywhere in the movie industry today. The story was similar, the acting saved only by Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz spoke through her lines and one could sense that the stories now had fallen into a set pattern.

The Panda was back too. In all his awesomeness and like last time showed the humans what it meant to be a Dragon Warrior, what it meant to take up one’s responsibility with pride, what it meant to face inner demons and the outer ones. But I think the one who stole the show here was the villain. Brilliant portrayal of how anyone can become evil. The movie just made me realize, how feeble we were when standing up against our inner evil. While watching Kung Fu Panda II, I wondered if 3D was worth it at all. It just doesn’t give me any extra joy, the glasses are bad across theatres in India and after the movies my eyes always cry for some rest.

And finally there was Stanley ka Dabba. Maybe the storyline was not the perfect, but it takes a great lot of talent to direct so many kids in all their naturalness. I think the greatest gift for me while watching the movie was to go back to my school days and remember how important the tiffin box was to all of us. It was when the first bonds of loyalty were created and the innocence of our hearts blossomed unfettered.

With a flurry of movies not meeting my expectations, I wait for Cars II and the last Harry Potter adventure. And I wait for someone to give me Cinema Paradiso once again to watch. Landmark and Crossword disappoint me with their collection. But I know the movies find me, for I never act snooty and choose between them.

Till then I can watch Ready, again and again :)

The Second Rains

In school, it was about running out of the class to quickly stand under the first drops. And then run back because you can’t let the teachers scold you in front of the class. After school, it was about taking your shoes in your hands, roll up your trousers and wade through the waters before they start stinking with the drains overflowing. You just needed to ensure that when you neared home, you braced yourself for mom breathing fire and love on you. On those days mom seemed like a dragon – fuming because I got wet and concerned about me getting unwell.

In Rajasthan, it was about being on my back on the terrestrial sky as the rains and the hail hit me and yet I knew that the deserts would be full of flowers soon. In Bangalore it was about the dripping dew drops in the morning. But Mumbai took the joy of the first rains away. The first rains were the ones that took the pollution from the skies and washed the city streets of months of sweat and frayed tempers. Last year as I had walked out embracing the rains, it was as if the skies were returning whatever filth we had sent towards it.

This year it was about the second rains. I let the first rains go. Like memories of the past. It was time to move on. And the second rains came, to a city cleansed of its anger. As I walked out of the squash court, uncharacteristically angry with the world around me it started. The torrents came without relent and everyone around was standing under the shades and smiling. And it just changed the world around. With a spring in my steps, I walked out and the enormity of the situation hit me. It was the Second Rain and yet it felt like the First.

The laptop was secured and the mind was free. The rains washed away the anger, the frustration and the feeling of awesomeness returned. After about 15 minutes of being the envy of Mumbaikars who were trying to squeeze in between the shades on the closed shops, one rare empty auto screeched to a halt at my side and shivering I walked into it.

But then if you have decided to be a child of the rains, the universe conspires to bring you closer to your elements. On top of a highway the auto stuttered to a stop. And in the blinding rain, with the rains misting the spectacles, the highway monsters with their yellow eyes looked like peaceful puppets. Everyone was smiling. 

And I walked for 75 minutes. Under the rain, with broken twigs under my feet and a song in my heart I walked towards inner peace.

For inner peace is sometimes just about being happy and laughing away the blues.

Or midnight coffee. Or a story about two IAS officers and human Jack Daniels. Or watching Prem Amar on a Sunday afternoon.

Inner peace probably is about believing in Friendship.