February 5, 2010

First Evening in the new city

So where was I?? uhh aaah…. Just reached my apartment, and as told by my colleagues it was at the heart of city, right at the nerve center of all the hustle n bustle….. (psst- it happens to be the only such place around here) ….Let me check with Mr.Google as to whts the exact area of this place, damn y didn’t this exciting (time wasting) task strike me earlier :) …..my place is on the seventh floor and corner most flat…. It did have a very picturesque view from my balcony….



It took me a few chilling seconds outside to take this snap…..n I promised myself to venture out again n again to feel how the whiff of ice cold air feels filling up the lungs…..


Anyways, I was asked to freshen up and come to
“THE TEMPLE”… well tht’s how the SHOPPING MALL here (a.ka. sort of Hyd Central but much larger than that MINUS the cinema halls :( ) had been christened by my colleagues….It’s called the temple ‘coz, we have to/ must visit it daily to gather by daily necessities. It has got ‘all the varieties’ of bread served through various shops (our daily routine breakfast, unless we are prepared to experiment on our own), some Asian (read Chinese) shops, a huge dept store etc etc


I arrive at THE TEMPLE and my colleagues are all the bit excited as any school kid wud be showing off his new compass box….they give a whirlwind tour of the entire place explaining from where I could my necessaries…. In actual they gave subtle hints, bête kal se tu apne aap ghoomega, humse kuch madad ki umeed mat rakh!!! …..

So be it… I decided to lock, stock n barrel for the next few days and told myself to buy some groceries n stuff…. N then I came face to face with the deadliest challenger in my life so far, he wouldn’t talk to me and even if he did I couldn’t understand him…I wasn’t sure if he is the one I want to talk to…. Hmm pardon my poor sense of humour, but here I am talking about the THINGS tht I need to purchase… everything was written in the native language….I couldn’t make head or tail of the items….. there were some 10 or more varieties each of milk, yoghurt, bread, eggs, cheese, n wht not with varied compositions …. N I couldn’t make out where the masala items were…. I read through the ingredients list, tried to decipher something from the image pasted on the bottles, make my own inferences of some words and finally bought my items… n then I realized why my colleagues come here daily, may be they pick the wrong item the day before n come searching for the correct one the next day … !!!!


By the way, my first purchase here was a muffler, everyone scared the ahem ahem out of me and told that I cudn’t survive without it and I take one…. And me being an Indian at heart, wht do I do??? Well, do the arithmetic of how much it costs in Indian rupees and get shocked !!!! This is followed by the same arithmetic of groceries bill and said it aloud
‘OH DAAAMN…*******’ ……


And then we dispersed…. I come back to my place n frantically search through the items to find out my menu for the night… I hoped to find some noodles (Maggie sort, so easy to prepare) and disappointed I am, as I don’t find….. So decide to make the easiest item around here ..DAL (read dal n tomato & not as some wud affectionately call
‘muddapappu’) n I have pickle, so chill maar bête, khana ready !!!! I discovered that the guys who used this apartment earlier were kind enuf lo leave a lot of utensils behind, thus making my task much easier…..


I freshen up again, serve the dinner to myself and eat it…….. Some might ask how it tasted?? Was it harmful to the digestive system?? Did it put ur resistance to test?? … hmm I may not be in a position to answer all of them, but the very fact that I wrote this post means that the MENU wasn’t as harmful to humans as it was perceived to be…. I SURVIVED!!!!!!!! What a ‘nice’ cook I turned out to be and surprised myself!! Actually surprise might be too little a word to describe my horror, amazement, shock, astonishment n .. n… well I ran out of adjectives as always :)


Aahaa…. There we go, I found the subject for my next post… MY COOKING!!! A.k.a MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH (rather my own life :( ) ….

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