Birthdays, and feeling blaaah
Friday was Ishaan's first birthday, and we all got together with the Sulaimans at MEG for a little to-dooo! Of course, the kid's not gonna remember much, but I guess the first few birthdays are for the parents and grandparents, to some extent a social neccessity. It was really fun though, brought back alot of memories of other birthdays, namely Daniella and Zayd badsha's birthday back in the day when Shal and I would be there bright and early, ready to blow up hundreds of balloons. Ok, maybe not quite that many, but it was a fair amount - needless to say, we were blue in the face! hehe!
Naina had stopped by for lunch earlier, so wonderful to see her - she's been working hard on her masters, and is getting ready to start working as a family counselor soon. Alot has happened in both our lives in the last three years, so we basically spent two or three hours catching up, before I had to leave for the birthday festivities. In between I was also entertaining an electrician and the telephone repair man - which made for alot of confusion at one point.
Arrived at MEG, about an hour later than scheduled, Shal was completely frazzled - she had spent most of the morning decorating the garden, and supervising balloon blowing, etc. After shooing her back into the house to get ready, I took to helping Hussein with the finishing touches, which included decorating the front gate. Apparently, minutes after I put up the balloons on the gate, some random kids ran by and plucked them off, much to Arika's dispair -- she came running from the kitchen, yelling, followed by mama - who was a little baffled - I of course, was completely oblivious to it all. Eh, whats a couple of balloons I say. Anyhoo, the streamers were still up, all served its purpose - and some kids got to play with the balloons - all g in the h - as the dc-peeps say ;)
Soon all the tots started flowing in, there were only about 8 kids and their moms ... they all dived into the little plastic blow up pool of toys, and had quite a blast - EVEN AKBAR JAANU! As I may have mentioned in previous posts, the weather here has been pretty fantastic - very pleasant, not too hot, in fact not hot at all, theres a wonderful evening breeze that flows through the city. The only issue is that its pretty overcast most of the time - but it hasn't really been raining. HOWEVER, as the kids came in, it seemed like there was going to be a cloud burst - so mama and Rohaan called for some cake cutting and snacks serving. Figured, might as well get it all out of the way -- so we had a little sing song, cut the cake, and just as we were about done - down came the rains. AAAAAh... subha'anAllah! Of course, everyone rushed inside with the kids, we ran about grabbing plates of food and the cakes to get out of the rain, gathered up the toys, etc. In less than five minutes, I was soaked, not too much, but enough to get me to put up a post entitled "blug" -- coz thats how I feel today [Sunday]. Been sneezing and coughing since yesterday, running a slight fever ... uuuuugh, yech. Anyhoo, so I've been laying low for the past two days -- trying to get this out of my system, inshaAllah I'll get it out soon!
Culinary Note: We entertained with the classic Bangalore birthday food, a menu that has NOT changed in decades. Sandwiches [unfortunately we missed the trademark memon pudina, aka mint, sandwiches], chips [with a new age sour cream dip], samosas, smileys [potatoes cut out in the shapes of smiley faces, deep fried], bondas [sort of mashed up potatoe with onions and spices, covered in a batter and of course, deep fried], jello and custard, shaami kababs [minced meat with spices, shaped into rounds and what else, fried :0)], and of course cake [aaaah, chocolate mousse cake from Mako's]
Going backwards, on Thursday I spent the day w/Shal - she was my official mall tour guide - we went to Garuda mall and Forum -- Garuda's not completely open, but had a couple of stores that aren't at the Forum - like Marks & Spencers and Mango - both TERRIBLY overpriced, but I did see some REALLY REALLY nice shirts at Marks & Spencers. hmmm... maybe they'll have a sale? unlikely. At Forum, we basically just walked around - unless you're really shopping, you can't spend more than an hour or two at the Forum. Lunch was at Mickey D's - which was a HUGE mistake. The fries were the fries, I don't think MD's fries change around the world, but the burgers, maaaan. First of all, they're not beef burgers [would be very offensive to India's Hindu majority] they're chicken -- the "Maharaja Mac" is basically chicken kababs in bun. The McChicken was fine, except the meat was the size of a chicken nugget. Needless to say, thats my first and last visit to Mickey D's. However, its worth checkin out their website, the menu is very interesting - reflective of the interesting mix of cuisines here in India. For example, the veggie McPuff and the Spicy Chinese. You're gonna have to check out the website to find out what thos are!!!
After chilling at home for a bit, we headed out to Rangashankara to check out Girish Karnad's A Heap of Broken Images - it was actually pretty interesting, and engaging, considering that it was a one woman cast. Arundhati Raja, renowed Bangalore Theatre personality, plays a writer fluent in both English and Kannada [local language], enjoying great worldwide success with her first novel - incidentally written in English. The story is that she's giving an interview on TV before the premier of the movie [in Kannada] based on the novel, and as shes leaving the studio, she encounters herself as a TV image. The writer and her TV image proceed to have a dialogue - hence bringing out the plot of the story ... very interesting. Rangashankara [pics] itself is pretty cool, looking forward to going back this week for Romeo and Juliet.
Girish Karnad is one of Karnataka's leading play wrights -- in fact, he's probably India's leading play wright. I doubt anyone's heard of the movie - AgniVarsha, but it was based on Karnad's drama - The Fire and The Rain. The Fire and the Rain [directed by Bangalorean Arjun Sajnani] was incidentally, one of the first plays that I watched, probably 10 years ago now, and I would go as far as to say that it was my introduction to theatre.
Naina had stopped by for lunch earlier, so wonderful to see her - she's been working hard on her masters, and is getting ready to start working as a family counselor soon. Alot has happened in both our lives in the last three years, so we basically spent two or three hours catching up, before I had to leave for the birthday festivities. In between I was also entertaining an electrician and the telephone repair man - which made for alot of confusion at one point.
Arrived at MEG, about an hour later than scheduled, Shal was completely frazzled - she had spent most of the morning decorating the garden, and supervising balloon blowing, etc. After shooing her back into the house to get ready, I took to helping Hussein with the finishing touches, which included decorating the front gate. Apparently, minutes after I put up the balloons on the gate, some random kids ran by and plucked them off, much to Arika's dispair -- she came running from the kitchen, yelling, followed by mama - who was a little baffled - I of course, was completely oblivious to it all. Eh, whats a couple of balloons I say. Anyhoo, the streamers were still up, all served its purpose - and some kids got to play with the balloons - all g in the h - as the dc-peeps say ;)
Soon all the tots started flowing in, there were only about 8 kids and their moms ... they all dived into the little plastic blow up pool of toys, and had quite a blast - EVEN AKBAR JAANU! As I may have mentioned in previous posts, the weather here has been pretty fantastic - very pleasant, not too hot, in fact not hot at all, theres a wonderful evening breeze that flows through the city. The only issue is that its pretty overcast most of the time - but it hasn't really been raining. HOWEVER, as the kids came in, it seemed like there was going to be a cloud burst - so mama and Rohaan called for some cake cutting and snacks serving. Figured, might as well get it all out of the way -- so we had a little sing song, cut the cake, and just as we were about done - down came the rains. AAAAAh... subha'anAllah! Of course, everyone rushed inside with the kids, we ran about grabbing plates of food and the cakes to get out of the rain, gathered up the toys, etc. In less than five minutes, I was soaked, not too much, but enough to get me to put up a post entitled "blug" -- coz thats how I feel today [Sunday]. Been sneezing and coughing since yesterday, running a slight fever ... uuuuugh, yech. Anyhoo, so I've been laying low for the past two days -- trying to get this out of my system, inshaAllah I'll get it out soon!
Culinary Note: We entertained with the classic Bangalore birthday food, a menu that has NOT changed in decades. Sandwiches [unfortunately we missed the trademark memon pudina, aka mint, sandwiches], chips [with a new age sour cream dip], samosas, smileys [potatoes cut out in the shapes of smiley faces, deep fried], bondas [sort of mashed up potatoe with onions and spices, covered in a batter and of course, deep fried], jello and custard, shaami kababs [minced meat with spices, shaped into rounds and what else, fried :0)], and of course cake [aaaah, chocolate mousse cake from Mako's]
Going backwards, on Thursday I spent the day w/Shal - she was my official mall tour guide - we went to Garuda mall and Forum -- Garuda's not completely open, but had a couple of stores that aren't at the Forum - like Marks & Spencers and Mango - both TERRIBLY overpriced, but I did see some REALLY REALLY nice shirts at Marks & Spencers. hmmm... maybe they'll have a sale? unlikely. At Forum, we basically just walked around - unless you're really shopping, you can't spend more than an hour or two at the Forum. Lunch was at Mickey D's - which was a HUGE mistake. The fries were the fries, I don't think MD's fries change around the world, but the burgers, maaaan. First of all, they're not beef burgers [would be very offensive to India's Hindu majority] they're chicken -- the "Maharaja Mac" is basically chicken kababs in bun. The McChicken was fine, except the meat was the size of a chicken nugget. Needless to say, thats my first and last visit to Mickey D's. However, its worth checkin out their website, the menu is very interesting - reflective of the interesting mix of cuisines here in India. For example, the veggie McPuff and the Spicy Chinese. You're gonna have to check out the website to find out what thos are!!!
After chilling at home for a bit, we headed out to Rangashankara to check out Girish Karnad's A Heap of Broken Images - it was actually pretty interesting, and engaging, considering that it was a one woman cast. Arundhati Raja, renowed Bangalore Theatre personality, plays a writer fluent in both English and Kannada [local language], enjoying great worldwide success with her first novel - incidentally written in English. The story is that she's giving an interview on TV before the premier of the movie [in Kannada] based on the novel, and as shes leaving the studio, she encounters herself as a TV image. The writer and her TV image proceed to have a dialogue - hence bringing out the plot of the story ... very interesting. Rangashankara [pics] itself is pretty cool, looking forward to going back this week for Romeo and Juliet.
Girish Karnad is one of Karnataka's leading play wrights -- in fact, he's probably India's leading play wright. I doubt anyone's heard of the movie - AgniVarsha, but it was based on Karnad's drama - The Fire and The Rain. The Fire and the Rain [directed by Bangalorean Arjun Sajnani] was incidentally, one of the first plays that I watched, probably 10 years ago now, and I would go as far as to say that it was my introduction to theatre.
posted by zai5h at Sunday, June 26, 2005
1 Comments:
Forgot to mention it before -- hope you are feeling better!!
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