Do Fatichar

After passing out of engineering college, I was in Delhi for quite a few months with some of my close hostel mates. Being a Computer Science passout, I always thought I should have gone to Bangalore. But some of my close buddies already booked their tickets to Delhi. The situation in Bangalore was also pretty much pathetic, as the market witnessed serious kind of recession during that time. Without applying much pressure to my brain, I simply opted to go with my friends to Delhi. Recruitment was almost frozen and especially for fresher’s, there wasn't much hope. We used to stay in some kind of a Dhobi Ghat in south Delhi. Well, it was basically a Dhobi Colony, but not those traditional Dhobi Ghats kind of. They used to wash clothes in giant washing machines which had some kind of a local flavor, pretty much similar to those kind of air coolers.

For a few months, I shared a small room with my dear friend Rajat. He’s from Mechanical branch and at least, they used to get some calls. Even though, those days were quite memorable, but was a little bit painful as well. Apart from the anxiety and the uncertainty about our future, one more headache was to have fed ourselves. Most of us learned to cook that time and it was quite a challenge to have satisfied out tummies. Some of our friends were very focused for their MBA and already started their CAT preparation and coaching. I never thought of MBA though, also it was little out of scope for me that time. I think Rajat was also on the same boat and that’s why we decided to share our room. 

We lived a Fatichar life style those days and on top of that, Delhi summer made our life much more miserable.  One late night, as our room was completely dark and I was busy shifting my sleeping position every now and then. I tried to make myself a little bit comfortable in order to have had some sleep.  All of a sudden Rajat asked from his bed "what’s up dude? Still awake?"

I replied "Yeah, trying to get some sleep"

We chatted for a couple of minutes and then he asked "Do you have any cigarettes left with you?"

I replied "No dude, I already lighted my last one just before we prepared to sleep"

Our conversation continued and suddenly Rajat switched on the light. It was 3:30 AM and he tried to look for a cigarette all over the room. Without much luck, he then looked for some healthy cigarette butts inside the ashtray. He lighted one and could only manage a couple of puffs and then felt the heat on his lips. Rajat was getting little desperate and started to look at all those empty packets. As I looked at him and his activities, even I also wanted one damn long puff, but none of the butts were at lightable condition. Oh! Shit, it’s such a mind game and we wanted it so badly. I also started to explore my luck and looked at every possible empty packet. It was already 4 AM and we didn't bother much for some sleep. Fortunately, all of a sudden luck turned our way and I could find a cigarette piece in one of the empty packets. Well,  that was a fresh and a completely unused one. As soon as I showed that damn thing to Rajat, his level of happiness was clearly visible on his jubilant face. He was extremely excited and I was almost about to have lighted our revere, but Rajat interrupted and said "Just wait a while, I would make some black tea"

Wow! That sounded extremely pleasing and within no time Rajat was ready with his tea. I offered him to light our ecstasy. Well, he truly deserved it that moment and his happiness was pretty much expressive while it came out, along with those long and smoky drags. The caffeine and the nicotine, along with our extreme kind of craving, created a mesmeric environment altogether. Oh! That was some kind of a moment and we felt highly satisfied like hell. We continued to chat about our uncertain future for almost another hour and then later, had some sound sleep early morning.


With this post, I completed my first century. I guess my post rate is quite slow, but still it’s some kind of a milestone.  

A little bit of Cookery

For the first time when I arrived in Bangalore, I was so mesmerized with the typical kind of cool weather out here. Even though it’s been almost a decade, but I still remember how I felt about the weather that time and it almost felt as if I directly arrived into heaven, all the way from hell. Well, before coming to Bangalore I was in Delhi for quite a few months and I hope Delhiites wouldn't curse me for this, as I’m simply comparing the weather. For the first couple of months, I stayed at a hostel in J.P Nagar 6th Phase and it seemed, the place was mostly occupied with students and job seekers. Initially, I was so much amazed with some of the food items on the street. Well, the first one is Gobi(Cauliflower) Manchurian. To be honest, I never came across that food item earlier. I was so much confused, yet quite delighted to see those red color things every here and there, while they're being fried on those big utensils. Initially I assumed them to be pieces of chicken. As my pocket was at a very pathetic and miserable condition that time, so I didn't bother to explore much. But then one afternoon, I just wanted to taste those damn chicken pieces and approached a vendor and asked "Boss, chicken plate Kitna?" How much for a plate of chicken?

The guy simply smiled and said "Boss, chicken nahi, ye gobi hai, Gobi Manchurian" Dude! it's not chicken, it's Gobi Manchurian.

That was a huge KLPD for me and simply wondered "what kind of dish is that?" I wanted to try that out and the price was also quite reasonable. As soon as my tongue encountered the first piece of gobi, it created some kind on an ecstasy inside my mouth and also deep within my soul. It was crispy and slightly juicy. Oh! The taste was simply out of the world. It all started that time and even today, I’m a big fan of Gobi Manchurian. I’ve no idea about the origin of the dish, but one could find it in almost every nook and corner of Bangalore.

The another popular food item out here is Chicken Kabab. One of my initial observations in the city was "one would find a Bakery and a wine shop within every 50 meters on the streets of Bangalore." Also the wine shops are meant not only to buy liquors, but one could also gulp as much quantity as they can afford, out there as well. Outside every wine shop, one could find someone preparing yummy fried chicken kababs in the evening. Even though, quite often my pocket had to face some kind of an embarrassment those days, but somehow my loyalty and affection with Old Monk remained intact. That time the market was gradually recovering from the recession phase and I hoped that my dream to taste all sort of kababs in Bangalore would soon transform into reality. Once my pocket turned little better and that too with those chicken kababs all around, my relationship with the monk got stronger and stronger day by day. Also, I was getting kind of obsessed with those kababs and the obsession was somewhat similar to the kind, I had with Momos during my college days. 

After I tied the knot, the monk must have been quite disappointed with me, as I couldn’t able to worship him on a regular basis. But my devotion continued over the weekends with my close and nearby friends. One day, I applied for a Life Insurance policy and I had to undergo a thorough medical checkup for that. Everything was perfectly fine, but the insurance company increased the yearly premium by Rs 500 and the reason they gave was that my cholesterol level was somewhat higher. I assumed that to be a silly excuse and was very much irritated with their attitude. After some flow of emails, I actually cancelled that policy. But my wife repeatedly insisted for my master health checkup and she was quite shocked with my reports. That time I got quite serious and started to work out a bit. I even consulted with doctor and according to his consultation, my relationship with old monk and fried kababs was jeopardized. Those roadside kababs look, as well as tastes very yummy. But the guys repeatedly use the same oil again and again, not sure for how many days or months.  I completely stopped to consume them and unwilling though, I had to dump my good old monk as well. Later, I tried to get spiritual with some budget scotch brands and even though it took sometime, but ultimately I was able to gain spirituality with them. Sometimes, but very rarely though, when I get very nostalgic, I would spend some quality time with Old Monk, along with some of my good old, old monk fans. 

Last weekend, I was missing those fried kababs so much that ultimately I decided to prepare at home itself. The recipe is quite simple and would like to share out here.

1. Ask the guy to cut the chicken in smaller and medium pieces

2. Also buy a kabab powder along with the chicken

3. Marinate the chicken (1/2 KG for a small packet of kabab powder) with very small amount of water.

4. Also mix one egg with it and again marinate it for a while

5. Mix ginger/garlic paste to it (I prefer fresh one)

6. Put it inside the refrigerator for around 15 minutes.

7. Deep fry the chicken pieces in either olive or refined oil in low heat for around 15-20 minutes.

Oh! It tasted much better than the kababs from good restaurants. I think, along with other important factors, good cookwares are also very important to create such kind of a magic. If you haven’t visited magickart yet, you should definitely have a look at it. Well, magickart.in is the leading online shopping portal in India for Kitchen appliances and Cookware. With their exclusive collection of Cookware, Bakeware and Kitchen Appliances, now days one could quite easily be able to create a wide variety of magic inside their own kitchens.

Saurav Maheshwari

Our school KV BRPL was located inside the township premises. Till 10th standard, our class used to have two sections A and B. As our school only had science stream for the higher secondary education, so in our 11th and 12th standard the number of students got reduced and both Sec-A and Sec-B were merged. Saurav Maheshwari was basically from Sec-A and earlier, I didn’t have much opportunity to interact with him, apart from those Hi-Hello kind of talks during the cricket matches we used to play on some Sundays. Later when we started to share the same classroom, I got to know Saurav more and he was gem of a person. I think many of the Sec-A guys were able to clear their Biology concepts because of Saurav. Well, those days during 8th and 9th standard, guys used to have hell lot of doubts regarding the reproductive system of human beings. Saurav’s dad owned a VCR and sometimes when his parents were not at home, Saurav and his close friends liked to utilize the opportunity and used to bring those reproductive kinds of movie cassettes on rent, to further enhance their biological concepts.

Saurav was quite a fun loving and an extremely friendly kind of guy. I even had the opportunity to had lunch at his house on few occasions. Wow! His mom used to make such yummy Alu Parathas. Almost 80% of the students of our school were from the township itself, well, I was from the minority group though. Earlier everyone including the teachers used to go home for lunch and on few rare occasions,  some sincere students used to bunk their afternoon lectures. Later the school authorities became strict enough and changed the rule. The township students didn't enjoy the new rule at all, as according to it no one was allowed to go home for lunch. So, everyone started to bring lunchboxes and that really created hell lot of opportunities for some of the foodie guys and trust me, they were quite plenty in numbers. Everyone had to somehow protect their foodstuffs till lunch time from those anonymous food stealers. I think the girls must have had a real hard time to protect their lunchboxes. Aha! Their mom used to prepare such mouth watering and tempting foods for them. As soon as we opened those boxes, oh! The aroma was so pleasing and I was really impressed with all those Mithais they used to bring. I must say, girls are very choosy and demanding with the stuffs they shallow, as long as they don’t have to prepare them. 

Not only girls and even some of the guys were also quite pissed off with those food thieves. That was the time when I and some of my backbencher friends used to empty our lunchboxes by 2nd period itself. Well, that minimized our risks to a great extent and also gave us the opportunity to enjoy some extra bites later. Apart from the girls, also few guys who used to bring good quality lunch, complained about those anonymous Tiffin Chors. Now Saurav often used to complain and then one day, he was so irritated that he came up with an extreme, yet very innovative idea. He along with few of his friends consulted with a pharmacist and one day, he mixed plenty of jamalgota seeds to not only his food, but also few other lunchboxes as well. Jamalgota is one of the best known laxatives and mainly used for severe constipation. I was not part of the conspiracy at all and they executed their plan in the first period itself. 

Fortunately I didn’t consume any of the damn thing from any of those boxes, on that particular day. But many of my friends were not fortunate enough. OMG! That day I realized the power of jamalgota. Actually, it's very much capable to convert serious constipation into ultimate loose motion. But under normal condition and specially on that particular day, it performed little differently. For most of the offenders, something unusual kind of chemical reaction occurred inside their stomach. Within no time, the food inside the stomach took an alternate path and poor guys started to eject from their mouth. Some of the guys puked 6-7 times that day and few guys even complained to the principal Sir. But the principal only said "why you guys had to steal lunch from others?" After that day, it became quite a daring task to steal foodstuffs from others lunchboxes. 

When we were in our 12th standard, Saurav’s father got a very good job offer and he had to resign from BRPL and joined a company in Saudi. Saurav also had a younger brother named Gaurav Maheshwari and he was 2 years junior to us. Both the brothers had to leave our school and got transferred to some school in either Delhi or Mumbai, I’m not very sure about that.  Once they left, I didn’t have much contact with him. Few months before our final 12th exams, most of us were little tensed, as well as confused about our career. During that time, on Nov 12 1996 the tragic Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision occurred over the village of Charkhi Dadri, to the west of New Delhi. The aircraft involved were a Saudi Arabian Airlines flying from New Delhi to Saudi and a Kazakhstan Airlines flying from Kazakhstan to New Delhi. All 349 people on board both flights were killed, making it the world's one of the most deadliest mid-air collision. It was so difficult to believe that 2 planes had a head on collision up in the sky, I mean there’s so much space out there and how could 2 tiny things collide just like that? 

Next day at school, we heard some rumor that one Saurav Maheshwari was in the passenger's list of one of the flight that crashed the previous evening. Everyone was so much tensed that moment, but I was cool enough and wondered, how the hell that could have been possible? But after sometime our school principal made the official announcement that both the brothers, Saurav and Gaurav Maheshwari was on board flight "Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747-100B".  The entire classroom went silent and we simply started to stare each other's faces. Even though our principal Sir didn't declare a holiday on that day, but our entire batch simply couldn't attend any of the lectures. After sometime most of us went back home. It was so difficult for me to digest the fact and just couldn't have imagined the pain, Saurav's parents went through after they lost both their grownup kids.

Without considering the security measures involved, according to the researchers the probability of such kind of a head on collision of flight up in the sky, at an altitude of 15000 feet is one in 100 million. Well, the probability is much lower than someone getting killed by a coconut, falling from a height of 80 feet above the ground. But yet it occurred and after that incident, aviation authorities across the world no longer relied on the theory of probability and developed the ACAS (Airborne Collision Avoidance System) to a great extent.