Go Zumba!!

It’s touted as the best thing to have hit India since the yoga wave. I had heard rave reviews of this new ‘fitness revolution’ which is taking the world by storm and was thus elated when I was given a chance to experience and write on the phenomena called ‘Zumba’.

I should tell you that I am fairly fit and active. I religiously do aerobics and swear by a 40-minutes brisk walk daily for good health.

I called up to enquire and the instructor enthusiastically welcomed me for a trial session. “You’ll want to continue, I can assure you” were her closing words. ‘She’s just doing PR’ were my thoughts.

So, on D-day, it was with some amount of skepticism that I entered the class.

I was greeted by a smiling and excited group of men and women, a mix of fat and thin, young and not-so-young, all eagerly awaiting their instructor to start the class.

Well start it did and within minutes, the entire group was completely transformed, right in front of my eyes! They seemed to follow the instructor’s steps with ease. What began as a warm-up soon morphed into a trans-like orchestra of men and women dancing to red-hot Latin music, their smiles only getting bigger as they moved their bodies to match the dance-beats and their friends around.  

Their smiles were infectious and I soon joined them as they did their side-punching, hand-shuffling, hip-swinging thumkas in tune with the peppy music.

The one hour that followed was a heady mix of exotic rhythm, thumping Latin beats and a non-stop combination of kicks, shoulder-shaking, rounds and turns, squats and claps.

I was dancing in front of complete strangers and it didn’t bother me. I was in a space of my own, where every step I took, in tune with the reverberating beats playing in the background, I felt a step closer to achieve an even superior level of fitness.

I didn’t realize how soon the hour passed and we reached the end of my session.

Even as I write this blog two days later, I can still feel the beats pulsating below my feet. My body feels light, agile and spunky. I feel greater vitality and energy running through my veins. And I wish to tell the instructor that she was right: I want to continue!!

Sizzle Fizzle

Yesterday was the ideal day to go out for a nice lunch. Holiday in the middle of the week, no pending house-work and the perfectly-lazy body-mind ratio.

The destination: "Kobe" on ITI Road in Aundh. Our original choice had been Sarja (owned by Lata Mangeshkar) located around the same place, but turned out they didn't operate on a National Holiday. Sad!!

Well, Kobe is famous for its sizzlers. Had recommendations for it from a lot of people since I landed here, so was keen to finally try out their fare.
The restaurant location does work for it and there were quite a few guests already seated when we reached. The restaurant is split over two levels, though I believe they open the top section only in the evenings, when the crowd begins to swell.

The interiors are really nothing much to write home about. Drab and stained white walls, simple sofa-and-chair seating arrangement and no decor to brighten up the place. The chics on the windows do deserve a mention for being quite impressive and perhaps the only saving-grace for the restaurant's look.

After being seated by a disinterested waiter came the menu: An unattractive, simple two-page booklet encased in a fake-leather file cover. My heart was beginning to sink.

Well the menu was simple and thankfully, offered only a variety of sizzlers apart from the soups and starters. I strongly believe restaurants get it all wrong the minute they start a please-all palate. Eateries "specializing" in a cross-section of cuisines only end up serving a mess.

In the mood to try something new, we ordered the Onion & Cheese soup. And we weren't disappointed. The soup was definitely different from conventional fare and retained the flavours of both its key ingredients. Full marks!

However, what followed was a let-down. Husband-dear ordered 'Sizzling Chicken in Schezwan Sauce' while I opted for 'Vegetable Sizzler with Garlic Sauce & Mushroom'. The service was definitely quick but sadly, we couldn't tell one from the other! Both the dishes were covered with a similar-looking sauce, which turned out to be quite taste-less. The chicken was plain-boiled, bland and burnt. while the vegetables were uncooked, shriveled-up and quite old-looking.  Disappointing.

Finishing the food was an ordeal and we had to finally order cold drinks to gulp it down.
Down by some 800-odd rupees, we had to head to the nearby ice-cream parlour for a change of taste.
The Verdict: A big Thumbs-Down!!

Hubby dear has been harping on about one 'Polka Dots' too.
Watch this space...

For the Love of Cooking...

I never cooked before I got married.
My contribution to the kitchen chores was limited to laying the table and taking the dishes out to be served. Or maybe pouring water over my mother's hands as she knead the flour for the chapattis.

My mother is a brilliant cook, by anyone's standards. She can cook up a three-course feast at an hour's notice and even with just a few ingredients to play around with. Calm yet trans-like, that's my mom in the kitchen.

Enter my teenage and she was after my blood that I pick up some culinary skills before prospective grooms come visiting. She recited horror stories of young girls who made fools of themselves (and according to her, more of their mothers for not having taught their daughters the 'essentials of a good home-maker') the first time they entered their husband's kitchens, all to inspire me to pick up the kadchi.

Demand 'something new' for dinner and she would make me choose the flavour my taste buds sought by making me choose from the rich collection of ingredients in her kitchen cupboard, all so that I know my cumins from the fennels; she would make me stand next to her as she made pastes and sauces, she would catch hold of me on days that I appreciated her cooking-experiments and would ask me to help her chop the onions for the next meal. I would whine and make excuses, but she would blackmail me with a 'your poor mom doesn't have a life 'cause she is busy feeding hungry kids like you who don't appreciate her efforts' declaration and I would be forced to grudgingly enter the kitchen but would rebelliously walk out after cutting just that one onion. (It would be so poorly cut that she would have to work on it again by the way).

But that was then.

Now, I have been married for more than a year. And I can more than chop onions, and make all the gravies and the veggies, and confidently experiment with first time recipes too, without wasting the raw materials. My husband-dear, food-lover that he is, does appreciate my cooking and all the effort that I put in for it. (Though, just for the record, he chops the onions much better than me!)

My husband and I go veggie-shopping together every Sunday morning, and bring home a new one every week. And then, I make that all important call, to Mummy of-course, to understand the wonders that I can do with my latest specimen.

Her recipes are easy to follow. She explains all that I need to know to handle the dish, and also warns me of the possible-blunders I am likely to make. I have never failed any of her brilliant recipes, for the simple and comprehensive way they are explained by her. Or I should rather say her recipes have never failed me.

Today, if I were to analyze my growing confidence in the kitchen, I would blindly attribute it to my mother and the skills I have involuntarily picked up from just watching her go about her business. Mumma, I learn more from you than I would ever learn from any cook-book or any online-recipe I dig out. You are the one on whom I bounce-off every new cooking-term that I encounter. You are my Tarla Dalal and Sanjeev Kapoor, rolled into one. You are the 'good-homemaker' that I strive to be.

And I still need you around to help with the Paranthas and the Chapattis.

Adult Franchise...Wasted?

Ok, before I start, I have to tell you that I enjoy politics.

Having worked in a Hindi news channel for a full six years, I have had the privilege of front-row seats to several  unfolding political dramas. I have had the honour of speaking to the top politicians of the country, watching them tear through the arguments of their opponents, articulate the most absurd defenses as solid logic in chaste Hindi and then in fluent English within seconds.

I have witnessed several politicians fighting elections, winning & losing them, seen them falling from grace, getting dirty with words...
And then there a few rarities in the business...the ones who don't ever speak a word, yet reporters hang onto their every move.
There are the kinds who always make the news, and the kinds who become the news by default.
There are the good ones, the clean-imaged, result-oriented kinds, the ones who let their work do the talking.
And then there are clumsy, media-savvy ones, who always seem to be caught with their foot in their mouth.

Believe me, its fun. To sit back and watch the events unfold. The chase, the fight for the best visuals, the exclusive chat, the race to be the first with the news.

Its a mad circus out there, the political arena.
And I love having been there.

But today, watching a political party take out a road-rally on one of the busiest streets of Pune, I felt a sense of disappointment. Young boys, perhaps in their formative few years on the bikes, waving the party's flags on their vehicles, several women in pinned-up sarees uncomfortably holding up the party's flag, marching down the road with hundreds of others, jeep after open-jeep with boys and girls barely out of the teens shouting slogans for the party, I felt something was certainly misplaced.

Do these youngsters and women even know what they are doing? Have they just been pulled out of their classrooms and their kitchens to increase the size of the crowd, in the process leading to unnecessary chaos and traffic jam on the road in the middle of a busy working day? Is this the political reality of the country, or should it be about the power to do something to improve the future of these innocent supporters who continue to vote for these political ringmasters who disappear as soon as the voting is over and done with?

Is politics only about weaving a web of words and then entangling the entire nation and their hopes in it? Is it just about latching onto the weaknesses of your rivals and then celebrating their fall?
Our political leaders, some of them so highly educated, are mere name plates on their seats of power. Lack of intent and obviously action.

I think its time we citizens starting taking the decisions. The first one about who to choose, and who not to.

I Miss You...

I have heard people say: Once a Delhiite, always a Delhiite. And I am a proud south-Delhiite, no less!!

For the un-initiated, south Delhi is considered the poshest, the most sophisticated and the most trendy area of Delhi, the capital of the country. Not to forget expensive. It is, after all, home to Khan Market, the costliest street of the country (Wait, I think its the world?) . It houses NCR's most upmarket shopping centres in South Extension and Greater Kailash.

Young school girls, college 'gals', working women in their early twenties and thirties (even aunties who just refuse look their age, for that matter!) catwalk down the parallel lanes of M-block market in GK in the most fashionable clothes you'll see away from the Milan Fashion Week. Young boys and young men drive through the thinnest lanes of the market in the costliest four-wheelers their dads can afford them, just to get a dekko of the 'maal' of Delhi, the south-Delhi girls.

Ok, so you do get the drift.
Now, coming from Delhi (south-Delhi actually) as I am, it was understandably, not easy to leave it all behind.
Infact, I remember my heart had stopped for a minute, back then on a sultry night of mid-2009 when my then-husband-to-be suggested we would have to settle outside Delhi. What! I almost thought of calling off the marriage, even after he tried to improve the offer by suggesting he could explore the option of London if I didn't like the idea of Pune.  

Well, the fact that I was attached to Delhi is an understatement. I was born, brought-up, educated and employed in Delhi. There wasn't any me, if I wasn't in Delhi. I certainly couldn't snap it all and saunter off to some new town after marriage??!!

Why should I have to anyway! Why should all girls have to, if I may bring in the feminist angle to it!
I tried to explain to my husband-to-be, who is from Kanpur, by the way, that I was, and we could be, after marriage, living in the CAPITAL of the country, the hub of all things big and beautiful. The seat of power, the centre of style and sophistication.We just couldn't move out!!

Well, we did eventually, and here I am, in Pune. With no regrets, if I may add! :-)

Recently, by the way, my husband pointedly remembered to tell me the discussion he had with my father before our marriage on the Delhi-fixation-of-Delhi-girls. It so turns out, that my father (who is originally from Lucknow) went through the same debate with my mother (A pakka Delhiite) before even they got married!

So you see, its not just me. Its in the air of Delhi. It owns you. And you happily surrender...Sigh...
But..I have managed to break the shackles and the strings, much to the amazement of dear-husband, who didn't think i'll be able to manage anywhere out of Delhi. Well you see, Delhi girls are smart, they can manage anywhere, in any situation!!

Ok, so I am a Puneite now. And a happy one at that. :-)

But there is one thing of my beloved Delhi which is pulling me back...The Chaat...
The Aloo Tikki of Nathu Sweets, the Gol Guppas (of Lajpat Nagar, Noida and GK..in exactly that order), the Sev Puri of South Extension, the Tandoori-Momos on the road opposite Venky, the Raam Laddoos and Bread Pakoras of Central Market....Ummmm...my mouth is watering already....

Will husband-dear book my ticket to Delhi,  fast?!!

Ok, So Here I Am...

Its finally happened. The long-in-the-coming, most-debated, weighed, evaluated (to the last extra rupee to be earned) decision has finally been taken. In my heart of hearts, I always knew I was coming. Way back in September 2010, even before I married my husband, I knew I was destined to come here.
To Pune city.
The Indian IT hub of India (Well, I am told Bangalore is the more global in its outlook, but then, I could be wrong).
I did come here once before. That was immediately after marriage. But went back to my "home" Delhi before you can say "I knew she wouldn't stay!"
But here I am now. Its January 2012 and I've been here for more than two and a half months now.
And I think I am going to be around...

Ok, so now for the customary and cliched queries...Yes, I do like it here. I've heard a lot about the weather of the city, though I haven't experienced its "wow!" elements so far. But I will be around when the winds change, don't worry, and I will post my experience then too, so hang around for that!!

Well, in the meantime, I hereby announce to award Pune on its top achievement so far:

For being extremely safe for young, trendy and "i-want-to-wear-low-waist-jeans-and-i-give-two-hoots-whose-looking" women like me. No male worth his balls has ever given me a dirty look here, or a second-look for that matter (For a while, I almost thought I've lost 'it', you know?!). Thank you Pune males, you are a refreshing change from Delhi's women-eaters prowling every alley of the city!!

Ok, with the goodie-goodie things over and done with for now, I do wish to point out two flaws in the city system which rob Pune of its top honours: The pollution in the city (Delhi wins here, hands down) and the sorry public transport system.

I have to mention here, I have used a city's bus service after nearly six years (I last did that in Delhi in early 2006!) and, barring the dust and the pollution and the crowd (thankfully no smelly armpits here, so do I thank the Pune weather?), I have enjoyed discovering the city at the bus-pace. Full marks here to my husband too who pushed me into it for my first ride half-way across town. I now do that and much more all by myself!!

The public transport system is not too much to write home about though. The buses are old, there aren't too many on a route anyway and the networking is painful (So if you need to go from Pashan to Aundh, which are actually just five kilometers apart, you first need to go to Deccan fifteen kilometers away and then hope the bus for Aundh hasn't left just a minute before you reached as the next one wouldn't be coming for the next half hour!).

Well, use the auto you would say. I would happily, if they agree to go to where I want to. And by-the-meter, if you'll please!!

All in a day's hard work!

But, all is not lost.
The city does have its pluses going for it....as I am discovering....