Office Dance Party

I haven't really missed the usual bombardment of holiday-themed parties, but I was still pretty excited to attend a much-needed office dance party on Friday night. In Bangalore, dancing is illegal in public places (seriously, this is some Footloose shit right here), so people are understandably pretty excited to dance when given the opportunity.



Bhindi Masala - aka delicious, spicy okra



Paneer - Rubbery Indian cheese cubes immersed in creamy curry sauce


As always, hanging outside with Stuti <3



Mamta and Viny


Kavery (4-foot 8-inch state Rifle Shooting Champion) loading up on Gulab Jamun and ice cream.



Mamta and me



Srividya looking like a totally different girl in her Western attire



Subhojyothi and Vatsalya



With Sultana and Chandini



Kavery, Somrita, Prathap, Jason, Prathviraj, and Sandeep








Later this weekend - while all of you were bundled up, enjoying your frigid blizzard, I was strolling around sipping on a fresh coconut - when I heard a scary sound!


Luckily, it wasn't a leper.

Ghazals

I haven't had much of a chance to take pictures lately, as work is once again kicking my ass pretty hard. We will be having a holiday party on Friday, so you'll have to wait 'til then for some photos/video. However, I have been listening to a lot of Hindi and Urdu music lately, as a result of instituting a mandatory music in the case room policy to keep my team awake. Everyday, a new person gets to be the "DJ" and share their favorite songs while we work. People mostly play a lot of current Bollywood dance/pop hits, though one team member is an inexplicably huge John Denver fan. (And everyone really seems to like the Backstreet Boys, including their new album, which I am sad to have become very familiar with.) My favorite songs are the old Bollywood Ghazals,Urdu love songs that are full of mournful longing and dramatic orchestration. One of the guys on my team was kind enough to burn me a CD, and I thought that some of you might be interested in listening, too. You can download the album here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/xtn4hz.

Lalbagh and Wretched Rabdi

Here are some photos we took today at Lalbagh Botanical Garden, and at dinner where we ordered the most disgusting dessert yet, "Rabdi." I really don't like most traditional Indian sweets - they are nauseatingly sugary, and the dairy here tastes weird and spoiled and hairy. But it's always fun to order something without having any idea of what is going to be brought out to you, so we went with Rabdi after being told that our first choice, Muzzafar (which turns out to be a sweet spaghetti dessert, blegh) was all out. Rabdi is a white, viscous substance, chock-full of clots and chunks. It tastes EXACTLY like mozzarella cheese floating in vanilla pudding, if you want to approximate the recipe and try it for yourself.

In Honor of World AIDS Day....

Pro-Progeria!!

I just saw a commercial for Paa, which looks like it might possibly be the greatest movie ever made. I haven't watched a Bollywood film in the theatre yet, and am super pumped that I waited! In case you couldn't guess, Paa is the story of a 13-year old boy with a "Progeria-like syndrome." Looks like straight-up Progeria (my favorite disease!) to me, except for the fact that the kid is like, 6 feet tall, due to be being played by "Actor of the Century," 67-year-old Amitabh Bachchan (remember the latrine scene in Slumdog? He's the guy worth jumping in for). Amitabh's real-life son, Abishek will play his father in the film, which will(of course) also feature several musical numbers!! I am soooooo into it.

Dot, Not Feather

Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday. For starters, I am a vegetarian who HATES tofurkey, that grey, rubbery, flavorless work of Satan. I also hate stuffing, because it reminds me of how my grandpa had no teeth and would chew up a bunch of bread and food and spit it back onto his plate for easier consumption. Pumpkin pie, in my opinion, is inferior to almost every other kind of pie (except for pecan pie, "shoo-fly" pie, and sweet potato pie, which I do not consider food). So, I suppose I am lucky that they don't have cranberries in India, or celery, or easily available turkey, or normal orange pumpkins (only white pumpkins that remind me of when ET was all dried out and about to die). I was off the hook as far as preparing any semblance of a proper Thanksgiving meal, so we decided to go to a nice restaurant instead of eating a mashed potato feast at the apartment.

Back in Philly, before both of my parents remarried, and we started having nice family Thanksgivings again, my mom and I would often go to an Indian buffet so that I could stuff myself full of curried delights. But now, living in India, curried delights hardly feel special. Both of us have been dying for sushi, so we located one of the only Japanese restaurants in the city - Shiro, and made a reservation for our Thanksgiving meal.

Shiro was really nice inside, and felt much more like a "real" restaurant than any of the places we normally frequent here. Surprisingly, they actually offered a special Thanksgiving menu, so Tim was able to indulge in classic Thanksgiving fare - turkey, mashed potatoes, and green beans, even though all were prepared East-Asian-style. I ordered a GINORMOUS veg sushi platter and edamame. For dessert, we ordered the "sweet potato" pie. As I already said, I am not a huge fan, but I felt like I should have something Thanksgivingish. I guess no one explained to the otherwise skillful chef that "sweet potatoes" are an actual vegetable, and should be the main ingredient in "sweet potato" pie. Instead, they used WHITE potatoes and just added a shit ton of sugar, so the pie was basically sweet mashed potatoes in a pastry crust!! It was not a taste sensation.

Although I had to work, and I miss my family, I am extremely thankful that I made it an entire day without hearing anyone say "Happy Turkey Day!" or "Gobble, Gobble!" Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

CSR

So this past week, we had our first CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activity at work - going to visit the Sree Rakum School for the Blind. The Sree Rakum School takes in children aged 2-5 who are either blind or whose parents are blind and can't care for them. We collected food, toys, and toiletries, and sent a group of employees over for a visit. I sadly was swamped with work that day and couldn't join, but thought you might enjoy the pictures as much as I did. I am pushing for a trip to the school for the "deaf and dumb" (yes, they still call it that), or one of the schools for the mentally retarded. And I better get to go next time. (Sidenote: I don't know if I ever mentioned the session I sat through about eyeball donation, but blindness is a pretty big deal here, apparently. They won't take my eyeballs because your father has to give permission for the doctor to pop 'em out of your face, and my dad isn't here to do that if they suddenly became available....)