It's food, you moron. Just food.

The summer before moving to the US, I was trying to find a classmate I could share an apartment with. I had set up time to chat with an American girl who was also looking for a flatmate at the time, and when we spoke, one of her first comments to me was "OMG I have to tell you, I love Indian food. And I make amazing chicken tikka masala!"

At the time, I laughed politely, but I remember thinking in my head - what on earth is chicken tikka masala?

When I moved to the US, I had several people tell me how amazing chicken tikka masala was. And it turned out to be served in the cafeteria whenever they had Indian food, in every Indian restaurant I went to, and by friends who said they cooked great Indian food. It looked like butter chicken, but tasted... blah. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out what this oh-so-popular dish was that I'd never managed to ever even hear of in Delhi.

Then of course, I read up on it, learned it was invented in the UK, and proceeded to roll my eyes and avoid having it as much as possible.

I have nothing against chicken tikka masala, I am just against people who have never lived in India telling me that Indian food is amazing when that is the only "Indian food" they've ever had.

This tweet popped up on my timeline yesterday:

Today was great. I had Chettinad for lunch and Gujju for dinner with Pesarattu for snack. Indian food so good you can write poetry about it.

— krtgrphr (@krtgrphr) July 31, 2017

This tweet made me hungry, but also made me think of another pet peeve that's been bubbling up recently.

I'm offsite tomorrow, at a location that is five minutes away from my favourite Indian restaurant in the city - their gulab jamun is to DIE for. And then I'm in NYC later this week, and have as usual already checked how far my hotel is to the closest location for The Kati Roll Co. The same coworker is going to be with me at both the offsite and in NY, and her reaction when I told her was "you want to have Indian food twice in a week?"

This isn't the first time I've got this question. When I came back from India last year, someone suggested an Indian place for lunch, and then paused and asked me if I was okay with that since I'd just come back.

First of all, can we be clear about something. For you, it's Indian food. For me, it's food. I grew up eating it. I live to eat it. Sure, pasta is great, as is Chipotle. And yes, I will admit, when I go home to India, I actually never eat Indian Indian food there, because I want my Indian versions of pasta and fried rice. But Indian food is just... food.

Second of all*, do you have any idea how many types of cuisine exist in India? I grew up there, and I don't know. Just because YOU have never bothered to eat anything other than chicken tikka masala, does not mean that's all there is to the subcontinent. In fact, show me one restaurant in Delhi that actually serves the blessed dish, and I... well, I'll promise to never visit that restaurant, that's what I'll do.

I mean, I could literally have "Indian food" every day for the next fortnight, and not have the same thing two days in a row. Less than a 5 minutes drive from my apartment is a chaat place, a dosa place, a chettinad place, a desi Chinese place, a Punjabi khana place, 3-4 biryani places, and half a dozen of those places that do buffets and serve a bit of everything. (Yes, I do live in the Little India area of this city). Literally the only thing missing from my life is Bengali food, although if I'm really craving it, I force my self to go to the Bangladeshi restaurant that makes mughlai parathas. And on occasion, I even manage to cook stuff that is somewhat edible.

So if I say I want to go have chaat even though I came back from India last week, or if I want to have a Maharaja thali on Tuesday and an Achari Paneer kathi roll on Thursday**, save the disbelief and pity a little. Because one of those is not like the others, and you're a moron to think otherwise.

End rant.


* I will confess, I was going to say secondly, but then I remembered this:

No, he wouldn't. ("First of all, I think you made the second bacteria up, and second of all, how do I avoid it?") Don't step to me. —HH https://t.co/qqtiDp1KoU

— The West Wing Weekly (@WestWingWeekly) July 29, 2017

** Yes, you're right. There is a very good chance I have kathi rolls on Wednesday too if my flight gets in on time, but I'll probably do the Chana Masala roll that day. Although I just checked, and they have a Kosha Mangsho roll too that I've never tried, so it's 50-50 at this point.

On feeding and being fed by friends

On the rare occasions I invite friends over for a meal at home, I tend to make sure it's planned in a way that I'll have time to cook before they arrive. If not, then I just order takeout, and I'm very clear that I'm ordering in. And I'm guessing I do this because growing up, having people over for a meal meant my mother would spend pretty much all day in the kitchen, cooking close to a dozen dishes - that's just how things were done, now matter how much we rolled our eyes and said we don't need so many dishes. But everything was always ready, just to be heated before serving, prior to people beginning to arrive. At the most it would be the luchis or the rotis that would need to be made, and if anything had to be baked or something.

I don't offer as many options when I host - because let's face it, my cooking capabilities are fairly limited, and why put both myself and my friends through so much unnecessary trauma? But still, I do try and have things ready before friends arrive.

Which is why I feel pretty puzzled when I'm invited to someone's place for dinner, and I arrive to find that they have every intention of cooking while I'm there. And this is usually fine if what we're doing is barbecue or something, where I guess the cookout is supposed to be part of the experience or whatever (although I will never understand people in this country who on the one hand complain about the heat, and then decide hot days are best spent outside by the pool - never in the pool, but just lying by the pool). But I feel completely lost when this is done by desi people, for Indian food, which, let's face it, typically takes quite a bit of time to prepare.

I think this is also partially because a lot of Indians tend to eat late, which again was not something that happened at home growing up - we usually ate by 7 or 8 pm latest. So if I have folks coming over at, say, 7 if it's a weeknight, I'll assume that they'll show up by 8 because Indians are annoying that way. So I'll have appetizers ready when they show up, and move to dinner by let's say 9.

Compare that with a friend I visited the other day. We got to her place at 6, on a Saturday evening. I hadn't eaten all day, because I had woken up really late, and then run around trying to get errands done before getting to her place. So when her husband heard that he brought out the samosas and namkeen pretty quickly, by 6.30ish (mainly because he knew I wouldn't drink till I had eaten something). Then around 8, he made some pizzas and served those. Which was great, and I felt pretty full, so I made them bring out the sweets I had brought from one of my recent trips. But then around 9.30 or 10, he suddenly started making pasta for us, which was apparently the main course of the evening.

And this has happened every time I've visited them, or other friends too. There's be snacks, followed by a mini-meal which feels to me like a main meal, and then suddenly there's a second main meal. And the second meal is usually made while we're there.

Which maybe is a nice and informal way to do it, but still always feels a little bizarre to me.

So am I the only person completely bewildered by all of this? I was talking to S, who feels the same way as me, and we were trying to figure out if we're just anomalies in this respect. Is this a generational thing, and we just happen to do things the same way as our mothers did, a Bengali thing (she's as probashi as I am, except maybe a little better at being bangali than I am), or just something else entirely?

Bein' home

In the last 26 days, I have...

...read:

• The Mine, by Arnab Ray
• The Hunger Games trilogy
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo

For someone who has read practically nothing in the last two-three years, this is quite impressive.

...watched:

• All four seasons of Coupling
• Both seasons of Sherlock
• Both seasons of Downton Abbey, though some episodes seem to be missing from what I have procured, and also I only realised halfway through the show that it is Downton and not Downtown.
• The season finales of Community, Castle and Once Upon a Time
• Ishaqzaade
• The Avengers
• The IPL final

...eaten:

• Gol gappas and samosas at the neighborhood shop
• Genuine Indian Chinese food at a dingy street stall
• Calamari at HRC, Delhi
• Mughlai paratha at Kingdom of Dreams - could've been better, could've been worse.
• Aloo ke parathas at Jhilmil Dhaba, Karnal - with dollops of Amul butter and dahi
• Mushroom achaar and apple juice from the NAFED (now called HPMC, I think) stall at Jabli 
• Butter Chicken at Giani da Dhaba, en route to Kasauli
• Thukpa and momos in a dingy little shop in Lower Mall, Kasauli
• Chai at Ross Common, Kasauli - a charming little hotel where we've stayed when I was a kid
• Chicken rolls at Badshaah, New Market
• Breakfast at Flury's
• Pretty awesome vegetarian sizzlers in Patna's only mall
• My favorite dishes at The Monk, Gurgaon
• The mother's aloo posto, luchi-mangsho, shepherd's pie, and dosas
• The father's salami sandwiches

...visited:

• Jabli, Kasauli, and Chandigarh. With the princess in tow, because the hotel we were staying in let us bring her along, and gave us a lovely little "studio cottage" which came with a tiny kitchen where we could make her khana too
• Kolkata, to meet the grandmother
• Patna, to visit the brother

I did NOT get to:

• have Bhutta
• visit the Inayat Khan dargah in Nizammuddin for Friday evening qawwalis, followed by a meal at Karim's
• go to Kake da Hotel
• have Shorshe-bata or any of mum's fish dishes
• eat at Big Chill
• go into Delhi as much as I would've liked, or visited CP, or Khan Market, or Dilli Haat
• go swimming

It's been a good month. Short, though.

Chai and tea

This is a PSA for everyone who is confused about the difference between chai and tea, as well as for those who think they know the difference. Particularly the latter group, actually.

Because there is no difference. Chai is the Hindi word for tea. Tea is Chai. Chai is Tea. C'est tout.

The world is coming to an end when Indian hotels now look at you and ask if you want tea or chai.

Calling it chai tea is stupid and redundant. Calling tea-bag tea, tea and masala chai, chai is confusing and ridiculous.

Call it regular tea and spice tea if you want. Or regular chai and masala chai. BUT STOP MAKING IT SOUND LIKE TEA AND CHAI ARE DIFFERENT.

Okay bye.

Ice!

So the person using Bloglines came back to my blog after my last post, but didn't reveal his/her identity. And in case you're back again, whoever you are, please understand that this is a very blatant appeal for comments. I need more commenters. Just the Zig is simply not enough. And that goes for the person from down South who visits every few days too.

I was going through my unpublished drafts last night, and came across the following one. Seems like an interesting mix of thoughts, so figured I'll put it up. I'm just trying to remember what on earth I was up to in October 2006 that didn't let me sleep at night. And exactly which bus incident I'm referring to here. There've been too many of 'em for my liking.

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If you live in Delhi, and have never heard of Kake da Hotel, you're an ignorant fool, in my very humble opinion. So there.
My family has patronised that place for more than twenty years now, and it's amazing how unchanged it's stayed over the years. It's still in that dingy little corner shop opposite Nirula's in Connaught Place, with the same hustle bustle. And it's not just the food which draws you there (although that is scrumptious anyway), it's the ambience of the place.
Everyone's in a rush there, the refills keep coming without you even asking, everyone keeps chattering at the top of their voices despite their full mouths... It's brilliant! It's fascinating how people from all walks of life will share a table with utter strangers without batting an eyelid. I have seen the most snobbish of people walk in there and walk out completely satisfied. Ah... Kake! There's just something about that place.

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I love filling ice trays. There's something utterly mesmerising about watching how you can let the water fall constantly in just one spot, and then see how it flows from cubicle to cubicle to cubicle. Not the most interesting of things for y'all perhaps, but mundane things things like this are fascinating at times, if you just care to look around you.

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It's amazing how a normal night's sleep can completely rejuvenate you.

For the past three weeks or so, I have been surviving on an average of four to five hours of sleep a night, with maybe an hour in the afternoon if I'm lucky. I hit my all-time low since my class 10 Boards when I caught only three and a half hours the other night. My sadistic family (what can I say - it runs in the family) derived great pleasure from watching my bleary-eyed efforts the next morning to get from one room to another without bumping into something.

That night, I decided enough was enough, and made sure I got around six and a half hours of sleep (which is my usual average anyway) and voilà! I was absolutely fit and fine and raring to face the world the next morning!

Of course, since then, I've been averaging about five hours a night again, so I think I'm heading for another breakdown soon.

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So I had a rather unnerving experience the other day. No, I won't go into the details, but I would like to say this: I hate the buses of Delhi. More specifically, I hate the men who travel by these buses. I think they're frustrated perverts, who should all be hung, drawn and quartered.

The problem of choice...

Back in the good old Dark Ages, when I was a kid, if you felt like having a packet of chips, things were very simple. You either got the plain salted wafers, or you got the corrugated ones with masala. I never liked the latter, so for me good old Uncle Chips was just perfect.

Then came the wonderful era of privatisation and globalisation and what-not. Frito-Lays came in and squashed Uncle Chips right out of the market (I think they bought it and then squashed it, but I may be wrong on this one). And quite frankly, the initial offerings of Frito-Lays were nothing to write home about. Really.

Then came their American Onion and Cream flavour (or something of that sort; I can never remember the exact name) which I developed quite a fondness for, and is the flavour I always choose to have even today. They've introduced several other flavours since then, most of which I don't like. And they only came out with those corrugated-style chips, which are never nearly as nice as wafers.

Yesterday, we developed a craving for simple potato wafers. Not asking for much you would think. I headed to the market, but what do you know? Not one shop keeps ordinary wafers. You have onion and cream, tomato, masala, mint, even paneer tikka and chicken barbeque for crying out loud. But ordinary potato wafers are just about impossible to find in the market. Sheesh.