What Ails Ye

www.indiangyan.com is a site that I came across about ten minutes ago while exploring a concept that I'd heard about. Onion (Allium cepa) it turns out is an aphrodisiac. Not just a regular one, the second best. Second to what you'll discover shortly. It's also been stuffed into mummies (the Tutankhamen kind, you perv), been the longest running tear-jerker for most housewives, though Ektaa thinks she can beat that record; sliced, diced, saute-ed, fried but never ever consumed before hitting the sack for some handkerchief-pandkerchief with the significant other when chocolate has failed.
The last thing I can imagine that's a turn on is sulphur breath. Horny, sulphur breath at that too. Anyway for those of you who're interested here's the excerpt from the aforementioned gyan site.

Onion is one of the most important aphrodisiac foods. As an aphrodisiac, onion stands second only to garlic. It increases libido and strengthens the reproductory organs. The white variety of onion should be peeled off, crushed and fried in pure butter. This mixture acts as an excellent aphrodisiac tonic if taken regularly with a spoon of honey on an empty stomach. The powder of black gram when dipped in the juice of onion for seven days and then dried, produces a mixture called kanji. This also acts an aphrodisiac.

More here.

Now if that bad enough the more perceptive of you would have realised is that at the zenith of all randy devices, more potent than rhino horn and tiger claw and the extract of a bull-elephant's prostate is Garlic. Allium sativum. The reek that chinese food gives you is apparently due to indigestible allyl methyl sulphide that seeps into the blood and then has to be gotten rid off by the lungs and skin. Leaving you smelling simply peachy for the better part of a day. The vampire myth is thence by simple extrapolation explained. That isn't the point.

This is. And if you don't feel like scrolling here goes.

Garlic is a natural and harmless aphrodisiac. Even Dr. Robinson, an eminent sexologist of America considered it so. It is a tonic for loss of sexual power from any cause, Sexual debility, impotency from over indulgence in sex and nervous exhaustion from dissipating habit. It is said to be especially useful to old men of high nervous tension and diminishing sexual power.

So Dr. Robinson lived a happy garlicked life, no longer bothered by the impotence of over-indulgence and the nervous exhaustion from dissipating habit. What in God's name is a dissipating habit? It had better not be what I think it is.

So all this came about when I realised that I didn't have any friends from school. Not from high school where I think I have the socially acceptable number of friends and acquaintances and voodoo doll needle stickers, but from kindergarten. Where apparently lifelong friendships take root, etc.
It turns out that my caretakers at the time (I'm not mentioning names here) used to fry a few cloves of garlic in good sesame oil and rub me down with the oil prior to a hot bath and feed me the fried cloves.
Every single day.
So I was the reeking randy four year old. No wonder no one stayed in touch.
More general garlic blade here.
Enjoy.

Season's greetings

So some many things have happened.
Discovered the marinara and how to make it. Belted Mojitos at TGIF. Got held up for 2 hours on the runway in Delhi. And 2 and a half hours off it. Managed to drive my mom who was traveling with me, up the fuselage. And got all privileges revoked by telling her, at 37,000 ft, that if she didn't like my company she could go outside.
Discovered also this really irritating-incomplete-sentence style of blogging.
Jesus was born some 21 odd centuries ago. Merry Christmas. And no, I didn't get any Ginger Wine this year. I did get sozzled on that noxious potion they serve at Noon Wines, which incidentally should either be declared illicit or come under some serious scrutiny. It's the only red wine I can drink without getting the mother of all headaches and the only wine that gets me drunk with half a glass. These two premises make me wonder if it's actually the Claret that it claims to be.
Internet is now unlimited which means some insane amount of quasi-legal activity will happen from my IP.
In the usual ironic vein that I seem to flow in, I have probably less than 2 weeks to make full use of this gift. It would seem that the world has conspired and almost successfully gotten me to head from my cosy world down south to the dreaded Capital. For what might be eternity.
Now Delhi I've decided is not a city. Not even a state. It's the Mothership.
It landed some millenia ago and since then has been in the continuing mission to assimilate and be assimilated. In the hope, as usual, of taking over the world.
"Abey!! Resistance is futile!"
That apart I think I've been spending sleepless nights in the worry that I have to pack, leave, leave my amp (Akai) and speakers (Bose) (yeah I had to put that into my blog. Shantanu, stuff it!) behind and actually live in the new Trauma Centre that AIIMS is running.
I guess it should be fun.
Hell it's a new year after all.

Branding

Because it fits well?



What will they think of next

Saving Grace.

And my sojourn to this higher latitude and lower almost everything else place comes to an end. And shocking as it may seem to the many hardliners (viz authors of vitriolic comments on previous posts) who believe that I do not approve or even tolerate this part of the world, I have found many a saving grace.
The Delhi Metro.
Incredible.
Traveled the Blue line as they call one of the lines, the other is called the Yellow line (which reminds me of an old, gross joke). This particular one (blue) is elevated. And the stations are just 100m long extensions of the platform accessed by stairs, escalator or lift. The trains run in a 5 min frequency, are air conditioned and as of now relatively empty when compared to Bombay. I still didn't get a place to sit at 11 am but at least I wasn't held aloft by people and completely dependent on the movement of those around me to get out of the train. There is of course an annoying announcement that keeps repeating itself telling one to stay away from the doors and what the next station is and which side (of the coach) do the doors open. Which if not for the rather generic voice and intonation is much better than trying to guess if the next platform is on the left or right.
Connaught Place (CP, yeah.) is called Rajiv Chowk and is a two level station. The blue descends to about 15ft below ground level and if you want to take the yellow line - as always it's down under. Add another 15 to get close to 30ft below Delhi and find the Yellow Line to North Campus etc. Sources tell me that the Kashmiri Gate Station is a three level station, will visit it the next time.
The metro as of now is cheap (what would have cost me around Rs. 5/- by bus and close to 50 by Auto was Rs. 9/-) and quick (what would have taken me between half an hour and forty minutes, took between 1o and fifteen). It's frequent as I saw 3 trains whizz by while walking to the station (100 m away and I walk at 4.8 km/hr. Go Figure). The only issue with it is they haven't quite covered south Delhi and they aren't making too much money. Which makes me wonder if they two are related or if the government if going to hike the prices. The Commonwealth games are going to be held here and apparently a criminal amount of money has been sanctioned to making Delhi a city of international amenities. It's getting there.
The other thing that makes Delhi worth my while (ok Ego, down boy) is Butter Chicken. Often called the official bird of the NCR and a close contender with Tandoori Chicken for the title of national bird of Khalistan, this dish is the best thing I've had in years. It is with great shame that I realize that I spent many years of my life in darkness eating many variants of chicken in tomato sauce under the impression that it was butter chicken. All that's changed now. The rich tomato gravy, the succulent meat and the atherogenic butter...
Gar Firdaus bar roo-e-zaminast, Haminasto haminasto haminast
Shantanu and other specimens from here who object to my transliteration of Firdaus, stuff it.

Visions...

This is what happens if the flight gets delayed and one has no entertainment
What better advertisement can one ask for...


I think H2Go is a funny name. And it's a bitch to take pictures in moving objects
For those of you who can read this. there is nothing funnier.


Will have to dig some more up if I can find them.

Enjai

Just Jobless...

Ok so I was in Chandigarh for a few days for reasons I’ll elaborate on shortly. I’m still up north by the way, and all ye who believe that I’ve served my sentence; this would be a good time to actually get that petition up and signed. And may be even delivered.

Now Chandigarh is a joint that essentially survives because of the cumulative governance of the Punjab and Haryana State machinery. To that add the chaos of a Union Territory. And the extreme planning of Le Crow. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that place is the epitome of how one can make a city so monotonously well planned it creates a serious antithesis in the head whether one wants to live there or not.

Rediscovered a Single Malt(Whiskey, you Philistines) there called Ardbeg. In a failing attempt to not sound the male equivalent of la-di-da, it’s a pale whiskey with an incredible peaty flavour, best probably diluted with an equal amount of water. For a bit, sitting on a friend’s terrace in a Chandigarh winter watching the stars and sipping on a glass of Ardbeg felt like some Persian poet thinking Agar firdaus bar rooye zaminast to haminast, to haminast, to haminast. Though with a few modifications in time place and person it could be another Persian poet content with a book of verse and a jug of wine but there was no one singing in the wilderness.

The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh is one of those institutions set up like maybe the Missionaries of Charity and Tihar, by an act of Parliament. Thus it enjoys certain privileges, one of which is conducting it’s own entrance. A sop that thankfully Tihar doesn’t have. It would be the end of world when a jail started choosing it’s inmates. With guys getting rejected if they “passed their morality paper” or “turned out just too smart for here”.

The PGI (as it is fondly referred to by friend, foe, employee, auto-driver and patient) entrance is not just a test of knowledge. It’s one of endurance, patience and sheer nerve. The application process is by far the most complex. And one is never sure till the last moment that one is eligible. Then every once in a while you can pick up the hall ticket at the exam hall ten minutes before commencement. The exam itself is at 8 AM on a winter morning. In a freezing classroom on desks and chairs made for ten year olds. It thankfully lasts for only an hour and a half. After that all there is to do is wait in the midst of all that winter for the results. And for those of you who understand it, full AJM happened. For those of you who don’t it stands for akkan just miss and no I’m not explaining that further. So I wrote AIIMS over the weekend and I don’t know yet but it doesn't look too good.

Had a discussion with an uncle of mine over a bowl of mishtidoi and screw you if you don’t like my transliteration; about life, the universe, medicine, music and food. This is the food bit. So chaats, it turns out have been destroyed by the Punjabis and us Southies by the simple act of adding onions to them. So the Original Hing (Asafoetida) based Chaats got overshadowed by the Onion based Chaat like items (paav bhajji, for example) which apparently are favoured by teenage females of the human ilk. It might even be that the predilection that the aforementioned teenage females have for such items is related to hormones and their swinging. Teenage males may also be found flocking to the centres that sell such onion based chaat like items resulting in the illusion that such tastes are not gender specific. However, one must realize that such selective migration of males could primarily be due to the presence of teenage females in those areas in the first place.

And we win a hundred points for sheer joblessness.

AIIMS results tomorrow.

For more interesting images of up north wait a bit… on a dial up and can’t upload.

More north than I'd like to be

Funny stuff that one can see do on trips to airports and distant lands.

Indigo, the airline, not the radio station. I can fill jars with bile vented as a result of the radio station that would make Ali Baba, the black sheep, bleat a hasty retreat. Their music is ok, it's western and occasionally that Putomayo world music hour gives me joy, but if they don't do something about the RJs then we might just go back to listening to Uppi approved Big FM.
Anyway IndiGo as they put it has nasty blue crowd control things. The 3' high metal cylinders connected with 2" strips of nylon? Yeah that's the one. IndiGo's is bright blue with "IndiGo No Red Tape" written all over it. Wanted to take a quick picture with the cool phone but I was already getting evil-eye from the security guard for laughing too loud.
Stare at the guy staring into the laptop. Not his laptop, the guy sitting next to him's laptop. And sue me for my grammar. When the guy looks up give him a raised eye brow.
Generally get shocked at the NCR and how things work there. Sometimes it's a rude shock that they do. But apparently they do. Been here at annual intervals and the infrastructure that gets built is simply amazing. They have a Metro now. The next cretin who goes weren't they always one, is going to get poked in the eye. And with some Commonwealth Games happening in a few years that's all the excuse they need to make the entire NCR look like the future. Except that every once in a while it feels like the planet of the apes. Like one woke up in some otherwise nice future except that there were monkeys all around.
Not being overtly nasty and communal but things do irritate me sometimes. The butter chicken makes up for it but not always.
All the Delhi rants apart been listening to this band called Advaita which apart from the usual bunch of bassists and guitars and the usual has a sarangi and a trained vocalist in hindustani... Like Scott Matthews who sounds like... like I need to listen to his stuff some more.
Leave for chandigarh tomorrow. More on that when I return over the weekend.
Peace out. Like they say sometimes.

NCR again

Science fiction and Fantasy novels stopped being original after perhaps LOTR and Dune. Nowadays they try to be funny (like Terry Prachett) or extensive (like Robert Jordan). Robert Jordan. What can we say? Twelve books the size of the original facsimile edition of Grey’s Anatomy, another 3 planned, more characters and complexity than Ektaaaaa could ever conceive. But having read books one to nine, forgotten the story, reread 6,7,8,9 and read ten and found myself in more or less square one. I realize that I’m just another victim of some cruel publicity. And Robert Jordan has enough money to get his amyloidosis treated at the Mayo Clinic.

That apart he does say more often than not that the wheel of time spins the fabric of reality with men and women woven in to this continuum yada yada, now the only unfortunate offshoot of this is that a wheel does the spinning and so history can repeat itself. And so it does, every once in a while.

Like now I find myself in Delhi to write an entrance all over again. For Neurosurgery. Which should be interesting if and when I get through but ever so often I want to scream, “when will this all end.” And then I just go back to sipping my beer.

So here is the latest bunch of useless thoughts. Planes are cool. And old as I am I still want a window seat even though I ask for an aisle. And like to look at the flaps and slats and imagine falling out of the sky if the wings break off. And marvel and how humanity has progressed from watching birds, eating them mostly out of jealousy and then taming the skies and still eating birds. And one will never get a cute woman in the next seat. I even got an empty seat but no woman.

And need to get me a laptop.

The next thought I having to deal with the NCR for a couple of weeks. Not just the temperature, which for someone like from closer to the equator is pretty cold. Even though the locals are going, “Lovely warm winter - 12 degrees today.” I’m thinking, “@!%$!@#$ You’re kidding me…” But one can always find sheepskin or wolfskin jackets, baby seal gloves, mink lined shoes to keep one warm, it’s the natives I have an issue dealing with. Discovered a way to get that out of the picture too. Use Sony’s in-ear jams with the iPod. They’re those cylindrical, sit-in-your-external auditory meatus, deafen you, but cancel ambient noise and one-tenth the price of the Bose. So you can’t hear them and thus live in the denial that they don’t exist.

Went for a nice 40 minute walk in the cold this morning, listening to Jamiroquai on the aforementioned iPod-Sony combination. The one thought I had was to kill the guy who when Godzilla came out and I mentioned that Jamiroquai was interesting launched into some passionate Cesaresque speech on how the weird hat wasn’t quite where things were at that point of time. So I didn’t listen to more of that band till recently. And how I’m tripping on that stuff. Brilliant. As Mohayana would have said, “Full groovy da! Trippy only it is.” I agree. Despite reservations against the word ‘trippy’, Jamiroquai is a “Somewhere it is” band. And the natives of the NCR were treated to splendid display of me grooving to Dynamite. Whatever shocks them.

Wisdom yet again...

Sources of Wisdom in the world are often not evident to the untrained eye. One must be a seeker of wisdom to find it. Unlike opportunity, this particular entity may not even knock. Take this for instance.

Picture taken with the w810i, somewhere in Bangalore.

Addendum : Too many people seem to be asking me this so go here if you don't know what the thirukural is or want to know more.