World Aids Day Parade

Around 10 am, there was a long parade of school kids, police, and other groups marching down our street on behalf of World Aids Day. (The Times of India has a slideshow of other events today about India.)

Today I did notice a lot more commemoration of the day than I did back in New York. The anchors on the news were either wearing pins, or there was a small logo mentioning it in the corner of the screen. Even the dreaded Airtel phone company got into the act, sending me a little note about the day after I'd sent a text message.

I'm sure the message isn't getting to everyone it needs to get to, and in any case the problem can't be solved in one day. But you have to hope that the message is getting out a little more each day in a country with the most HIV+ people (in absolute numbers) in the world.

Christmas Is Coming

Commercial Christmas
Originally uploaded by GreyArea.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas -- well, not really. It's in the mid-70s every day (24 degrees C). And without the "trigger" of Thanksgiving and the Black Friday that comes after, when does India decide to put out Christmas stuff? From what I've heard, it's somewhere in early December, logically enough, so whatever merchandise will appear is still unknown.

Our next-door neighbor, a very old Scottish lady who is rumored to have starred in some silent (!) Bollywood movies, put a wreath on her door a few days ago, so that's one sign. And today, on the rickshaw to the gym, I saw a couple girls selling (and wearing) Santa hats. They were in the middle of MG Road (a main shopping drag), going from one stopped car and rickshaw to another.

Turkey Day in India

Happy Happy Thanksgiving to Americans, one and all.

For our Thanksgiving, we headed out to The Only Place, for its annual Thanksgiving dinner.

Unfortunately, we hadn't made reservations, and they were full up. I wish they could have fit us in, since it was early, the place was still basically empty, and I had been looking forward to a little schmoozing. But they wouldn't seat us, so we had to made do with takeout. As it was, this was for the best, since Don was feeling a little under the weather, and turkey always tastes better when you're home, right?

The turkey was really good -- not up to that of our relatives, of course, but definitely impressive and much appreciated this far from home. (Please excuse the lack of a gravy boat in the following picture.)

On the Treadmill

When we first went to India, I thought that somehow I'd magically lose weight. Maybe I thought I'd get sick for a while (nice, huh?). Maybe I thought that because most Indians, at least the younger ones, are skinny, this would somehow rub off on me. But it definitely didn't happen. So for about 6 weeks before we left Bangalore and again now that I've been back, I've been going to the gym.

I suppose like most Westerners, I first toyed with doing yoga or something here. But then I had to be honest: I'd rather have some abs and a lot less weight rather than still more serenity and inner beauty (I have too much already!). So off I go to the gym each day, sweating and lifting and running and drinking endless glasses of water, all the while listening to horrible dance music.

The below video has made the rounds, but I just have to post it since it so completely shows just what my gym routine is NOT like:

Mobile Paperwork

Because of their possible use by terrorists and other unsavory elements, cell phones take a bit of paperwork to get. The government wants each phone traceable to an actual person, basically.

For this second India stay, I had to buy a new one, because I had lost mine just before we left Bangalore in July. Don still had his, but the number had expired from lack of use. So after buying a new one I also bought two new Airtel SIM cards. And that's when the fun began, because I had to provide the following:

• 2 passport-size photos
  
• passport and visa, for photocopying [my store was excellent, in that were able to do the photocopying themselves]
  
• driver's license
  
• signatures on just about everything, including on the highly restrictive terms of service, both of the photos, and on the photocopies
  
• proof of address

It was that last bit that turned out to be a mess. I had an old letter from a foreign company that I thought would work, but I guess it wasn't good enough. Even less impressive was the delivery tag from the Netflix-for-India company 70mm. As a result, Airtel turned off our cell phones yesterday.

So today, Don and I went back to the Church Street store where I bought my phone, and he got to take a crack at filling out all the paperwork himself.

The best part of the "Prepaid Customer Enrolment Form" is a clause for farmers. In India, people who earn all their income through agriculture don't pay any income taxes, so they often don't have a tax number (I think this is true). Therefore there's a part of the form to sign if you're such a person. When I and then Don filled out our forms, the woman at the phone store tried to get us to sign that part. Luckily we both skipped it -- the last thing we need is the India government asking us where our coconut grove or rice paddys are.

Here's another account of a westerner getting a cell phone. It's interesting that he's also saying what several people told me today: it's a lot easier to get service through Hutch than through Airtel. But we still love you, Airtel, as long as you turn those phones back on!

Choley!

To continue our temporary impersonation of a full-fledged food blog, I made choley yesterday. This is a spicy stew made with chickpeas, tomatoes, onions, and something sour. The sour usually comes from tamarind, but the recipe I used called for lime juice instead.

This was yet another opportunity to come to terms with the pressure cooker, and I think I'm finally OK with it. Unlike those in the U.S., Indian pressure cookers don't let off a little steam at a time -- most of it builds up and up until it can't stand it anymore. A small steam cloud and a huge racket results -- it's like a steampipe breaking or something. Everyone, including cookbooks, call this small explosion a "whistle," but it's way scarier than any whistling I've ever heard. The "whistles" are so important that it's often how you might time how long to cook things -- "give those lentils three whistles, will you?"

Anyway, after 25 minutes and 6-7 whistles and only a little fear and loathing from the cook, the kabuli chana (brown chickpeas) were ready to have browned onions, cooked down tomatoes, and spices added to them. If I do this recipe again, I'm going to use one rather than two sliced chili peppers -- two was just a little too much for our delicate Western palate. But it was really good all the same -- amazing how a good recipe can transform 1-1/2 cups of chickpeas into something edible and interesting.

Fish Curry, Thumbs-Up

The fish curry turned out very good. First I cut the 0.6 kg (1.3 pound) fish fillet up into about 15 pieces and then tossed them with 1/2 t. each turmeric and salt. I let them sit for 15 minutes. Then I heated up about 4 tablespoons of oil and browned the pieces in batches.

I set the fish aside, poured off half the oil, and then came the excitement.

I turned up the heat to high, added four dried red chili peppers, and fried them until they were "plump and black," as the First-Time Cookbook says. This caused a lot of smoke, but it was all over quickly and noone was hurt.

Then it was time to add some mustard seeds and cumin seeds (1/2 t. total), let them crackle for a bit, and then fry a large, chopped-up onion (or five small ones in my case) until it was golder. And then I added spices-- garlic, ginger, chili powder, coriander, cumin, and more turmeric. I fried everything until the oil separated from everything else (the Indian term for this is to "bhuno"). I added 2 cups of water, returned the fish to the pot, brought everything to a boil and then simmered it all for 15 minutes.

It turned out great. I was worried it would be too spicy to eat, but the fried peppers seemed to make the broth peppery rather than hot, and the sauce was excellent when mixed with rice.

I'm thinking that if I make it again, I might throw in a few sliced potatoes along with the fish in the last step. And I'll know not to be too scared of those dried chiles.

Early Morning Wedding?

Well, if it's about 8 am on Wednesday, it's probably time for a parade with a band and a horse-drawn carriage! At least it was this morning, on our street.





I'm guessing this was a bride on the way to her wedding, along with an attendant. I wish I had a better idea what she was holding. And I wish I had a better shot of all the flags the band and marchers were all carrying. If anyone out there can help fill me in, I'll be in your dept.

Fish Time

Tonight we're making Bengali fish curry, (Maachher Jhol), using the always useful and encouraging First-Time Cookbook.

I'm very excited, since i haven't cooked any fish here in India yet.

I know very little about the fish I bought -- kingfish. It looks like a non-oily whitefish. It also cost a lot -- 600 inr a kilo ($6/pound). Of course, I only got about .6 kilos, but I feel the pressure if it turns out lousy.

Pictures coming tomorrow if I can manage to photograph it in a non-hideous manner.

So Many Books

The internet at the apartment, hasn't worked since we got back. Although this has cut down a great deal on frivolous browsing, having to buy Wi-Fi in hourly chunks has also made me disinclined to blog much at all. I've been busy with some freelance projects, and Don's been busy at work, so we haven't seen so very much of India (at least Bloggable India) in the past few days in any case.

Yesterday, I headed up to the Palace Grounds, which do hold a palace. However, it's also used for a lot of other things, including the wonderfully named Princess Academy horse-riding school. But I wasn't there for horses, I was there for the Bangalore Book Festival, during which publishers and bookstores rented stalls to sell books directly to the public.

There were publishers in Hindu and Kannada, Tamil, and other major local mother tongues. There were stalls by university publishers, such as Oxford and Cambridge, and scientific/technical publishers, including Elsevier and Macmillan. But my favorites were the stalls of the local bookstores, and I picked up a couple oddball books from them, including Three Men in a Boat and some short stories by J. F. Powers.

Just about all the stalls seemed to be doing a good business -- I got there around noon, about an hour after it opened, and crowds were already dispersed through the whole enormous building.

Oh yeah, and there was parasailing! Behind the building, not among the stalls. I didn't get too close, but I did see a man's torso floating up, about 30 feet in the air. I couldn't decide if it looked just scary, or scary and fun.

CHILLED CHILLI CHAI

The internet at the house remains busted, and so I find myself buying Wi-Fi down the street a lot. Because the two sellers are Infinitea and Cafe Coffee Day, I'm in a near-constant state of buzzness.

Today I decided to mix it up a bit, and ordered Infinitea's CHILLED CHILLI CHAI. I somehow elided over that middle word, and it was a big mistake. The drink looks like whisky, smells like diesel fuel, and that chilli makes it really really burn. Ow. Fresh lime soda here I come.

Dewar's Found

Sunday we went on a short walk through some of the older neighborhoods to the north and west of us. One highlight was walking by Dewar's bar, a landmark that's been around since 1933, when this area, the Cantonment, was one big barracks for the British.

It was way too early to stop by, at least for a drink, but I was glad to know where it was. The roads are fairly twisty by it, so it will take a bit of concentration to find it again.

Bug Fight

And I'm back too. I got in early Wednesday. So far I've managed to (mostly) unpack, go on several walks, make messes and then clean them up, and stay up a little later each day.

But what I'd like to talk about at the moment is our never-ending battle with the roaches and the bugs, who got very cocky during our absence. We've been moving stuff out of the kitchen's cupboards and spraying poison to reduce their numbers. One horrible surprise this morning was our canister of atta (wheat flour), which had fallen prey to web-weaving moths of some sorts. And their squirmy grub babies, a dozen or so which fell on the floor when I dropped the thing on the ground (and screamed like a little girl).

The canister had a tight-fitting lid, so the little buggers must have been growing from the inside out. But what were they doing for water? I'm a little too grossed out at the moment to clean the tin -- it's still sitting on the counter. If I knew any six- to eight- year schoolkids, I'd give then the whole thing and ask them to make it into some sort of science project -- it's a little like a terrarium, after all. Another option would be to pitch it into whatever yard it is that holds the rooster we hear each morning -- I'm sure he'd like the little grubs as well as the wheat, and it would be great revenge for us.

Back

Hurrah! I'm back.

Bangalore is the same. Well, there are a few changes. Some major roads now have designated autorickshaw lanes, and for the most part, the rickshaws are staying in them. Even more astonishing and wonderful is that a pedestrian crossing signal has been installed on Cunningham Road in front of the Sigma Mall, making my life a whole heck of a lot easier. Not so great is that the Food Bazaar has stopped carrying Coca-Cola products and has joined the evil Pepsi empire. So my grocery business is going to the scruffier but Coke-carrying Food World.

Oh, and the city's name is changing. As of November 1, Bangalore will be rechristened Bengaluru, which is the Kannada version of the name. This follows the trend started back in '95 when Bombay went local with Mumbai. Calcutta officially opted for Kolkata in 2001. Somewhere along the way Madras became Chennai. Now several cities in our state of Karnataka are jumping on the bandwagon next week, which will coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the state.

SeventyMM

So I think I saw a pamphlet or brochure for SeventyMM back when I was in Bangalore, but I didn't really follow-up on it. A recent post on the blog Hacking Netflix jogged my memory.

SeventyMM is a company modeled on Netflix. You subscribe for a monthly fee, and then create an online list of movies you'd like to see. The movies are delivered, two at a time, by hand. When you're done with those two, the DVD-wallah comes back for those and gives you the next two on your list that they have on hand. You can keep the movies as long as you want -- there's no late fee.

The biggest difference from Netflix, of course, is the hand delivery. In the States, all the movies come via post, one at a time. Delivery by hand means that the company is going to be limited only to urban areas -- the company is now up and running in Delhi and Bangalore.

Also, since a lot more people in India can watch VCDs than can watch DVDs, most of the movies come in the VCD format. [This might also have something to do with the problem of getting the right region code on the DVDs -- not sure about that.]

And finally, and very handily, you can SMS SeventyMM to arrange a pickup. You can't do any SMSing of Netflix and expect anything to happen.

There's a hokey registration fee of 499 inr, and a deposit (for what?) of 999 inr. After that, you pay 549 inr per month for as many groups of two movies that you can watch that month. Most VCDs in the store were at least 200 inr or so, I believe, so the pricing seems pretty reasonable to me, at least for people who are buying VCDs already. I didn't see any places to rent DVDs or VCDs in Bangalore, so there probably isn't much competition. There's also a scheme by which you can get other people to sign up and then have your monthly fee reduced.

Has anyone tried SeventyMM and had a good time with it? I think we'd like to sign up, so if anyone wants to "refer" us and get a little bit off their monthly fee, email us at bangaloremonkey @ gmail.com.

When Do I Get to Go?

It's been a weird couple weeks. Don's been finishing up at the office, and I've been cleaning up stuff around the house and running errands in between doing some freelance work. There have been several hiccups with getting our apartment sublet and ready for our absence. As a result, I'm not quite sure when I'll be heading off to India. Don flies out this Friday, and I hope I don't have wait too long to follow him.

Back to Bangalore

We've been holding out a bit on you, but the truth is we're heading back to India -- for six more months. Don will be working at the same publisher he worked at before, and we're mainly be in Bangalore again, with some stays in Delhi and Chennai and as much other travel as we can fit in.

Naturally, another trip back to India first meant another trip to the consulate. Don paid his call about a month ago, but I just went last Friday. Because the visa "clock" starts ticking the day you get the thing, and because it seemed likely that I'd get another six-month journalist one, I needed to wait until just about the last minute.

Figuring that I had nothing to lose, this time I applied for the 10-year tourist visa. And to my surprise I got it. When I applied back in January, I was working as a travel-book editor -- enough to tag me a "journalist" in the eyes of the consulate. This time, it was easier to be correctly seen a tourist instead. I'm very glad that I won't have to leave before six months, and I'm also glad that I won't have to apply for another visa for quite a while.

By the way, anyone who might have their own visa issues should first check out the India Mike roundup.

Magic Mango Splitting

It took an old Cook's Illustrated magazine to alert me to the fact that the world now has such a thing in it as a "mango splitter." Made by the Oxo company, which makes an excellent vegetable peeler, among many other things, the Splitter does what it claims, according to Cook's Illustrated. In a flash, your mango is sliced up into pieces, with the slippery seed all on its own.

All the same, I'm still not convinced enough to plunk down my $12. Isn't a big part of the fun of eating an Indian mango watching it slide halfway down your face and all over your arms? True, it can be hard on your clothes, what with the staining and all, but surely that's a small price to pay, although maybe a bit more than $12.

NPR thought enough of the thing to cover it last year (I can't make the audio or video play, but you might be luckier).

And here's a video of the splitter in action. As you might notice, the mango is pretty firm -- I think that ones in the Americas tend to be a lot less soft than those in Asia.

Breaking Bollywood News

This blog will be out of retirement soon, but in the meantime I just found out via Sonia Faleiro that the Bollywood star and illegal deer-poacher Saif Ali Khan has been filming a movie with Rani Mukherjee just a mile or two from Bangalore Monkey current headquarters (the couch). Sonia reprints the New York Post's Page 6 coverage:

Bollywood bad boy Saif Ali Khan has brought his troublemaking act to the Big Apple, squabbling with his co-star during the shooting of his new film on the Lower East Side and irritating the staff at the Madame X lounge. Khan, the son of a famed cricket king and Indian screen siren, is facing charges of poaching an endangered deer in his native India and has a reputation for doing as he pleases. He and the crew of his new film, "Tara Rum Pum Pum," have been shooting on Orchard Street by day and living it up by night. Khan and his fetching co-star, Rani Murkerjee, have reportedly asked their producer for rooms at separate hotels so they don't have to see each other off the set. The other night, the hunky millionaire and some pals stopped in at Madame X on Houston Street. A bartender there said Khan copped an attitude while throwing back shots of tequila and downing rum and Cokes. "He acted like he owns this joint," said the barkeep."

My knowledge of Bollywood is still sketchy, but I know enough to wish it was John Abraham in our fair city instead. (Photo of Khan and Mukherjee from Bollywood Blog.)

Miss Us?

Hey kids, sorry we've been so gone. Even though we're back in New York now, we will keep posting from time to time about India matters, especially the way the country looks from over here.

Last night we watched a Wide Angle documentary called 1-800-INDIA. It was about the outsourcing boom, looking at the ways that call centre jobs have changed not only the employees but also their families and society as a whole. It did a good job of interviewing the Indians, but it was perhaps a little rah-rah -- I could have done with a grouchy critic or two, if only because I like to disagree at least a little with my documentaries.

I haven't seen it yet, but Morgan Spurlock (of Super-Size Me fame) has an episode of his reality show 30 Days in which an American switches places with an Indian -- outsources himself. I have my suspicions how it all turns out, but I'll shut up until I actually manage to see it.