One Night at Forum

I finally had a Subway on Indian soil. Now only boozing is left.

I swipe my card at the PVR, I get tickets for Pokkiri, booked 6 months back. Hats off to PVR for their memory and data storage.

The previous show was delayed when I had gone for Sivaji. Yesterday also it was delayed. Don't know whether it is just my luck or as BJ says, just a strategy to sell popcorn and coke. The latter it must be.

We did fall victims to this strategy, at the cost of becoming paupers. We were able to make up the 100 bucks with the last 20 bucks being coins. On buying a coke each, I had 2 bucks (a 2 rupee note that has been lying around in my purse since God knows when) and BJ was left with 50 paise.

PVR sucks for a number of other reasons too like not allowing helmets (inox and innovative have no issues at all with a helmet), but due to lack of choice, I end up visiting the place again and again.

Speaking of Sivaji, the dialogue "pera kettale summa athurudhu la" ( crudely translated as "on listening to the name itself, it starts trembling) seems very apt for Voldemort.

The movie, Order of the Phoenix, just like the book, was very disappointing. Just seemed like a badly edited version of the book. I have too many cribs with the movie and not much enthu to go over them. The movie had one totally strong positive though, Emma Watson. Simply stunning in all the scenes that she appears.

Hopefully the final book will be stud. And a "more important hopefully", I will get my copy on Saturday itself.

The return back home was in heavy rain. I like driving in the rain and despite my assumption and approximation based driving as it was night, the drive was pretty good. Except for the part where cars splashed water on me. This part I totally dislike. Two reasons, the water is dirty. More importantly, the water is at a higher temperature than the rain water. Sucks.

Baingan Barta

Ingredients:

1) One fat brinjal (one of those huge ones, not the normal one)
2) Two onions
3) Two tomatoes
4) Chilli powder and salt
5) A few spoons of oil

Method:

1) Rub the brinjal with a spoon of oil and then place it directly on the flame. Ensure that the skin of the brinjal gets burnt properly everywhere.
2) Take some oil in a pan, cut the onions and add and heat.
3) After the onions reach a golden-ish colour, add cut tomatoes, some chilli powder and salt to the onions and continue to stir.
4) Simultaneously, strip the brinjal of its burnt skin. Check for worms (thankfully there were none) and mash the brinjal.
5) Add the mashed brinjal to the onion-tomato mixture in the pan. Stir for some time.

Your baingan barta is ready. Surprisingly simple to make. And pretty good to eat too (if you like brinjal).

The Copa America Final

I was just a little late in waking up. But by that time the most significant incident of the Brazil-Argentina match, the first goal was already scored. Baptista's goal in the fourth minute meant that Argentina were chasing the game and Brazil could hit on the counter, something that they did very effectively, with the substitute and stud Dani Alves first setting up and then scoring a goal.

The only chance that this match would be interesting was if Argentina responded with a goal soon, and Riquelme did hit the post in the 10th minute. But this was a false dawn, after this Brazil kept the Argentines comfortably at bay. It was not pretty to watch, but pretty effective.

To some extent, Argentina also bottled it. Riquelme was very ineffective as was also Messi(surely has a long way to reach a Maradona, who delivered when it mattered). As a result, Tevez was almost never in the game. Even Mascherano who had a brilliant Champions League final, had a bad match. This Argentine team is the footballing counterpart of the Cronje led South African team. Thrash all teams in the initial rounds but come a cropper in the knockouts.

The Ten Sports coverage sucked. Not one replay of the first goal in the time I watched, that is after 10 minutes, no highlights during the half time and a commentator who was commentating looking at the TV coverage. Even I could be more insightful than him.

I watched the match half asleep. Sadly after the match got over, I got no sleep. As a result I am still half asleep. I used to be proud of my ability to fall asleep whenever I wanted to. But alas, this seems to have left me completely.

Enna Vendum Pulava?

I am no poet, but I surely have figured out how to make a decent Pulav.

Ingredients:
A cup of rice.
A couple of potatoes, a few carrots and some beans. (maybe one onion also, I didn't have any)
A few green chillies. (3-5 depending on your ability to have spicy stuff)
The spices, the special biryani leaf, etc. ( I found a small packet costing 5 bucks called pulav spices in the neighbouring Mallu store )

Procedute:

1) Cut the vegetables
2) Soak the rice in water
3) Pour a little oil into the pan and heat by putting the flame in sim.
4) Slit the green chillies and add to the oil
5) Add the spices and some salt to taste
6) Add the cut vegetables
7) Keep stirring the vegetables at intervals of two minutes for some 10 minutes.
8) Remove the rice from the water and add it to the vegetables.
9) Stir for a couple of minutes.
10) Transfer the contents of the can to the electric cooker (a pressure cooker should also do)
11) Add 1.5 cups of water and let this mixture cook.

Your pulav is ready. Eat hot with curd or raitha.

P.S Pulava means poet in Tamizh.
P.P.S Enna vendum = What is wanted

Sivanasamudram - bike trip

I have been to Sivanasamudram twice. Despite this I was of the opinion that one of the two waterfalls, Gaganachukki, alone was two falls due to the fairly large island in the middle. It was only this time that I realised that Barachukki, the other fall, was a totally different set of water falls and there was a substantially large island, also referred to as Madhyarangam (the middle island, with Srirangapatna and Srirangam being the non-middle ones).

Coming from Kanakapura and Malavalli, Gaganachukki is the one that comes first. And it is the higher and more majestic one. As a result, getting close to the water here is a difficult task. We did not even attempt it. I had gone up to the water here (up meaning before the water falls) in both my previous visits. On talking to a coconut water vendor there (pretty cheap coconut water at Rs. 5, but not too tasty though), he said that we could get down to the water at the other fall.

Barachukki is some 15 kms from Gaganachukki. And there are steps for one to go down to the water. And a dhoni (the round boat that seems to be a fixture on the Kaveri (Hogenakkal and Talakkad too have these)) ride took us just beneath one of the falls. 60 bucks the cost for both of us. Here, one can also attempt to have a bath right beneath the waterfall. But as we hadn't made any arrangements, we refrained. Crossing the river to get to the bottom of the waterfall was a good experience though.

An island on the Kaveri meant there had to be a Ranganatha Temple. But by the time we were leaving, the sanctum sanctorum of the small Ranganatha temple was closed, so I decided that it was not worth paining Vamshi and taking him to the temple.

We took the route that I thought was the shortest, via Kanakapura and Malavalli. The first 80 odd kms is good road, the next 40 kms or so around Malavalli is really bad, and the last 20 kms are again well paved. Thanks to the bad roads, this has been the most tiring drive that I have undertaken. Ended up with a slight niggle in my right calf due to the numerous times that I had to brake. And the longest too, some 160 kms each way. Another bad thing about this road is that between Kanakapura and Sivanasamudram, there isn't a decent place to eat. We had to make do with some mixture, cream bun and dilpasand at some bakery on the way.

Pics.