The Burrito Story

Here is how, my friend says, the country has increased her appetite with its magnum-sized helpings...

"So, when i first landed in Baastan [sic] 4 years ago, my first meal was a burrito. i had that burrito for THREE meals, i swear. then I came to texas 2 years ago, and found the burritos 50% even larger, and it took me 3 meals to eat it. now i can eat 90% of it in one meal, sometimes even the whole thing."


Super Size Me ?

Waking up at 5am and braving the sweltering heat at 6m and a one hour rickety bus ride, having breakfast at a narrow old part of the town where "hygiene conditions" are so non-existent that someone who works in a government hospital wanted to throw-up, still bravely hogging the delicious warm dumplings and soup, then going straight to a pharmacy and downing de-worming, acidity and enzyme tablets.

Someone would ask why go all this length to upset your system and some others would say that we are perfect target customers for American advertisements: eat and then take meds to reverse the effects of eating (which include screwing with your digestive system and putting on pounds of unwanted weight).

We do funny things for the things we love. and food figures right up that list. Such is life, and what is life without its share of madness ? :)

Eat, Pray, Love, Food etc.

There are very few movies that i have started watching and could not get through with. there have been times when me and my friends have taken more than an hour to select a movie, and then by the half-time, i have been the only person watching it while everyone else would be asleep. this might have little to do with the movie and more to do with my willpower. but nevertheless. then i watched...no correction, tried to watch Eat, Pray, Love. i chose to ignore the bad reviews. a movie which has Italy and Italian food ? it possibly cannot be too bad.  i could ignore the parts in India (Pray) and Bali (Love). both the concepts are anyway over-rated, as per me. also a significant portion of the movie had James Franco and Javier Bardem. two men who can  make any movie worth watching. Javier Bardem has always been a favorite. James Franco is more of a recent one, not just for his movies. he is very academically oriented, currently is a Ph.D student at Yale and at one point in time, he was simultaneously enrolled for classes in Columbia, Tisch and Brooklyn College. Julia Roberts isn't a favorite, but i find her as smart as hell. so i weighed my odds and they were in favor of giving this movie a try.  it might have looked like i was watching this movie with a lot of expectations. many many people forbade me from watching this movie. but i just decided to see the good things in the movie, a.k.a. (as mentioned before) weighed my odds, adding the fact that i have a pretty good threshold for tolerance.

i guess nothing could prepare me for the woefully slow pace of the narration, the unattractive shots of food, the unflattering angles of the actors and terribly contrite dialogues. a good quarter of the movie was about Italy and the Roberts' characters' obsession with food. i was amazed at how little the movie captured the feel, beauty, colors, richness and flavors of Italian food. such unappetizing shots of pasta in marinara sauce ! and barely any shots of pizza of the Naples. now if you are trying to show a woman who decides to go on a binge with Italian food, don't you think there ought to be more emphasis on the food than anything else, like people making time-pass and lame conversations ?

it is pointless to even go to India and Bali and talk about her "amazing" discovery of prayer and love. it is so hard to feel her anguish, her feeling of being trapped, her struggle. by the time she reaches Bali and Bardem had come into the screenplay, i decided sleep was a much attractive option. i had seldom come across a movie with contrite dialogues like Roberts' character yelling "i need to find myself" time and again.


a movie that screwed-up in-spite of having food and Italy.

D I S A P P O I N T I N G.

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P.S.: Probably this is an apt time to admit that i have a special thing for food. a dialogue in the movie was: "i am having a relationship with my food". i wouldn't be too far from such a character. i can have a relationship with a one-item food like khichdi/pongal/bisi-bele-baat or multi-item-mind-boggling-weird-sounding ones.  one act of kindness on God's part would be that he put me in a non-vegetarian household. i must admit that being a mansahari gives me great liberties to be able to at least try out a lot many things. in-spite of having a very close staunchly vegetarian friend who had been trying to convince me to become a veggie by showing me videos of animal cruelty and verbally dueling with me on (im)morality of killing animals for food, for the last two years and still not giving-up (S, you deserve a post on you). oh wait, S is a vegan. who am i kidding ! anyway, the up-short of all this is basically i like food. the sight of a king-size snickers for breakfast fills me with as much joy as an exquisite Crème brûlée. erm....this "P.S." is almost another blogpost :P

Two Men, Good Food and a Drink

to the two S in my life:

they pamper me, listen to my rants, laugh at my silly thoughts, laugh with me on my wild fantasies, indulge me,  soothe me, scream at me, make fun of me. there is something very comfortable about their company. maybe  because i dont have the fear of being judged. maybe because i can share my deepest fears and my darkest secrets with them and they'll just roll their eyes. these two men can lighten-up a grey movie and make it  into full technicolor. sometimes i just stay in their company to get that infectious enthusiasm they have for life.  the silly talks about men, clothes, fashion, chick-flicks. their care-o-damn attitude. when we have one of our  talkathon sessions, i end up saying - "we are so crass, cheap and vulger. we will surely go to hell :D" and then i sleep with a content smile on my face.

when i see them fighting for the survival self, my heart fills with so much pride. i have a strange sense of  ownership on them. i have seen them in their weak moments. when the self-assured, unapologetic demeanor  comes down to reveal individuals who are just as insecure and lonely as everyone else. who need love, assurance, acceptance just like everyone else. their world is so different from me, yet is so similar.  

i celebrate them everyday.

..........

on a different note: its amazing what a good meal can do to you. it uplifts your spirits, soothes your soul and you feel: ahh...all is well with the world now !


its been six months since i have had a single drink ! six months :O. the weather here is so non-conducive for any hot drinks (other than coffee and tea). i am yet to find my favourite brand of Moscato D'Asti :(. heck, i am yet to find any Moscato D'Asti.