One More Birthday

Yesterday I turned 67 years old. Practically time enough to cover 3 generations.  The earliest I remember celebrating my birthday was when I was 22 and already a Probationary Officer in State Bank of India.  Before that there was no tradition of celebrating birthdays in our family.  Even now Birthdays are not taken very seriously.
I reckon it is only peer pressure which makes us celebrate this. Also for those of us who follow the Hijri calendar, the birthday is on a different date.  For example my birth date as per Hijri Calendar is 24/5/1369 (24 Jamadiul Awwal 1369).  By this token I completed 69 years on 22nd February this year

The first celebration which I remember was my "Bismillah" - a function for Muslim boys and girls when they become 4 years and 4 months old to initiate them into learning.  There is a feast in which all friends and relatives are called  and in their presence the Murshid or Maulvi makes you recite a couple of verses from the Holy Quran.

The second function I remember was when my father got transferred from Kolar to Channapatna in 1957 and he was given a grand farewell. Thereafter there have been quite a few celebrations

Interestingly the Salafi brigade  - Muslims following Islam very strictly as per their interpretation of Quran forbid celebration of birthdays saying that this is an imposition of western culture on Islam. Sounds familiar ? Yes they also oppose Valentines Day and generally enjoying life.
Islam is the most easy to follow religion and has scope for a lot of accommodation. Unfortunately it has been branded as a strict and unforgiving religion.
Anyway let me not digress - the point was about celebrating birthdays. While celebrating these are okay, the cult that is made out of it is exaggerated. Forgetting one's spouse's birthday can easily result in a divorce.
Another school of thought is that why celebrate the nearing of your own end as each day you grow old you are nearing your end.  But this is morbid and straightaway should be put in the dust bin.
Finally I think birthdays come and birthdays go.  If you don't have anything better to do then celebrate or if feeling too lazy skip.

Paya and Boti

Boti and Paya

Bangalore has a lot of people who love what we call "spare parts".  These generally refer to tripe, brain, kidneys, liver, trotters etc.  Whereas brain, liver etc do not require any specialized cleaning, tripe and paya do and believe me it is quite a hassle to do the cleaning at home particularly in case of tripe. I remember my Grandmother cleaning the tripe with lime and hot water for hours. The effort was well worth the tasty dish usually a curry.  Trotters are usually cleaned by burning off the hair and skin and scraping th resultant product till it is cleaned to your satisfaction.

When I was posted to Middle East shops there used to sell cleaned trotters and tripe which you could straightaway cook. 

Even in Crawford Market, Bombay cleaned paya is available which can be cooked straight away

In Bangalore till very recently paya was available only half cleaned and tripe as it is.  With Grandmothers disappearing and modern women loath to dirty their hands with cleaning this stuff the pleasure of eating these delicacies has become rarer and rarer.

Of late many online meat suppliers have come into the market.  Some of them sell trotters.

Brown Apron (https://brownapron.com/fresh-mutton.html) sell trotters @ Rs.280 for 6 but the cleaning is not as good as the one you get in Bombay / Middle East most probably because it is done manually.

http://onlinemeat.in/product-category/lamb/ sell booti @ Rs. 280 and paya @ Rs.150 per kilo but their service is limited to Electronic city area.

All online sellers sell their products at prices which are substantially higher than the market.  The market segment they cater to consists of weekend meat eaters, non-locals who do not know where to buy meat and people who cannot go to meat shops. Regular meat eaters in Bangalore usually source their needs easily with the friendly neighborhood butcher. This segment of the population is the major consumer in retail as they eat meat regularly and not only on weekends and occasions. These people  will never buy online unless someone can give them something which the traditional supplier does not.

I understand that tripe and trotter cleaning equipment is easily available.  I also understand that this is not very expensive and does not need special skills to operate. Lots of Chinese suppliers on Alibaba.com supply this equipment. Here is an opportunity for some enterprising start up who can install this equipment, buy trotters and tripe in bulk from Tannery Road where there is a spare parts market and supply ready to cook trotters and tripe either directly online to customers or to other online suppliers.

Breakfast on Road

Ariyas on NH7

After a long time had to undertake a road trip to Kanyakumari on the NH7. Discovered a nice breakfast place about 511 Km from Bangalore - in between Satur and Kovilpatti. 

We reached the place at around 7:30 AM.  At that early hour there were few customers but the swarm of flies made up for their absence.  Fortunately a friendly waiter directed us to the AC Room which was spotless and totally free of flies.  Maybe the flies are meant to get more business for the AC Room.  

We were 5 people so could experiment.  We ordered Ghee Roast Dosa, Idli, Vada Pongal and Coffee.  The Idlis were perfect, the Vadas nice and crisp on the outside and soft inside, the Pongal was divine - but the winner of the show was the Ghee Roast Dosa. It was quite large and served in the form of an inverted cone. It was crisp, flavorful  and had a heavenly aroma.

The best part was that apart from real authentic Sambar, each table had a 4 dish serving vessel full of coconut chutney, Tomato Chutney , chow chow chutney and mallapudy mixed with gingelly oil.

Needless to add the coffee was real filter coffee - strong and full of the coffee taste.

What a wonderful start for the day!

From Ghazi to Shaheed

Nazneen Pasha 

It all started in Feb 2003 in Hyderabad.  A colleague of mine knowing my passion for pets in general and cats in particular gifted us with a Persian cat. Being in Hyderabad and the fact that the cat came from an aristocratic family we promptly named it Nazneeen Pasha.  What we did not know was that this gift was bearing two more gifts. 

Maata 2003

 It gave us two cute kittens a couple of months later and was promptly given an alias - "maata". The children were ecstatic and thus we had 3 cats with us.  

While one was named Ghazi Pasha (Ghazi means winner in war) due to its tendency to go to war with whatever opponent was available at hand be it another cat, dog, chicken or even a snake.  The other one who was the strong silent type was named Rustom Pasha.  Both really lived upto their names.

Baba and Rustom

While Maata and Rustom were really well behaved and aristocratic Ghazi was the rebel.  The children nicknamed it Babafurry since he could not live up to its aristocratic name. Baba was the only cat in my 63 years  of cat rearing that could not be potty trained. We got transferred to Mumbai and stayed in Nerul where all three cats added a lot of color to our life.  Then we moved to Mumbai proper where we first lost Rustom and then Maata .

Rustom and Baba

Baba remained with us never recognized the fact that he was our pet and we were his owners.   He behaved as if  he was our owner and pretty much made it obvious and ruled our lives. His way of expressing displeasure was to use his "potty indiscipline".

Baba

I retired and shifted to Bangalore three years ago. Here too he remained with us without old age - he was more than ten years - bringing any mellowness.
It was Baba's habit to give company to people who used to get up for "Sehri" in Ramazan.  This Ramazan as usual he got up and insisted on being let out in the compound.  A pack of stray dogs somehow jumped inside and instead of running back into the house he fought back as usual.  By the time we could all run out to his defence the Ghazi had become a Shaheed (martyr).

Baba

 The ten years he had been with us he had been a great influence in the lives of the entire family.  Even today we expect him to walk in dirty, dishevelled and victorious from another scrap.

A Trip to Coonoor

After a long time the children insisted that we have an outing. The long weekend of 29-31 March 2013 appeared to be ideal for the sojourn.  We had never seen Ooty and planned for the trip there. Unfortunately because of lack of accommodation within our budget we had to choose Coonoor.  What a bit of fortune!  We had to pass through Ooty on the way and at first sight itself I hated the place. Extremely congested and commercial it looked no place to relax.  The next day when we visited the Botanical Gardens this feeling got further strengthened.

My son Khundmir found a friend whose friend knew a Bed and Breakfast joint in Coonoor which was extremely reasonably priced.  We were seven adults and an infant and the entire accommodation consisting of 2/3 bedrooms, two bath rooms and one large sitting cum dining area with lovely front and back lawns was going to cost us Rs 4000 per day !

The caretakers were a very nice family who really took care of us. They provided us with food, coffee/tea, baby food etc as per our requirements at a very reasonable rate.

The food was homely and piping sot in the nice cool atmosphere which added to the enjoyment.

We started on Friday at 5:30 AM.  We planned to have breakfast at the legendary Tiffanys at Maddur.  The legend has really got sour ! We reached the place around 7:30 and were told that the famous Dosas were not available.

Only Idli, Maddur Vada and chow chow bath were available.
The service is totally bad bordering to insulting.  The attitude appears to be we are the best so take it or leave it.  We had a lot of leftovers which we requested them to doggy bag for us. They refused and were extremely rude. We complained to the man on the counter who was ruder.  Never again will we visit this place.


We reached Bandipur around 9:30. The drive through Bandipur and Mudumalai Forests was not very pleasant as the forest gave a haunted look. Dry try without leaves, no animals and an eerie atmosphere. May be because of this the drive appeared to be too long and tedious.


The road from Masanagudi just outside the Mudumalai Park is bad for abot 15 KM.  But once the climb starts the road is good. It took us 45 minutes to negotiate the 36 bends. Coonoor is another 20 KM out of Ooty. The moment you get out of Ooty it becomes extremely pleasant. Coonoor is a nice laid back place where you can really relax.

After spending a couple of nice days at Coonoor we started back on Sunday morning.  On the return we made good time coming down and did it in 25 minutes.
We stopped at Masangudi for breakfast.  It was awful. It is extremely difficult to spoil Idli Chutney but this place achieved it.  To add insult to injury the charges were tourist place charges  Rs. 40 for dosa !

We were lucky this time in our forest drive and could spot some deer, peacock and elephants.

Reached home by about 3:30 PM after having lunch at Kamat Lokaruchi near Channapatna. This was another disaster. Read my review about this in Burrp.

The joys of being a Grandfather

On the 4th of June 2012 I became a grandfather,  Sagheer and Misha presented us with a baby boy - Syed Mustafa Faiz

Faiz was born in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu on account of his maternal grandparents being in Panagudi a small village in Tirunelveli District. Only his Grandmother, parents and uncles could see him as I was bedridden.
It was only after his Chilla that I could see him


Newborn Faiz

As soon as the baby entered our life the serene retired lifestyle was totally changed. Now everything was focussed on the child, his sleeping, waking etc. Soon we had the Chatana and Aqueequah was celeberated after 4 months.

Faiz Chatana 2nd Oct 2012

Now our life is totally dominated by Faiz and anything to be done has to suit the convenience of the little one.  His uncles refuse to go to better jobs outside Bangalore because as per them he is their daily dose of anti stress medicine.

Till next time 

The Sad Demise of Chhoti Aapa

Her latest photo with my grandson Faiz in July 2012

Fakir Syeda Asgari Bano , My Chhoti Aapa passed away on Saturday the 5th of January 1013 at Tirunelveli.

She was 69 and left behind a daughter and two grandchildren besides her husband.

She is the first among us siblings to pass away. I am younger to her but she has an older brother and sister.  I had been practically been brought up by her along with rhe elder sister as we lost our mother when I was a year old. Needless to add beside the sibling bond there were the more lasting bonds of mutual growing up as motherless children and her being part mother.

She was a very cheerful and lively person but suffered a lot after her marriage.  Not that the marriage had gone wrong and she did not love her husband  - it was the other way round   - she loved her husband too much and suffered silently.

Her only son also died very young adding another scar to the psyche and she was definitely not her own self the last 20 years.

Luckily she was blessed with a dutiful daughter and and a loving son in law.  The grandchildren, particularly the granddaughter, Sama loved and adored her and took care of her to the last.

We were lucky that we were able to see her days before she died.  I don't flatter myself when I say that my family, particularly Noor Ayesha, my wife, were her favorite relatives.  She loved her three nephews and all three of them could see and talk to her months before she died.

Around 15 December last year we received a call that she had become serious and we rushed to Tirunelveli. She revived after our visit , could recognize and talk coherently -  probably for the last time.  I think she knew that it would be our last meeting.

God was kind to her in her last days.  She passed away without suffering too much and her soul must be definitely much happier now.