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.