Several Things

Yesterday I drove past Domino’s Pizza and saw a banner hung right in front of it that read, ‘Parampara (‘tradition’) Austerity Centre’. What a juxtaposition!

Time to mention two more signs that I like: Rigid Hospital, in Anna Nagar. Doesn’t it sound as though it will provide you with rigor mortis? Or the kind of prosthetic implant that I will now get as a Google referral?

And of course, there’s the unbeatable, inimitable Hotel Runs (hotel in this case meaning ‘restaurant’) in Adyar.






some Google referrals:
upper lip, besan – I actually know what this means, or I think I do: – when Raj Kapoor (old-time Hindi film actor / director) first met Nargis (old-time beautiful Hindi film star), he knocked on her door and she answered. She had been in the kitchen making some fried snack, and she had a smudge of besan-based (chickpea flour) dough on her face. Much later, when Raj Kapoor made the film Bobby, he used a scene in which the hero, played by his son Rishi Kapoor, meets (the heroine) Bobby: she opens the door, wiping her upper lip with a besan-smeared hand.

(update: Jivha says, "Actually I don't think you're right about the upper lip, besan explanation, I think besan is actually smeared onto the upper lip as a 'poor person's bleach' to make the upper-lip hair blend in with the colour of the skin.")

how to filter shrikhand -- Tie yoghurt in a piece of loose-weave cloth and hang it up over the kitchen sink (catch the liquid in a pan and use it for making bread or chappati). When it’s thick, mix it with sugar to taste and rub it through a strainer. Add a little cardamom. Optional: add a couple of grains of saffron dissolved in a small amount of milk. It’s a delicious Gujarati dessert, which can be very sweet or tangy, it’s up to you. It’s good for using up yoghurt that has become sour.

slap hindi tv actress -- sigh, the usual stuff. Violence and sex. This blog doesn’t contain much of either, but they still manage to find me.

up churidar shots -- because of the usual stuff I wondered, How can you look up a churidar? It’s tight. It’s called churidar, ‘having bracelets,’ because it gathers at the ankles in many folds, (somewhat) like wearing bangles around your ankles. Then I realised that ‘up’ probably means ‘Uttar Pradesh,’ where churidar-kameez is a more common dress than it is here. Oh.


I came back from doing some errands, and Mary came out to meet me in case there were any groceries to be carried inside. I saw that she was wearing a lime on her finger – she had cut a small hole in it, and fitted it over her fingertip like a cap. Or like a pale greenish-yellow clown’s nose. I asked why, and she said the finger was infected, and lime was supposed to pull out the infection. (Later, she said that the lime hurt much worse than the infection, so she took it off. Then she asked Ramesh for some medicine, and she’s much better now.)

(update: Raj says: "Mary's infection on her finger is popularly called "Nahga Suthi" which translates to "Nail Hammer"! ....the tip of the finger swells like a hammer head...... And popular treatment is fitting it with a lime cap.")

(another update): Ramnath sez: "I didnt know the Suthi in 'Naga Suthi' meant hammer. I thought Suthi meant 'around'. And since the swelling comes around nail, I thought it was called so... This joke came in Anadha Vikatan long back: A customer asks the waiter, Why is the hole in the Vada (a snack fried in oil) so big. The waiter replies, the cook has 'naga suthi'."

No comments: