Of Pani-puris and Women

Pani-puri, Gol-guppa, Gup-chup, Pani-batasha or Phoochka all are the name of the same common Indian fast food & If you have not heard of them please paint yourself white and call yourself "Jonny English". But the special observation which i am going to enumerate here is these round hollow fried crisp, unleavened bread filled with a watery mixture of tamarind, chilli, chaat masala, potato onion and chickpeas have special connection to behavioral pattern of women.

Lets start from the past, I believe most of us have come across such incidents or stories in their, lifetime just didn't join the dots. In the Dutta family there is a very famous folklore,Dr Avantika Dutta (who happens to be my mother too.) the only female in the family (to be exact in the branch stated by Uddipan Dutta) had to once go through a long perilious bus journey with lot of motion sickness, giddiness, nausea and loads of vomiting. Just when the ordeal ended & she got down at the bus-stop, chance to sight a Pani-puri wala.Dr Avantika Dutta prompty hailed the hawker and asked for a plate, obviously her fellow passangers were astonished to see her enjoying food when minutes before she throwing it out. That was as a legend, stuff i have heard (many times & always from Baba) but not seen. What I have seen is my Ma and my cousion eating pani-puri and chat and getting double sick since they were already down with stomach upset from a party last night. What I have seen is my Ma silently pointing to pani-puri hawkers and my Baba (who is by the way a medical officer in the Indian Armed Forces) trying his best to decline with reasons like "its not clean" and "not nutritious" etc but giving in for greater good (& probably peace).

Certainly my Ma and cousin are not big enough sample to generalize a rule for the whole women kind. But i am sure all of us must have seen womens' profound affinity to this grub. I am so very confident that i would place it in the list of things that women (specifically Indian) _always like_ right below diamonds, flowers and above chocolates, soft toys. Why because with advent of modern times have seem an emergence of more health conscious and serious/confident type of females (hence above chocolate and soft toys). Pani-puri fits right into the power schedule of a modern lady, its light low/no calories and fast food (to prepare and to eat). But there is a catch, the image of pani-puri has not always been associated with cleanliness, a quality you would always expect out of a lady. To be gore the pani-puris tastes best when the sweat of the "pani-puri wala" has gone in the "pani". Careful observation brought me to a conclusion that even the most hygiene freak ladies are ready to make an exception to enjoy them. Take the case of a particularly fastidious colleague of mine, who always asks for extra tissue off the food counter and carries and alcohol based super hand-cleaner in her bag. She is of the kind who would carry a jacket to keep her dress clean and another cover to keep her jacket clean. But all her cleanliness falls apart in front of a pani-puri she is ever ready for it, even more it is the only thing for which she ever asks us to stop when our group is out somewhere.

The incident that really got me to think this way though is a different one. Recently or not so recently while we were returning from somewhere and I was totally focused in outwitting early evening Bangalore traffic the soft, pleading yet firm voice of my pillion reached my ears "Gol guppe khaye" ?/. The confusion in the punctuation is because i am still not sure whether it was statement or a query. Any how i had no other option other than to say "Haan.. Jaroor" and to start looking for chaat shops along with impending traffic. The one I found and stopped was hugely a crowded stall on the Banergatta Road, but before i could manipulate by bike into a parking my companion had returned with a fallen face "Saab puriya khatam ho gaye, only toote hue bache hai ". A look to the basket of puries reveled the fact that yes there seemed to be only few left. Getting out of there we started our slow crawl towards BTM in search of a decent pani-puri place. The next one we checked out got rejected after a careful inspection of ingredients "Yeh south Indian gol-guppe hai, matar (cickpeas) dal ke banate ahi, aache nahi hote." . An astute observation that i never knew of in my 2&1/2 year stay of Bangalore. The third place was decent,clean,a less crowded one, but alas its strength became its downfall. My friend said "Kisi ne ek bhi gol-guppa nahi kaya, bahut bakwaas hoga, yahan ka." making a twisted nose but in softer tone. At this point i remembered my yoga exercises and took a deep breath in _my mind_ (yes in my mind, a visible sigh can cause or get you grievous injuries.). I made my voice as polite as i could and asked "Koi aachi jagah jante to? Hum wahi chalte hai". The response to my question was strong nod of affirmation and beaming smile. We immediately hopped on the bike and she started to give me directions with great confidence and surety which was quite a surprise to me. Usually with my rudimentary knowledge of Bangalore roads and her shifted sense of directions we had ended getting lost manier times. Not this times though, she was pointing me to roads and turns much better than a GPS mapper would do, that made me think do all ladies or only this one have a PPS (Pani-puri positioning system) built into them . The place we ended up was "Ladoos" (BTM) which my friend proudly declared owned and run by _biharis_. May be its endorphins, a hormone that is said to make people happy and is stimulated into blood flow by chocolate , coffee, pani-puri etc. (Though not yet confirmed but I am quite sure researchers if try would find the pani-puries act as endorphin producers in a female body) , or its that they look very cute when with their cheeks swollen trying to stuff the whole puri into their small mouth, or maybe its _just_ that for those few minutes they are _quiet_ as its quite difficult to speak with it in your mouth, I don't know. Whatever it was the evident pleasure and satisfaction on her face made the whole effort, every ounce of it worth it.

In an attempt to put my observations in an academic and practicle purpose. I suggest pani-puri can be document as one of strong fondnesses rather weakness of Indian women. All guys, keep it in your mind pani-puri can help you make up for forgotten events, late ariivals and so on. The more dedicated ones can think on the lines of (when looking for surprise presents) a life time supply of pani-puri from some good pani-puri maker or they could even try their hands in trying to make them.

Sunday Sex with Sabayon

Most of my life (it seems a life time, though it has been just last 6 years), I have been in love with Gentoo. Like any straight _linux loving_ male I entered the world of manhood with Redhat 9 (what Fedora called herself, back then ). She was a mystic girl from a foreign land whose language I did not speak, but i had an instant liking for her because 1.) Sensible - whatever she did, made sense at some level to me. 2.) Openness -what more a guys wants when a girl opens herself to you and is ready to change to whatever he wants to. I don't brag that I immediately knew my way with her and started molding her to my taste, but the promise of being able to do so was enough to hold my interest. Over the initial years of my playboy-hood, i had many affairs. I was seduced by the classy Suse, charmed by Mandrake ( now Mandriva ), fooled around with Slackware and when I was heart broken ran to motherly Debian.

Then one fateful day I brushed my shoulders with Gentoo. She was playing hard to get, and it was huge turn-on. I was patient and persistent, till she gave herself completely to me. It was awesome. What did i see in her ? everything, she made go through a lengthy foreplay before any action, never before i had known a woman's complete body like this before. I learnt may intimate details, which i always took for granted before. She oozed with "you don't like you change it" attitude, which as I mentioned before is always a plus. She was _blazing fast_ , lean and athletic partly because i had pretty much set the flags of all her curves. Whenever I got my way through her, I felt a great sense of satisfaction which I didn't in any other courtship. For the first time I _thought_ "I had found true love". And, yes we did have a long-lasting stable relationship. I don't deny occasional male weakness, when a new girl called Ubuntu came over to our block or when Redhad 9 had a makeover and changed her name to Fedora. But Gentoo was the core of my life. Recently, i started to have what we would call _7 years itch_. Yes, yes i might be just looking for change. But as it happens in any relationship the very reason i fell for her started to annoy me ( maybe because I was getting older, may be because I got a job ). Picture this you have had a long day in office and you need a _quickie_ but your lady is mood of elongated foreplay, that's when a man chooses to sleep on the couch. Come what may i remained largely faithful, some time 2 years back i first herd Gentoo has new sexier sister called Sabayon (earlier it was called RR4). At first i gave it no thought, I am a firm believer of beauty is more that skin deep (I give Mint no points over Ubuntu). I was stead fast on my morals even when the Sabayon was wooing a lot of men.

Then one weekend about 4 months back, i had fight with Gentoo and stormed out of the house. While going around for some relationship advice I came across Sabayon admirer. He mentioned that she had the best of both the worlds. Fresh, out of a fight i decided to give it a try. At first my notion was its my old girl Gentoo dolled up in a *bikini*. But a little more investigation revealed the guy was saying the truth. It supported the original _gentoo portage_ source based packaging (without which i would have sent her packing home.), It also had the equo the new binary installation overlay. Man!! she was switching signs like a Gemini. I could emerge the portage when I was in mood of long satisfying love making to have lean & optimized action, but when asked she would gladly serve me a quickie through the binary overlay. Believe me its every mans dream come true. I could immediately see she was young and needed support to mature,but she was going the right directions . She got me excited enough to spend the whole sunday night with her, we did not sleep until the wee ours of the morning. Next morning I knew i was moving over.
What can I say ? I am a man.

Those not in the Gentoo world would benefit from this simile what Ubuntu is-toDebian , Sabayon is-to Gentoo

The Lady with High heels

In the front of my office building, the walkways are intermitted with a geometrically designed hexagonal cement patterns with alternating hexagonal holes concentric to the hexagonal pattern surrounding the hole. Probably the idea of the designer was that there would be grass growing through holes, and a well trimmed uniform meadow popping through the holes at approximately same height as the surrounding cement pattern would look cool. But that is not what is happening there. The grass is usually yellow and dead even the earth from the holes keep spilling out creating quite a no. of voids in the pattern which are potential hazard for careless walkers and people with small foot or high heels.

Late one night you see when I exited the office building I found myself behind a women ....no a lady immaculately dressed in her black business suit, and balker shoulder length hair. She was dragging behind her a black trolley-bag with majestic grace and below her were black shoes with approximately 4 inch heel pin (these were the type of shoes ladies usually were with pointed front and high heels but I don't know their correct name.). Surrounded by all this black her pristine collar and glowing face looked almost poetic. No jewellery, very light or no make up, drop-dead-gorgeous. My genetically programmed eye automatically started to follow her. As she was making her way through the above mentioned demented walkway her right heel found its way into one of these voids twisting her slender ankle. Out came the characteristic feminine high pitched shriek. My heart went out for the damsel in pain, but my brain was not helping at all, there was nothing I could think of to say or do except pick her up and carry her. However gallant or tempting that may be I neither had the guts nor courage to carry it out. As I was raking my brains to find something to do, she rotated her head around to see if someone had heard her, but did not catch me as I was directly behind her and maximum peripheral human vision is about 300 degrees. She slowly limped her way to the nearest high raised slab, sat down, massaged her ankle, readjusted her shoe, stood up and walked away with her former grace. I stood there like a prize idiot just looking at her.

Since then whenever I cross or see those cement patterns in front of my office, I have a lot of regret about that night not asking her was she ok, not offering her to carry her trolley-bag not doing anything ....something. But I also wonder why had she speculatively looked around, was she _looking_ if someone had heard her or was she looking if someone had _heard_ her. I don't think in any near future the lady in the above description would chance to read this blog entry, but if you do madam and your reasons for looking around that night were former, forgive me for writing this blog but if it were the latter your knight in a dull T-shirt was just behind you but alas too unclever and shy...

A different Air hostess

Because my place of work (Bangalore) and one of my home _towns_ take more than 36 hour our travel by train and with the advent of new economy airlines, I have found myself quite a no. of times _in_ the passenger deck of a plane during the past two years. I must confess in the initial days of my air travel I always enjoyed my sight, when they wished , when they bend over to talk to you, when they gave the delectable but absolutely boring and mandatory demonstration, when they would came over to charm you into buying the horrendously costly in flight snacks and even when they briskly but absolutely poised walked up and down the aisle. I admired their ability to be, but at same time found it funny that their jobs required them to be 5 inches higher even though they were already 36000 feet above the ground level. Off-late I started to lose my interest. Their action where prim and proper but they too professional and impersonal. Their porcelain faces always carried a smile which seemed to be painted by a artist not a curve of genuine happiness. They were like any professional models, cheerleaders or pin-ups imperfected by their perfection.

Whenever you think you have figured it all, you have set yourself for an awakening. This time when boarded my very late night night DECCAN Delhi to Bangalore, I had decided to finish reading something off my notebook, and busied my myself with it as soon as I could settle in. I stuck to my reading material pretty much during the initial-half of the flight and did not put down my glasses till the hostess dragged the food cart to to my aisle side seat, read out the menu and asked me If I needed anything. As always I was hungry during the night and said "May I have the Meal combo...".The pair of huge eyes in front of me had a sudden twinkle in them and my hostess whispered "No" with naughty playful smile. I took me full 5 seconds to realize that she was playing with me on my polite by irrational last statement, of course I could have it. After a short giggle she placed the food on my tray-table and said in her crisp tone said "That would be 70 Rs Sir?". It was my turn now, with a relaxed "OK" I went back to the food, without any attempt to pay the hostess. But she knew what was I trying she said "That means you pay me 70 Rs before get to eat your food." I looked at her with mock sternness but was undone by the twinkle in her eyes and we both burst into laughter, the first genuine laughter i herd from a air hostess.

All while my nibbles on the sandwich and sips of coffee I was not able to move my thought off what happened. Had I found a just discovered a honest to good hostess, or all of them steal such moments of genuineness which I have missed despite my best efforts? Any how even if it was just her it was too small a test sample to conclude something. I was having this unstoppable itch to find out. Feeling more brave than wise I decided to scratch it. With just about a finger high coffee left in the cup i strategically pushed it so that it fell spilling coffee on the tray table just beside my notebook but not it. It also splashed few drops on my trouser. I immediately jumped up and pressed the ringer. For about 4 minutes there was no response, I was already started feeling foolish in trying the stunt when I saw _the_ hostess walking towards me. I started acting franticly trying to clean the mess with small piece of paper-napkin. Reaching me she said "You asked for me, Sir". I gave her an helpless look and went back to tiring to clean the spillage. She returned with a bunch of paper-napkins and stated to wordlessly help me. This was not working. I initiated "I am so sorry, this is was clumsy of me to dirty your plane. I am so sorry...." the only response from her side was a dry "Don't worry Sir last flight tonight." After finishing the clean-up and helping me with my trousers (cleaning them ;)) she got up to leave. All that was going in my head was come on lady... you are tired and its late in the night the last thing you want is some stupid grouch spilling coffee for you to clean, say something, show some disgust ... Just as she was about to leave without a word or expression I said "Thanks you. I don't how it happened. I am sorry.".Somewhere on her face her lips quivered and just below the breathing came out almost a whisper "That's what happens when your eyes are glued to the laptop". I _beamed_ with my full 36 out, her expression were something between confusion and questioning. Fortunately another bell rang somewhere and she walked away,and I said to myself "Mission accomplished".