BREAKFAST AT NEIGHBOUR’S

Last Sunday our neighbor invited us for breakfast. Gaurav gave the person a lot of free books and I tempted him with the best offer in laptops for his son. He couldn’t resist us for the neighborly treat. We woke up at 10am; Gaurav had told me that his son had come down thrice since 7am reminding us for breakfast. Breakfast at 7am??? That’s still the time my dinner doesn’t get digested enough!! So after 12ish, we went to have breakfast, no bath, no shave, I wore a jeans on top of my shorts to hurry up, put a lot of water in the hair to show that we had taken a bath and was clean! The son had come over for the fifth time, “Appa calling for breakfast please come down.” So we went, the person, around in his late forties welcomed us with a big smile as if we told him the funniest joke over. I was still sleepy to notice and Gaurav was hungry. His wife and two sons came down and we came to know that his sons were studying engineering in some college and went off to study. I couldn’t stop myself from peeking; the younger was playing games on the mobile phone while the elder played with the scale.

Let us rewind a little, the first time, this neighbor’s wife saw me was trying to get over the boundary wall of my house at 5am in the morning. I was coming back from Vijaywada and didn’t have the key to the main gate and Gaurav was not taking the call in his slumber. I was halfway on top of the boundary wall and I heard a voice,”Mr Mr, where are you going?” It took me around five minutes to convince her that I stay in the same house, its just that I do not have the key and the landlord will start yelling if I wake him up at five in the morning.

His wife was from Mumbai, hometown was Tamil Nadu, in laws stayed in Karnataka and she in Andhra and teaches Hindi in some school. Found it a little confusing and tried to sync the India map and all the states thinking I am not the only one who has to travel. Her English was the typical YUMM—M, YELL-L, YENN-N, YO-O types, wondered how she managed to teach Hindi which she could hardly speak.

After a 20 minutes discussion on my Telengana stake, education in India, politics in Bengal and two pushes from Gaurav, we decided to have breakfast. I was not that interested in the breakfast thingi as I am not much of an Idli, Dosa or any of its kind person. The wife came smiling and the husband accompanied in a symphonized harmony, wondered it was planned. She put down one biggg casserole and open the lid to some ‘Chaowle kya sabzi’(Chole ka sabzi), she said, I now you North peapull likes Chaowle, saw yai made Chaowle and Pooriz’. It was a nice gesture; we never thought someone in an unknown area would actually care to cook what we might like to have for breakfast. Gaurav started drooling and almost finished 4-5 puris at lightning speed. The old man also was pretty fast with his hands. I was awestruck and managed with three puris itself while Gaurav and the neighbor competed to 8-10 I think. In between, I praised the food and was generally talking about filter coffee and its popularity in south. The wife who had come and joined the conversation sprang up faster than a rocket and got us some hot filter coffee and steel tequila glasses, well it looked like that. The neighbor had it one shot too and smiled!!! Damn, I couldn’t take a sip, it burnt my tongue! Waited for ten minutes and then managed to have it sip by sip.

Did the final Namashkaram while the entire family bid as adieu till the gate. We found someone who cared for us far off from home when all people nearby don’t care much.




P.S.- This blog has been written in just humor and means no offense to any part of the country/religion/caste. We are all one world and so I continue to believe..

DESI FOREIGNERS!!!

Its been a while I have written a blog now. Guess the work makes me too tired to pen down and when you have to cook after work, there is no energy left at all for anything..and I mean anything!!

I am at Hyderabad now, Gaurav and I have taken a 2BHK flat in this place called, Warasiguda/Warsikuda/Bharasikuda/Varsikuda…and the list goes on, everyday I try to pronounce it correctly, so I still kinda not know where exactly I stay. It is somewhere near and behind the Art’s College Station I try to convince the autowala everytime he says a long string of words in Telegu while nodding his head which is used for a YES and a NO in India.

We are the foreigners in our area!! Unbelievable ??? Sad ?? TRUE it is!!

Gaurav and I had taken this place in July09. The very first day, hunting for the maid was a tough job; bachelor hai, radu something something..Nodding of the head. Yes we are bachelors, so less work and more pay! The maid smiled and was ready to work! MBA does help at these times!!

In a few days we realized that we are the foreigners of our neighborhood, how, here’s how :-

We are fairest people staying in 4km radius of our house and people gaze at us whenever we go out of our house! All the people are dark, no this is not being racist, this is the fact!!

Our dressing sense is weird, we were shorts and tees to buy milk in the morning and we do not wear the traditional lungi or the morning ‘teeka’ on the forehead. We expose ourselves and people stare at us while we walk, wonder what will these people do if Bipasha Basu walks down in that Dhoom bikini!

I got a pair of sunglasses as it is hot as well in Hyderabad! I wore that and tried walking from my house to the auto stand, and people actually stopped and watched, I opened the glasses twice to check if there is anything wrong with them and also managed to sneak a picture in my mobile to check if it is looking awkward.

When we come out the main gate, the local kids start cheering and dancing at times. To make things better, the big hearted Gaurav gave them some rubber balls to play with.

We went to the video parlor and asked for Hindi movies and he charged us sixty bucks as security deposit and 30 bucks as rent for a MoserBaer CD which had a MRP of forty only!

We go to late night parties/movies on Saturdays and often get beer at home on weekends, it’s a sin!! We stay in a ‘family’ neighborhood. Yes, the ‘family’ became family by magic and the crowd at the wine shop seems to increase everyday.

The maid, she charges us double the money she charges the landlord, bunks half the month and does a quarter of the work!

The ‘Sabjiwala’ tells us, “This tomato, take take, fresh fresh!!” And I was like WTF!!! Dude, I am from the same country, don’t know how much of Hindi he understood but smirked and gave me more quantities of everything at around triple the market price!

Then comes the landlord, he tells everyone, this Chatterjee fellow is a foreigner. And then he will make a shit face which even the best of Telegu actors will fail to make. Now who the hell is Chatterjee ?? Well, I am!! He doesn’t know my name properly and knows me by Chatterjee. The day I get pissed off and hit him and run away, a police complain by the name of Chatterjee is lodged and the Banerjee saves his arse!
Anyways, so we listen to English music in I think some 10km radius from where we stay. And when I’m with my Ipod, one cannot miss the look in the shopkeeper’s face or the MORE ladies with too much of powder on their face giving them a ghastly look!! Many a times I wondered, if MORE gives free powder to its employees!!

I eat fried rice without butter milk, that’s a sin here! I eat bread and cheese (no, almost not in everything and the cheese maggi does taste good), cornflakes for breakfast and not the Idli and the inevitable ‘chutney’. Gaurav had jaundice, couldn’t get his food down, and threw up thrice in an hour. His boss came down with a somber face and advised him, only Idli can cure/save him at this juncture BUT he must not give into the temptation of the ‘chutney’. Gaurav threw up four times in the next hour and told his boss that he had idli and now he is throwing up even more! The look on his face was weird than that of Rakhi Sawant’s, after Mika allegedly kissed her! Believe me you, this person must have got some kind of a shock, he didn’t speak for the next 10 minutes or so.

At times, these are amusing little snippets, it helps you to get through the life which is otherwise boring and lonely. One of these days, I will put a tattoo in our arm which says, ”My name is Shils and I am not a foreigner Mr. CM!!”


P.S.- This blog has been written in just humor and means no offense to any part of the country/religion/caste. We are all one world and so I continue to believe..