A Samosa by any other name

A Samosa by any other name

I love samosas.. and if the accompaniment is chutney and chai.. the combination is unbeatable. I have been eating samosas on and off for at least 40 years, but only recently it struck me that though ubiquitous (and I did not quite know just how ubiquitous) and seemingly simple to make, not everyone can get it right.

The filling  has to be just right in ingredients and quantity. Too much filling and you feel as if you are eating a potato cutlet and if it is  too little, you feel you have been short-changed. The crust has to be made of maida (refined flour) and fried just right. Now I have eaten samosas in Pune, and the Puneites while good at Shrikhand  , can never get the samosa right. They use aatta for the crust.. and that makes it a very poor samosa…or an almost-samosa. And for some reason I am not able to quite fathom, in Pune it is called a Punjabi samosa. Luckily Punjabis are large hearted (and not uptight like Maharashtrians) , and haven’t filed a PIL against the Marathis for insulting them with this prefix “Punjabi” to the almost- samosa.

Further south, In Bangalore, the various Darshinis and Sagars (restaurants that serve South Indian food/ snacks ) also serve samosas. They don’t call it a Punjabi samosa, but they also can’t get it right. The crust is (as in Pune) is done in aatta and the ever present curry leaves are added to the potato masala. Well, this is also an almost-samosa.

Yet there are at least a couple of places I know  that you can get the the genuine article in Bangalore. One is Bhagatram on Comemrcial Street and another is Lakshmi Sweets in Marathahalli. I am sure here are many more. I think what makes the difference is the ethnic origin of the shop owner or cook. I have eaten samosas in Whitehall, London in a  Pakistani eatery, and hey were quite good.

Now thats what brings me to the second part. Where exactly did the word Samosa come from ? The word  does  not quite sound like Hindi / Sanskrit, nor is it Punjabi or any South Indian Language. So I looked up my friend Google Srinivasan. And here is what I was not-so surprised to find.

The word (and therefore the eatable) originated probably in Iran where it is called  sanbosag in Persian It is also seen in other countries : Sambosa in Afghanistan, sanbusak/ sanbusaj in Arab countries, samboosa in Tajikistan, samusa in Burma and sambusa in Horn of Africa (Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti).

Samosas have been around for about a 1000 years now. Amir Khusro (1253–1325), a scholar and the royal poet of the Delhi Sultanate, wrote in around 1300 that the princes and nobles enjoyed the "samosa prepared from meat, ghee, onion and so on". Ibn Battuta, the 14th-century traveller and explorer, describes a meal at the court of Muhammad bin Tughluq where the samushak or sambusak, a small pie stuffed with minced meat, almonds, pistachio, walnuts and spices, was served before the third course, of pulao..

 It is only in India , that the samosa is for the most part a vegetarian snack. Elsewhere it is usually filled with mince lamb or beef.

Have you ever been conned ? Part 2.

Have you ever been conned ? Part 2.

I am not writing this blog to expose the group of people who conned me, but just to record their ingenuity and acting abilities.

I guess this too happened within a few months of the first one. We were living in Domlur and late evening I had driven to the nearby market to buy veggies. This was before the traffic-mess days, so one was allowed to actually park there. It was dusk, actually more than dusk, just the last bit of light before night. I saw a slot that I could park into, but a man was sitting there. He was sitting on his haunches and looked like a villager. As I backed into the space, he got up and I parked.

 He had meanwhile joined a group of people, which had at least two women (in 30’s) two kids and one man. They had a number of bags with them, as if they were traveling. Just as I got out of the car, one of the men approached me and asked me if I knew Hindi. He explained that they were from some place in Maharashtra (their clothes confirmed this) and were labourers at some construction site. Their contractor had defaulted on wages and they wanted some money to buy tickets to go home as there was some festival (Diwali ?) approaching. They just wanted 200 rupees. It was a convincing story. Unfortunately I had only 50 with me. So I actually went to a kirana/ grocery  shop that I regularly bought from and borrowed 100 bucks and gave it them. Then I went back home and told my wife what had happened. We thought that I should go back and give them some more money. So I went back. But they were nowhere to be seen. I drove around but there was no sign of them. They had vanished. It surprised me because it looked like they would definitely have needed more than a 100 bucks to buy tickets and I had expected them to be still around asking other people for help. Anyway, they were not to be found and I came home.

Some time later, maybe more than an year, a similar group again approached me. They may even have been the same people. The size and composition of the group, their approach (do you know Hindi ? the contractor has not paid, etc), the timing (dusk) and their clothes immediately flashed the earlier experience to me, and I knew I had been conned then! Of course I wasn’t going to be fooled twice.

Since then I have been approached twice again (once in Ahmedabad!) by similar groups and in a complete action replay, and have on several occasions seen someone else being approached. It’s a neat trick and seems to work wonderfully well. 

I sometimes wonder if some enterprising person has an IPR on this and is franchising the whole con.

No minor vices This happened quite a few years ago when India was not so well integrated into the global economy. I was working for a company that had a foreign collaboration and one of the business executives from “Head Office” of the collaborator was visiting us in the factory in India. He was an important person for us. Along with a colleague (we will call him Gopal) I was to receive the visitor (who will be called Max ) at the airport, take him to his hotel and settle him in. Well Max arrived. He was mid-thirties, slim and blond with a good dose of American enthusiasm, a likeable sort of a guy. We had just started the ride back to the city from the airport when Gopal started asking Max about his family, mother, father brothers, sisters, uncle and aunts. I sensed that Max had not expected this line of conversation. Cross-cultural training/ sensitivity was yet to find roots on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Max answered with some hesitance that his father had married twice and thus he, Max, had a large number of siblings. We also came to know that he was unmarried. At some point of time Gopal asked Max whether he smoked . Max said he did not smoke. This was a big surprise for Gopal. He could not imagine an unmarried American who did not smoke, especially since tradition did not prohibit Max from smoking. Gopal then made a remark to me …”Yeh Max to bahut sant (saint) aadmi hai” and repeated the same to Max in English. As we were starting lunch, Gopal asked Max what he would like to drink. Max replied that he did not drink anything stronger than beer. Now this was too much for Gopal. An American in his thirties, who was not married AND did not smoke AND did not drink !!! Gopal repeated the saint dialogue in English to Max and me. I could feel Max distinctly uncomfortable with this newly conferred sainthood. Gopal just could not get over this rather “sainted” American, and soon enough repeated the saint dialog again. At this point Max interrupted him and said, “Look guys, don’t get wrong ideas about me. I am no saint. It’s true that I don’t smoke and drink, but I have a weakness for women”

No minor vices

This happened quite a few years ago when India was not so well integrated into the global economy. I was working for a company that had a foreign collaboration and one of the business executives from “Head Office” of the collaborator was visiting us in the factory in India. He was an important person for us.

Along with a colleague (we will call him Gopal) I was to receive the visitor (who will be called Max ) at the airport, take him to his hotel and settle him in.

Well Max arrived. He was mid-thirties, slim and blond with a good dose of American enthusiasm, a likeable sort of a guy. We had just started the ride back to the city from the airport when Gopal started asking Max about his family, mother, father brothers, sisters, uncle and aunts. I sensed that Max had not expected this line of conversation. Cross-cultural training/ sensitivity was yet to find roots on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Max answered with some hesitance that his father had married twice and thus he, Max, had a large number of siblings. We also came to know that he was unmarried.

At some point of time Gopal asked Max whether he smoked . Max said he did not smoke. This was a big surprise for Gopal. He could not imagine an unmarried American who did not smoke, especially since tradition did not prohibit Max from smoking. Gopal then made a remark to me …”Yeh Max to bahut sant (saint) aadmi hai” and repeated the same to Max in English.

As we were starting lunch, Gopal asked Max what he would like to drink. Max replied that he did not drink anything stronger than beer. Now this was too much for Gopal. An American in his thirties, who was not married AND did not smoke AND did not drink !!! Gopal repeated the saint dialogue in English to Max and me. I could feel Max distinctly uncomfortable with this newly conferred sainthood.

Gopal just could not get over this rather “sainted” American, and soon enough repeated the saint dialog again. At this point Max interrupted him and said, “Look guys, don’t get wrong ideas about me. I am no saint. It’s true that I don’t smoke and drink, but I have a weakness for women”

Blue Blood-y Buggers: Indian Royalty

Blue Blood-y Buggers

For the last several years the media, specially the print media has been rather shamelessly lionising the erstwhile Indian royalty. So one is treated to pictures of palaces, stories of riches and glory and images of bejeweled and obese men and women.

So what is my take on this .? Here it is

At the time of independence, India was one of the poorest countries in the world. While one can lay some of the blame at the doorstep of the British, we must remember that in even when India became independent, there were some 250 plus "princely states" and kingdoms, ruled by kings of various degrees of importance and a uniform degree of dereliction of duty to their people. So this poverty was the outcome of centuries of exploitation and misrule. The palaces that one sees in glorious full colour reproduction were built while the people toiled and spent lives in darkness. While the kings in full regalia attended the Delhi durbar of Queen Victoria, or holidayed in the south of France, their subjects were starving to death. They shamelessly added to their coffers and built magnificent palaces while doing nothing for the public. And this mindless and unpardonable neglect of duty went on for several hundred years. Only the other day on some TV channel there was a documentary about a famous necklace owned by the Maharaja of Patiala. Among other things, it was recorded , that when he died he left behind 80 plus children from 20 or so wives. This king was so  f**_king busy, he could never have had time for any governance.

Finally, to add legendary insult to historical injury, some of the dynasties have claimed descent from Rama and some from Krishna.

Then came Independence, and at least some good sense prevailed. Or perhaps they made a virtue of an inescapable necessity. Barring a few exceptions (the most infamous being the Nizam of Hyderabad), the kingdoms agreed to join the Indian union. But they retained some of the privileges and properties and were given generous pensions by the government. In the time of Indira Gandhi's government, she abolished the Privy Purse and the pensions and the 'kings" squealed like indignant school children. They claimed that they had given "their own" property to the government and now they had been betrayed. How ridiculous. They should have been glad they were not guillotined as happened in the French Revolution.

In the years that went by, some of them joined political parties, but very few rose to any prominence. It was clear that the masses of India had had enough of them and did not want them back in power even if through election. Most of the rest sat around for some 20 years reminiscing the past and blaming fate. The Mysore ex-king kept jumping form party to party (an unusual case of party-hopping !!) , the favourite of the moment being the one that he perceived would help him get back his palaces. He even turned designer, hold your breath, designing of all the things, saris !!!

In conclusion, the only positive things that can be said about them are that some (very few) were good rulers and actually worked for the public good. And their myopic vision and constant internal bickering and fighting gave the British a chance to establish control over India. Without this , we wouldn't  have been an independent country.

Dho dala !! My story of washing machines

Dho dala !! My story of washing machines
 
I think in the last 20 or so years, no other household appliance has done as much for the Indian middle class home as the washing machine. My household goes into panic every time the machine breaks down.

As a child I had only heard that in far away lands there were machines that washed clothes and some years later I saw these huge things in laundry shops, but they were far from becoming household appliances even in the west. So when we got our first washing machine, somewhere in the mid eighties, there was a fair bit of excitement. It was a simple twin-tub (Videocons semi-automatic VNA 800) that did a reasonable job, but suddenly washing clothes became an entertainment rather than drudgery. I must have read the instruction manual several times over, with more interest than a best-seller and each time discovered a new feature.

We marveled at the high pitched hum of the dryer-tub and beamed happy smiles when the clothes came out nearly dry. We watched with satisfaction as the washing tub removed the dirt from clothes and the water turned a muddy grey-brown. It was as if the Ganga was washing away our sins and cleansing our soul. Even though the washer and dryer BOTH had automatic timers, we stood respectfully through the complete washing cycle. We traded out favourite moments-in-washing with friends and relatives.

More practically, the maid taking a few days off was no longer so dreadful. And I think the maid was also very happy that she no longer had to wash clothes, though she wasn’t as yet allowed to operate the machine.

Over a period of time, the twin-tub was replaced by a front loader. It washes better, the clothes don’t get mangled and one can use fabric-softeners and conditioners. But the initial romance has died. Running the washing machine is no longer as entertaining as it used to be. Also as its fully automatic, I don’t have to watch-and-wash.

Is it just me getting old or do I need a new more exciting washing machine ?

No Green cards for India

 No Green cards for India
Can you guess the number of Nepali citizens that live in India ? Well according to a reliable figure available from 1997 it was 1 million. The estimates for today vary from 2 to 3 million. That’s 20 lacs minimum… not a small number. While in the earlier years , they were mainly concentrated in the north , nowadays one can see them in the south too. According to a treaty between India and Nepal, citizens of either country do not require a passport/ visa to enter the other country. Almost all Nepalis in India do low level jobs such as watchmen and construction labour and domestics, and certainly don’t have a very high standard of living. But their numbers still keep increasing because conditions back home in Nepal are even worse. In many ways this parallels the migration of Indians from rural areas to cities and from poorer states (like UP and Bihar) to Mumbai.

So while educated Indian youth travel westwards for a better life, Nepalis come to India. Nothing wrong with either set, because the quest of a better life is undeniable. But look at the paradox. The Western/ developed nations (USA, Canada, Australia, Europe) with their very high income levels (USA per capita GDP is US 50,000/- compared to USD 2,700/- for India) have all kind of rules and regulations and restrictions to discourage immigrants. They, the West, only accept the best, most well qualified Indians and make it look like a favour. And while India does not have much wealth to share, for many years we have been sharing our poverty (not my words.. I think this is from Amartya Sen). Does it mean India has a heart ? A heart that is not all that small ? To me, yes, it does mean that, and among all the senseless politicking and communal violence and terrorist deaths, that’s at least one small comfort to me.

But we also have rabble rousers like Raj Thakeray and more generally the Shiv Sena and its various avataars , who, forget Nepalis , will not even accept Indians from Bihar and Nepal into Mumbai. What can one say about that, or do about that ?

Finally: Some time in the pre-liberalisation era , I had meeting with an Englishman. He was most upset that India had high customs duties and other trade barriers. He was a torch-bearer for free trade and I was his punching bag for all the ills of India’s trade policy. At one point I asked him, if the UK so strongly believed in free trade, why did they not allow Indian workers to feely enter the UK ? We had no further discussion.

The Great Indian Middle Class Cover up

The Great Indian Middle Class Cover up

A few months back I took a train to Kerala and saw a large number of “VIP” suitcases “covered” with olive green canvas … and thereby hangs a rat’s tale.

I guess I must have been in the 5th Std when some returning-from- “phoren” relative gifted our family a transistor radio.. and not just any radio..it was National Panasonic !! cutting edge Japanese technology of the time. As an aside, these were always called transistors.. never transistor radios.

The new transistor was a big change from the older (Philips) radio which would needed a warm-up before use , made guttural noises and sometimes whistled funnily for no reason. An additional plus point was that I (or my brother) could carry it to our room and listen to all the Vividh Bharati broadcasts of film songs..including the famous Jayamala, a program where AIR broadcast songs requested by soldiers from the armed forces.I am greatly indebted to the Lance Naiks, Sipahis and Subedars from 56 APO and Ambala cant for this early exposure to one of our great musical traditions. Come evening, the transistor would be appropriated by my father for the nine o’clock news (of Devaki Nandan Pandey and Lotika Ratnam fame). But I digress…

This transistor was about the size of a large dictionary and had shiny and smart looking knobs and dials. It had a built in antenna (aerial in those days) which could be folded . But it did not come with a factory made case. So in deference to the time worn tradition of our dusty land, a “rexine” cover was procured. It was black with a transparent plastic window. So the smart Japanese thing was now looking like a piece of Russian artillery. Thankfully the music was still as sweet. Somehow the aesthete in me did not take too kindly to this Russian intrusion, and at every available opportunity I would take the cover off to admire the Japanese beauty that lay beneath.

That was my first first-hand brush with this obsession of middle-class India to “cover” anything and everything in sight. Suitcases, televisions, washing machines, music systems, mobile phones, computers, telephone instruments, et al, ad infinitum. My mother cannot refrain from a disapproving glance if she sees something that does not have a cover. And so it has gone on. Products designed with passion and commitment by left-brain thinking Italian designers, long haired Japanese award winning designers and similar assorted persons with artistic souls are promptly “covered” by us In India. To add insult to designer injury, the covers are about as appealing as a badly made caramel custard. And then finally of course there are the people who will buy perfectly designed and expensive Japanese and German cars and never bother to remove for months the flimsy polythene film that covers the seats.

Rather tasteless, no ?

Hairy Tales

These  are not hair raising.. they are hair cutting tales. They all relate to my childhood experiences with haircuts and barbers.

Sunday best : For some reason quite unknown, as kids we always had haircuts on Sunday mornings, and that meant waiting and waiting. At least an hour each time. It wasn’t as if barbers were not open on weekdays. Or that there wasn’t enough time after school on weekdays. But it HAD to be a Sunday morning , …perhaps because our parents were not logical minded , maybe because time was not at a premium, or something like that. Unfortunately several thousand parents in the city had the same mental make-up. So we ended up waiting an hour at least. Forty years on, things have not changed . Sundays still see a logjam in barber shops all across India. I know that, because in the last 20 years or so, I have twice made the mistake of getting a haircut on a Sunday morning.

In recent years I have often wondered why indian barbers don’t smarten up a little and offer differentiated rates depending on weekdays. Like TV advertising has highest rates at prime time. Must suggest it to my barber.

Red Haircut: Why were all barbers in India communists in the 70’s ? The only thing we could do while waiting interminably on Sundays was to swat flies, and to read the well-thumbed magazines the barber-shop had. And they used to be mainly Russian magazines, in English and Hindi. Sovietland is one name I remember. These magazines told us all about the glorious advances being made in Soviet Russia, and they had pictures of sturdy Russian style buildings and and sturdier Russian women driving tractors and trucks. At a time when there weren’t too many tractors around in India, to see one driven by a woman was a little amazing. There used to be also a brightly coloured Children’s magazine from Russia. So I sort of reasoned that Indian barbers were all communists. The hard working proletariat, plotting the overthrow of the Kulaks and reading Sovietland for strategy and inspiration. Only many years later this did mystery of haircut-commmunism get resolved. The Russian magazines were the cheapest available. They filled up the waiting room without costing much and so the barber shops preferred them over Filmfare etc.

Miscellany : One of the embarrassing experiences of childhood is something like this. When you are about 5 or 6 yrs old, you are so short that when in a barber’s chair, the barber has to bend very low to do his work. It’s inconvenient for him, so he puts a plank on the armrests of the chair and makes you sit on that. His problem is solved, but he doesn’t know the mortification it causes to the little soul to have his smallness on public display. It’s truly embarrassing. But one grins and bears it. And then comes the day when you have grown a few inches and the barber does away with the plank. It’s a great feeling. Grown up, man of the world, sitting in the chair just like your elder brother. Sometimes though, more embarrassment is in store. By a freak of chance, the barber who had ”graduated” you was shorter than his colleagues. So the next time you get assigned to a taller barber, you are back to the plank. I swear it is NOT a pleasant experience. Its like being banished from heaven.

How not to be horn-i in Bangalore

How not to be horn-i in Bangalore

Please forgive me for using the “h” word, but I couldn’t get the right one. Horn-i here means a driver who frequently uses the vehicle horn, mostly without any positive or useful effect. This having been clarified, henceforth the word will be spelt “horni”.

A fictional study conducted by a reputed automobile association has come up with some rather startling facts. It has been found  that in Bangalore, yellow-plate passenger vehicles (cabs, sumos/ qualis, mini-buses etc) on an average give a 16 percent higher mileage than other vehicles. And if it is used for call–centres / BPO companies, the figure goes further up to 18 percent. When I read this report, the engineer in me was intrigued.

So what is going on? How does one improve fuel efficiency? Well the bad news is that you can’t get higher mileage just by changing the colour of the number plate to yellow. You have to be seriously horni to get there. Here is how it works. As a result of continuous horni-ing, an envelope of charged particles is created around the front of the vehicle. This is a low-pressure area. So the air from the rear of the vehicle pushes the vehicle forward. Of course by this time the driver has created a further envelope in the front. This natural-assist is what reduces fuel-consumption. All of this of course requires skill.

And just how horni can you get? There are a number of places you can go to learn the art and science of being horni. Mostly these are places that are run as offshoots of driving schools. We met up with one of the people running a school. He was one Mr. Honkerappa from Assholenarsipura Horni Driving School. He said that to really do a good job at being horni, you have to take at least 40 hours of instruction. He did however offer some tips. Here they are

• Well, the driver must know precisely when to be horni. Some recommended situations are: at traffic lights when there is no space for any other vehicle to move an inch forward or to the side;
• For added saving, being horni a split second after the traffic signal changes from red to green is highly recommended. Never mind the fact that you are sixth in line and it will be a full minute before the other vehicles in front of you move. Just be horni and see the performance go up.
• You must also recognize when someone else is being horni and hogging all the action. Never allow the vehicle in front of you to have an empty space in front of his vehicle. For the natural-assist to work, the space in front of YOUR vehicle must be empty. So be horni with all your might.

We also asked him if there was any special equipment or car accessory that was recommended. He suggested model PITA from M/s Balasubramanian Horn Company of Coimbatore. It’s a huge hit already with all call centre vehicles in Bangalore. You cant miss its strident / rude sound on Bangalore roads. It endows the driver with a rudeness quotient far beyond his biological limits. And its been proven to improve horniness. Interestingly, the advertising tagline of the company is “You can’t be seriously horni if you don’t have Bals”

Finally, are there any side effects or can one be horni all the time? Well occasionally you may come across a driver who takes offence at the rudeness. He may actually gun you down. It has been reported in the US of A. Then of course you can’t be horni around hospitals and schools. In my own case, I have a special sound–activated switch in my car. If someone is being too horni, the switch kicks in and my car remains stalled in front of the horni driver for 5 minutes. By which time he has lost it.

Recommended Reading:

• Medico Legal Issues in Horni Driving by Mr. Balasubramanian, Coimbatore.
• First Aid on the Road published by Bangalore Call centre Drivers’ Association
• If you are Horni, don’t do it from the backseat… Anonymous