Category Archives: Nostalgia

Nostalgia, Rant

Durga Puja

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Durga Puja (Worship of Durga) is the ultimate festival of the Bengali people. Although you cannot deny the religious nature of Durga Puja, it is as much a cultural and a social festival as it is a religious one; which explains my interest in it. Being an Atheist, it is the cultural part which draws me. It is my favourite festival of all time and is something I look forward to, all year, every year.

Durga Puja is celebrated in Autumn, on a date decided by the Hindu calendar, either in late September or early October. It coincides with the North Indian concept of Navratri, but unlike Navratri, we don’t punish ourselves by restricting our diets or eating vegetarian food. Unlike Navratri, Durga Puja is a time to meet people, feast like there’s no tomorrow & gorge on your favourite food, mostly meat.

Durga Puja
Durga, PC: Indiatimes

The Origins (For me)

My memory of the festival from when I was young is that I had no interest in leaving my house to go and see it. In fact, when I lived in Panchkula, one of the Puja committees even awarded me a prize (Set of Sherlock Holmes books, which I treasure to this day) for academic performance. I refused to attend and someone later brought it home for me.

The first time I remember attending a Durga Puja in earnest was when Ritwik Mandal took me to one in Nagpur. I remember he insisted that we have the puja lunch (bhog). They didn’t have cutlery; you were expected to eat rice with your hand. I was struggling and an elderly couple sitting next to us started making fun of me in Bengali, not knowing I could understand them. I took the higher ground and didn’t abuse them.

Slowly, as I attended more and more Pujas, my interest went up. I remember going to the Maddox Square puja once with my cousins when I was in Kolkata. We reached the venue well past midnight; still the atmosphere was electric. There were thousands of people there, chatting with family and friends. The smell of food being prepared wafted through the air. I hung out there for a few hours and headed home. I had not seen anything like it before.

Regular Patron

Eventually, I became a regular patron of Durga Puja, when I moved to Gurgaon and my parents moved there, too. My father had no interest in it, so me and my mother explored the city in search for new Pandals. After marriage, I drew my wife into the mix, too. Slowly we developed our favourite Pandals, although we would go Pandal-hopping to all the major ones in Gurgaon as well as Delhi. When our daughter was born, we got her hooked, too and we developed a predictable schedule.

  1. Few weeks before the start of the Pujas, we would go to Slice of Bengal in CR Park to begin our shopping. My wife and daughter would both get Bengali sarees and other clothing.
  2. We would attend the pre-Pujo fest at the Chittaranjan Park Bangiya Samaj.
  3. On day 5, we would go to the Pandal at Kashmere Gate, see that it is not ready yet and return home disappointed. By next year we would forget this and do the same thing again.
  4. On day 6, we would cover some of the Gurgaon pandals.
  5. Day 7, we would go Pandal Hopping at CR Park in the morning (Including Navapalli, my daughter’s favourite), then go to Oh! Calcutta for lunch and then return home stuffed. In the evenings, we would go to some more pandals in Gurgaon, including my favourite at the DLF Phase 1 community center.
  6. More of the same on Day 8
  7. On the 9th day, we would go to all our favourite ones once again and then bid a tearful goodbye till next year.

I much prefer Delhi & Gurgaon Durga Pujas to Kolkata ones (which are complete carnage).

Disappointing 2021

Durga Puja in 2020 was a subdued affair because of COVID, but there was something, at least. This year’s Durga Puja was a big disappointment. Normally there’s one Bengali group organising it in Bangkok, but this year, there’s nothing. There are no Bengali restaurants in Bangkok either (There are Bangladeshi, but its not the same). So we are sitting at home, watching it on TV.

Hope I am able to enjoy my favourite festival next year, again.

Nostalgia, Rant

Smells

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Out of all the senses, the sense of smell is probably the one I am most sensitive to. Certain smells invoke a very strong emotional response from me. Below is a list of smells that influence me.

Smells
PC: MedicalXpress

The Smells of

  • Old Spice reminds me of my childhood.
  • Cigarette smoke reminds me of my father.
  • Beer reminds me of Sood Sahab.
  • Whiskey reminds me of Sanjay Patel.
  • Weed reminds me of Goru.
  • Damp and mold reminds me of the basement of our house at Panchkula.
  • Diesel Exhaust reminds me of Delhi/Gurgaon.
  • Lemongrass reminds me of Hotel Bonsai at Connaught Place.
  • Lemon reminds me of Lemon Tree Hotels.
  • Nail Polish Remover reminds me of my mother.
  • Naphtha reminds me of my paternal grandparents’ house.
  • Urine reminds me of T-Point Hostel, NC Jindal Public school and my maternal grandparents’ house.
  • Garbage reminds me of Uttar Pradesh.
  • New electronics reminds me of my first computer.
  • Cow-dung reminds me of Mathura and Vrindavan.
  • Panchvati incense reminds of of the Maruti 800 car we had when we moved to Delhi.
  • Nivea deodorant reminds me of São Paulo.
  • Rose reminds me of one time I travelled on Rajdhani Express with my mother.
  • Night Blooming Jasmine reminds me of the festive season in India.

Also, I remember a few distinct smells which I have no names for

  • The distinctive smell of the video game parlour at Jwala Heri market. Might have been some incense that I have never come across anywhere else.
  • The smell of freshly dried clothes out of the dryer provides me a lot of comfort.
  • The earthly smell of cosmetics in and around a Forest Essentials store.
  • The smell of rubber and leather that is omnipresent in old-school shoe stores like Bata.
  • The distinct smell that was prevalent at Tosh Opticals, Paschim Vihar that I once again got a whiff of, at Central few days ago.
  • The smell that comes from desert coolers fitted with new wood fiber.
  • The typical smell of carpet, tablecloth and linen at old-school Indian restaurants & hotels.

Nostalgia

I Miss College Days

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I frequently dream about my college days in Nagpur. Although most of those dreams are actually nightmares with a recurring theme, some are actually pleasant. Last night I dreamt that my daughter took admission in some Nagpur college & me and my wife also moved there to be closer to her. There, I was roaming around on my motorcycle and made acquaintance of some college students.

Although I have been to Nagpur many times since I graduated, it is not the same going back as an adult.

College days in Nagpur
Nagpur, PC: Kayak

What I miss about college days

  1. Seeing my friends everyday.
  2. Going to college but not going into the classroom.
  3. The widespread excellent food cheaper than anywhere else.
  4. Finding a new bar to drink for cheap every day of the week with friends.
  5. Once in a while staying at home blogging while friends are outside partying.
  6. Going to Buldi to buy cheap clothes, drink fruit juice and buy mobile phones.
  7. Drinking beer with Sood sahab at home listening to music while it is raining outside.
  8. Riding around on my motorcycle (RIP).
  9. Going on dates with my girlfriend (now wife) & spending hours talking on the phone on the terrace.
  10. Filling ₹10 worth of petrol in my motorcycle.
  11. The feeling of returning from holidays at home.
  12. Not having a single female friend.
  13. Hanging out at Shanky PP with friends and drinking coffee.
  14. Going to Pyramid and not buying anything.
  15. Our very first home.
  16. Going to Westside and not buying anything.
  17. Going to Poonam Chambers & playing video games.
  18. Knowing exactly what 2-wheeler everyone had & judging them for it.
  19. Attending college rock concerts without being judged for being single and poor.
  20. Sitting at Cafe Coffee Day staring at girls without a single worry in life. Also purchasing Q-Jam coupons for ₹5 and playing our favourite songs.
  21. Going to localites’ house and not relating to their culture, but appreciating a home cooked meal nonetheless.
  22. Consuming cannabis with friends at the hostel on Holi and then spending the next few days wasted.
  23. Drinking beer at Telangkhedi lake and pissing in the lake standing on the retaining wall.
  24. Watching English movies with shitty Hindi dubbing.
  25. Sleeping in on exam day.

What I don’t miss

  1. The sweltering heat & the ever present dust.
  2. The constant/ever present lack of monies.
  3. The shit fountain at the hostel.
  4. My immature behaviour.
  5. Exam result nights.

For anyone else feeling nostalgic about college days, suggest watching this excellent show on Prime.

Nostalgia, Rant

I miss Home

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As expected, 6 months into my stay at Bangkok, I already miss my home in India terribly. Part of this is because of the lockdown in Bangkok. Part of this is because I never really wanted to leave India and had to do so because I was unhappy with my job and this was the best option I had, then.

What I Miss about Home

  1. Although Thailand has some of the biggest malls in the world, I miss my Ambience Mall. I miss looking forward to weekends to go to Ambience Mall.
  2. Although Bangkok has some of the best restaurants in the world, I miss dining at Pizza Express, Daryaganj, Chili’s, Mamagoto, Sodabottleopenerwaala and Burma Burma.
  3. I miss going to Cyber Hub on the weekends.
  4. Although Bangkok has some of the best bars in the world, it is missing a microbrewery culture which was so popular in Gurgaon and Bengaluru. I miss drinking craft beer.
  5. Living in my own house and doing what I want with it.
  6. I miss Connaught Place, although, I hadn’t been there for many months even when I was in Gurgaon.
  7. Miss Hotstar India. Hotstar Thailand doesn’t have as many shows, especially from HBO, FX etc.
  8. Sorely miss Amazon. Lazada/Shopee are disgusting and I use them only because I am forced to.
  9. I miss having the electrical switches the right side (For India) up.
  10. I miss the few friends I have.
  11. Miss the prevalence of online services like online doctor consultations, online medical test bookings & online booking of household services.
  12. I miss driving my own car.
  13. Lastly, I miss a sense of belonging.
I miss Ambience Mall
PC: IndianRetailer

What I don’t miss

  1. The horrible air quality most days of the year.
  2. The unnecessary and tiring bureaucracy in every aspect of life.
  3. The forced religious indoctrination in everyday life.
  4. The lack of respect for animals and even pets.
  5. The high cost of fuel, electricity and cooking gas.
  6. The high cost of food at restaurants.
  7. The filth omnipresent everywhere.
  8. The utter disregard of Indians towards their country and their countrymen/women.
Nostalgia, Rant, Travel

Goodbye, Gurgaon

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The fateful day is here. After almost 13 years in this city, the time has come to say goodbye and move on.

I got married while living here, we had our kid here, bought our own apartment here; till a few months ago, I thought I would live here forever. However, the deteriorating air quality year-on-year and the complete apathy of the government decided otherwise.

For years, I watched the air quality go worse, for years I saw people turn a blind eye to it and eventually it became clear that this problem won’t be solved in the near future (or maybe ever).

PC: Rentomojo

I will miss

  1. Spending my weekend at Ambience mall, perhaps my favourite place in the city. I still remember the first time I went there to buy formal shoes for my first job here (the job didn’t involve formal wear).
  2. Having breakfast at McDonalds while soaking the winter sun at MGF metropolitan mall.
  3. The (few) friends I had here and drinking beer with them at one of the many craft breweries.
  4. The wide highways, flyovers and underpasses and sparse traffic.
  5. The ease of getting things done and solving problems by throwing money at them.
    Apps and online services for literally everything.
  6. Extremely fast same-day and next-day Amazon delivery.

I will not miss

  1. The horrid air quality between November and January every year and the grey/brown skies.
  2. The constant and relentless pitch of hindutva in every aspect of your life.
  3. Kids as young as 12 driving cars with impunity.
  4. People who cut in queue (in person or in their cars).
  5. The name “Gurugram”.
Nostalgia, Rant, Satire

Beer, my friend

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I have a long relationship with beer and our relationship has evolved over all these years.

A mug of “Child” beer

I clearly remember my first beer (or any alcoholic beverage for that matter) which was at Orchid Lake resort next to the pristine Umiam Lake in Meghalaya. I was around 12 years old at that time & was going to Shillong with my uncle and his friend for the day from Guwahati & had stopped at that resort for lunch. My uncle and his friend ordered beer for themselves and offered me some. My first reaction was that it was bitter. I obviously kept that information to myself & commented that it was very tasty so as to not embarrass myself as less of a “man” in the presence of 2 adults.

I had beer a few more times with that uncle over the next few years but didn’t enjoy any of it.

When I went off to college at Nagpur, I was suddenly exposed to a whole plethora of alcoholic beverages. Beer was reserved for those hot summer days when we didn’t have electricity or had an exam the following day & didn’t want to get too drunk.

I remember one evening when Sood Sahib was feeling a bit low. I suggested that we drink some beer & his spirits lifted immediately. We bought beers from a store and some policemen tried stopping us on the way, but we somehow escaped, got soaked in the rain, reached home, dried up and enjoyed our beers.

Sood Sahib Enjoying and Appreciating Beer

I also remembering going to Urvashi with Neeraj after our gym sessions to drink beer with Tandoori chicken to aid our workout recovery. Beer also accompanied our jam sessions on numerous occasions.

My first major incident with beer was when I bought what I thought was “Haywards 5000” from a seedy store in Nagpur, went home and drank it alone. My roommate came home from college later to find me passed out with my head shaved. Later, when I regained consciousness, he also reported some strange behaviour from me but I would refrain from going too deep into those details. Later everything explained itself when we saw that the beer I had was actually a “Haryana 5000”.

When I moved to Gurgaon, I was exposed to a new world of freshly brewed beer also known as “artisanal beer” or “craft beer”. We used to go to Rockman’s Beer Island at Ambience Mall very frequently to drink fresh brewed beer poured out for us from taps.

We used to order barrels of this stuff and get hopelessly drunk. I remember one incident when we went to Beer Island with Soniel’s German colleagues, everyone got sloshed on beer and they ran away without paying for anything and we were stuck with the bill.

Beer plus Laser

Another incident with beer I remember is when I had something called “Beer Buster” at an office party. It was beer mixed with Tabasco sauce and I had litres of it. When I came back home, I couldn’t sleep because the Tabasco was burning in my chest and stomach all night.

Neeraj at Beer island

One of my best beer experiences was during my Beer trip to Bengaluru. We went to a place called Biergarten which was a huge open air pub surrounded by beautiful palm trees. The weather and the colour of the sky were unlike anything in Gurgaon. Even the washrooms had a killer view.

Biergarten, Bengaluru

Not until the lockdown, when I was forced to stay without any beer for months did I learn the true value of beer (among other things). When the lockdown did open and I rushed to the nearest beer shop to buy some, I decided that I would start treating beer with more respect from then on. Yes, I would savour my beer more and learn to enjoy it.

  • Greek Beer in China
  • Italian Beer in India

I started drinking beer slowly, appreciating the textures and flavours and enjoying the taste rather than aiming to get hopelessly drunk.

First Craft Beer after Unlock

When I drink alone at home, I never drink more than 1 or 2 cans at a time and I make sure I enjoy every sip. When drinking out with friends (rare), all these rules go out of the window, though.

3 cheers to beer and here’s to many more years of friendship.

Gadgets, Nostalgia, Rant

I miss my PSP

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And I hate the fact that there’s no true sequel. No, the Nintendo Switch doesn’t count, because the type of games that were available on a PSP and the types of games available on a switch have no comparison.

Sony Playstation Portable. PC: Wikipedia
Sony PSP. PC: Wikipedia

I bought the PSP in 2008 as a gift for my 23rd birthday from Palika Bazaar, during a trip to Delhi. It was the second gaming device that I owned, after the Nintendo Gameboy Advance. It was the PSP-3000 with homebrew OS, capable of running pirated games from ISO files stored on the Memory Stick Pro II Duo. It could output the display to a TV at 720p, too.

Unlike the Gameboy Advance (& currently the Switch), the PSP had serious games, directly ported from the PS2 and PS3 versions. It could play multiple versions of Need for Speed, there were a few flight simulator games and it also had most Grand Theft Auto games.

I remember playing PS exclusives like Patapon & Flow. I also remember returning home from my night shift job at Aricent and playing Resistance: Retribution for 30 minutes everyday, before going to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. My friend KK used it to play God of War on my PSP at work.

Eventually my wife lost it.

The games on the Switch (which is portrayed as the successor to the PSP) belong to a different category. Insanely fun to play, but not serious console games like PSP. Especially, without a single GTA title, I refuse to accept the Switch as a PSP successor and buy it.

I think the demise of PSP type of devices stems from the shift of portable gaming towards cellphones. Why invest in a portable gaming console when you have a powerful processor and chipset right in your phone? Somehow, I can’t bring myself to gaming on my phone.

I hope Sony one day releases a successor to the PSP, or at least a cloud gaming service which has Sony exclusive titles.

Nostalgia

Our first home

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For the first 17 years of my life, I lived with my parents. When I went off to college, for the first time to a different city (Nagpur), things changed a bit. I started living with some seniors at a rented apartment. I was living without parents, but I was still living at someone else’s home. When these seniors passed out, I lived for a few months at the college hostel, which was, again, a different experience.

When the toilets at the hostel turned into shit-geysers, I knew I had to leave. I started looking for a new place to stay at and a roommate to stay with. The excitement was palpable; this was the first time in my life I would stay at a place of my own choosing with people I chose to stay with.

Eventually, I found a roommate in the form of a creature known as Whoreko and a nice, independent place to stay at Verma Layout.

The time spent in this new place were one of the most blissful years of my life. We had our own place, we could come and go as we pleased, we setup our stuff the way we wanted and we both had our own rooms. In short, we had our own place and we were masters of this little area. We even had our own terrace, where we perched in the evenings and threw water on Halud when he came to visit us.

We both had a computer of our own and we connected them using a LAN cable for multiplayer gaming and file sharing. We listened to our own choice of music (Which, thankfully, matched) in the mornings when getting ready for college and in the evenings, well into the night.

Our First Home
My Room

Once, we even setup a fireplace in our kitchen sink by burning old clothes, books etc. Flames were leaking out of the kitchen ventilator and the neighbours gathered around to watch. Everyone dispersed when we threw a pressurised deodorant can into the fire and it exploded, rattling doors and windows nearby.

Kitchen, forever charred by the fire

The place was at an awesome location. T-Point hostel and Shankar Nagar chowk were nearby, so was a Cafe Coffee Day and Ambazari lake.

After Whoreko, roommates came & went, but I will forever remember and cherish the time I spent staying at this house, our first home.

Below are some of my earlier posts about this place

Education, Nostalgia, Rant

Improbable things

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I couldn’t sleep last night and my mind kept drifting between various improbable things that have happened in my life over the years.

Cardano, making the improbable, improbable
Cardano, making the improbable, improbable

Things that shouldn’t have happened (because, probability), but did. Some examples of these improbable things are:

  1. Once, when I was very young, I hadn’t completed my homework. While going to sleep, I kept wishing for fever or some other illness to befall me, so that I don’t have to go to school the next day. Sure enough, next day, I had fever in the morning and didn’t have to go to school, possibly avoiding a solid beating.
  2. The time I was returning home (in Nagpur) while drunk, riding my bike. I couldn’t spot the high tension electricity cable hanging in the middle of the road and my bike (along with me) was lifted 10 feet into the air. I fell on the road and my bike fell on top of me, all while electric sparks were shooting from the pole, the cable and my bike. That scene immediately sobered up my friends and me and we are all still in awe how I survived that incident.
  3. The time when I passed my engineering final exams because of a fluke. I have already blogged about it once, so won’t add details here.
  4. The time when I was hired at Aricent (now Altran). I lived at Kolkata with my parents. Aricent was holding a hiring drive in Kolkata and I went there just because I had nothing else to do. Somehow, I was selected in the interview and hired a few weeks later. The fact that
    • Aricent staff came to Kolkata for the hiring drive (Never happened before, never happened again)
    • I turned up and was selected
    • Got the right job (at that point of my career)
    • At the right location (I was already aspiring to move to Gurgaon) still boggles my mind.
  5. When I stayed at Kolkata, I used to watch a TV show called “Indian Rendezvous”. There was a part in the episode about Delhi which shows a balloon competition with a balloon sponsored by BT and I dreamed of moving to Delhi one day and working for BT. Years later, this would come true.
  6. How I was lucky enough to have the perfect child exactly like the one I wanted (I might be biased for this one).
  7. I had a friend “J” in college who introduced me to the song “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens. We used to listen to this song at his room very often. Years later, I was listening to this song on my own, when “J” called me and told me his father has died earlier that day.

Makes you wonder how probability isn’t always perfect and such things slip through its laws from time to time.

Nostalgia, Rant

Sitabuldi

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Recently, I had a dream about Sitabuldi. For those who are not fortunate enough to have ever lived in Nagpur, Sitabuldi, also called Buldi (But pronounced “Birdie”) is a densely populated commercial neighbourhood of Nagpur.

Sitabuldi
Sitabuldi, PC: Wikipedia

The area is divided into “Modis”, which means “Lane” (loosely translated to English). I have a lot of memories of this place during my (extensive) stay at Nagpur. Some of the highlights are

  1. The second hand mobile phone market, where I was a regular, both to sell and buy cellphones.
  2. Hotel President, in Modi No. 3, where my parents often stayed, when they came to visit me in Nagpur.
  3. Pape Juice Corner, which squeezed the freshest and best fruit & vegetable juices and was open till the wee hours of the morning. Unfortunately, the last 2 times I visited Nagpur, I found it closed.
  4. Haldiram’s Thaat Baat restaurant, where we ate sometimes, when we had some money, but only enough to be able to afford vegetarian food.
  5. Some rooftop bar, whose name I cannot remember.
  6. Janki Talkies, a small cosy theatre, where we went only once to watch some movie at night. Our group was the only group to buy tickets that night, so the theatre operator had to begrudgingly turn on the projector & start the movie just for us.
  7. Sitabuldi Fort, which we passed many times, but never bothered to go inside, because engineering students don’t go see forts.
  8. Shukrawari lake, also called Gandhisagar lake, which we passed many times, but never bothered to go inside, because single engineering students don’t go boating on lakes.
  9. The street vendors whom we visited to buy cheap garments from.
  10. Some dhaba where we once ate cheap food and the utensils were coated with sand.
Sitabuldi Interchange Station, PC: The Metro Rail Guy

The place has recently changed somewhat, with a futuristic looking metro station now constructed as part of Nagpur Metro. I did make plans for a Nostalgic trip to Nagpur this year, but the Covid situation made it impossible.