And when I say right, I mean reaching a level where the first whiff will have raising your eyebrows in appreciation, where the first sip will have you taking in a fairly rapid breath, and where the last, lingering, I-wish-it-wasn’t-over-already sip will have you wishing your cup was larger. That’s the kind of right I mean.

But there exists a class of people who have practiced this art more assiduously than baristas have.

Office-goers.

Entire careers have been spent on mastering the coffee machine, and there exists a certain cursed demographic of recently retired folks who sit on park benches early in the morning and speak of the 13^th of September 2006 vintage with nostalgia.

“Just a little too much sugar. Otherwise faultless, I tell you. Absolutely faultless. Tchach.”

It’s a recent phenomenon, though, the obsession with making the perfect cup. Back in the days of yore, when American capitalism and those dastardly notions of equality through the office hadn’t reached our shores, a peon would usually go through the office, dispensing cups of chai and coffee, as per each cubicle dweller’s desire. But somewhere around the start of the previous decade, the peon was replaced with a coffee machine.

Now, if you happened to work in an office where every possible cost was cut until a bonsai looked like a banyan tree, you probably got saddled with the garish yellow Nescafe machine. Press button, and a pale brown liquid steeped to its gills in sugar would trickle out apologetically. It would swear by it’s mother about how it really was a cousin of coffee, but both you and it knew that it was lying. You can still get a cuppa of this monstrosity in some multiplexes by paying fifty rupees for the privilege.

But if you happened to be working in one of those swanky new offices where nothing less than the best would do, you would probably come face to face with a coffee machine that looked more like a cockpit of the latest beast from the Lockheed Martin stables, rather than a vending machine.

It would have a button for Latte, a button for Espresso, a button for Cappuccino, a button for Steam, a button for Milk, a button for Water and about a dozen others for the heck of it. It would take you a solid month to figure things out, but a million delayed assignments and missed meetings later, you would have the hang of it.

The worst part of it all, of course, is that the machine can be calibrated according to your taste. For example, if you want not a full cup of latte, just press the latte button once again before operations have ceased completely. Voila! You get 80% of what you would have normally got. You’d think this is a good thing, but you then realize, with a sinking heart, that you have a potentially infinite combinations to choose from.

Given enough time, in theory, you would be able to press just the right buttons, for just the right length of time and in just about the correct order for you to get your coffee just the way you liked it – almost.

No one else can do it for you, of course. You, and only you, can get that perfect cup. Worse still, you can only get it from just that one machine which is closest to your seat. Which is why you strenuously resist any suggestions from your manager about changing your seat. It isn’t so much for the view – it is because your nearest coffee machine would now be a different one.

That’s not the worst part though. You know (and don’t you try to weasel out of this one) that you never have quite gotten around to getting that perfect cup. You know that machine better than you know your car, and you know exactly what to do. But it’s never quite been, you know, there.

But keep trying, as you do every day, and you will get there eventually. You will get that perfect, soul-stirring, nirvana inducing cuppa one day. Exactly three-fourths of a spoonful of sugar, just about half a squeeze of espresso, and a eighty percent fill of the latte. That’s my perfect cup, and I know the day will come.

And that’s when I’ll put up my CV on Naukri. On that perfect coffee day. Because dump of all dumps this office may well be, but I simply cannot leave without mastering the machine.

On the other hand, if I did master it, why would I leave?

Dammit.

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1…

Why are truck drivers not extinct yet?

Consider the dodo.

It was, by all counts, a large, friendly bird. It was also the dimmest light by far in the ornithological world. It would waddle up to its hunters, and simply wait to be exterminated. Not that it knew of it’s imminent demise, of course. The only thought, if one can call it that, that passed through it’s brain in it’s last few seconds on planet earth was “Hey, long black barrel. Whoa! Loud nois….”

In other words, it would be safe to assume that the good dodo died out at least in part because its IQ’s was measurable with a rather good pair of vernier callipers. If that.

Well, then, there you go. By that measure, there is no way the truck driver could ever have outlasted the brontosaurus. No way at all. Because if one were to call the dodos dimwitted, truck drivers are absolute black holes. They are also absolute another-word-that-ends-with-holes, but that is neither here nor there.

Why do they drive in the fast lane? Every time I think of this question, I dig my fingers so hard into the palm of my hand that I swear a little blood oozes out. And since I clock about 40 kilometres a day on my commute, I lose a lot of blood on a daily basis.

They’ll chug out of side lanes in stately fashion, and rumble over on to the fast lane at the first opportunity. And once they are there, it is impossible to dislodge them. There you are, zipping along at sixty kilometres, not a care in the world, until you see a green truck in the far distance, moving at at an obdurate thirty kmph. There’ll usually be a message in Hindi painted on the back, including such superlative vignettes of wisdon as “Horn OK Please” or “Tu 13 Dekh” – this only aggravates my irritation.

Anyway, you hope and pray that he will veer off in time, but of course, no such thing happens. So you end up behind him and honk resignedly. Which makes not the slightest difference to the subterranean intelligence, since it is handicapped in terms of both grey and hearing matter.

And so you stick behind the befuddled behemoth, puttering along at 30 kmph until you slowly ossify to death. All over India, ossification due to being behind a truck is a leading cause of mortality, being beaten to top spot only by ossification due to dealing with an Interactive Voice Response System.

Over time, I have evolved a system that brings me some respite, if only temporary. I overtake from the left, swerve ahead of the trucker, and slow down to an even slower crawl. This forces the truck to go ever slower, until he finally moves into the slow lane – at which point I zoom off.

It is a very satisfactory system, save for one fatal flaw. It drives the missus mad. I don’t know why (yet another of those incomprehensible mysteries that I referred to at the start), but it does. She gets mega pissed.

And that, my friends, is why I can deal with being stuck behind a slow trucker. The alternative is too painful to consider.

*Typed out on my mobile phone while being stuck behind a trucker on the way home at 6.30 in the evening.**

** You didn’t really believe that, now did you?

Nestled in between a couple of non-descript shops in Model Colony, MiniWok is easy to miss. The owner, while giving us directions to the place, described it as a hole-in-the-wall, and that is an accurate description. Speaking of directions, it lies bang opposite Eden Court, and is one shop away from the venerable Sweety Stores.

It isn’t very large at all, and can seat not more than 16 people on four tables at any given point of time. But the ambience, or the lack of it, isn’t really the point here. The point is that it serves pretty good food at about-reasonable rates, and what’s more, serves some dishes that would otherwise be pretty hard to find in Pune.

We found out about the place through Burrp, and in a toss-up between China Gate and MiniWok, MiniWok won.

The menu has got the tried and tested favourites that have become more or less mandatory listings where Chinese restaurants are concerned. Hot and Sour Soup takes its rightful place, along with Triple Schezwan and American Chopsuey.

But the really interesting parts of the menu reflect dishes that we hadn’t come across before in Pune. Pho is available on the menu, as is Bulgogi. We didn’t try either of these dishes this time around, but both will certainly be on the agenda when we return.

What we did try is what I have come to look upon as the acid test of a restaurant that claims to serve South East Asian cooking: Tom Yum. Seemingly simple to make and devilishly difficult to actualize, Tom Yum has been the downfall of many a restaurant outside Thailand. And while this one wasn’t an out-and-out failure, it certainly was nowhere close to authentic. It was missing the punch of the galangal, and the subtlety of the lemongrass, and it was a tad too salty. Not bad as it went, but it wasn’t Tom Yum.

The wife, on the other hand, was fairly happy with her Chicken Clear Soup, which was light and brimming with vegetables. I don’t know about you, but I tend to like my soups hearty and full of vim and vigour, while Boshu tends to go for the light and delicate flavours. To each her own, I suppose. But for the beginning of winter, it was certainly the soup du jour, and I ended up wishing I had ordered it instead of the Tom Yum.

There was a reason we had chosen this restaurant over China Gate today evening: Son-in-law Eggs. Apparently a much-revered delicacy in Thai cuisine, Khai Luuk Khuey or son-in-law eggs looked quite tasty when shown on Masterchef some weeks ago. And now that they are available on a menu in Pune – well, gotta try! And so we did, and boy were we glad about out choice. Light, sour, spicy and fragrant, the dish was an outright winner. There was a hint of sweetness in the background, as there often tends to be with Thai dishes, and the crunchy peanuts provided a nice contrasting texture to the otherwise smooth feel of the dish. Very nice indeed. Pricey, perhaps, at 175 bucks a pop, but I’d recommend trying it out once at least.

On to the main course then, and our choices were at once outlandish and conventional. We ordered the Triple Schezwan, which was as good, or as conventional, as one could hope for. A little spicy, with the obvious red colouring that masquerades as Schezwan cuisine in India, and with a very generous helping of noodles and rice, the dish is exactly what it is supposed to be. An Indian rendition of a dish that no self-respecting Chinese will want to claim as his own. Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t taste bad at all. As far as Indian Chinese goes, it was right on the money. But it is Indian Chinese.

The other dish that we ordered was the undoubted star of the show. Khowsuey is a hearty noodle dish with a coconut gravy and literally a dozen accompaniments served on the side. Its supposed to be a soup, really, more than a noodle dish with gravy, and I’d much rather have it out of a bowl than a dish – but the taste was to die for. Thick, hearty, nutritious and bursting with flavour, it was khowsuey at its very best. And the supporting cast of burnt garlic, fried onions, fresh chillies, boiled eggs, chopped coriander and lemon wedges were just what the doctor ordered. In short, if there is one dish that you must have at MiniWok, make it this one. Simply whatay!

Now, in theory, we were far too stuffed to have anything else, but since when has that stopped me? We decided to have desert and the owner recommended Tub Tim Krob, or water chestnuts marinated in rose water,and served with coconut milk. Super light and super tasty, we managed to polish off the entire dish without too much trouble. So tasty, in fact, that I secretly toyed with the idea of ordering another round. But wiser council prevailed and we stopped there.

Our bill came to around a grand, which I suppose would be par for the course for two people. It isn’t cheap by any means, and given the rather rudimentary ambience, some might consider it unreasonably expensive. But as far as I am concerned, the taste, the quality of the produce and the sheer lack of alternatives in terms of cuisine, make it a place worth going to again and again.

At any rate, we certainly intend to do so.

I wore a suit and went to Bombay.

Now, I must confess, going to Bombay in itself is a traumatic experience as far as I am concerned. For various reasons, all of which need not be explored in detail in this post. But what made this trip seem like an extended visit to hell was the fact that I was dressed in a suit.

Because, you see, Bombay is always humid. It is like the world’s largest, most crowded, dirtiest sauna. All the year round. That’s the opinion that I and my sweat glands have of the place even in the middle of winter. And three days ago in Bombay was, I can assure you, not the middle of winter.

This post is not about Bombay’s weather, however. It is about suits, and how they do not, well, suit me. Frankly, my brain hasn’t developed enough to be able to handle suits.

There’s the coat, to begin with. It makes me feel like a specimen in a taxidermist’s display. Also, wearing the suit entails having to carry a handkerchief, because that prohibitively expensive worsted wool, besides costing you the moon, is also oppressively warm on your shoulders. Now, a handkerchief in and of itself is not really all that large a problem. But the handkerchief, along with my wallet, my cellphone and my keys becomes an unsolvable conundrum.

Here’s the thing. I carry my keys in my right pocket (up front). My phone is in my left pocket (up front). And my wallet is in my right pocket (at the back). Over time, I have evolved a system that goes somewhat like this: get up from chair, pat left front pocket, pat right front pocket, pat right rear pocket. Look reassured, do whatever it is that I got up to do.

And it’s a very nice system indeed. I can proudly attest to not having lost a single key, wallet or phone since Kulkarni’s Instantaneous Check^TM 3.0 was implemented. But the addition of a coat is completely incompatible with this system. As I said, one complication is the addition of a handkerchief. Wearing a coat also results in four hundred and sixty three new pockets. There are two outside the coat, there are two inside the coat near the shirt and I haven’t quite figured out how many lurk on the sides. The upshot is that I have to pat myself all over repeatedly, and find different items in wholly unexpected places.

Interested bystanders on such occasions often get the impression that I am performing my own, rather worried version of the Macarena. The only good thing is that they seem to rather enjoy it.

But even this, I can deal with. I’d rather not, but I can. What I cannot begin to fathom is the wearing of the tie. Indeed, I have one simple question when it comes to the tie.

Why?

A simple search query on Google throws up a million different reasons, none of them being remotely convincing. And of course they wouldn’t be convincing, if you think about it. What could possibly convince you to wear a piece of ridiculously expensive cloth around your neck and tie it up as tightly as possible?

Also, it dangles. And that can turn out to be positively lethal. Allow me tell you a purely hypothetical tale.

There was once this rather fetching young (I said it was hypothetical, didn’t I?) man, who wore a suit and went to Bombay. On this visit, he happened to partake of lunch at a particular cafeteria in a particular firm. In said cafeteria, in said firm, this fetching young man carefully filled up his plate, taking care to ensure that he spilled nothing on his suit.

He managed to do this without accident, a feat that he is still justifiably proud of.

The problems started when he took his plate to the table. While sitting down, the dangling tie took the first opportunity to dip itself into the dal on the plate. In a vain attempt to save the end of the tie turning into a dal-fryish brown (from it’s it’s original steel grey), he grabbed desperately at the tie. Missing it entirely, he managed to hit the end of the spoon that was in the aforementioned dal-fry. Which, upon completing a graceful parabolic dive, landed upon his lap.

Desperately ineffectual dabs with the handkerchief resulted in a large shapeless, yellowish blob materialising on the front of formerly entirely black trousers.

Ah well. Into each life some dal must fall.

Upon completion of lunch, the young man proceeded to the wash basin, and bent down to wash his hands and rinse his mouth. As you would have come to expect by now, the tie preceded him.

About the only good thing to come from that little sojourn was the fact that a little of the dal on the tie was washed away. On the liabilities side of the mess that was the tie’s balance sheet, a rather large part of it was now irrevocably wet. At least for the foreseeable future.

Which explains why the young man spent the rest of his time in that firm in a very suave suit, but sans tie.

I’m slated to go to Bombay again this weekend. This time, however, I will be with friends, and in nothing more complicated than shorts and a t-shirt.

Which, let the record state for now and forever, is just how that hypothetical young man likes it.

On a pitch that offered opportunity to bowlers and nothing but hope to batsmen, Sachin Tendulkar and Dale Steyn engaged in the kind of battle that is seen all too rarely these days. There aren’t enough top notch bowlers going around the world right now, and far too many batsmen with claims of being in the top drawer for truly evenly matched combat; which is why, when it does happen, it is to be savoured and cherished.

Today was one such occasion. Today,a bowler with real claims to being one of the all time greats took cudgels to a batsman who hasn’t had to fight duels at these levels for years on end now. And it made for gripping, compelling viewing.

Aesthetically, Steyn won. Hands down. He was fast, he was (mostly) unerringly accurate and he was every inch the snarling, in-your-face paceman. His seam position was impeccable, his length varied only for the purpose of intentional surprise and his line deviated from just outside offstump just the once, at the most: for the express purpose of getting Pujara leg-before.

Sachin, on the other hand, was noticeably uncomfortable. To call this criticism of Sachin is to not know cricket, for no one, bar none, can look comfortable on this wicket. He played and missed innumerable times, he pushed tentatively to deliveries that might have been left alone and he had to bring all his knowledge to the fore so as to simply stay at the wicket, let alone score runs.

But, and this is crucial part, he did it. He gritted his teeth, he dug in his heels and he stayed in. Every so often, he would bring out a shot from his arsenal – now the uppercut, now the on drive. If the attack allowed it, he unfurled a couple of majestic cover drives. But mostly it was just a matter of of negating a champion of seam and swing.

He stood outside his crease, which in itself is a rarity. He took a deliberate step in and towards the off stump, and made sure of where it was. He would get well forward, and literally smother every delivery that he could. Those that he couldn’t, he would either let go, or fend at and lose a battle.

But he’d be ready for another, for he was still in the war.

A war that still continues, as I type. It’s barely a couple of overs after tea, and Bhajji has just gotten out.

But the old gnarled Indian warrior remains, proudly unbowed. And the young South African brave still steams in; he still, and truly, believes.

Ah, cricket.

Where do the bottles go, anyway?

Every home has one article that it keeps losing all the time. Everybody who has ever stayed in one knows this.

For no apparent reason, and through no discernible cause, the said article keeps vanishing, no matter how focussed an eye you keep on it, and how often you replace it. Spoons lead the race in this regard across households, of course. You’ll buy six of ‘em, nice, new and shiny, and before the month is over, the missus will be complaining about how there are only three left, and what do you do with them anyway – throw them in the trash? And before you know it, you’re standing in the checkout aisle, pulling out another six, nice new and shiny spoons out of the shopping cart and depositing them on the checkout counter, going “Hey, didn’t we just….?”

At which point the missus focuses a particularly steely gaze on you, and you rescue yourself by bending down to pick up the 5 kg atta pack.

But as I was saying, its mostly spoons. Forks, perhaps, in other households, while candles have also been known to hold their own in this regard.

We do things differently, of course; we lose bottles. Don’t ask me how we do it – I have no idea. But I can confidently attest to the fact that we must have worked our way through at least thirty bottles in about eighteen months, putting our monthly average at around a bottle and a half. And while India has not gotten around to doing an annual survey about this statistic just yet, I’d back our household to come out tops nationwide.

Because if you apply some thought to the matter (and I have), you will realize that it is, on the face of it, deucedly difficult to lose a bottle. A spoon might, admittedly, make it into the trash every now and then, or maybe your maid is a bit of a kleptomaniac with a particular weakness for nice, new, shiny metallic objects… but a bottle?

You know the kind of bottle that I’m talking about, right? Those PET plastic bottles that come in a six pack, in attractive packaging that confidently asserts that these bottles are made of non-degradable plastic, and will remain odourless and food compatible (whatever that means) practically forever. They are usually colourless and completely transparent, although we have occasionally experimented with a fetching shade of blue, and on one particularly memorable occasion, with an arrestingly deep shade of pink. I’ll confess here that losing that particular batch wasn’t the worst thing to have happened.

But as I was saying, we have gone through about five of these packets in about a year and a half, and we’re no closer to solving the mystery of where they go. The maid can’t very well slink off with them, they can’t land up in the trash, and although we have our fair share of visitors, none of them are known bottle-borrowers. Books are another story, but bottles, no. I don’t think so.

Lately, over the last six months or so, we’ve given up on buying new ones. Instead, we use mineral water bottles that have been purchased on car trips, trips to the movies or at airports. And here’s the really worrisome part: these disappear as well! There was a batch of Kinley’s that had decided to stick around, and I really did think we had turned a corner, but before you could say PET, they upped and moved on, leaving us with their successors (Bailey’s).

The only good thing to have come out of all this is that I’ve become a bit of an expert on which bottled water to buy. Aquafina is by far the worst, in my opinion, because the packaging is rather flimsy, while Kinley is the best. Nice, thick plastic, and the shape is very grip friendly. Bailey’s is not half bad, while Bisleri is passable. My current companion is a brand called Kelvino, and while it isn’t bad, it is nowhere close to the outstanding quality, aesthetics and grip that Kinley offers. Honest.

As regards solving the mystery, we’ve given up. You know how it is. After the fifth patch of spoons, you give up and accept that it just is the way of things in this particular household, and make room in your monthly budget for spoons (six). That’s pretty much what we’ve done ourselves.

Every trip to the movies, we pick up a couple of Kinley’s. It’s healthier than drinking Coke (and cheaper too!), and what’s more, our household needs them.

It’s been a bit of a crisis over the past couple of weeks, however. No movie has been worth a visit to the cinema, and if things persist this way, we’ll end up having to see Band Bajaa Baraat this weekend.

I’d have gulped, but my throat is dry.

I impose a word limit of about eight hundred words or so on these write-ups, and writing about my feelings about news channels would take up well over a million, so let’s not go there today. Staying on the topic of reality shows won’t improve my mood noticeably either, unless it’s one of the only two reality shows that I have ever liked.

The other was a show called The Crystal Maze, but that show used to come on TV in the early nineties, and talking about that will only make me realize how old I’ve become – and that’s a guaranteed mood deteriorater as well, so let’s not go there either.

Let’s go, instead, to a topic that has been warming the cockles of my heart for a long time. Masterchef Australia is a show that I have, quite frankly, become addicted to. On reflection, it’s hard to not be addicted.

It’s got eminently likeable people as contestants, who do not bitch about each other.

It’s got eminently likeable hosts, who genuinely like cooking, and are warm, convivial people.

It’s about food.

Seriously though, there is something comforting about watching these guys go about cooking food while I’m eating mine. Every week, for the past few months, I and the wife settle down with our dinner in front of the telly, and watch random Australians we’ve come to love rustle up different dishes in the space of an hour.

And hey, don’t you go about knocking down Masterchef India. I think it serves an excellent purpose – by making it so fantastically, outrageously, unbelievably horrible, they’ve served a timely reminder about how genuinely good Masterchef Australia is in comparison. Not that such a reminder was needed, of course, but still.

It’s  not very relevant to India, by the way, that level of fine dining. The restaurant scene in India is nowhere close to the level that these guys show day in and day out, of course, and fine dining is still a nascent art. Plus, I’ve got a confession to make – it looks very well and fine and dandy, but there is no way on earth those portions are going to fill my tummy.  No matter how pretty the food, Kulkarni still goes primarily by quantity. Remind me to tell you about this horror in Bangalore called Spiga, and their terrifyingly tiny portions (positively catastrophically tiny portions when you factor in the insanely exorbitant prices). But you’ve got to admit, cooking of that nature does make your mouth water.

The best thing about Masterchef Australia, as far as I’m concerned, is that the contestants and the hosts are genuinely nice to each other. There’s a level of respect between them that is sadly missing from every other reality show. Other shows, from what little I’ve seen of them, try to make it a point to be rude, boorish and uncivilized. Quite which users have provided feedback to these shows that more of this is needed I do not know, but I hope they stay the hell away from Masterchef Australia.

And it’s turned me into quite the connoisseur when it comes to food! I know what a confit is, and I know that such a thing as a blast freezer exists. I know that making bread is a ridiculously complicated process, matched perhaps by the process of making chocolate. There exists such a thing as a hatted restaurant (and the more there are of the hats, the better it is), and Heston Blumenthal is a (if you’ll forgive the pun) blooming genius.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a fan of the vada pav, and will be for life, but I’m more appreciative of the finer things in life. And for that, I’ve got the good folk from Down Under to thank.

Wikipedia, that blasted site, has already told my curiosity who the winner is, so the element of surprise is gone – but Marion was by far the best cook, and it’s a crying shame that she was eliminated as early in the show as she was. It’s a show that I cannot get enough of, and frankly, I’ve no clue what to do between nine and ten every evening once it gets over.

And there are only two days left for it to get over, of course. The grand finale will be worked over in the space of the next two days, and come the new year, Star World has lined up an impeccable replacement – a thoroughly charming reality show called the Bachelor.

Sigh.

And now if you’ll excuse me – it’s almost time, and if you need me, I’ll be glued to the telly.