Chp 563. Birthday Party in Pune

When you’re in your mid-thirties and still single, you have no other option but to love kids. By that time, most of your close friends or relatives in your age group have kids of their own, so you gotta stay in the game and act like you love kids in order to blend in. :)

Whether you like it or not, all your office water-cooler conversations or weekend hangout with friends now revolve around topics on diapers and pre-school admissions, and you shake your head wondering whatever happened to the good ol days when the topic of conversation used to be just about breasts, not breast feeding.

At work, my fellow Co-Founder and partner of FITH Media Sumeet just had a baby boy, and his life changed forever every since :) And another close friend Abhilash our Art Director is expecting his first child next month. Bloody hell, we singles are becoming a dying breed day by day.

Outside work, things are pretty much the same too. Just this Saturday, I was invited to a birthday party by my dear friend Daniel. It was a combined birthday party for his daughter (4 years) and son (1 year).

By the way, this was not my first kid's birthday party. Back in Mumbai too, I had been a regular invitee at various children's birthday parties too. A kid's birthday party is not exactly a Spring Break kinda party, if you know what I mean.

Remember how much you used to look forward to birthday parties back when you were a teen? Oh yeah, that was the shizzle back then. Birthday parties back then meant having the time of your life, painting the town red, experimenting with stuff and having a memorable experience you’ll remember for a very long time. Sometimes, I still think I’m a teen deep inside.

I’m not going to give the clichéd old "Age is just a number" line by NKOTB (oh snap, did I just quote NKOTB?) but the reason why I think I’m still a teen deep inside is because a part of me refuses to grow up. While this may be a good thing if one is developing products meant for this particular market segment, it kinda leaves you out in the lurch when you’re with your own age group.

So yeah, coming back to Daniel’s birthday party for his two kids, I was a bit apprehensive about my role and responsibilities, especially since he asked me to come early before other guests arrived to help him with the arrangements and preparations.

Daniel had been an awesome friend of mine. He’s one of the few people I became friends with through my blog. He had been a regular reader and commenter of my blog since 2006. As I have said many times in my past updates, blogging sometimes help us pick the best of friends because it brings out a connection even when the two concerned parties haven’t met each other personally. We just feel comfortable and build a bond with that other person even if we’ve never met him or her in real life, just because we read his/her blog updates all the time.

On the day of the birthday party, another close friend and blogger "Not Good" aka "Blackest Red" Samuel (Sanga) picked me up from my apartment. When the two us reached Daniel’s place (we were the first to arrive), Zodini, Daniel’s wife, immediately handed us our tasks - Sanga was to help with the kitchen work and preparing food while my responsibility was to hang the balloons and look after the kids!

See, that just shows how much people value your usefulness :P But I made sure I did the best damn job of hanging up balloons. Check out my balloons yo. I’m pretty damn proud of my work. :)

Check out the symmetry and alignment of each balloon above! I calculated the placement of each balloon using Pythagoras theorem divided by a Fibonacci series of higher order so as to derive the perfect Euler’s equation of complex analysis while taking into consideration the speed and velocity of wind at that moment. But does a child cares anything about that? Nah, all they did was rush straight to the balloons and burst them. See, this is why I hate kids :P

But yeah, you have to love them or else you end up being a social pariah :D But all jokes aside, I love the kids especially little Jonathan as he and I spent a lot of quality time while the "adults" were preparing the food…

The daughter on the other hand had just woken up from her afternoon nap, so she was grumpy as hell. Best to leave her alone :D

While I was hanging the balloons and babysitting the kids, Sanga was busy helping with the food preparation...

As you can see from the photo above, he was busing grinding the salad... He could move his wrist up and down really really fast... definitely looked like a man with a lot of practice... somebody who would do this every day, from the time he woke up to the moment just before sleeping... I'm talking about grinding food by the way, you filthy mind...

Daniel, Zodini and Sanga made the salad including awesomeeee "Vawk lu bawl" which is a Mizo delicacy made from pork.

The rest of the food were ordered from a Manipuri caterer in Kondhwa.

And then came that dreadful moment when hard physical labour was required and there were no signs of any youngsters around. In our Mizo community, in any social gathering, we usually delegate the heavy physical work to the youngsters. That is something we all went through while growing up. But that day, the "young" dudes had not arrived yet, so it was up to Daniel, Sanga and me to do the dirty job of transporting the rented chairs from the vendor. And so the three of us walked across miles carrying 10 heavy plastic chairs each back to Daniel’s place. That moment made me realize how unfit I had become. It also made me realize I was no longer a teen. :(

Soon, guests started arriving. I never imagined there would be so many Mizo families and children living here in Pune. Like I said before, I’m still new to Pune and don't know most of them, so I was just sitting at a corner by myself while the rest of the guests socialized.

And then it was time for "hunserh" - a short speech and prayer to thank God for the wonderful occasion.

Once this was over, it was time for the cake cutting ceremony. All the children screamed in excitement as the cake was brought out...

After this, the adults sat around talking to each other while the kids played together.

This was quickly followed by dinner time as it was past 8PM already. Some of the guys fooled around with the camera, like for example this useless Foster who wasn't around when it was time to help with the food prep or heavy lifting, and only showed up when it was time to eat...

...whereas people like me were busy coordinating with the food preparation...

Even Daniel's non-Mizo friends really enjoyed the food that was made that day. Some of them found the taste to be a bit "different" but nevertheless ate their fill.

Here's a couple of pics I took of the food, which, as mentioned earlier, was made by a Manipuri caterer in Kondhwa.

Time to eat for the hosts too. Looks like there is no rest for a mother even on her kids' birthday party!

Hard to eat with these two popping up every now and then to take a photo... They seemed to be in really high spirits... They're Pune's version of Kelkang Kal I guess. :P

After dinner, when most of the guests had left, it was present opening time!

As we ended the day, we took a few more pics together here and there, so as to remember the moment.

And so that was the memorable birthday party organized by Daniel and Zodini. In a way, I got to meet many of the Mizo families residing here in Pune so I don't feel like an outcast anymore. And surprisingly, when I was introduced for the first time, many of them asked, "Hey, aren't you that blogger?" Dayymmm!

Much thanks to Daniel and Zodini for managing to pull this off. Throwing a birthday party for 50+ people is by no means an easy task.

All in all, I would like to end this post with these photos of little Jonathan who somehow managed to find my hidden empty coke bottle... :D :D :D

So until then, take care y'all.

Chp 562. Order North Eastern food online

So recently, thanx to my friend Becky, I discovered this new ecom site that sells Northeastern stuff online - giskaa.com. They deliver not just across India but even outside India. They also sell not just ethnic food but a lot of other items like home decors, office accessories, fashion products etc that are all centric to the North Eastern culture.

The website sources products from different manufacturers across the Northeastern states, and they handle the logistics - that is, even if you place your order from different manufacturers/sellers, giskaa.com will pack them all together from their warehouse in Guwahati and send it all together in one package.

As for me, my joy knew no bounds the day my package from Giskaa arrived :) By the way, it took only three days for my parcel to reach Pune.

And here it is, thadaaaa, my order -

I wrote about this on Facebook, and immediately a lot of my friends too decided to order. I really think giskaa.com should give me a discount next time for referring so many new customers to them! :D

So here is my feedback on the things I ordered, in case you want to order too.

[all pics of food item below are from giskaa.com]




Ngari by Meira Foods, Manipur (200g / Rs.183). This is a popular chutney paste in Manipur prepared from fermented fish, and is added in Meitei dishes like eromba and singju. In Mizoram, this is more or less what we call as nghapih. Personally, I find the taste to be a bit too pungent and strong. If you are from Manipur or Nagaland, I’m sure you’ll love it, but for us Mizos whom I think are more accustomed to a toned down version of fermented fish (nghapih, ngha-um etc), it may not exactly be your cup of tea.





Etsuk - Bamboo shoot pickle by Techinutsu, Nagaland (200g / Rs.143) - Again, here it is a matter of taste buds. I find this bamboo shoot pickle, compared to the ones we get in Mizoram, to be quite bland. That full essence and aromatic flavor of a bamboo shoot pickle is just not there in this. As I said before, this can be because of regionalism because in Mizoram, bamboo shoot is a very popular delicacy and this is not up to the mark according to our standard, but others may like it. I won't be ordering this again though.





Smoked pork with King Chilli by Kohima Foods, Nagaland (150g / Rs.187) - This is utterly awesome. The Bhut Jolokia perfectly blends across the smoked pork. I just wish there was more fat (as I prefer fat over meat when it comes to pork) but I'm also alright by this. Definitely something I won’t mind ordering again. Now the cost is a different factor. Just 150 gm for 187 bucks? The whole thing got over in a matter of minutes when I shared this with my non-Northeastern friends yesterday (we had it with appam and coconut chutney, it was soooooo good!). Yeah my friends love pork and all things spicy, imagine had I shared this with my NE friends!!!?? A second is all it would take to disappear. I recommend this for the taste, but I’m not so sure for the VFM part. I wish it had more quantity for that price.





Pork Yormi by Spice Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh (240g / Rs.223) - Love this, except for one small thingie… small pieces of the pig’s hide are present here and there, which are really hard to chew, and leaves behind a painful feeling on your dentals if you happen to chew on it at full force, so you must be really careful while eating it… Other than that, the yormi (spicy chilli flakes) is spicy but not too spicy so you can have it as “seh-hmeh” (side snacks) with your drinks if you want :D The best part is when you happen to chew on a piece of fat and oh yummm that feeling that runs through your mouth across your soul... Sheer Heavenly :)





Dry Meat with Axone (fermented soya bean) by Anung Phom Products, Nagaland (100g / Rs.157) - Mizos love Naga akhuni/axone, because we have a similar dish called bekang. And yes, pairing up this with bawngsa meat is perfect. Now you know why I'm calling it bawngsa. So let's keep it that way shall we? :)





Sen Sen Dry Meat with King Chilli by Sen Sen Products, Nagaland (100g / Rs. 182) - A bit too expensive, shelling out 182 bucks for just 100g, but this dried bawgsa meat is AWESOME! In fact this is my favorite from my entire order. If you love bawngsa, you have to try this out. And the King Chilli blend is not too hot, probably because it is dried as well. I had this with poha, masala dosa, vada pav, upma etc and trust me, it goes well with all these. Yup, I'm definitely going to order more of this.





King Chilli pickle by Meira Foods, Manipur (250g / Rs.135) - Last but not the least, the King Chilli, aka Raja Mirchi aka Bhut Jolokia aka Naga Chilli aka U-morok aka Ghost Pepper aka many other names. Now this is the only one I haven't opened and tasted yet, but I'm sure it will be good. If you visit the website, you will find many other King Chilli pickles out there. The only reason why I selected this one was because of the cost. It was cheaper compared to others like Sen Sen King Chilli pickle by Sen Sen Products, Nagaland (150g / Rs. 161), Red Chilli pickle by SN Products, Meghalaya (200g / Rs.155), Fresh King Chilli pickle by Kohima Foods, Nagaland (150g / Rs.257), Naga King Chilli pickle by The Green Caravan, Nagaland (200g / Rs. 228) and King Chilli Pickle by Abenla Homemade Products, Nagaland (500g / Rs.366).

As you can see, the one by Meira Foods is the most economical, and my decision to buy this is purely because of VFM rather than taste. (also, yeah you can thank me for making a price comparison manually because the ecom website is not very user-friendly).

So that's it. My feedback on some of the food items at giskaa.com. I really hope some of our Mizo manufacturers like "Tui bon tops" start selling at giskaa.com too. Next time I'm gonna order new stuff (along with some of the old ones I mentioned above that I'm gonna order again). So cheers, and enjoyyyyy :)

Chp 559. Rest In Peace Zuala

I’ve been playing this song by Ozzy Osbourne for the umpteenth time since yesterday - "See You On The Other Side". A continuous loop on my playlist. Because yesterday, I got the sad news that my dear friend Zuala is no more.

He breathed his last yesterday after being admitted at New Life Hospital in Aizawl for organ failure three weeks ago. How I prayed he would get better, and sometimes the news I got were reassuring… but yesterday his condition became worse and there was nothing the doctors could do anymore…

Dammit… Bro… :(

Only the good die young they say… No bro… you just can’t leave us like that. :(

The ironic thing about my relationship with Zuala is that, we met online back in the mid 2000. Back then we had this popular Mizo community website called misual.com, and he was one of the most prominent members there, contributing insightful articles, comments and opinion on various issues. We agreed on almost everything and bonded right then. He was known as "zualbonez" in the online world, and that was how everybody knew him as, including me. It was only when we finally got to know each other personally that we realized he was none other than my senior in School at St. Thomas Khidderpore back in the early 90’s. We actually knew each other back when we were kids! His dad Pu Ropianga was even my LG (local guardian) when he was the LO (liaison officer) of Mizoram House, Ballygunj Road during those days.

Small world, we used to say, laughing about how our paths had crossed such a long time ago. The Zuala I knew back in STBS might have been all blurry because that was such a long time ago, and I joined another school in '92. But the Zuala I knew later had been one of permanent friendship. Whenever I visit Delhi due to work, I would always stay over at his place.


[online friends meet-up, 2010. video version - youtube]

In Zuala, I found a lot of similarities. What we liked, what we despised, we shared the same wavelength because we had a similar upbringing. He had this immense passion for cooking, was a great cook, and boy he loved to experiment. We had the same taste of music and spent hours discussing about speed metal and oldschool glam rock. Our late night chats ranged from his experiences in IIMK to management and business related topics to foreign policies and sports to social and political conditions of Mizoram. We always had a lot to talk about... how unfortunate I now have to write all that in past tense.

He even took to blogging for a couple of years. When I read his most recent blog post today, I felt stifled, trying my best to hold back a tear, only to realize that was impossible. His latest post on his blog will certainly move you too; it is perfectly apt for this moment…

"whisper nearby the leaves of the trees

i lean near to overhear what they say.

An angel from the sky is what i hear,

and of me a being from below.

They sing of our union of sky and 'neath."

True indeed bro.. Let the angel from the sky sing of your union today...

I wish I could have spoken to him on the phone one last time, but unfortunately even our friends who went to visit him were not allowed to see him because he was admitted inside the ICU. But I had enough sources who continuously updated me about his condition every day. And yes, it brought a smile upon my face when I read that he still had his sense of humour...

Suddenly, what he joked about is now no longer funny. And all this had been so sudden, I'm still finding it hard to come to my senses. It felt like just yesterday when I would message or call him to let him know I was landing in Delhi, and he would immediately be like "Brooo come stay overrrr" even though I had my own company guesthouse accommodation. The past three years, I was in Delhi a lot of times, making at least 2-3 business trips every month. So, yeah, I was always showing up at his house.

And when both of us were back at his pad, we would be like, "Let's call up Fonzieee" (another dear friend I met through misual.com) and then we would call him up and even if Fonz was too tired or didn't feel like going out, we would keep pestering him until we changed his mind. And then the three of us would go out and paint the town red. How I miss those days.

Zualbonez showed me around Delhi and we met up with other misual.commers like lushaier (Pu Hluna), chemtatrawta (Hriata), violette (Manuni) etc. Oh those memorable dinners and talks we had. Unfortunately, I don't have any good quality pics of those moments to post here. But there were those memorable times when we took out my cousin to Route 04 at CP. Or the time we paid a surprise visit to our friends Toya and band performing at Striker Pub in Gurgaon. He always had the energy to treat a guest well.

What is left now, are not just memories, but his online imprints. Reading his comments on my old blog posts now leaves behind a sad feeling of depression. Reading our old Facebook messages or going through some of his last comments at misual.com definitely is heartwrenching.

But as my cousin said... let's remember the happy times, the times when he was happy. I am really going to miss Zuala, my friend, my brother. This is one blog post where I cannot find enough words to express how I feel. Today they are burying my friend in Mizoram. And being thousands of miles away makes it even more harder for me to find closure.

Rest In Peace my brother. I'll see you on the other side.

Chp 558. College graduation throwback

So there’s this blog friend of mine Vered whom I’ve known for quite some time. We even met at the third Mizo Bloggers Meet I attended back in Mizoram two years ago. Yeah she’s the one who did that crazy dance in the middle of the misty Durtlang road after our dinner meet-up.

The reason why I’m bringing this up is that recently I’ve been seeing a lot of her farewell and pre-graduation photo updates on my Facebook timeline. So apparently, she’s going to graduate from college this year, completing her BA LLB (Hons).

A big congratulation to her.

Now as a friend, I am really happy for her. But as an old fart who graduated from college more than a decade ago, I just couldn’t help thinking about the vast contrast between how people of today’s generation are graduating compared to our generation.

Back during our college days, be it graduation photos or farewell photos or any photos taken with our college friends, we had this thingie called “the roll film” that we had to take to a “Photo studio” and they would in turn take hours or days to develop the photos. But for these youngsters, it’s just a matter of seconds to see if their front facing camera had captured the perfect graduation selfie or not, otherwise they would just take another one. Sighhh…

[Image source: Danielle Vitarbo]

I know a lot of older generation peeps would agree with me, talking about how people had no cell phones during their college days as well. I guess I belong to a generation caught in between. When it comes to my generation, we had mobile phones to some extent. But it would be an understatement to compare them to the smartphones that we have today.

During my first year Engineering college, maybe 1% of my batch had mobile phones. Second year college didn’t see much improvement either. Those were the days when incoming calls were still charged and mobile handsets were the size of… ironically, some of today’s latest mobile phones! Funny how we went from small smaller smallest to big bigger biggest in terms of screen size... maybe this pic will cheer you up :)

When the cell phone boom happened around the year 2002 and service providers started providing free calls within the same network in order to compete with other networks (you gotta love capitalism and competitive free market for that), everybody started owning a cell phone. Soon, the queue at the local STD/PCO booth slowly started becoming shorter and shorter…

But of course during those days, having a mobile phone that could take photos as well was unheard of. In fact our main concern back then was whether our cell phone was capable of having a Monophonic or Polyphonic ringtone! Seriously.

I was in final year of college when Samsung N625 – “the phone don't ring but sings” was released. That was the marketing tagline of one of the first Polyphonic ringtone phones in the market. I bought that phone. And yeah that phone definitely had a snob value back then :)

Today's youth have come a long way from that. Mobile phones not only have super high-def photo and video image capturing abilities, but they also have complete access to the internet. A lot of college youngsters today are already on different job portals and professional networking sites or researching potential employers and comparing salaries & perks between different companies right from their handsets.

Applying for the mandatory final semester internship too is just a matter of seconds for the engineering student of today. I remember how much we had to travel and physically approach different companies for internship those days. And we had to carry our résumé in a 3½ floppy disk or take a print-out. Today, everything can be done through the cloud. Such a wonderful time to live in, if one can take advantage of all the technology around.

Back during my days, there weren't any job portals like naukri.com, MonsterIndia, TimesJobs etc, so college placement time was the only time we could sit for job interviews. To look up on a company or job profile required going to a dingy old Cyber Café that charged by the hour, and waiting for an empty cabin usually took a lot of time because those were the only places hormone-raging college couples could use to make-out. And worse was the fact that most of the computers had Internet Explorer as their default browser. Only a few systems had Netscape Navigator, which was far preferred by the vast majority.

So those were some of the many struggles we had to face during our college days. I can't help but think how my life would have turned out if we had such advantages back then. Because one of the reasons why many of us are in the wrong line of work or why we climb so slowly up the corporate ladder is because we've been uninformed (of course hard work, dedication and talent are pretty much required too, but when I look back at my life, I think I could have at least cut down a couple of months or even years in my career, all because I wasn't informed enough).

When you're uninformed about the number of career opportunities or different job options available in the market, people tend to make the mistake of accepting the first job offer they get after college, because many fear they may not get another offer again. Such hasty decision prevents people from analyzing if that is the right path for them or not in the long run. And then once that hole is dug, very few tend to crawl out. All that could have been avoided had we been more informed and aware of our industry.

Would I start afresh if I had the luxury of such information at my fingertips back then? Today it is no longer a risk to start your own business venture. You have AngelList and other places where you can easily pitch to investors and VCs. You have hundreds of Start-Up accelerators and incubator programs. You have many crowd-funding sites to display your project proposal and convince others to believe in your product. And you can get information about almost anything now. The Google search of my days wasn't as powerful and efficient as it is today. Forget searching, today you have many reputed portals where you can ask questions about anything, and experts from different walks of life will answer your query and clear your doubt. You don't even need a LinkedIn profile to network with other professionals, Facebook can pretty much achieve that. The options are endless for the youth of today.

So yeah, maybe I would.

I would do things differently, which would have different outcomes.

But then again, it's a matter of "what if", so it's just a hypothetical question. It doesn't necessarily guarantee a better future.

And who knows, maybe these same batch of students who are graduating today would be bitching about the next decade's batch of graduates, calling them fortunate for being surrounded with new technologies that we don't have today, after all, technology is forever changing and improving. Maybe in the future, students can easily clone their bodies so they can attend multiple lectures and increase their learning and experience faster. Or an option to insert nano chips into their brain cells where an AI will take over their body during exam time. So many possibilities.

For now, I guess those are just the few thoughts that entered my mind when I saw those graduation photos. And you know what really grinds my gear? The fact that I don't have a single photograph of MY graduation!!!! Aaarrghhh. I don't have any photos of me going on stage proudly to collect my BE Computer Science degree from the Vice Chancellor, or any photos of me with my classmates in our graduation gown (it was yellow, and ugly) all because of the stupid roll film cameras. By the time the films were developed, everybody had already vacated our college hostels and left for their respective hometowns, so there was nobody I could get a copy from. Frack you roll film.

Maybe in the future, some of the next generation college graduates will build a time machine as a college project and go back to my Convocation and take a photo of me! :)

Until then, cheers.