thursday

The weather is getting hotter. Bangaloreites swear up and down that the monsoon shouldn't be here yet, but it sure as heck has been raining a lot. (One has to remember to bring an umbrella, which has never been a talent of mine.) We managed to avoid getting rained on on the way to work.

It was Kishor's birthday and along those lines, he decided he was gonna take us out for lunch to the Hyderabadi Biryani place. Biryani is a delicious sort of rice casserole dish for those unaware, and apparently the biryani that comes from Hyderabad is especially delicious. We proceeded to order mutton and chicken biryani, chili chicken, butter chicken and lots of rotis. Then we stuffed ourselves silly. Meat gets downright delicious when cooked biryani style - tender and juicy as anything. Drool.

I needed to get back fast since I had to do an interview. (Ooh, I feel all professional!) Went back on the back of Madan's bike since that would be faster. I have to say, I know they're incredibly deadly, but I love riding around on the back of a motorbike here in India. Instead of getting jostled around (and cheated) in a rickshaw or waiting two million years in traffic in a car, you can just....go. Wherever the hell you want. Whenever.

I was, surprisingly, permitted to do an interview with someone Actually Famous: Renee, an up and coming Hindi pop star, and David Anthony, her USA producer who has handled such luminaries as, uh, Janet Jackson and the Backstreet Boys. I have never conducted a real official interview before, which meant I had to quickly figure out how to use the dang recording device quickly. However, I think it went okay: I took the precaution of drawing up my questions beforehand. Renee was authentically intelligent and charming, and it was actually a pleasure to discuss her interest in fusion Hindi music. Her music is quite good - I listened to it on her Myspace page - and their mission is to introduce Hindi music to dance clubs in the USA and the UK. I wish them luck. Few things are more fun to dance to then really good silly Hindi music.

I finished up the interview, then headed on home to take a sorely needed nap. Naps unfortunately are hard to get in India, mainly because the time around 4:00 is the time the neighbors decide to watch Bollywood movies at earsplitting volumes. While their dog barks. Thank God for ear plugs.

We managed to rally the troops at a somewhat decent hour (never easy to do), then headed off for Tandoor, a nice place on MG. Road. The restaurant had a pleasant Raj-Era ambience, with overdressed waiters and the inevitable open tandoori kitchen, featuring young guys in white chef's outfits skewering delicious, delicious meat onto big metal skewers. (This is fun to watch.)

The others ordered some terrifying cocktails, which I abstained from. I do not like my liquor adulterated with fruit juice and food coloring. Aneesa and I conspired as usual on the food, choosing stuffed tandoori peppers and an interesting sounding kebab composed of ground lamb wrapped around chicken. The stuffed peppers were delicious, with a paneer, mixed nut, pomegranate seed and onion filling and given a nice hit in the oven. The meat was delicious and rich as well, although I do find the notion of combining two different animals into one dish to be a big....wrong somehow. Maybe I should get over it.

I also tried some delicious chicken tikka (just chunks of tandoori chicken) and some awesome tandoor gobi (cauliflower.) For some reason, cauliflower given the tandoori treatment and marinated in a bit of yogurt transforms a usually unassuming and pale vegetable into something akin to crack. Magic.

I was kind of a tool and tried to rush the bill because I wanted to go to a club and it was already past 10:00 - and as you may recall, everything closes in Bangalore at 11:30 or the morality police get kerflumpt. Unfortunately, the (rather pricy, but in my opinion worth it) bill took its time arriving. We made a general decision not to bother spending 20 extremely rushed minutes in the club, and decided to purchase some booze-likker from the sketchy bar on Thippasandra. Which we did. I curiously lost the urge to drink and rounded out the evening sitting on the roof listening to music, which is always nice.