My Bangalore

Today we celebrate another Rajyotsava dina. Bangalore officially becomes Bengaluru. Do we care? .... considering for us it will always just be called HOME...

My Boys are Back!

Thank You Thank You Dilip Vengsarkar jee….
Now bring back VVS, Dada and Bala (when he’s fully fit) and we’ll have the perfect team for the World Cup!!!
I was watching cricket controversies last evening and Siddu was in one of his crazy moods ……..demanding VVS be brought back......not that I disagreed with him but it was just hilarious watching him get all hyper and yelling at poor Jadeja who sat there with a big smirk on his face…

The art of Kaapi Kudking!

The art of Kaapi Kudking!

I love coffee!!! in fact i'm addicted to it.. ask the people i work with......they're amazed at the number of cups i gulp down by the minute........a great cup of coffee can change your mood in seconds.....growing up i drank Bru or proper filter coffee made by ma or akka and i loved it... even in school when good leetle children drank bournvita (i did that too) i had to have my coffee in the morning.. it's such an amazing feeling taking that first sip of coffee in the morning.........nothing tastes better... in Bangalore i would go to Coffee day and have my Frappe.....in Airlines it was always the delicious kaapi in the dirty glass tumblers "sugar haak bedi, seperate aag tanni" we would say...much to the annoyment of the waiters who probably thought we were a bunch of spoiled teenagers who had nothing better to do than hang out in cars under the trees in airlines for hours......we were doing something productive u know...we were discovering ourselves......don't smirk..... i remember hours of chit chat with my friends about cricket, boys, parents, our futures.......we bonded in airlines...we laughed, we fought, we ate, we bitched... we lived in airlines............ok this was supposed to be a post about coffee not Airlines hotel but well if ure a Bangalorean u know that one cannot be referred to without the other... as i write this i sip my coffee....i love the feeling of sitting on my couch early morning (ok not very early....sometime before noon) sipping my coffee......with my laptop on my lap......rambling my life away into this little screen....i love it.......k getting back to coffee.. when i came to Denver i brought with me freshly ground, tightly packed bags of filter coffee (from coffee day and from kb's estate) and every few months i would make my dad mail me a new stock... i checked the shelves of the local indian store for coffee and all i found was Bru.......i bought some pronto and stocked the cabinet at work.. i soon discovered Starbucks.. although it took me sometime to figure out what i should order to make my coffee taste like a good cup of filter kaapi....it wasn't easy... Americans drink their coffee way too strong or way too sweet...i even had some help from the blog world...i came across this discussion about Starbucks and what desis thought of it and what came the closest to tasting like proper South Indian coffee.. i finally discovered it......no its not the cafe americano drip coffee and by god its not the Cinnamon or pumpkin spiced lattes......its a white chocolate mocha (i know it doesnt sound filter kaapi like at all) but there's always the modifications right.......a few trips to starbucks later after listening to some of the ridiculously long orders being placed.....i didn't feel weird about my super long order anymore... so here's how i recommend it... make sure u get it without the whipped cream (this isn't dessert!)...ask for only three pumps if you're getting a venti(the large) otherwise they end up putting like a half cup of the super sweet gooey stuff in it.....and then depending on how you're feeling about yourself that day get either non fat or regular milk.... so the next time u see me drinkng a venti three pump white chocolate mocha with a look of contentment on my face..... ull know the coffee turned out just right......

p.s i drink my piping hot coffee with a straw or just straight out of the cup (no lids please... cause drinking through that tiny hole on the top makes me very nervous...) vokay fellow coffee lovers......YENJAAY MAADI nimma coffeeannu... :)

ooooohhhhhh i know! i can blog about this...

So i started this blog last evening... its pri's first u see.. yes i realise i occasionally refer to myself in the third person.....no i'm not crazy......maybe just a leetle...anyhoo i went to bed last night and couldn't fall asleep cause i kept having these brilliant ideas on what i was gonna blog about the next day...i guess i should've done this much earlier...... u see i read a lot of blogs....... mostly at work where well i don't do a whole lot...and i constantly email my friends some of the good stuff ive read.....i think the first ever blog i read was 'instant kaapi' many many years ago.....i was fascinated.......i think part of the reason i didn't start a blog earlier was cause i figured i wasn't half as good as some of these awesome people with their awesome blogs.....but then i realised i loved to ramble about the most nonsensical things and i have an opinion on everything (as u all know.......or if not.. u will find out very soon and instead of typing up another one of those long structureless emails about absolutely nothing and sending them to my helpless friends ..... i figured i would instead do this and have the world hear my fascinating and sometimes scary ideas... i'm not doing this to show off my writing abilities (as u can see i have none and i dont care)... i'm just doing this to ramble, to have fun......i'm not trying to change the world through this blog.......although occasionally there will be detailed entries on the art of team selection and what is expected of a captain...and why certain people with the last name bucknor should not be allowed within 10 miles of a cricket stadium....so this will be where i vent, where i bitch, where i judge, where i procrastinate....anyhoo bottom line........
pri hopes ull have fun!

CricketCrazyPri

I've been cricket crazy ever since i can remember. As a kid i grew up watching Kapil Dev.....i drank lots of Boost cause it was the secret of his energy supposedly...I played cricket with my neighbourhood kids.....i wasn't any good at it but i loved the game. I loved to watch it, i loved listening to Gavaskar and Boycott...as i grew older i learned to appreciate Bhogle and Greg Chappel (this was of course before he decided to become coach and turn everything in Indian cricket upside down)....... I remember getting so frustrated everytime Mohinder Amarnath mispronounced Dravid's name (rahul dray vid) ..........I remember when people wanted Kapil to retire i was still a small kid and i never understood it... i remember that awesome match against Australia in the Chinnaswamy stadium where Kumble and Srinath scored the winning runs.....i remember my dad making me leave as soon as Sachin got out and the crowd started getting wild.....it was my first time watching a game in the stadium and i didn't want to leave even though it looked like we were gonna lose. I remember walking to the carpark and asking the security guards along the way who were listening to the commentary on their transistors "uncle score enu?" I remember driving home through the crazy traffic on MG.Road and people coming out of the stadium yelling India..............India............India............ and i remember thinking no way!!! we won???????? how in the world????
I remember the Titan cup final against South Africa when Kumble took wicket after wicket and the crowd cheered "kumbleee kumbleeeeeeee clap clap clap"... i remember doing that cheer in class the next day and banging on the desk for the clap clap clap part .......i remember the teacher walking in with a look of utter disgust on her face... I remember having to stand for the next hour with the class as punishment for this atrocious behavior! I remember all those awesome Sahara cups between India and Pakistan where Dada was invincible........in his batting and bowling...........i remember coming back from tuitions and having a bath and getting all ready to watch the matches (they started at 7pm)........i remember fighting with my classmates about Dravid and why even though he was a slow batsmen and he 'wasted' so many balls as they called it.....why it was so important he remained in the odi team ....I remember crying when we had the Pakis 5 wkts down in an Asia cup match and it started to rain and the match was called off. i remember telling my dad "pa but Venkatesh Prasad took all those wickets......will it stay on his bowling record?"I remember my dad coming home with a tri coloured cake the day of the India Australia match during world cup '99 and finding me bawling in my room cause we were 5 wkts down for some 50 odd runs and it meant the end of the world cup for us. I remember hoping it would stop raining and the electricity would come back that first day of the first match of World cup 99.....we weren't even playing it... it was Srilanka(the last world cup winners) vs England (the hosts)..........just the excitement before every tournament....... The sheer excitement when we were getting close to a win.........the thrill of actually winning......the sound of the neighbours bursting crackers right after (i always wondered how they had this year round supply of crackers ready to burst..) I remember when Sachin came to my School on Sports day...... i remember sort of touching the corner of his shirt and almost getting crushed in the crowd.........i remember lying to everyone later about how i got to shake hands with him...... I remember borrowing my dad's pager so i could get live score updates at school.....i remember writing the score on the black board for my classmates and erasing it before the teacher saw it.........i remember making my parents buy me 'cricket today' and 'wisden cricket asia' magazines and then many years later driving into airlines just after buying the latest issue of Wisden cricket asia and finding my letter in the letter to editors section......i wanted to scream..........they'd published it........really??? my silly letter???? I remember Irfi's first wicket... it was super early in the morning and i yelled so loud my entire household woke up... I remember VVS Laxman's three consecutive hundreds in Australia... one more beautiful than the other.......I remember the fun Sharjah matches and Jadeja's sixes at the end.....I remember Eden gardens and the semi finals where i refused to accept the forfeiture of the match........I remember March 23rd 2003 when right after the national anthem i saw Zak bowling wide after wide and no ball after no ball and thinking to myself this isn't a good start.......I remember weeping in the interval thinking there's no way we can chase that mammoth score......... I remember washing my face and coming back to watch the chase believing in my heart that it was not impossible...But we lost that day like we have so many times......I know it's just a game but by god its a freakin awesome game.......and its so worth it.........all that bunking... and giving up sleep ......fighting with cable tv guys and with God (why why why does this always happen to India?) ...........all that ........all worth it...........after all my most cherished childhood memories.........are all cricket related!!!

Welcome Pri to the magical world of blogging!

I've been inspired to get my own blog for a really long time... i finally did it! I figure i need to stop orkutting my time away and do something a little more productive...They say blogging is the best therapy (not that i need therapy i'm super normal and stuff...i think) so welcome Pri to the magical world of blogging!

Pri's inspiration to blog...........

em of compulsiveconfessor
vik of mysourapplemartini
falstaff of 2*3*7