Five lies the broker told me

Recently me and a friend were house hunting. Low on cash for travel, low on budget for a house and with two + 1/2 days and an exam in the middle, we started on the biggest journey of our lives. We don't need to participate in a khatron ke khiladi type of reality show because we have faced all that and that too in the MUMBAI HEAT OF JUNE!

We had a list of houses and list of brokers ready before we came to bombay. I schedule was jam packed and we waltzed all over bombay meeting atleast 10 different brokers and seeing atleast 35 different houses, all over south bombay! If you think this is easy, managing schedules and travelling, then you do half of that and show it to me.

During this time, we were taken very lightly, because two english speaking girls who are obviously not marathi are a joke for brokers in bombay. So they lied to us and even tried to cheat us. But here are the top five lies that made it to my list -

1) Madam, can you hear the sound of the train? This means the station is right next to us.
(The station was atleast 3 kilometers away. Ass.)

2) This is not a chawl! This is SRS. It's no where near a chawl!
(SRS stands for Slum Rehablitation Society and the aunty who sat outside her house was rolling beedis.)

3) Wait for me at the temple, the house is right there.
(Then he comes and makes us walk all way opposite to the temple, after the 3rd signal, into to lane that's as big as shivaji park, while he rides his bike)

4)  The tenants are there in the house. We don't need keys.
(Climb 5 floors, to reach such a house and wait outside for 30 fucking minutes because tenants are sleeping apparenlty. The entire neighborhood woke up with the noise we made, but not them.)

5)The tenants like right beside you so there is no problem.
(Of course there is a problem if the tenants live right beside me, I DON'T WANT THEM COMPLAINING ABOUT EVERY SINGLE THING I DO!)


Here's hoping no one ever has such a ghastly yet entertaining experience again!

People I follow on instagram and love.

I don't update this blog as often as I would like. Mostly because I'm a very busy person who has an extravagant social life. *Bullshit Alert*. No, The truth is I'm just lazy. And also, I get fleeting , tweet sized ideas and not fleeting blog sized ideas.

Anyway Instagram obsession has taken over the world. And yes, I am one of those people who posts a picture of every food item I eat. So if you want to follow me, here is my handle.

Moving on to the list, here are some of the people who I love to follow on instagram and I think you should follow them too.They are very unique in their own sense. Although I did want to post their pictures in this article I've refrained from doing so because that might lead to a copyright issue, but please do check them out on instagram.

1) @shayaar
No, he is not an Indian musician or lyricist but he is an artist/miniaturist based in Israel . His pictures will amaze you. None of his pictures are of actual things but instead they are made from polymer clay and are probably as big as your nail. He specializes in food items and he can make you macroon cuffelinks to cupcake pendants to red wine earrings. Amazeballs huh?

To check out his work here are the links for facebook, etsy, twitter and instagram.

2) @lunarbell_lunch

This mum creates amazing and unique lunches for her children. Want to make a box of plain veggies and bread sticks look like a unique owl? This mum is your best bet! Highly inspired from the Japanese art of bento, these lunches will dim any food creativity you have seen even in five stars.

Here are the links for instagram and facebook.

3)  @twosleepyowls

Going by the real name of devyani gupta (I think she's a marwadi too, and hence just awesome nonetheless), I know nothing about this girl. Is she an artist? Maybe. Is she a photographer? Better be! All I know is that I love her creative photos. She doesn't post much or often, but when she does it's a delight! I can't describe any of her photos so you will have to check them out for yourself. Devyani, If you're reading this, KUDOS.

4) @theepicureanrabbit

Incase you don't already know, I'm a catering college pass out. And god save my soul, I love trying out new places. But you know how you go to a fab restaurant , spend a bomb and cannot take good pictures of what you've ordered because of the terrible lighting in the restaurant? Yeah, this guy never has that problem. The takes beautiful pictures of food and fresh produce and is a delight to have on your feed.

5) @saranshgoila

India's fav young chef and also a catering college passout (yay!), this guy's feed is filled with good food, recipe ideas, and behind the scene shots from his various tv shows! One really nice thing about this guy is that he may not be able to reply to all, but he does try to reply to a lot of people who comment on his pictures.

Although he is present everywhere on the internet here are the links to his facebook, twitter and instagram page.


These were a couple of my favourite instagram folks! Of course there are lots more. Some other famous accounts to follow would be @talkingfood , @humansofny etc. The reason I didn't post about them was because most people already know about them!

If you think there is someone I must absolutely follow or have missed out please leave a comment!

For the love of - POUTINE!!

You know suddenly over dose on a food item and then you don't want to eat it at all for a few months/years?

This happened to me with FRENCH FRIES. I got so bored of them , that their sight used to make me puke. But recently , I was at a friends house. We were tired and had been doing our assignment for hours. Just menial work of writing/copying you know? And we didn't have lunch. It was 5 in the evening and we were STARVING. Suddenly my friend puts on the tv and Fox Travller's Eat street is coming. On that episode they showed a unique thing called poutine selling at Smokes Poutinerie.

Now poutine is a very basic , run of the mill combo of - FRENCH FRIES + THICK SWEET-ISH GRAVY + CURD CHEESE. It originated from Canada/Quebec and it is pronounced as Po-teen.
Salivating , aren't you? Just imagine our condition when we saw that , that too on an empty stomach!
We googled what it was, like curious hotel management students and realised that mahim ka sasta southindian food , would not do it for us at the moment. WE NEEDED SOME FORM OF POUTINE with meat.

Now the only place I knew where we could get such a thing was IMBISS. (Click the link to read a review)

We rushed out of the house and went to bandra from mahim at a break neck speed just to realize that IMBISS would open at 6. (We reached at 5:45 , but a 15 min wait was too much for us at that time.) We waited waited and they finally opened their doors to us at 6:10. By that time , we were MORE-THAN-STARVING. (If such a state exists , that is.)

We went in , placed our order for the meaty dishes and asked BRUCE , the friendly owner, to toss up some sort of greasy fries+gravy+cheese combination. I requested him to make it with barbeque sauce and not gravy, and that was indeed a very good idea. He made this for us -

All I can say is that , it was heaven. It was MORE-THAN-HEAVEN. Like if I died and did not reach heaven, but I got a plate of poutine on my way , I would be happy. Like ecstatic happy. (Too much usage of the term "like":\ )
Poutine is so simple, so heart warming and so high on the greasy calorie scale that I'm frankly very shocked that it has not yet made it's mark on the world fast food arena yet.  It is still served rampantly in canada/quebec and in some other parts of the world in other forms but not in India.

Here's hoping poutine becomes a common street food soon! TRY IT ASAP and THANK ME!  :D

IMBISS - Restuarant Review

Caution - If you are vegetarian , STOP READING THIS ARTICLE NOW. Also this article does not contain an flowery language , humor etc.

Okay. So once again I’m late. Should have written this review two/three weeks back when no one knew about this place!!! 

Imbiss when translated on google translator means a “snack” in German. Oh , and a beautiful snackery it is. 

Don't get lost, love

I had a nightmare last night.

You were lost and nobody cared.
Some said you died; the others thought you were lost,
And some just said you disappeared for self peace.
They were so nonchalant, so unperturbed,
It bothered me!
What happened to those promises of lifelong friendship and inequitable love?
Didn’t you mean anything to anybody?
Didn’t they care? No gloom, no remorse, no misery!
I was furious! Was this a hoax?
I screamed and screamed!
I asked them a million times,

“Where IS he?”

All I got for an answer were shrugged shoulders and faint recollections!
I wondered what it was like to have a depraved heart.
I started crying, I couldn’t help it!
I was searching for daises on a desert!
I knew I needed to find you myself.
To show you the faces of these blarney imposters,
To prove to you I was right.
Now, I know am selfish but I couldn’t help thinking
When I go away, will it be the same?
Will I be such a rare and grave memory that nobody would even search for me?

Would you be there then?

Will you come back to find me?

Please tell me, you will.

On Positvism and Names

Have you read my blog recently? All my posts are all goey and happy and complenting other people and all that? Have you seen the wallpaper it's like filled with pink sunshine!!

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

This blog's name is "CYNICAL Vagabond".. C.Y.N.I.C.A.L. Vagabond. I should totally be dissing people and writing about things that I hate and that piss me off. I should be venting my anger against politics and people not recycling enough.

Seriously , What am I doing?

Next post onwards , I promise I'm going to write about something bitter that will make you gnarl. Hahaha *Cat Claws* Meow. Lame. Sorry.

Oh Btw , I was at work today and I saw this glass painting signed "Shish". And I thought WOW , this must belong to a guy named ashish , maybe. Then I thought that he probably named it that way cuz of shish being sheesha (Glass) . And then the next thing that came into my mind was that his twitter handle should be AShishKebab - A SHISH KEBAB . Get it ? GET IT? Yeah , I thought I was creative too. Lol. #AddictedToTwitter .

Hahaha. My friend priya's twitter handle is "Priyoritized " as in priortised . The first time I read it i was totally shocked and just smiled to myself for two minutes. And then there's this pretty awesome guy whose name is URBAN SANYASI . Like how cool is that. Totally an oxymoron.( I smiled for two minutes after I understood this one too) I thought that was so creative. I felt guilty and thought I should have a supercool twitter handle too. Like this. Something which is a spoof or involves wordplay, ya know?

So I put on my thinking cap and came up with - TADA - *DRUMROLL*

Meghnanimous - As in magnanimous .

OMG. JUST REALISED THAT MAGNANIMOUS IS A POSITIVE WORD TOO. SHOOT ME.
Maybe , I'm just going through a very positive phase. Shemur!! :( (Whaddup Superwoman reference!!!)

So if you know anyone with an awesome twitter handle or you are one of the people mentioned in the article , leave me a shout out below or on twitter! Have a good night , you.

A blog worth mentioning - Caramel Wings

This is one blog I discovered yesterday . And I've almost seen half of it! I LOVE IT! You know when you have that spark of creativity and inspiration and you want to make something complicated , then you google it , find a million recipes and get confused? Well next time , just open her blog and search it there! Poof , Stress be gone!

www.caramelwings.in

Some of the things I LOVED that she made/wrote about were:

1) Mascaporne Cheese - OMG. I change the channel every time they say this word on tv cuz I know I can't afford to use it . She did a homemade version which is so easy , cheap and readily available. Truly solved half my problems. THANK YOU.

Long Time, It's been!

Hi. Hello. Er.. It's been long eh?
Sorry , I've not been updating this blog. The purpose of this blog was to talk about random things I noticed, liked or disliked.. But in being oversmart , I've lost that somewhere. I'm going to try and be a little more regular now..

So here's an update abour me! - At the moment , I'm doing my internship at ITC hotel Vadodara. So incase any of you guys drop down there , do wave! :D

And since I'm doing almost 9-10 hrs a day of work + 1 hr travelling, I barely have any time to do anything else.
Here's a lame pic I took at work :

My new passion these days is twitter!! Oh yes!! As some of you may who are my friends on facebook know that i'm absolutely facebook crazy and If you aren't my friend , you can read about that here.
And since my blog is linked to my twitter account a lot of people have asked me to update my blog (You can follow me - @cynicalvagabond)
In other news , the last article I wrote , got feedback from Jaymay and also Josh Radnor himself!! OMG. (Jaymay commented on the my blog. Sigh , I can die peacefully now.)

Ya see? :D

Oh and I almost forgot to mention , I miss bombay. If you live in bombay or love it as a vacation destination , or just absolutely hate it , let me know in the comments below! :D

Have a nice day and eat a pizza. 

Happythankyoumoreplease - A movie review

I have to admit , I was biased before I saw this movie.

TOP 5 REASONS WHY I WAS BIASED-

1) I'm a romantic. My favourite genre in movies is romantic-comedy. I'd choose a rom comm anyday to sit and cry my eyes out to with a nice big bowl of hot and sour soup (Pop corn is so last season.). And generally I tend to love rom comms which have a different story line rather than the whole rich-girl-poor-boy thing and somehow , the REAL critics seem to dislike what I love. (I'm restraining myself from adding a LOL here.)

2) I love JOSH RADNOR because of three reasons - cute , cute and super cute. In battle of Friends V/s HIMYM , I've always chosen HIMYM and I will stand by that no matter what.

Ten Things I hate about me - A Book Review

I just joined a new library and randomly choose a book with a girl on the cover page and some pink on it. Yes , I was depressed and did not want to read Salman Rushdie then. Some girl power , cloth talk , closet talk and boy talk would do me just fine , thank you.

Turns out I was mistaken about this one. This book didn't give any of that. The book is written in English easy enough for 13-15 year olds to understand. It lacks content , a good story line and the closest you get to talking about clothes is the yin-yang on a hijab.

Awwwwwh!!! Fuck!!! NOT HER!!!

So! Ever known a person who you have hated and yet secretly admired? You knew she was better and and you hated for being better at something you liked to call "your field of expertise"? Well. I went through it and it angered me and made me feel small. I always felt like she had to get out of my way for me to get my chance at the spotlight. When ever she did something extraordinary I watched from the sidelines but NEVER openly joined in the appreciation she was receiving from everyone else.

Let's face it, life is a ruthless game. You need to push people out to get your own way. TO SURVIVE.
But don't worry, I never had the guts to push her out. she was too powerful and I was too scared. Naive , perhaps too.

And then you've moved on with your life and she's out. You're away. and suddenly she makes a presence back. She's weak now. And you are well, er... not better then what you were. Maybe the same you were back then. But now she's not good anymore. And you realise hey! YOU are BETTER! Well at least wayyyyyy better than her now!

You get excited . And your confidence grrows. She was falling like a house of cards and you were standing on the sidelines watching with disdainful glee. Were you happy? yep , you were going berserk with joy!

Do I sound sadistic? Ha. I don't care. She was a silent enemy. And now she's no more. I'm better. And WE BOTH know. ;)

Don't Care no more

After very phase in my life I've been through some very hard transitions. When going from one phase to another , I've realised I become too careless and don't think about what the older people think of me , now that I have a new set to impress. But also , I've seen that people don't like progress. Especially if you are progressing and they are not. Even if you give them no competition what so ever now, they just don't like it. When they are in the old phase and they see you get foward , they get jealous and they start bitching.

I mean , get a grip guys. I'm not giving you any competition any more so why can't you just be happy for me? I'd like appreciation for my efforts , thank you very much.

I believe that during every transition you need to put the previous people you were with in two categories..
A) The important
B) The rest

It's easier that way you know. The important people , you take them foward. The rest , you call them a good memory and move foward taking the memories but not necesarily them with you.


I'm sorry if any of my readers find this blog post too confusing.. I just have a lot on my mind I need to say.

Life's like that.

They were sitting outside on the terrace on a crisp February morning sipping their green tea , reading the newspaper and making light conversation regarding their plans for that day. While casually flipping through the paper, he looked at her and asked her what she wanted to do. She was occupied, thinking of the work to be done to the roses in the garden and so she murmured a slow ,"I don't know."

As usual , he laid down her options for her. He said "We could either go to the club for a game of lawn tennis or we could either go to that wine seminar". Now he knew that she was a decent wine enthusiast and she was keen on going to that seminar. She knew too , that he wanted to play a game of tennis for quite a while and had just complained about his canvas gathering dust.

She stopped her rose musings for a minute , looked at him over the newspaper in his hand and said, "Lets go to the club."

He kept his newspaper down while smiling this amused smile. He looked at her for a minute and gave her this sly smug "I-know-you-very-well" kind of look. She returned his smile , shrugged her shoulders and said "what?" He said "Even after 14 years of marriage , you still cant answer a simple question with two choices, truthfully". She looked at him and she knew. She knew that even before asking her the question , he knew what she wanted and what she was going to answer. She was intrigued that even after being with each other for so long, they still learnt new things daily.

Friendship of convenience

Isn't it funny how all those "Friends Forever" promise change in a split second?
How all hours and hours of conversations changes into minutes of arguments?
How all the trust disappears when the person you trusted the most turns their back on you because they have got a new shiny toy to play with? And you go on waiting and waiting and asking what you did wrong and getting angry and upset and hurt. And then eventually when you decided to let go , thinking maybe they are happy being away from you and that you don't deserve all this unjustified pain, they come back claiming they had never gone?

Well, I'll just sit here and answer this above question now.

Is this what dreams are made of?

He came to see me that day. I was at home and so were a few other people, all running up and down with a frenzy. Lots of work was going on in my house and outside on the street. People were flooding in and going out. It was a scene from movie.


It was a surprise really. I wasn’t expecting him home. I saw him at the door and I smiled, he knew how seeing him always made me happy. I took him to my room and we sat there. We were going through the usual routine of “Hi, how are you?” when I sensed a sadness in his eyes, like a thick cloudy form of pain. But, he covered it up so well with his gibberish and random jokes; he made me believe there was none. I didn’t believe my mind, I didn’t believe my eyes , just this once I believed my heart and decided he was in pain. There was a reason to his visit, I realized. I was about to ask him what was wrong and what he was holding back, but before I could a voice called me downstairs. There was work to be done. I told him I’d be back in a second.

When wrong is right...

I have no words to say,
What we make of this,
Because we oppose everything
In which we once believed.



We tell each other everything,
And yet we deny.
We complicate simple things
And then we apologize.

Lonely Lights.

Light and dark, outside the window.
Loud noises and blasts.
Smoke and smog.
A charred smell.
A few sad statuses on facebook.
Sympathy.
A dog running away, howling.
A shallow silence and then again a blast.

Damn, Its just a lonely diwali.

A blog worth mentioning: Usha's kitchen!

Hi guys! Check out this blog and facebook page!


http://ushaskitchen.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Ushas-Kitchen/104713866254296



They belong to a experimental indian housewife who has decided to help others!
This is her form of charity and goodwill for the society!
With the world going gaga about indian food in the recent times and more and more indian kids/girls/ladies/men wanting to learn but not knowing how to cook indian food, this page shall be a god given boon! And I proudly say she's my aunt! On this page you can ask queries get home tried and tested recipe and other great tips!
When u ask a query for a recipe she will try it out with precise measurements take photos and upload it as soon as possible!

AND HER FOOD IS AWESOME! TRUST ME , I HAVE EATEN IT!

Do join , follow and publicize!

Coffee mania!!

I love coffee... and this is absolutely enthralling and exciting! A must check-out for everybody! Its like a coffee history and technique walk through with amazing cartoons! Must have taken a LOT OF WORK!

PLS VISIT!

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/coffee

She thinks she's like that. She isn't.

That time when she slept her shallow sleep, She dreamed of kainene lost in the war. She dreamed of all the things she lost and din't want back. She dreamed of feeling sad, even regretful for what happened.She dreamed of waking up and thinking of dying and not moving.She was in that state where she din't know what she was thinking was dreaming or reality. She felt hungry and longed for things whose taste she din't like. She dreamed writing about it. She knew would write and she knew nobody would understand what she wrote. But, she would write it still. This time, just for herself. It was important.