Glorious Light

To Nupur....

The moon, it shines bright
brighter than all else; tonight.
Everyone looks up, looks around.
The glorious light, is everywhere.

Not I, for I look elsewhere.
I look to you, only, my love.
Your face, brighter than full moon.
The stars twinkling, in the midst of your eyes.
The glorious light, is everywhere.

My desert spring, my oasis;
bring warmth in the cold ice, of my life
make bright, my dark eternity.
I blink, to see you through closed eyes.
The glorious light, is everywhere.

Soar above that which is wrong,
your innocence must not be broken.
To sing, I want, to you;
you make me want to feel, want to belong.

Your spirit completes me; my cloud of happiness,
I lose myself to the light, the light of your soul.
You become a part of me, integral, vital.
Might i see the world through your starry eyes.

Your touch, the mist of winter morning;
your voice, intoxicating but pure.
The taste of your lips, is nectar.
Turn my night into day.
The glorious light, is everywhere.

The Pune Misal pav tour.....by motocycle

The Pune Misal pav tour.....by motocycle

This one's courtesy a friend of mine who goes by the name "kadakpav". Before you wonder why anyone would be called that, id like to take your attention away from that cuz its a story you just wouldnt be able to relate to. The matter of interest being Misal. Personally i've always been a fan of misal. Though i've been living in mumbai most of my life and face it, people from mumbai know little about ancient marathi culinary traditions, i had a few trysts with misal during my time there. Now pune, thats a place which i believe can be heralded as the global misal capital.

Now, if you don't know what misal is, dont bother to read further, cuz i aint gonna be able to explain. A gourmet delight if i may say so myself. I wouldnt call myself a perfect gourmet or gastronome, but lets just say i have a colossal appetite. Ah, i drift into obscurity again. I must pay attention to relevance. Alright, the misal tour. Well, ever since my first few days in Pune, i noticed that every restaurant served misal here. Everywhere i ate it, it was different. I was intrigued. So after a few months of misal hunting, i finally opted to take professional help. Kadakpav, (its awkward, but lets just call him that) is what we call an "assal puneri". What that means, is that he really doesn't know that a world exists outside Pune, but then he does for that matter know everything there is to know about Pune. So, i went to him and said, "kadak, mereko pune ka best misal khaneka hai". At first, he was shocked that i hadn't eaten it yet, but then i told him i was from mumbai. After cursing the ignorance of "us city boys", ( i always believed pune was a city in its own right); he nevertheless agreed to take me to eat good misal. The best misal he said, was decided from person to person, apparently there were several kinds of misal, and different people had affinities to different kinds of misal. I was rather abashed at this point in time but i decided to humor him. He said he would take me to a few misal outlets ( i was later to find out that all these were to be visited on the same day); and that i would later decide for myself what the best misal was.

So it began, Kadak and I, on the greatest journey i had ever undertaken (im not kidding, i really dont get out much). We were to traverse the length and breadth of Pune, and visit the oldest and most famous misal outlets around. This was just after i had read Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries, so i felt like drawing parallels. Except that Che and his friend drove a 500cc la pederosa where we drove a rickitty old Bajaj Electric in which the back-seat didnt have a cushion, meaning only that I would end up unable to sit for nearly 4 hours after getting home. Also Che and his friend traversed the entire continent of South America where we were just travelling through tiny, crowded and smelly roads of interior Pune.

Anyhow, it started early. We left in the morning, travelling through roads i never knew vehicles could go through and reached a small dirty shack run by an ill-tempered "kaka" (interesting how all such shacks in Pune are run by ill-tempered kakas). Kadak told me this was the premier misal outlet in Pune and that the owner (kaka) started out as a refugee out of Kolhapur. What i was fed there was nothing short of what old wives would call pickle. 20 minutes and a liter of icy cold water later, i still felt like my mouth had been lit on fire (oh i know what that feels like literally also). We then began our journey towards another shack named Bedekar somewhere on an intersection of a certain Laxmi road. Each road thinner than the next, each intersection about half the width of the road itself. Bedekar apparently was typically puneri, and therefore made sweet misal. Also importantly, it served its misal with "slice" bread. When i inquired, it turned out that original misal always comes with "slice", and that the misal pav that we know of, is just a hybrid. That i believe most of us didnt know. Anyway Bedekar Misal kendra was also run by an ill-tempered kaka who was out buying provisions and hence had left "kaku" in charge. It wasnt a respite, "kaku" had a shorter fuse than the earlier kaka i had encountered and almost slashed at me when i asked for the customary "sample" which is supposed to come free. Well, Bedekar misal was rather sweet, and i ended up feeling like i would end up with diabetes before i finished what was on my plate. We left soon thankfully.

By now i was rather full, but kadak had only gained in enthusiasm. He seemed willing to take me all the way to "karad" where he said one could obtain the best misal in the world (like i said, the world to kadakpav didnt surpass pimpri-chinchwad). But we finally decided that he would take me to a place which served the best hybrid misal. Oh there's 2 types of misal. One would be home-made misal, which these 2 places served, and the other would be hybrid misal, which was changed to suit a range of tastes. Kadak seemed decidedly adamant that anyone who likes hybrid misal isnt really a misal lover. I said i didnt care, so he took me to a place on the famed JM road, which he believed served the best hybrid misal. By this point, I wasnt really able to tell the subtle differences but i was actually starting to enjoy myself. The hybrid misal wasnt much to talk about and i decided that he was actually correct in noting that hybrid misal isnt as good as home-made misal.

Kadak now offered to take me to his favorite misal joint, which he said was in a place called kothrud where the crux of the population is "assal puneri". This, believe me, was a long way off from where we'd started. Anyway we head off into the direction of kothrud. The bike we drove on was caught by a neighborhood “mama” (its funny how everyone around seems to be in some way related to you) or police officer atleast 3 times in the process of getting there. This was basically because, in puneri style, kadakpav believes following traffic rules is stupid. Also, kadak didn’t have the necessary papers for our bike or rather relic. When we finally got there, there was a line in front of the place, a line that extended almost till the end of the road. I was intrigued that people would really be willing to wait in line for a misal outlet. After waiting for nearly 30 minutes, we entered a shack that could fit about 10 people including the cook, manager and waiter (all these roles were played solely by kaka), the misal was pretty much the same thing I’d eaten 3 times already, but kadak seemed to relish every morsel. He ate 3 plates after which kaka said he’d run out and just couldn’t make more. The reaction of the people who’d been waiting in the line behind us was almost comical.

After all this, and a 60 minute bike ride in the chilly pune winter, I was duly dropped home. Kadakpav left me saying “Have a good twilight”. It took me nearly 2 days to decipher what he meant, only to realize that he’d been reading the GRE wordlist and found that twilight was a time just before sun-down (he’d dropped me off at 6 p.m.). In retrospect, I felt a lot better for the journey. An experience that would change my life forever (like I said I don’t get out much). I had just traveled through unknown lands eating unknown food, or rather the same food at different places. I had realized that any bystander on the street can be referred to as one’s relative, that one who follows traffic rules in pune is a retard, and that going on misal tours can leave you bedridden with gastric infections for almost a week.