"One, please" (or, Thou shalt not dine alone)

I love my food, but I'm also pretty irregular about it. I eat when I feel like it, whenever the whim to experiment takes over, and often in sync with my equally random sleeping habits. I'm not much of a cook, but I like checking out new places and all that blah. I often eat alone, because most of the people I hang out with are not given to random spontaneous trips to some arbit place. And people find it difficult to believe that I actually eat alone at diners and restaurants. Or, to be more accurate, I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that people find it odd.

At around 11pm yesterday I was dying of hunger. I'd put two consecutive night-outs on campus and for all purposes had practically lived there. My body clock was messed to the extent that I had breakfast at Kerbey Lane at 7 in the morning (without having slept a wink), and promptly went home and crashed. I slept a bit more in the afternoon after class and had seen out the entire day without having anything else to eat. I've talked about how Austin is the Bangalore of the US in many ways, and here too most restaurants close as early as 10pm. Kerbey Lane cafe, close to campus, is the one 24 hour place around and your only other late night options are the beer bars which serve your usual pub grub. Anyway, I didn't feel like cooking dinner that night or ordering food because my roommate A was out with his friends B, C and the rest of their gang, and it would have worked out to too much food for one person. A,B, C and the others had gone to this beer joint close to my place, called "The Flying Saucer".

There's another Kerbey Lane somewhere closer to my apartment. I called up B, a regular patron, and he reckoned it would be a 25 minute walk. Too far, I decided. My stomach was well and truly rumbling now, so the Flying Saucer loomed as the only option. Although they model themselves on a traditional German beer place with some 300 varieties of Beer from all over the world, the Flying saucer serves some good simple German fare, basically sausages, wurst and potato salad. So I headed there, and though it was buzzing quite a bit for a Thursday night, I managed to get a table on the patio outside. As I was tucking into my dinner, A suddenly stepped outside and was more than a little surprised to see me. "You should've come inside and joined us. We're heading home now." "Well, I just came for a quick bite. I'm not drinking you see." And he added, with a look of major concern "You enjoying yourself?" Out came B, C and the rest of them, hanging around the place for some post-drinks banter. Before I knew it, I had become this object of major curiosity among the group, who clearly thought I had lost my marbles by being seen alone in the place. "I thought you were going to Kerbey Lane!" said B. "Well, I decided it was too far to walk, and this was the only place open for dinner." C had just joined the group and voiced his amazement, and I had to repeat the explanation for his benefit. "But surely you can't come here for dinner! Alone!" "I'm doing just fine, no worries" didn't seem to cut it with him. The rest of them, on being told "Woh us ka roommate hai" were meanwhile nodding their heads knowingly. So much for a peaceful dinner.

Even if I'm not the most gregarious person, I'm not a recluse or anything. I keep some really good company here, but at the same time I like a bit of privacy and anonymity, and often enjoy doing certain things by myself, like browsing through music stores or going for random walks. And sampling food, of course. But far from wanting to understand, people seem to be disturbed by it and classify it as abnormal behaviour. Another blogger had a nice long rant about how annoying it can be the way society perceives the single woman. For the single twenty-something male it can be equally irritating and also amusing to see others' reactions if you don't conform to the stereotype. Apparently, you have to live by the 'work-hard-by-day party-harder-by-night' credo, be surrounded by fast-talking cronies everywhere, be a complete Raymond family man at home and an incorrigible flirt everywhere else, be obsessed with fast cars and bikes, have strong opinions on everything and NEVER be seen alone. If you like reading, blogging or, god forbid, eating by yourself you suddenly become this depressing Devdas type character who needs help.

The funny thing is, I've known people who like to consciously portray themselves as solitude-loving lone wolves, who like being far from the madding crowd as if to build an aura around them. Whether this constitutes an iconoclastic streak or just being an exhibitionist, I don't know because in my case I'm not out to prove anything to anyone. I guess I could take the philosophical view and be reminded of a line from an Archie comic: When a person dares to be different, he gets called an individualist. On the other hand, if he is different, he becomes an oddball.

Big fish, little fish

I read that Bangalore now has a second Landmark bookstore, this time in Jayanagar. The arrival will probably be welcomed in South Bangalore but it makes me wonder what lies ahead for Select, Blossom, Premier and other places of that ilk in the future. The old Madras Landmark is probably the best I've ever been to, and holds many happy memories. But the one in Forum mall tended to disappoint because of its comparatively indifferent staff and ridiculous pricing. The arrival of Planet M (with its customer schemes and mostly clueless personnel) on Brigade road sounded the death knell for some of my favourite smaller music shops, and I can only hope the same does not happen with the Crossword and Landmark expansion, which comes at the expense of personal attachment.

Franchising may be big in the US, but there's an admirable 'support local businesses' drive here in Austin (and other places, I'm sure) that makes me wish more of the same happened in Bangalore. More than the traffic, pollution and insider-outsider wars, it is the compromising of local flavour (the 'homegrown' factor) and this inexplicable need to keep up with other cities which is my major bone with Bangalore of late. When a branch of Copper Chimney opened in Bangalore, critics were quick to point out that the food and quality of service were nowhere near that of the Mumbai branch. I can well imagine regulars to the Chennai Landmark feeling similarly about the Bangalore one, and yet we have branches sprouting in all corners of the city now. Why, you must ask, do we go ahead and try to emulate everyone else and be someone we're not? There were enough good homegrown establishments to begin with, but today apparently the Landmarks and PVRs have to be accommodated wherever possible so that every big city gets streamlined and devoid of uniqueness. This will allow the Bangalore haters to get stuck in and feel further vindicated, but at least some local businesses continue to lend the city some charm.

Another blogger had written a similar sort of post when the Forum Landmark had first come up, and suggested it was a similar situation to the one portrayed in You've Got Mail. I suppose this gives me a reason to watch that rather lightweight film again and perhaps see it in a new light. Apart from the fact that my weekends have become excruciatingly empty.

Not-so-random musings

This opening paragraph business has been reduced to a space for convenient and banal explanation as to why I can't seem to post more regularly. Has blogging become such an indulgence that I have to save as much material as possible for a monthly post, as if to justify the bloody exercise? A more appropriate term for 'writer's block' would be 'laziness'.

So I turned 25 a couple of weeks ago, my face smeared in cake and my body soundly kicked from all sides, as if to make up for the relatively sedate celebrations of the last two years in Austin. I barely escaped being flung into the apartment pool, despite actually playing along and protesting. A year ago, I woke up the day after my birthday feeling strangely miserable and empty, and decided the solution to all my problems was to get a haircut. In twelve months, nothing's changed. The long hair remains (with a lousy haircut looming large), the sleeping through classroom lectures (with date and topic neatly scribbled in my notebook) continues, and I am still oblivious to the happenings of the world outside. The problem then, with 25, is expectation. It may be a mere number but it gives people (including myself) a license to ask questions about my life to which 'I don't know' or 'we'll see' are not acceptable answers. In that regard, maybe I do feel old. But then age is just a state of mind right? Whatever.

Another occasion which made me feel old (or shall we say, 'dated') was, strangely enough, a heavy metal concert I attended a couple of months back. It was one of those 'Metal Masters Tour' sort of things, with an all star lineup of Testament, Motorhead, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. With stalls outside selling beer on tap (a blessing in the oppressive summer heat) and food, which you were allowed to bring in to the arena, this was the sort of concert experience I could only dream of having earlier seen live acts only at the comparatively repressive Palace Grounds in Bangalore. But the crowd was an eye-opener. If the same lineup were to be playing at Palace Grounds, your entire Engineering/ St.Josephs Commerce College metal contingent would have shown up in all their black finery (making sure their t-shirt featured a band other than the ones on show), and suitably wasted to the point of being at their savage and anti-social best). Here, apart from the precious few at the half-full mosh pit right in front, the place was packed with forty-somethings, presumably wallowing in nostalgia and ready to put away their band t-shirts for a Halloween party. Nevertheless, the show was a great one, and a gentleman named Ruben Palomo was nice enough to send us a few snaps like the one above (we had forgotten to bring our cameras).

It sometimes concerns me that after coming here I haven't expanded my musical tastes as much as I used to during my earlier college days, and it's difficult to stay contemporary when you don't own a TV and your friends listen to mostly retro stuff too. But then again, one of the things I've come to like about the college crowd in this country is their attitude towards musical tastes; everybody listens to a wide range and nobody really tries to typecast themselves or anyone else because of it. I mean, on a typical Indian campus you find people using musical leanings to make a connection, and even friendships. Whether it's your guy-girl gangs who spend endless hours playing Antakshari and Guess the Shayari, or your guys-only Metal 'til Death groups, music seemed to polarise people. I'm not saying that sort of thing doesn't happen here, but (having gotten to know and work with a few American undergrads), it's just far less noticeable. Although I've always been something of a classic rock loyalist, I no longer cringe when hip-hop is played on the radio, I sing along when the desi junta blast out Himesh and mindless Punju ditties, and I've come to appreciate (thanks to a few people I've met at the music department) that DJing is an art, and a difficult one at that. I don't know whether this gradual attitude shift is due to evolving of my musical senses, or simply growing up. But I'm happier for it.

Mentally, I feel exactly the same as I did four years ago, circa final year of undergrad. But the crucial difference then was I already had a job to walk into as soon as I graduated. I wonder if that was a good thing, after all. If I was forced to actually hunt for a job and make myself *ahem* marketable, I would have probably learned a good deal about job hunting (and myself). That particular challenge has finally come up (given that I don't feel as if I've learnt a thing in the last four years), what with an economic slowdown here and all. Depending on how it pans out, I will probably get a small taste of what Will Smith's character must have felt like in his pursuit of happyness.