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Nischal da has kindly sent me a pic of "Orient Restaurant" so you can all check out the over-spelling of the word.

See Below:






OF HOME 'MADE' STORIES and OTHER THINGS



Hi Guys,










I was recently in Darjeeling for a short 2 week vacation and on the suggestion of some friends i'm doing a series of short mini-blogs on things that are uniquely Darj.


Just a way to remember the lil things that make Darj home for so many of us.


Let me know your thoughts.


Luv

Vish

RAIN

Visits home always involves lots of aunts and cousins who either come visiting or invite you over for lunch or dinner.



During one such visit by an elderly aunt when she had retold almost 3 hours of old family stories my eyelids began to droop and before there could be some more family drama I stood and went to the window to gaze at the mountains. At that moment even the mountains seemed more interesting than my old aunt's even older stories.

This was when I first noticed a few stray drops of rain fall on the windowpane. Bored and desperate to break the seemingly unending flow of ancient stories, I turned to the group of relatives in the room and mentioned that it looked like it was beginning to rain.

That was all it took to transform my old frail aunt into an opera worthy performer.

Standing up and belying all traces of her age and health she bellowed:

“Pani Paryo. Luga Uttha.” (Its Raining. Pick-Up The Clothes)

With her voice still ringing in my ears, I could only stare; stunned at the volume she was able to produce from such a frail body.

This shock was made even more amazing by the fact that there weren’t any clothes to pick-up.


Or for the matter that this, wasn’t even her house in the first place.

The flavour of Darjeeling is in the rain. Definitely.

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ORIENT. OR IS IT?

Everyone who’s grown up (or studied) in Darjeeling will know of the famous hangout:
Orient Restaurant.

Atleast the ones who were born before 1990.

Those innocent childhood days had no internet cafés to spend hours over nor Facebook friends to report mundane status updates to.

All we had were boyhood tales & hamjayega jokes. And they were usually told & retold over steaming plates of momos & thukpas which were washed down with Goldspot and Thums-Up and sometimes, maybe something a little stronger….lets just say something that required a little more brewing.




Maybe that was the reason that among parents and elders, visiting Orient didn’t have quite the same innocent distinction as maybe Penang’s or Benis café did.

So going into Orient was almost always done on the sly. And furthermore by virtue of being situated at a tri-junction of what is possibly some of the busiest streets in Darjeeling, entering Orient also had the added danger of being spotted by some relative or the other.


“Papa ko sathi, Gurung Uncle le dekheko thiyo re tah….” and all that drama.

And maybe it is because of this very reason that I had never realized that on the entrance board, both the words “Orient” and “Restaurant” has been miss-spelt.

And how have they been miss-spelt?

Well, you’ll just have to look more closely the next time you are in that part of town.

I am still too scared to stand in front of Orient and take pictures… who knows, that Gurung Uncle may still be around.

Note: This pic is courtesy Nischal da

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TAILORS

The zip on my suitcase had come off courtesy some over-eager baggage handlers at Bagdogra airport and unlike the UAE where things like this are usually disposed of, Darjeeling has a neighborhood tailor who’ll pretty much repair everything that can possibly be fixed.

That new jeans needs to be shortened? No Problem.

I need a cover for my car. No Problem.

The house needs a curtain? No Problem.

Shower Curtain?? Still No Problem.

And what is more, his “personal touch” will put most multinational customer service providers to shame.




I have to admit that I don’t visit the Tailor often, heck, for that matter I don’t even go back home so often. Yet when I went there with my suitcase the first thing he said was…


Kaile aaunu bhayeko? Dubai ma, hoina? (When did u come? You’re in Dubai, aren’t you?)

And here in Abu Dhabi the supermarket I visit almost every day probably doesn’t even know I exist.

Home. Aaah.

---------------------------*---------------------------

BENIS KO AALU

This, as every true-blue Darj gal will tell you, is actually not 100% accurate.


If it were taken literally, every tourist would probably look for Beni’s, locate the café and then complain about the horrid aalu they got there and curse your taste.

What Darj people mean when they mention the above is actually a small shop located opposite the café. It has no name, no signboards and at first glance you can barely imagine that such a place could be famous.



However having eaten there ever since I was a kid, for me, it has always been just “Benis ko aalu dokan”.

It probably took a jaundiced NRI eye to notice that the actual place they do the cooking in is a small room directly above the shop. And guess what? It has a window through which you can see the kid (or child labour depending on how you look at it) stirring the huge pot.



And the place is not even tall enough for him to stand straight.
So as a result, he’s always hunched over the pot as he stirs.


The secret of the taste of Benis, I dare say, is probably coming from his sweating brow.


But then who cares.... the cold in Darj makes everything fine again. Even Germs.

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FOR THE LOVE OF THE FLAVOUR.

There is a new brand of condoms in India. Its called Manforce.


(Now whether the name in any way recommends rape or any kind of 'forced' entry is another topic for another day. )


For today I’m more interested in the flavours.


Selections like strawberry, banana (obviously), bubblegum, vanilla etc are the usual suspects when it comes to prophylactic flavours, but remember this is an Indian condom, marketed to Indian tastes. And so guess what they came up with?

What else but “Pan Pleasure”



Now I would usually associate chewing paan with a guy.

Not that women don’t chew paan, but if it were to be an obsession, I’d think a guy would seem more appropriate.


And if I am not mistaken, flavoured condoms don’t really do much for the ‘wearer’ as opposed to the ‘partner’ so I’m really confused as to who exactly the target audience for this is?


Unless ofcourse it causes a ‘tingling’ sensation and you like a ‘tingle while you fingle' - so to speak.


Khair... Jaane do

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CALENDARS.

Long before Vijay Mallya began customizing it with skimpily clad girls, Indians (and you didn’t have to be famous for this – you just needed a giant size ego) were printing and distributing calendars freely.

But Greed always trumped Ego so the calendars were usually 1 big sheet with a picture (usually of some God) with flimsy date sheets to rip off at the bottom.




This time at a friend’s house I happened to see one of these calendars.


Now apart from the fact that he was a LIC Agent there really wasn’t any other justifiable ‘qualification’ for actually printing and distributing calendars.

Maybe he just liked to see his name in print. Maybe he needed to make a point to someone. Maybe…. I don't know..


But to be fair it was also mentioned that he was a Gold Medalist of some kind.

But going by the spelling, just the spelling.... I’d say not a very good one.
Maybe he just 'made' the gold madel.



Till next time ........