MATCHES, MIRCH AND MASTI part 2

HUNDI BIRIYANIS, HANGOVER BUDDIES AND THE KOLAVERI BHAIYYA

Pardon me for the gap between the previous post and this one, the semester has begun and I am finding it particularly hard to adjust between doing-nothing-at-home to doing-nothing-in-college. B)

Getting on with the post, part 2 of ‘MATCHES, MIRCH AND MASTI’ will deal predominantly with food. And um, beverages.

AN OVERDOSE OF CHICKEN

Now if you are a die hard biriyani fan, you will most certainly know that Hyderabad is THE place to go to for authentic Moghul biriyani. We were not disappointed. The GOLD BAWARCHE RESTAURANT that was a 5 minute walk from the pigeon hole we were put up in served some amazingly good biriyani at dirt cheap rates. Now having grown up in a city that charges exorbitant amounts for relatively small plates, when we saw a hundi biriyani priced there at 140 rs, we thought “well ok, 140 rs, that could serve one person.” But the damned thing came in a container so huge, 3 people could have eaten from it. comfortably! Not only the hundi( pronounced as hun-di) biryanis but almost everything they served at the GBR was insanely good and amazingly cheap. Being a die hard non vegetarian, such good food at such an affordable price spelt only one thing. P-A-R-A-D-I-S-E.

MACHI OPEN THE BOTTLE!

Victory and celebration are something that are synonymous with cricket tours. Now each guy has a different way of celebrating. But one form of celebration that is universally accepted and followed is “machi, OPEN THE BOTTLLEEEE!” this tour had enough rest days in between matches and the guys decided to, um celebrate. Now being someone who doesn’t drink definitely has its perks. Like sitting there watching them making an ass of themselves. And with the right amount of prodding it can be entertainment guaranteed. A few moments from the tour are classic. Buddy’s back stretch, praga’s antics, panch-o going for a jog the next morning with half boil stuck in his beard and PT banging shoulder first into the wall while trying to lie down to sleep. Truly hilarious moments! Both on and off the field, this is probably the best team I’ve been part of. Extremely talented and obscenely funny. It was truly an honour to be one among you. Love you guys. :)

WHY THIS KOLAVERI?

Just a few weeks before this tour, sony music released a song from 3, a tamil movie directed by rajnikanth’s daughter and starring his son in law. A couple of days later, the song went viral registering page hits and downloads like nothing ever seen before!

Before leaving for Hyderabad, I was quite skeptical about this entire VIRAL thing. Agreed, a song can become so popular it is played in all sports events irrespective of the language or the context. Like say a ‘chak de’ or a ‘ringa ringa’. But only after reaching Hyderabad did I truly realize the gigantic proportions this song had snowballed into. It was everywhere. Literally!

Juice shops, shopping malls, chat kiosks, breakfast vendors, everyone kept playing the damned song over and over again! And if they came to know that you were tamil, they had only question for you. “COLA-VERI ka meaning kya hai?”

Now listening to a song almost all the time is something but having it played every morning precisely at 7 is another. Suprabhadam, yes I can understand but why this kolaver di, definitely NO! Our breakfast vendor would arrive at our room at exactly 7am and start playing the song. The worst part, he would put it on loop! So every time the song ended, dhanush would start off again in a few seconds with “yo boys, I am sing a song!” the first few days it was fine, but after the third morning it became too much to bear. What was the meaning of kolaveri you asked, you should have come seen the look in our eyes between 7 and 7.30 am every morning. ;) but then, the man was genuinely good and so were his idlis, dosas and mysore bondas. So we decided to spare his life, affectionately calling him the KOLAVERI BHAIYYA. At the end of the meal, he would make calculations in his head and tell us the total amount. At 10 rs a plate (4 idlis/2 dosas/4 bondas, same rate) we never really bothered to check. C’mon this was our very own kolaveri bhaiyya, he would do us no harm! The last day though, we did. And we realized that he had charged us an additional 40 rupees that day alone! Either he had looted us from day one or he was very bad at math, we would never really know. we decided to leave it at that.

A couple of days later, we were safely back home, the train journey surprisingly being largely uneventful. ;) In hindsight though, this tour has been one among the best. We played hard and we partied harder. It was a shame though that we lost. But then failure is just an opportunity to start over again knowing what to do and what not to. SRMite and proud!

Until next time,

Adios!