I was deter­mined to catch some­thing of the Habba this time (since I’ve been doing so con­tin­u­ously for the last two, in 2003 when I was vis­it­ing and in 2004 as a res­i­dent). Unfor­tu­nately, with most of the events dur­ing the day, it wasn’t too con­ve­nient to attend the musi­cal con­certs or the plays, which would start at 6.30 pm. Is it pos­si­ble to get from any­where to any­where by 6.30 on a week­day here in the city? Anyway.

Let me move on to this demonic show I wit­nessed over the weekend…

On Sat­ur­day evening, the Crusty Demons jumped, vroomed, som­er­saulted, made weird move­ments, did one hand stands, no hand stands, played tru­ant : and all in mid-air! They turned out to be demons alright, scar­ing the crust out of us poor souls. Basi­cally, they did every­thing short of cook­ing din­ner up there. Bangalore’s weather played tru­ant with a steady driz­zle start­ing at about 6 pm.

After some test­ing of the track and the mounds they had cre­ated for their stunts, the demons decided to go ahead with their show. And quite a show it was! My jaw dropped to the muddy floor on sev­eral occa­sions, and I man­aged to pick it up just before it got tram­pled by my excited whistling and shout­ing neighbours.

Just one thing that I thought was a lit­tle strange, for 500 bucks, the least they (orga­niz­ers: DNA Net­works) could have done was to orga­nize some kind of ele­vated stand­ing arrange­ment around the area so as to enable folks to get a bet­ter of the area and the rid­ers when they were rac­ing up to the ramps and around it. And of course, I was really annoyed that my bat­ter­ies were con­fis­cated at the gate (I know they were doing their job!) but more so because there were about 15 dig­i­tal cam­eras around me all going click click… Unfor­tu­nately, my bazooka looked too pro­fes­sional to pass the test. And after the show, it was about ½ hour to track down the DNA folks to get my bat­ter­ies back.

…Thank­fully, no such prob­lems encoun­tered at the Ban­ga­lore Habba grounds, where we headed next. We just missed Aman and Ayash Ali Ban­gash per­form. But we were on time for Indian Ocean, who were really good. Fol­lowed by Strings who were get­ting the crowd on their feet, when moral police stepped in and said, it was time to go home. So this group comes all the way to per­form and just man­ages 2 songs and then it’s time to go home. Looks like moral police are deter­mined to make life as mis­er­able as pos­si­ble for every­one. I won’t be sur­prised if as a next mea­sure MP put ‘swipe in, swipe out machines at every home to make sure we’re back before the clock strikes twelve.

Towards the end of last week, along with some nice com­pany, watched Amit Heri and his group per­form at Zero G. I haven’t been to this place much, but it is quite pleas­ant and chilled out. Since it’s on the ter­race, it’s rel­a­tively cool up there. Def­i­nitely worth a visit, once in a while, though the cock­tails are a lit­tle on the higher side (the height adding to the price, I guess). Any­way, pretty enjoy­able music they churned out, includ­ing some folk num­bers with jazz beats and a Turk­ish tune which had every­one applaud­ing. A lady called Math­angi lent her voice to the pro­ceed­ings. They started with a rather inter­est­ing ren­di­tion of “Maha Gana­p­ati…” that I loved.

Btw, a note to my read­ers, if you do hap­pen to notice (and rec­og­nize) me in any nook or cor­ner of Ban­ga­lore, please do come and say hello! It’s quite a nice feel­ing when strangers come up to me and ask me if I am who I am. And I am known to be rel­a­tively friendly :) For exam­ple, I got a mail today from Kiran, who thought he saw me at Infinitea ear­lier the same evening and sent me a mail later about it. Btw, if you haven’t been to Infinitea, it’s quite a cool place on Cun­ning­ham Road and serves rel­a­tively good momos. And also nice chai. Though Suman, who was there for the first time, was not at all impressed by the spearmint tea we ordered. If you don’t like exper­i­ment­ing, stick to nor­mal tea.

A few months ago, I had Arun walk up to me in the gym and say hello. I never bumped into him again, but that’s because I’ve aban­doned the gym for a while :)

And not to fall back on the food front, went and ate Ben­gali food yet again last week. Couldn’t resist it. I do realise the full extent of my glut­tony, espe­cially since it was just a few days ear­lier that I had gone there. But never the less, there was noth­ing to stop me once I got the urge for fish. This time, for some vari­a­tion, we ordered Anglo Indian style chicken (which reminded me very much of chicken cooked back home!), baked pota­toes, and fish, fish and more fish. Thank­fully, my din­ner com­pan­ions were equally will­ing and hungry!

And lastly, a reminder before I go and get lost in work — the Indiblog­gies 2005 — is now on. I’ve vol­un­teered to give a prize but have yet to fig­ure out what I should give. So folks do go check it out. Vote. Do what­ever is needed. Just do it!