Quick Gun Murugun- Mind It!!!

Okay, okay, so any music video that starts out with someone wearing the outfit above ordering a tumbler of whiskey and a masala dosa and including a rap about breakfast foods is going to be AWESOME in my book- I know I’m bias (See my South Indian breakfast post if you need a refresher on the food) Plus, it’s a spoof on Rajnikanth movies, who’s tagline is ‘mind it’ and is always doing show-offy things like catching bullets in this teeth or defying the laws of physics in other ways, like spinning knives midair for indefinite amounts of time- youtube the guy if you want to see- he is HUGE over here!

Chorus:
Idly, Appam, Sambar Khao
Quick Gun Murugun ke gun gao
He's a rebel without a cow
Mind it, mind it, mind it… IDLY!

Here’s the basic premise- QGM is a Tamil cowboy who's mission in life is to protect cows from non-veg restaurant owners. Seriously. On the other side, there’s Rice Plate Reddy (the dude singing in the music video), a nonveg restaurant owner who is hellbent on creating the perfect nonveg dosa. While protecting a village in Tamil Nadu from RPR, QGM is killed.
25 years later after (present time) he is able to reincarnate himself thanks to his lifetime devotion to vegetarianism. He then searches for RPR, who is trying to start up a Dosa franchise called McDosa (love it) in Mumbai. The evil RPR has been kidnapping aunties across the country to find the perfect Dosa recipe that he can then fill with meat. This leads to a showdown between QG and RP into an epic battle of veg vs. non-veg as well as Quick Gun vs. the big city- I know Justin would love how it has some Crocodile Dundee type moments in it as Quick Gun has to deal with Mumbai/Bombay!
Don’t worry, I’m buying the (bootleg) DVD and going to have several screenings in the States. Enjoy the music video and MIND IT! Without further ado, here is the video for “Mind It (Tamil Bhangra)”…

The Best and Worst of the Smells of Chennai

So, the second I got out of the air condition of Chennai International Airport and into the steets of Chennai a familiar smell came back to me... the smell of Chennai (as I know it). It could only mean one thing, I was back. As weird as it is to like the smell of 95% humidity and campfire, that’s what the overriding smell of Chennai is in my opinion. There are trash fires everywhere in the city but they usually don’t smell like burning plastic or other grossness but have a sort of campfire smell to them, I think I must have missed the place if that smell makes me happy though. Then, walking around the streets, I realized there were all kinds of other smells I missed (and didn’t miss) during my two weeks back in the US. A friend called India an ‘assault on the senses’ and I think there is often smell overload with all the sensations for your nose to take in, here are some of the other best and worst.

Chai/Coffee- Chai wallahs (chai tea vendors) are all over in Chennai. It smells like the spice cardamom and is a delicious smell. Coffee is also really popular in Southern India, although it is mixed with copious amounts of milk and sugar and is really hard to find good black coffee (my fave). However, there are many places that sell ground coffee, these shops smell fantastic and the smell wafts into the streets, I could stand in front of one for hours. You can get the ground coffee to go and make your own black coffee at home- this has been my taste of home while I’ve been here. India loves their caffeine just like I do, it’s a match made in heaven!

Diesel Fumes- All you have to do is walk down the street and you get a big lungful. It’s even worse when you’re stuck in traffic in an autorickshaw, which is exposed to the elements, you can even get lightheaded- who likes carbon monoxide poisoning???

Jasmine /Other fresh flowers- I have NEVER seen so many flowers anywhere in the world. There are people selling flowers everywhere and their smell is probably stronger than any I’ve experienced. In particular, women wear strings of little white jasmine flowers in their hair and it smells great, it’s a very particular flowery smell that I’ve never experienced.

Beedies- Tobacco wrapped in a plant leaf- it has a very particular smell to it, actually not bad, it almost smells like herbs burning. Maybe I just like them because I used to smoke them from time to time in high school. One of the most popular brands here is Ganesh Beedis which is weird to name a product that kills you after a god- can you imagine Jesus Brand Cigarettes???

Urine/Ammonia- By any wall especially, you get that strong ammonia/kitty litter smell. Men seem to think the whole city is their urinal here and I don’t think a day has gone by since I’ve been here that I haven’t seen someone sidle up to a wall and let loose. One of my first days here a co-worker told me not to walk so close to the walls and I was all like ‘what’s the big deal?’, but I quickly realized how wise his advice was.

Incense- You can smell it burning everywhere, from temples to people’s homes, I love the smell. My favorite is when a rickshaw driver has a stalk burning, which masks the diesel fumes a bit.

BO- With so many people around all the time, it’s inevitable that SOMEBODY forgot to put on their deodorant, or even more likely, just refuses to wear it. It’s in the air at all times though, I think that all the South Indian spices make BO even more pungent here than elsewhere in the world though.

Open Sewers- In some neighborhoods (like by my work in Guindy), there aren’t proper sewers, just drainage ditches filled with a slowly moving, milky-watery substance. Nuff Said.

Indian Food- Well, duh. Street vendors in particular, especially when they’re deep-frying something, smell delicious and are hard to pass up- too many varieties of smells to post here but trust me, there is a smell for every palate, from spicy to mild, from healthy to fat saturated in saturated fat!

Fresh fruit- Sold everywhere, it is often displayed and stacked beautifully and the smells make it too tempting to pass up, from mangoes to sweet limes (they look like tennis balls but are actually some kinda combination of an orange and a lime, not sour at all like our limes), from jackfruit to oranges there is always something sweet smelling and delicious when you walk past a fruit vendor.

I Need Your Help! Where Do I Go???

I’m turning 30 in about a month and plan on taking a long weekend off of work to celebrate. I’m trying to figure out where to go for a few days to relax and have some fun. It looks like I will be by myself so I’d like to be somewhere where I can meet some new friends and take it easy. Originally I was thinking about going to the Himalayas but I think that by the time I adjusted to the altitude it’d be time for me to turn around and go back to work. Some ideas I had included Goa, a strip of beaches in eastern India, somewhere in Kerala, the state directly south of Goa, Mumbai to live it up in the big city for a few days, or maybe another Southeast Asian country for a couple days, like Thailand, Sri Lanka or Vietnam.

So, my friends, what do you think? Where should I go? I think I’ll only have four or so days and am having trouble deciding and any suggestions would be really helpful!

Sleeping on the Plane

I usually can’t sleep on planes. I get so envious when I see the guy next to me fall asleep before takeoff and not wake up until after the plane has landed. However, I was that guy on my 13 hour flight from Dulles to Doha. I think I was so exhausted from my trip home that I just couldn’t help it. It certainly made the flight go by a lot quicker.

I had a great time at home, got to see many friends and family (though not everyone I wanted to see L) but I was running around so much and without my own bed that I was just plain beat by the end of the trip. The trip back home also had its share of sadness, with a death in the family, but I was glad I was home so I could pay my respects and to be supportive of my family. It was great to get back to Chennai yesterday though, where I have my own bed and many friends! It will be short lived though, since next week I go to Pune and then on to Coimbatore after that.