Life, Musing & Anecdotes

Queen

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
I was quite young when we visited Darjeeling, the famous hill station in the north of West Bengal. I was with my parents and another family of friends. Back then it was quieter and cleaner in Darjeeling. I was not more than 8 or 10 year old. Yeah I was a kid.

When you visit this hill station a horse ride around the hill is a ritual – like every person has to do it. I was a kid and super excited to see the horses. Well they stink quite a lot.

My parents were enjoying a good sip of the Darjeeling tea at a café in the central area when I went on my first long horse ride. These horses are I guess trained to walk on that 2 inches space that you have between the road and the slope downside. You will be feeling as if they are going to jump down and push you towards your unplanned suicide.

There was this young boy, not more than 17-18 who was the owner of the horse and was walking along the horse. I am not sure owner or care taker or what, but he was now responsible of my wellbeing till I was back at the center.

That guy kept speaking non-stop in Hindi (I wasn’t too fluent in Hindi back then). About his family, his house, his horse and god knows what not. When he had asked me my name and where I was coming from I had told him without thinking anything. I don’t know why he wanted this horse ride walk not to end at all!

I on the other hand was worried on two things first the horse was may be half a centimeter away from the slope and this guy walking by the horse was getting on my nerves and I was not getting any good feeling.
This is when he said – “bhag chalo mere saath… I will make you my queen” (Run away with me, I’ll make you my queen).

This was the moment of shock, surprise, and terror all at once. And I was a kid.
The only thing ran in my mind was – I have no idea where I am, there’s no one around, and this isn’t something good. That sixth sense of a girl was inside me quite early I guess.

I thought, the best thing I could do that time was not respond to him at all. And guess what I did, I started singing. I sang our school assembly song loud and clear!! I had no idea what else I could do. He kept on saying weird things but my ears were not party to them at all.

All I wanted was to get back to the central area and away from this mad man.

And I did, in another 15 minutes I guess and simply ran towards my mother. But I don’t know why I never told this to my parents. In fact I have never told this to anyone! But this isn’t a happy memory for me somehow!


Have you ever faced such a situation when you are uncomfortable with someone’s presence or advances?

 ***
This post is written for the A to Z Challenge 2016 for Day 17 Letter Q. Visit A to Z, BlogChatter to read other beautiful bloggers!

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Life, Musing & Anecdotes

Pandal Hopping Mess

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
Durga Puja is the biggest celebration of the Bengali’s. More than being a festival it’s an emotion and part of our identity for Bengalis. It’s five days of fun, food, pandal hopping, meeting friends, attending cultural programs, new clothes and a lot of fun.

For those readers who are not aware about a ‘Pandal’ – it is the temporary outer structure where the idol is kept and worshiped. It is decorated and lit up in the most beautiful ways. Every locality of the city has their own Pujas and their own Pandals. These days they are crazy for themes.

When we were younger we were crazy about visiting pandals and almost made lists of how many we are going to visit. When you want to visit numerous pandals across the city you have to be geared with map and mark the routes. Since these pandals crop up on roads and streets many roads are blocked for those 5-6 days and traffic is diverted. In short – if you have not visited Kolkata during pujas then you will not understand it!


Now, you already know how prone I am to getting lost. You missed that part, did you? Worry not, read my lost stories.

This one time all of us cousins had planned to visit a few pujas late in the night. Durga Pujas are whole night affairs, in anyways. I was the youngest in the group of 12. That Time I myself was some 10-11 year old. We were led by my eldest cousin brother who was big enough that time. This particular pandal is very famous for their decorations every year and each day of the festival they usually have a footfall of more than a lakh people.

You don’t even need to walk because you’ll be invariably pushed by the crowd. We entered the pandal through the entry way and within minutes we had to walk out along with the crowd in the same flow through the exit. There were two exits one to your left and one to your right. Once you are out and in that flow of the crowd there’s no way you can go in the opposite direction. It’s like a human river.  

Me and three of my cousins came out through the left exit way and stood near one of the stalls waiting for the others to come out. Time flew, thousands of people passed by my other cousins were still not out. We got a little worried. Those were not the days of mobile phones. We realized they must have gone out of the other exit. I made one of my brothers climb up a wall of a nearby house to check if he can see the other group over the sea of crowds! We didn’t spot anyone familiar.

After almost 45 minutes we visited the inquiry box and made an announcement – “Amitava Bose, who has come from Behala, your young brothers and sisters are waiting for you at the inquiry box please contact immediately”. [It sounds hilarious now, but we had to do all this back then.]

I was the only one in the small group of four who stayed in Kolkata. The others stayed in different cities and were visiting Kolkata during the Puajs. Imagine my plight. Even after waiting for a long time we didn’t see or hear anything from the other group. We searched for our car at the parking, the cars were missing too. We thought they must have forgotten about us!

One of our house was nearby and we decided to walk. But waking up someone at 2:30 AM in the night and announcing we are lost wasn’t a great idea. We waited in the garage amidst mosquitoes and light flies hoping this other group will come there looking for us.

But then we had to ring the bell and wake my grand mom up who came down worried with the bell ringing at that deathly hour. Guess what few minutes after ringing the bell we heard the cars honking and the other group barging in!


How I wish we had mobile phones back then!

This is how crowded it gets
Image Source
Meanwhile check out a crunchy salad recipe 
in my Food Blog


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This post is written for the A to Z Challenge 2016 for Day 16 Letter P. Visit A to Z, BlogChatter to read other beautiful bloggers!
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TravelTravel Anecdotes

Out in the Space

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
Well no, I have not done a Space tour or visited the ISS. I am not a rollercoaster person at all. I always feel I will fall down and break a leg or smash my head. It’s not that I have a fear of heights but I have a fear of falling down specially from these roller coasters. I was in Disneyland in Paris sometime in 2005 or 2006 and if you have visited a Disneyland you will know it has these wonderful lands – Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland and so on.

This Tomorrowland has all sorts of weird rollercoasters. I was being pretty happy with the castles, Tarzan’s tree house, trains and shows. Frankly, one day at the park is too less a time! A friend dragged me to this craziest ride called SPACE MOUNTAIN. I was not too keen on it. But since everyone was rushing towards it I too joined the queue. You cannot see this ride from outside. All you can do is he people screaming their lungs out. This is a complete covered ride. As I got closer to the entry gates I could see the people of the last ride getting down. Few were puking, few were all red (from all that screaming I guess), few were crying and some looked disillusioned! I told my friend – you go ahead I am leaving the queue – there’s no way I’m doing this to myself willingly!


This is that dreadful ride! Source
He still dragged me and made me sit in that god damn ride!

The ascend itself was at a steep angle and we were taken up to some 5th floor height I think. And after that all I remember is I thought my heart was already outside my body, I am neither hanging or sitting, I couldn’t shut my eyes any tighter and the guy beside me was laughing!!!!



He even told me “open your eyes and see the space”

Really

If I could I would have jumped and hung on to a rope or the scaffolding – practically anything and escape that ride.

I did open my eyes for a split second and I guess a meteor whizzed pass me. The commentary in French behind the seat wasn’t helping me either!

This torture (for me) lasted for how long – I have no idea. I even screamed – “I don’t want to die!”

By the time we were down and the ride stopped I was shaking. The attendant and my friend had to hold and support me to get out of that seat. I didn’t howl or swear at everyone around was the saving grace!

I have been to Disneyland Hong Kong after few years and STEERED CLEAR of everything that remotely even looked similar to that Space Mountain.


Did you have a similar experience at a rollercoaster in an amusement park? Believe me I am scared of the oscillating Pirate Ships too! 

Seriously I didn’t even go back to look at my photos. They would have been worse than this!
Image Source

Meanwhile check out a gluten free breakfast recipe 
in my Food Blog


 ***
This post is written for the A to Z Challenge 2016 for Day 15 Letter O. Visit A to Z, BlogChatter to read other beautiful bloggers!
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Life, Musing & Anecdotes

No Fish Fry

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
We Bengalis are very sentimental about our fish. We eat fish like every day and if given a choice then in every meal. We have like some cosmic connection with fish. Ask a Bengali to be without having fish for a week he might find it is absolutely okay to murder you!

Here in Bangalore there are apartment complexes where they don’t allow non vegetarians. Imagine a Bengali trying to get a house for rent over there. Back in 2011 when we were looking for a place for rent we skipped all the properties that were listed with – prefer vegetarians.

My in-laws were visiting us one time and we had gone to Coorg for a quick holiday. For us food is a big part of any holiday. We were staying at a resort which was supposedly a good one over there. During one of the dinners my father in-law wanted to order fish fry. The restaurant in the resort didn’t have any fish fry apparently. They served only seer fish (which is a sea fish, and we are river water fish eating people) and that too only for lunch!

This is something that’s almost unacceptable for a Bengali.

“You don’t even have a fish fry?” asked my father in-law.

“No sir, no fish fry”


What worthless restaurant you are, we all thought inside!

Source


Have you too faced such a situation where you are sentimental about a particular food?



Meanwhile check out my Food Blog


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This post is written for the A to Z Challenge 2016 for Day 14 Letter N. Visit A to Z, BlogChatter to read other beautiful bloggers!
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TravelTravel Anecdotes

Macau or somewhere else?

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
Looks like all sorts of funny incidents happened in my life while I am travelling. I was going through my own posts this month and I can see most of these are my travel stories! LOL.

We were visiting Macau and Hong Kong sometime in the year 2008. We had to take a ferry to reach Macau from Honk Kong. This is one of a kind ferry though! We were asked by the local guide at Hong Kong to get down at the last stop and a driver would be waiting at the terminal for us with our name.

It’s actually difficult to follow the English that a Chinese origin person speaks. But we did catch the word ‘last stop’.


The ferry was supposed to stop at two terminals. We got down at the second one. It was sometime around 7 or 8 in the evening local time. By that time we had got a message from the driver that he was waiting outside for us. We came out and started searching for the placard with our name. Didn’t see any familiar name. Those days there weren’t Matrix cards (at least we were not carrying any!) My phone was on international roaming. But in the roaming things were also funny that time. I was using a pre-paid connection that time. I could send and receive SMS and ONLY receive calls and couldn’t do outgoing call. Thank god we have better options these days with WIFI available everywhere.

We spent over an hour looking for the driver. If you have visited this Macau you’ll know it’s a city of Casinos and tourists. Just outside the terminalwas the runway of the only airport there. While waiting for the driver we watched planes taxing in the tiny airport.

We sought the help of the tourist police there. He called up the driver and some words with him.

What he told next caught us in surprise.

“Your driver is waiting for you in Macau”

We were a little dumbfounded – where the hell were we if the driver was in Macau!!!

“Is this not Macau?” asked my dad now sounding worried.

Mom was tensed so was I – where the hell did we come?

“This is Taipa!” said the police

Taipa, now where was that?

The police explained Taipa is another island in Macau about 20 minutes away from the terminal where we landed up. This is the place you get down if you are visiting MGM or Venetian. 

He asked us not to worry since he instructed the driver to pick us from our current position.

Thankfully, we didn’t land up in some weird place!


Have you ever been in such a situation? Reached somewhere else by mistake instead of your destination?



Meanwhile check out a quick salad
  in my Food Blog


 ***
This post is written for the A to Z Challenge 2016 for Day 13 Letter M. Visit A to Z, BlogChatter to read other beautiful bloggers!
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TravelTravel Anecdotes

Lost

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
While travelling if you have not got lost and don’t have a lost story to tell, were you even travelling? I have a history of getting lost or getting separated from the group of people, or losing something important, like everywhere. It’s either I am getting lost or my parents or my friends! I thought why not share few glimpses of that today.

Vanished in Venice

We were in Venice, right in front of St. Mark’s Basilica mingling with people and waiting for our turn to enter the cathedral. We had some nice sandwich and cappuccino at a café at the Piazza and were pretty excited to be in Venice in the first place. Just before entering the cathedral I touched my sling bag (this was in 2006 or 2005 – I don’t quite remember – and sling bags were not in fashion, it was a small pouch bag with a long sling like strap) to see if everything was in place. I sometimes get this OCD rush when I am travelling. And guess what happened? The sling was there over my shoulder but the pouch was missing! WTF?? Where the hell was my bag. I was in Italy and that pouch had some Euros and my Passport!!!!


Two things ran through my mind – my parents will probably disown me if I lose the passport and I might be deported back to India that very moment! I was super scared to report this to my parents even. I was what twenty year old that time. I even asked them to go ahead with the Basilica and I’ll join them in a while. But my dad understood something was wrong because I had turned al red! For twenty minutes I searched almost everywhere, from the café to the entrance of the church! It was finally another kind Indian Lady who came searching for me, she had found my purse. She was searching for me to help me out. Madam you saved me that day thank you!

Absent in Acropolis

If you have visited Acropolis or anywhere Athens, Greece you will know it’s just tourist tourist tourist. Everyone wants to click a photo first and then see everything else. I was also young and carefree when I visited and climbed the place up much faster than our friends and my parents. All I wanted was someone to click my photo with the nice backdrop. Then I realized the camera was with my mom. (those were not the days of iPhones and smartphones).

But where the hell was my mom, or my dad? They were tugging behind the last I remembered. But I didn’t see anyone! There were scores of tourists but not the people I was looking for. I went down the underground museum in search of them. They were not there as well. I think for an hour I left everything and kept searching for my parents. The other thought at the back of my mind was – they must be worried about me too, their only daughter was lost, and lost in Greece! This time my passport was not even with me – I started trusting my documents with my dad after my Venice experience. I forgot about the photos and everything else. I even reached the parking lot. I saw our bus parked; I thought maybe I can take the driver’s help to report to the police! And then guess what – my parents were seated inside the bus!!!

They roamed around everywhere, finished the sightseeing and were waiting for me in the bus – supposedly! I still don’t know who was lost – me or them. And I don’t have a single photo of mine at Acropolis!


There are many such incidents that I can write about, but may be later. Tell me when was the last time you got lost in an unknown place?

Seriously. Source



Meanwhile check out a super grilled salad
  in my Food Blog


 ***
This post is written for the A to Z Challenge 2016 for Day 12 Letter L. Visit A to Z, BlogChatter to read other beautiful bloggers!
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