Urban Shots - Bright Lights : Book Review

The book is a compilation of 29 beautiful short stories, edited by bestselling author, Paritosh Uttam.

edited by Paritosh Uttam

It’s the perfect cocktail - right amount of ingredients - be it comedy, drama, suspense, thriller, crime, biography, romance, fantasy. Few stories figuratively intoxicate and leave you in  want   of something more of it.

The book takes you on a joy ride from posh Bangalore colony to a flat in Jaipur. Amul has the innocence of a child, Maami Menace has a petty neighbour, who has solution to every  problem but yet she doesn't try them on her own. Stories such as It’s All Good, The Pig In A Poke and  The Weeping Girl are based on the current topics of recession,fraudulent mails and conning. Across The Seas and the Raincoat have emotional quotient attached to them. Father Of My  Son is my favourite, which has a father backing his son's proposal of marriage. Hot Pants increases your interest exponentially as you proceed with the story. The Peacock Cut is a  literary delight and the choice of words has infused life into otherwise ordinary story.

A low-point being that there were many proof-reading mistakes of apostrophe, inverted commas and even spelling mistakes. Also some stories appeared to be routine blogging stuff and a few wore the look as if they were translated from Hindi.

Apart from these, the book is just a perfect read and is prescribed dose of musings of urban life. It is worth the money you spend on it. My personal favourite being - Father Of My  Son.

BadeMiya : Road Side Stall at South Bombay

After spending 9 grands on camera, Milan and I, decided to go light on food but yet it was time for celebration ( those of you, who didn't understand celebration - for what? Yes, we celebrate even after giving an exam, leave the results ) and there popped the name "BadeMiya". As far as Milan knew, according to him it would have costed around 100 bucks for chicken/mutton/fish. So, we headed to Colaba.

This is first click from my "Canon PowerShot SX150 IS"

Reached there, it was a road side stall, with lots and lots of waiters parading here and there. The seating arrangement has been done on pavements on both the side of the road. Standing in the front of stall, you get the nice "smokey" smell. Ambience is nice, you see people walking on the roads, its the same feeling as if you are sitting at a high-end coffee shop and a transparent sheet of glass is separating you and road.

The menus were invisible at  the counter and we searched for them for first few minutes and then we came to know that they are nothing but an A8 size laminated sheet, one side was the menu and the other side has all the biodata of the stall. After I glanced through the menu, to my surprise, it has no item of fish. I was badly waiting to eat fish, after Tushar declined my offer of eating fish, the last night. Then obviously we had to go with mutton as chicken is regular at hostel mess.

We ordered Mutton Bhuna and Rumali Rotis, which came just moments after it (quite obvious as people at stall to meals offered ratio seemed close to 2, to me). It was a small plate applied with a very thin layer of gravy just as to cover the white colour of the plate. Though it was quite tasty ( don't count on me on the taste part, I am missing taste buds I guess and also I haven't had mutton since last 6-7 years or so ), it was too less for two Bhukkads to feed on. After Rumali Rotis, we gave a shot at Naans. And then came the Naans, which appeared as half of the bun of a burger. Taking into the consideration less liquidity and more viscosity of Mutton gravy I decided to eat that piece of bun with the green and red chutney povided as supplement at the beginning of the meal. As the last piece entered into my mouth, it marked the ( what should I say ) deduction of Rs. 110/- from my wallet.