A little Puja flava comin' atcha

Before Puja I had anticipated being cut off from produce access during the holidays, so I have a fridge full of random crap I need to eat before it all goes bad. My meals over the last couple of days have been mostly a result of boredom and unfounded desperation. I just ate an entire meal of fried potatoes with what I think was homemade watery Ketchup (tomato? sugar? salt? vinegar? who knows). Last night Benjamin and I were hungry and couldn't decide what we wanted for dinner. In about 45 seconds we went from being incredibly excited about a Domino's pizza to, after realizing I'd have to walk back to my house to get the phone number to order it, deciding to go to the Bake Shop. In retrospect, this was maybe not a very logical plan B. We might as well have given up on making channa masala in favor of eating crackers out of the dustbin just because we'd have to walk to the corner to get the chickpeas. The Bake Shop sells cakes and savory pastries, which are things with names like "chicken envelope" (exactly what you think it is). We pointed to a few items that had been sitting in the case all day, watched a man microwave them, and went back to Ben's house. I also purchased a piece of butterscotch cake, which was another bad idea. Indian cake is like the worst kind of broken promise, prettily iced and presented but consistently having the texture and moistness of styrofoam. After eating all of this very rapidly we began to regret everything, but were cheered immensely by this amazing scene from Suhaag, a 1994 Akshay Kumar-starrer (he can currently be found on bilboards at every major junction in the city selling Levi's jeans with some blonde chick's hand down his pants). I have now seen this whole movie and still could not begin to tell you what it is about. There's a lot of intense fight scenes, some involving zombies.

Guess what! My internet is fast enough today for this post to be partially VISUAL. Unfortunately it's not good enough for video, otherwise I'd show you a video of my favorite thing ever, the 5-day 24-hour carnival in Deshapriya Park and the greatest ferris wheel on Earth. We rode the shit out of that thing. Nothing can turn a bad day around like some ferris wheel action.

Even though Puja is over, I went with Ben and Joel to Chetla the other night to check out a huge "global warming" themed pandal that had won all sorts of awards. It was already being partially deconstructed (it no longer had a roof), so it was completely dark inside, but the flash of my camera showed an arctic landscape full of unhappy-looking animals. Based on the ice-covered model of the earth outside this was some sort of warning about climate change. This thing also had 10 air conditioning units keeping it arctic-like... who doesn't love that irony. The animals were pretty entertaining.

There was also an igloo within this pandal, which was pitch black inside now that the power was no longer on. I took a picture to illuminate one of the walls, and this is what I found.

Scary, no? I'm not entirely sure whether this was part of the deconstructive process or if the aim with this piece was "Living-dead Inuit, eaten by polar bear." Happy happy on the Puja everyone!