Day XVIII and XIX in Bhubaneswar- India trip 2022

 "KAALI MU TO HUSBAND SANGARE HATA KU HATA DHARI MARKET RE SHOPPING KARIBAKU JIBI", "Tomorrow I will go shopping in the market with your husband holding his hands" - a challenge thrown by a woman to another woman. The later obviously irritated by this indecent proposal lands a thunderous slap on the girl's cheek who just boasted herself as the other woman in her husband's life.

The camera zooms on their faces for 30 seconds, flashing intermittently while capturing the emotions of the ladies, one of satisfaction of being the conquerer of the other woman's husband and the other woman's face showing signs of insecure annoyance. The background music grows louder as camera continues focusing on their faces. This is a scene from a popular Odia teleseries in the evening prime time. The women folks in our home are glued to it, including my mom who after a long day watches it bleary-eyed.

I call "SAMBADA", the vernacular Odia Newspaper rubbish. But my bowels won't move unless I scan it, going through all the crap while sipping my morning cuppa tea. An important news item caught my eyes - "SAALI SAHA BEDI RU BARA FERAAR", "The groom flees from the marriage altar with the bride's sister". Another noteworthy news item was about a Clerk in Pension Department of Odisha caught for taking a bribe of Rs.15,000 (about $200). It's high time they stop reporting bribes of these meager amounts. I find ultimate hypocrisy in seeing this reported on media. A classic case of the Odia saying - HAATHI GALI JAUCHI, PIMPUDI DHARA PADUCHI (Elephant escapes while the Ant gets caught).

We studied in Math and Physics during our school/college days, that when a number tends to get too small we ignore it considering it as zero. And those who are familiar with corruption in India a bribery of Rs15,000 is too small these days to get noticed and reported. The media should forget them and rather focus on catching bigger fishes.

We use the term GOAT for Greatest Of All Times (GOAT) - for the likes of Pele in soccer, Tendulkar in Cricket, Roger Federer in Tennis and so on. I can proclaim that Goat meat is the greatest of all meats, especially in curry form. I have eaten chicken, turkey, venison, tortoise and quail meat curries. But nothing beats the taste of goat meat curried the Odia way.

The scorching heat and humidity of the daytime restricts my shopping and dining out mostly after sunset. The cooler and breezy weather earlier this morning prompted me to go out and do some shopping as my departure day gets closer. Didn't find a single store carrying a decent collection of craft and gift items. Some of the stores I found were grossly overpriced.

So I headed to "UTKALIKA" - a craft store located in the iconic Market Building, the Times Square of Bhubaneswar. I took a stroll amongst a plethora of shops, big and small, just opened for business in the morning. I found the price in Utkalika quite reasonable. It had a wide range of products and their staff friendly. The same afternoon I visited my friend Alok Kumar Pal at his office in Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC). The office, the rooms and the cafeteria looked modern and impressive. It looked no less than a 5 star hotel.

While driving on Bhubaneswar roads we have to skirt the incoming traffic on our own lane approaching us. It feels quite irritating and often scary to see a vehicle coming towards you in your lane. The Bond movie "Living Dangerously" should have been shot on the roads of the capital city. Or a Road mafia movie "Roads of Bhubaneswar", similar to the Coal mafia based movie "Gangs of Wassyrpur" would be a big hit. Nothing more can relate this phrase "from reel to the real life" than riding on Bhubaneswar roads. More later...