Mogwai Revival: The Self-Indulgent Prelude

I moved to Bombay the first time back in ’09, just a day before I started to really hate the city. I remember the flight clearly; there were noisy people all around, the weather was terrible; the usual. It was raining, and there was lots of horrible turbulence. Honestly, I was scared shitless. But now that I think back, I have very fond memories of that flight. Reason being that a couple of weeks or so before I took that flight, I had bought (downloaded; whatever) this album called The Hawk is Howling by Mogwai, while in the midst of this massive three month long instrumental atmosphere music spree. The entire two hours that I was on the flight, I heard just the first song off that album on repeat, called ‘I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead’. Rumination and nostalgic remembrances rendered a miserable experience into a meaningful one, thanks in no small part to the song.

The flipside to Jim Morrison’s impact is that I could never get past that first track on the album; I invariably ended up playing the same piece on repeat and I never really allowed myself the chance to explore the album further.

A month or so down the line, after I had well and truly sucked all life out of that song, I decided to give the rest of the album an honest listen. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the third song, ‘Danphe and the Brain’, which again grabbed me instantly, so I just decided to give up. I heard ‘I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead’ and ‘Danphe and the Brain’ on loop for the next few weeks, and never really got the chance to hear the entire album, and then I just sort of forgot about it. Oh, such a fool I was back then.

Then, just the other day (three years later), while working on something, I decided to play ‘Danphe and the Brain’ since it had been playing in my head for a few days so I had to get it out. I sort of got lost in what I was doing after a few times of re-playing the song, and the rest of the album continued to play very slyly while I wasn’t noticing. And somewhere during my passive state, it hit me.

Words can’t describe the kind of impression this album’s made on me since (which is shameful since I write for a living), and in such little time too – just two days to be precise. So I’ve decided to do a review of one song off the album (soon to follow), and it’s as hard a decision as any to make, since I really can’t decide between ‘I Love You, I’m Going to Blow’, ‘Scotland’s Shame’, ‘Thank You Space Expert’, ‘The Precipice’, and a couple others. Shall try nonetheless.

Album Name: The Hawk is Howling

Rating: 10/11

Because this is one of those rare albums that truly deserves 10 rating points. Then again, it’s not the ‘greatest album ever’ either, and I can think of many others which would probably get a 10.5 or so on the same ratings scale. So this rating has been picked for the sake of both fairness and convenience.

Food Review: Dessert at Big Chill - II

I’m not particularly big on milkshakes, although I don’t mind them occasionally. I’ll get to the milkshakes later though.

So I ordered my Mississippi Mud Pie from Big Chill, or The Big Chill for pedantry’s sake, and asked for takeaway. They prepared this neat little tin foil box with the dessert inside, a small plastic cup filled with aforementioned chocolate sauce, and put both duly into a jute bag, because plastic is so 20^th century.

Now I’m all for saving the environment, and plastic is bad and plastic bags are the scourge of the new-age hippies. But sometimes – every now and then – plastic is necessary. I genuinely believe that in the service industry – particularly in the hospitality sector – one should always account for the lowest common denominator, or the dumbest breed of people that will flock to your establishment for nourishment. In this tale of mine, I belong to that class of society that I just spoke about.

You see, the mud pie I had ordered is set largely in a base of ice-cream complemented with a thick crust. Ice-cream melts. Jute leaks.

So I was left with a big bag of leaking chocolate milk (with just the right amount of peanut butter for optimum taste pleasure) on my lap for the better part of 40 minutes, which was the length of my ride to my destination from Big Chill. I was in a car, so I had to do my very best not to spill even a smidgeon of the formerly solid-state dessert floating around in the box on my lap, for which I decided to sacrifice my sole pair of jeans.

I actually had two options; one of holding on to the jute bag and hoping and praying (which is what I did), and the other of actually using those two feeble plastic spoons inside the bag and eating before the mud pie melted completely. I chose the former, since eating the dessert in the car would have meant risking complete spillage disaster. And more importantly, I would have had to share. So I suffered in cold silence as the chocolate drip entered my socks even.

While in the car, I didn’t quite realize the magnitude of the problem. So I got home and opened the box, only to find decapitated crust bits floating around in a sea of brown milk. It was massacre. I tilted the box and drank all of it like milkshake. The chocolate sauce in the little plastic cup was still completely intact, so I gobbled that up neat. Worth it, I guess.

Like I said, the fault’s probably mine for not thinking things through, but the restaurant isn’t completely blameless either. They should have the good sense to have a couple of plastic bags handy for people who want to carry ice-cream dessert for 40 minutes in a car in Delhi heat.

Verdict: Dessert good, packaging not so much. Get some bloody plastic – out with the new, in with the old.

Rating: 3/7 – Fine, be ecologically conscious all you want. But let’s not be greedy tree-huggers? Or daft? If you really must maximize profits at the cost of customer jeans, then why not at least warn the foolhardy about the perils of ice-cream in jute bags in advance? Would have saved me a potential ant-picnic inside my pants. 

Food Review: Dessert at Big Chill - I

I was in Delhi recently, and I decided to step out for a meal one day. I’m not much of a food person; most of the stuff I ingest usually tastes like my own foot. But I do have a weakness for dessert.

So I went to Khan Market to get something to eat. Instead of eating though, I ended up drinking a few beers (thanks to my very strong will power and poor taste in friends), by the end of which I was starving. And also terribly late. So I decided to pick up food (i.e. dessert). I went to Big Chill, which is basically an overpriced Italian-ish restaurant styled like a café. The place is extremely trendy, but it’s fair to say that the reason behind its grand success – good food at decent prices – has been diluted somewhat; a look at the RHS column on the menu should testify.

In any case, there’s this one particular dessert they serve there called the Mississippi Mud Pie. It’s this filthy (‘decadent’ is passé) chocolate based thing that I really love. They serve this hefty slice of cold cake, consisting of a peanuty, wooden  crust, some chocolate/peanut butter/ice-cream based cake thing, doused in thick, diabetic chocolate sauce, the last ingredient being a personal favourite. The coolness of the cake thing, combined with my own coolness, strikes quite a contrast with the hot sauce and the elegant long-handled spoon they give with it. I was ordering takeaway this time though, so no spoon (unless you count plastic ones).

It cost (or costed, since mostly Indian people would be reading this) a grand sum upwards of 200 rupees, although I’m not sure of the exact figure since I made my friends pay for me. And since this is primarily a review blog, I should get down to the actual review of the Mississippi Mud Pie Takeaway at Big Chill: