My winters holidays are now over, and I am back with a new post. Most of the time in Delhi I was busy doing only 2 things. Either I was riding the newly inaugurated metro (Line 3, the blues line from Dwarka to Barakhamba Road) or trying real hard to install Mac OS X onto my computer. Now if you have visited Karan Misra’s Blog you know everything about it, incase you haven’t here is the painful story. Karan returned from Stanford with a new Mac installer. Obviously I was thrilled to hear this news, as the previous one that Rungta has been successfully using for quite a few months does not recognize my SATA hard disk!! Now that the new installer is here and Mr. Misra is also here, WHO can stop me from having Mac on my computer?? And this question still remains unanswered. Well, I gladly carried my entire system to Karan’s home hoping that by the next day I shall be proudly using Mac on my PC, but unfortunately the installer kept stopping midway. After spending two days working on it Karan realizes that the disk image might be corrupt. So the image is reacquired over a period of 4 days and then again the installation was retried, but again sKaran was unsuccessful again. This time it did not even boot from the dvd. Now after wasting about a pack of dvds, a precious week and quite an amount of data I am back to a usual Microsoft life and a computer which has been declared as ”MANHOOS” by Karan. Thanks Karan sob,.. weep you tried hard, but sob, unfortunately weep weep, bad luck…

Now some of the bright parts of the winter break. Delhi Metro is definitely awesome that is an old statement. Now I have realized that the adjective ‘delicious’ can be associated with the Metro. Now everyone knows that I love to eat. FOOD drives me crazy! And now Metro takes me right from Dwarka straight into the heart of Old Delhi!! On 2nd of January I decided to go old delhi and have lunch there (and this was a good excuse to ride Metro). So I went. At noon I started off from home and reached the metro station at Dwarka More (The closest to my house as of now). I bought a smart card for Rs 100 (acutally Rs 200, including the security deposit) and boarded the train. It took me about 35 mins to reach Connaught Place. The ride from Dwarka to CP is excellent. You get to see very big Malls and Multiplexes, the highest station at Rajouri Garden (the tracks go over a flyover and the view is spectacular - the engineering must be appreciated) then you see a big Lord Hanuman statue and the train slowly moves underground into the Rajiv Chowk (CP) station. Next I go to the second level of underground station and change over to the yellow line (from Central Secretariat to Vishvavidyalaya). This train took me to Chawri Bazaar station. This station is extremely deep under the ground level. Three flights of long escalators separate the platform and the ticket counter (which is also underground). And as soon as you come out of the station you are greeted by cycle rickshaws, tempos, bonk bonk, horns, traffic jams (in short a complete chaos). I selected one direction and started walking for sometime enjoying the Old Delhi atmosphere. After some time, I looked for help to reach the Paranthewali Gali. A shopkeeper helped me to reach that place, called a rickshaw and off I went. The distance was not too much but the ride was extremely time consuming due to frequent jams and confusion. And after a tedious ride I reached the lane, the renowned Paranthewali Gali. This old lane which earlier used to be full of parantha shops, now only has three parantha shops left. I went to the shop that was recommended by the shopkeeper. He asked me to watch out for the one that has the photos of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi etc. That shop was the oldest and the best. Well, I located it soon and enjoyed a few paranthas over there. The food was tasty. The simple vegetable paranthas are for Rs 15 each and the special ones, namely paneer, rabri, chini etc are for Rs 20 each. You are given 3 different kinds of vegetable, mint chutney and pickle with the paranthas. The shops are extremely small, stuffy and jam-packed with customers, but still the experience is worth it and the food is good. Next I decided to have the special authentic Muslim Biryani. I hired a rickshaw and went to Jama Masjid. The entrance to Jama Masjid is not very good. Even this place is pretty dirty and full of crowd and goats. I did not enter the mosque but managed to taste biryani at Meena Bazaar. And the biryani was excellent. The taste was toooo goood!! Mutton Biryani, 250 gms for Rs 10/- only and this is a must try. But I must tell you that only a real food lover should go there and have the biryani as the shops are dirty, you may find pieces of hair in the food (and whether that belongs to the goat or the cook?, I do not know) Just close your eyes, keep your nose open (the food smells great) and enjoy the biryani. And after the divine experience I went to the Delhi Main metro station (near Chandni Chowk) and went to CP. Here as soon as a climbed up the stairs leading out of the station I saw Wenger’s, the bakery. The pastries at Wenger’s are the best that I have tasted so far. Everyone must visit this bakery once and try out the flavors. After this superb lunch and desert, I returned to Dwarka. And finally I must repeat, Metro takes you to tasty food.

Two more things happened this winter-break that I really enjoyed. Firstly the DPS RKP reunion. It was good to meet old school-mates, although many of them did not manage to turn up. One thing I must mention is that in the past 15 years of my association with DPS this was the first time we were offered a proper meal by the school. And secondly Rungta’s B’Day. He rescheduled his celebration as I was leaving on 7th Jan. We had a good time at ‘Not Just Paranthas’.

Basically this sums up my entire winter break and now I am back to college…and some bad time lies ahead of me……..