The Goan Omelet Pao!

Now if you ever land to Goa, you would like to eat an omelet pao because (in order of preference)

1. It’s cheap.
2. It tastes amazing.
3. You get to meet friends.
4. Someone lands up sponsoring you omelet pao (high five!).
5. You get to check out chicks, as these omelet pao guys open shop at strategically placed junctions.

There are a variety of omelet paos that you could choose from, but I would suggest you go to the guy at the Mapusa taxi stand, not only because the stuff there tastes good, but also because that guy has employed human robots. More about them later.

Now for some omelet pao etiquette.

Rule #1: You do not, and I mean do not, eat omelet pao alone. You should always make sure you have company.

Me (on the phone): Hey, !@#$%^ lets go eat omelet pao.
Lesley (who stays like 3 kms away): Eh, wtf man, I’m watching TV. !@#$ off.
Me: !@#$ you man. Screw you. Just come. It’s on me.
Lesley: It’s the woman volleyball finals man.
Me: Screw them.
Lesley: I will.
Me: Are you coming or not?
Lesley: Parcel it and come to my place man.
Me: @!#$#(@$*#@$@#)%*&^&#(@$@#$ . !@#$ you man, I’ll eat alone. Lemme know who wins.

Srijay: Hello.
Me: !@#$%^ lets go eat omelet pao.
Srijay: !@#$ you man. I stay in Porvorim (which is like very far from where I or Lesley stays).
Me: Lesley is coming man. And we may go and play some Counter Strike too.
Srijay: Cool, I’m in. Where do we meet?
Me: Taxi stand, omelet pao.
Srijay: Okay.

Lesley: Hello.
Me: !@#$%^ I spoke to Srijay, he’s coming to Mapusa to play some Counter Striked. He said he wants to meet up and go beat some school boys in Dust 2 (a Counter Strike map).
Lesley: Where are we meeting?
Me: Taxi stand, omelet pao.
Lesley: Cool, will be there in 10 mins.

And, this is just one example on how you do not break Rule #1.

Rule #2: You always eat your omelet pao with the roas. Roas = Chicken curry.

You have the option of consuming your omelet pao without the roas, but if you are gonna do that, I suggest you’d might as well eat a newspaper. Besides, the newspaper would be 1/10 the price.

The essence of the omelet pao is lost if the curry is not allowed to create a thin slimey, juicy layer between the omelet and the pao. This being the primary tastemaker.

Thus, Rule #2 should not be broken, yet those who do so may be allowed to go unpunished.

Rule #3: Order some juice.

It should not come as a surprise that there always is a guy providing fresh juice right next to the omelet pao guy. This is the age old marketing technique that they do not teach you at MBA class. The juice guy provides the exact balance between hunger and thirst. Hunger being satisfied by the omelet, thirst being quenched by the juice. Now imagine eating a lovely omelet pao and then not having anything to drink. FAIL!

Rule #3 is not mandatory, but should be followed. So order some juice.

These are the 3 main rules that are to be adhered to when you venture out to eat your omelet pao.

Now back to the human robots. The means and speed of the delivery of you omelet pao is directly proportional to the experience of the human robots at the omelet pao stall. Older the human robot faster you get your omelet pao. Lets refer to these human robots as hubots. Hubots are of a special breed. They do not have something known as hand-eye coordination. Their eyes and hands function separately. They also use their mouths a lot primarily to pass on information from one hubot to another. They produce anywhere between 6 to 12 ready-to-consume omelet paos in a minute.

The way you acquire your omelet pao is as follows. You shout for your order. One hubot picks up the information and registers it. And signals that he has heard you and your order is on its way. What you do not notice and realize is that the rest of the hubots have also registered the same information and are already preparing your omelet pao.

The hubot precision of omelet pao preperation is unmatched. One hubot breaks a couple of eggs which land onto a massive frying pan. In seconds another hubot has had them fried. A third hubot busily cutting loaves of bread in the middle, suddenly puts his arm out with the pao, only to grab hold of an airborne omelet which slip right into the pao. This omelet pao then moves into the hand of another hubot who adds the roas and next thing you know your omelet pao is wrapped into a tissue and is handed to you by one of those mobile hubot.

The mobile hubots are the ones who make sure you enjoy your meal without having to go to the counter to place your order or have to watch the other hubots at work. The mobile hubot also get you juice from the jucie guy if required.

Next thing you do is bite into you omelet pao. Aah! Life is bliss! The Goan Omelet Pao!!!

Now you may be wondering what happened to Lesley, Srijay and me. Srijay who stays in Porvorim which is like 10 kms from Mapusa has to take one of the local buses, get down at the Mapusa bus stand and walk to the taxi stand which is right opposite the bus stand. I stay in Parra, so jump onto the so call ‘Beast of the Road’ aka the Honda Activa and ride 3 kms to the Mapusa taxi stand. Lesley, the lazy b*stard stays in Mapusa, 3 minutes away from the taxi stand. As protocol always an important part, Srijay reached first by default, I reach a few seconds after he arrives and Lesley, that moron never turns up on time.

Srijay: Where’s Lesley?
Me: Dunno man, he should be here anytime. (One mobile hubot catches my signal for two omlet paos).
Srijay (on pohone): Where the !@#$ are you man?
Lesley: Ah, I’ll leave now.
Me: He just left right? (Sirjay nods, our omelet paos are in our hands by now).

Lesley decides to show up after 3 minutes. On an average 30 omelet paos must have been produced by now.

Lesley (to Srijay): !@#$%^ what do you wanna game suddenly?
Srijay: Me? You are the one who came up with the idea.
Lesley: B*lls.
Me: Hey looks, hot chick man. Looks known, must be our junior.
Srijay: !@#$ you man, you are paying for our omelet paos.

Amen. Goan Omelet Paos!!!

I enter the station. Kacheguda it’s named. Like, who the hell names places with such strange names. Yeah, and don’t forget I’m on my way to BengaLOOru. I notice some colleagues at the station. Wanna be metal heads for sure. I nod my head and walk past them. I’m on the hunt for a public urinal, coz my manhood ain’t got no strength to hold in the liter of water that I just consumed a while back. Finally, I find it. I pay the guy a buck. That’s the price you pay to mark your territory on public property in this country.

All at ease now, I spot a clan of metal fans. All in their black Tshirts, long hair and beards. Few metal headed chicks also are spotted. All these people swarming towards the calling. Like insects to the light. I being one of them. I walk past all and locate my boogie and find my seat. Luckily I get an emergency window. I open the grill and lean on the window. Screw the rules.

There is this old hag who is yapping nonstop in her native tongue. Screw her. I put my earphones on and listen to a mixture of Slayer, Obituary and Megadeth. I buy an egg biryani from one of the guys running up and down, selling food in the train. I eat. I throw the box out of the window. Just doing my duty as an Indian. You can’t blame me. I would use the dustbin, but I did not spot one, and besides, did you ever notice a dustbin in a train?

The old hag goes off to sleep. And so does the rest of the folks in d boogie. I’m awake.

We make a halt at a place called Mahaboobnagar. Let me break that down for readers who are not accustomed to this vernacular crap. Maha = Big, Boob = Boob, Nagar = Place. Well I don’t see any big boobs anywhere. Utter dissapointment for a place with such a fancy name.

The train moves on. I’m the only soul awake. I’m not one of those early sleepers. Besides, its only 2130 hrs and I’m in no mood to sleep. I look out of the window. Its all darkness. I realize Hangar 18 is playing. I was a huge Megadeth fan when I was in the 12th. Then it just got heavier and Megadeth had to step aside.

Metal fans are moving up and down the boogie. You can always know, from the signature black tshirt and dirty/torn jeans.

My thumbs are starting to hurt, typing all this on my phone. I’ll rest now, and watch the darkness pass by the window.

I sleep around 2330 hrs. Thats a bit early for me.

I wake up to sound of those guys selling coffee and tea in the train. It’s 0530 hrs. I buy a cup of tea. Talk about bad tea. This tasted like sugar mixed in water with added brown color. I consume it anyway. I let Les (aka Lesley, Minority, Asshole, Azzyole, MH, etc) know that I am somewhere in B’lore. We decide to meet at the bus depot opposite the railway station.

The train passes through the city. On the way I notice a college. And across its compound wall there was a huge “Librarian = Prostitute” sign painted. The librarian must have either pleased a lot of people or really pissed someone off :) . I have a good laugh.

All along the way I notice these men pissing on the wall. Like as though they are marking their territory. What is the problem with Indian men I really do not understand. I never associate myself to being one of then. Not even over my dead body. Don’t ever associate me to Indian men. They disgust me.

At last the train halts at Bangalore Central. I let Les know that I’ve made it alive sans any incident. He tells me to meet him at this place called ‘Majestic’. It happens to be a huge bus stand right opposite the station. I figure out my way to the place and wait for Les to bring his sorry ass there.

I go take a seat and observe the early morning chaos that people go through. After a while and walking around searching for each other Les turns up. We greet each other our style aka hug and abuse and head off towards the bus to take us to his place.

We land at his place after quite a while. We update each other about all the crap that has been going on and that went on. The show starts at 1400 hrs and the gates are open at 1230 hrs. We leave around 1200 hrs and head off towards the the venue. We stop at Shivajinagar and find a place to eat.

The restaurant looked really shady. Amazing! Just some place that we would visit. We enter. We get ourselves some real tasty biryani and feel stuffed. We leave and catch a bus towards Palace Grounds. Unfortunately, we get off at the opposite end on the ground. What we did not realize was that the so called Palace Ground was in fact a real huge place. We catch an auto finally reach the entrance.

Metal fest it was. All the black T’s, the cigarettes, the weed, the hair, the booze. It was all around. You could smell metal fans. I felt at home. We head off towards the gates, get ourselves frisked and we are in. We were early, so there were a lot of sound checks going on. I meet a goan clan that comprised of Xavier [Fetish Komb], Joe and other known faces. Les and I head off towards the stage where some Machinehead employees were doing a sound check. We sit down and watch.

Nothing fancy. Looked like it was gonna be a while before the show kicked off. Patrao Joaquim (aka Maddogg) gets in touch. Says to headbang on his behalf. We oblige.

After a lot of baking in the hot sun, they finally begin. The Indian bands start to play at the smaller stage. I got to say, Indian bands do kick ass. Prestorika, Millennium and Mother Jane impressed me. Guys in the moshpit were losing it. I had to think twice whether I would enter the pit. Missed my long hair. I did not feel dangerous enough to get in. I did not mosh. No issues though.

We meet one of Les’s friend named Topzor. Topzor, a chinky, is one real animated character. He is there with his chinky clan. They are all funny guys. Lots of abuses are exchanged. Lots of racial remarks shot around. All felt good.

Some guys around were real high. They were abusing all the Indian bands. Telling them to F*ck off and get off the stage. Ah, typical stoned metal fans. It was fun :)

Machinehead finally appear on stage. Fans cheer. We make our way towards the stage. Les departs and moves to a side to join Topzor. I move to the middle. Need to be close to the animals. Making your way to a moshpit is a challange in itself. I gotta squeeze through the million of souls accumilated there.

I make it to the middle. Center stage up front. Amazing place. I join the craze. For all of you who are not metal fans, you all, you won’t understand. I don’t need you to. Either you get it, or you don’t. All that goes on here cannot be documented. :P

Machinehead was done. One amazing performance. I move out of the pit. I take a Sprite and head off to a corner and sit down. A guy comes and sits next to me. He rolls his joint. He smokes it up. He blows out the smoke which comes on my face. I breathe it in and feel happy for no reason. :) Reminds me of something I can’t recollect. But yes, a brain cell was triggered. Ah it must’ve been from all the training I got from my friends during college. If there was and Oscar for the role of most supporting secondary smoker, that award would’ve been mine eyes closed. I know the smell of all kinds of cigarettes. I can tell the difference between a local ‘Beedi’ and a ‘Marlboro’. Thanks to those friends who used to create smoke clouds around me.

Megadeth starts to play. I move towards the middle to have better view. No way was I gonna make it to the center of the stage through 2000 odd guys. Megadeth did not sound that good. I decide to watch them from behind. No chances of a moshpit either. I can’t locate Les. I just and watch them on the big screen. Megadeth sounded really bad. What an anticlimax. But Machinehead nailed it.

The Gods finally feel good and I locate Les and Topzor, all high on entertainment :P . We abuse, shoot out some more racist comments and start heading home. The rain god suddenly decide to send in a slight shower. More of a drizzle. We try and run for cover. But screw that, we decided to get wet anyway. Les, Topzor, his rebel friends and I start walking out. We couldn’t help noticing one woman’s rear stuffed into a pair of jeans 2 sizes smaller than what she would probably require. What the hell is wrong with the women! We tell Les to go tell her to take a pants off so that we could see the size and gift her one that would actually fit her. Well all that nonsense was fun. I let made the long walk back seem really short.

Finally we some night shuttle and somehow manage to reach Les place. It’s way past midnight. We can’t locate a place to eat.

The hunt goes on. Finally we find a shaddy, half shutdown place serving Omlette Dosa’s. We order two. The guy tells us to come inside the shop and eat, else the cops will raid the shop. WTF. Can’t those dam police just let a common man eat his food and another common man serve him without them having to come beg for money! Anyway, screw them. We eat. We feel stuffed and good and head home and call it a night.

Amen to day 1.